Thanks for posts FAREASTERNDRIVER and UNIONJACK I needed that to stimulate me to further activity. Also thanks Mr Moderator and staff for Happy birthday wishes..
When I read REGLE’S posts, my mind wanders, and I recall various events, passing out on the return from the Elsan due to lack of oxygen, (portable bottle empty). The nearest I ever came to “getting the chop” on an air test in a Lanc rapidly approaching the ground at ninety degrees. Killing the pig, Keep it up Regle, but not so much about urinating, and elsans.(only trying to raise a laugh). And ANDY more pics of Regle ? I know private cameras were verboten “during the present hostilities” but surely he has a few.
Must keep things in chronological order.
Hopefully a picture of the Majestic Hotel, Harrogate, which when I was there, was full of aircrew. Stripped of all it's finery, and fitted with eight campbeds to each unheated room.
I think that comparing our two stories, shows the difference timing made to our futures.. Remember, my school friend Geoff Davis, who was accepted at R;A;F Padgate at the same time as I was killed on Beaufighters by the time I finished ground school (I.T.W) and Regle who joined before I did, on ops while I was wasting time at Harrogate, and from our point of view, it was wasting time, with drill, P.T, swimming while a war was going on. A lot of us had lost our homes , relatives, and friends or knew some on who had, and our only objective was to stop the war. It then came as a shock, to find there was a surplus of pilots, and we could be in Harrogate for some time . I was offered a commission in the Fleet Air Arm as a pilot , but after consulting “the barrack room lawyers” was advised I could refuse, I refused. Much pressure was used to try to persuade me to transfer as the F.A.A was short of pilots , but I wrongly assumed, that after my experience crossing the Atlantic , I would always be seasick, and of no use to the King’s Navy . Others were offered glider pilot training, and as a previous post reminds me were also offered jobs as stokers on the railway. I decided to stick to my guns, hoping that after a few had transferred I would have my Spitfire. The rumour was that we were being held in readiness to go to the Far East taking over the planes of the aircrew who had already
done their bit in Europe.
Spitfire ? Some chance. I was posted to Pre A.F.U at Kingstown Airfield on Tiger Moths “to keep my hand in”. While it was all good fun, and no one treated it seriously we were still frustrated despite the fact that we could play around the top of Helvelyn in the Lake District, pretend dive bombing and low flying, chasing each other around the top of cumulus clouds. The airfield, just North of Carlisle was on the West side of the A6 with the billets (Nissan huts, with the ubiquitous coke stoves) on the East Side. So between the two, on the A6 a constant stream of American, low loaders carrying tanks and guns. Jeeps, Ducks. D.U.K.Ws ?, etc passed en route from Glasgow to the South Coast in preparation for D Day.
My oppo at Carlisle was one Sergeant Lucien Francois G***** *******, a Belgian who was quite a character. One of his lesser antics was when he flew to Newcastle in a Tiger Moth, to fly through the balloon barrage,.For some unknown reason he got away with that, but on a subsequent trip, when I was with him, finished up on a Court Marshal. I will deal with that next.