The morning after our return from the Blackburn Aircraft airfield at Brough my instructor asked for my log for the flight. I didn’t have one, and told him so. He replied, “then produce one quick”. I drew a straight line from Carlisle to Brough on my map, and then entered , track, course , wind speed, etc , onto the log sheet and signed it, and gave it to him. Shortly after it was “hats off’ and there I was standing in front of the C.O. Without any preamble, he asked, which way did you fly to Brough. What could I say ?. I had signed the log, but couldn’t drop my oppo ‘in it’ and mention St Ethelburga’s, so I asked, “ is it serious sir” To which he replied “very” As I couldn’t obtain any further information, I decided to tell the truth with a few omissions. I told him we had lost our bearings , and seeing a large town ahead, let down to see if we could identify it, and then recognized The Majestic Hotel., we then set course for Brough. Think I detected a slight smile. He then placed me under open arrest pending a court of enquiry , and a possible court martial. The charge falsifying a R.A.F document. He then went on to say that Sgt Francois !!!!!!, was also under open arrest, and said that a retired Wingco had written down our identification numbers and reported it to the Air ProvoMarshal, who had a permanent representative stationed in Harrogate . Evidently locals were getting a bit fed up about the number of aircraft shooting up the Majestic. For some reason, he seemed sympathetic. And said his hands were tied, and that if it had been reported directly to him, he would have dealt with it internally.
Five weeks passed, before the court of enquiry, and it was quite boring, with no flying, or fun
flying around Helvelyn, or the top of cumulus clouds. I was put in charge of the sports stores and as very few airmen were stationed at Kingstown Airfield, coupled with the fact that sports day was one afternoon a week, I had to find something to occupy my mind. We had been told , nod, nod ,wink, wink that as we were under open arrest we couldn’t go off camp. We didn’t ask how we got across the A6 to the billets, without going off camp. Francois and I still had our motorbikes so we visited places like Gretna Green, and explored Workington , Maryport, and Carlisle. To fill in the rest of the time I ‘acquired” a bench and vice which I installed in the sports stores Nissen hut.. I then made a wooden model of a spitfire as a pattern, took it to the local foundry together width ’acquired’ scrap brass and aluminium . All to be rough cast, then filed and polished. By the time the court of enquiry arrived I had built up a small successful business selling the completed models to other airmen and civvies. N.B ‘acquired ‘ is R.A.F parlance for borrowed.
Eventually the great day arrived, the court of enquiry was held. I was retained as a witness and Francois charged with low flying. I think our C/O must have forgotten to mention the falsification of the navigation log., or did he lose it?. Shortly after, the court of enquiry was held on the airfield. Francois was ‘wheeled in’ and I sat outside for a few hours. In the event, I was not called into the room. Eventually he came out, and we walked to the Billets. On the way he told me that he told the court how he had escaped from Belgium under a railway carriage reaching Spain only to be caught and returned to Belgium. He then said he managed to reach Gibraltar on his next attempt and then travel to England, with which the court had much sympathy. Particularly so as , after all this he was wasting his time at Carlisle. He told me the court recommended that he be posted immediately to a A.F.U in spitfires.
This caused a lot of annoyance among the other pilots, some of whom discussed whether to also shoot up St Ethelbergers . Luckily no one did.
The reason I say , luckily, some years later, in civvy street, I was waiting in Tate and Lyles reception waiting to see the chief engineer, and noticed that the chap sitting next to me was wearing A? AN? R.A.F tie, he told me during the war he was in the Judge Advocate General’s department, somehow the conversation turned to Carlisle, and it turned out that he was the Judge on that day. When I jokingly asked him why he hadn’t punished us all by sending us to an A.F.U, he looked perplexed and asked what I meant. I told him what Francois told me, he told me it was untrue, and that he had been sentenced to six months hard labour and discharge from His Majesties Forces. Evidently he was already on another serious charge before the court martial offence.
TRIVIA.
Recently watching the Coast program on T.V which was dealing with the Solway Firth, it transpires that during W.W 1 a large ordnance depot was constructed between ~Gretna Green and Annan, near Carlisle . Employed there were twenty thousand female and two thousand males, which resulted in trouble in the local hostelries. As the job was very dangerous handling explosives the government took over control, and remained in control into the seventies. No wonder the beer was week and the pubs terrible when we were there.