A Spitfire Pilot. Part 12.
By this time, most of us were anxious to get as many hours in on Spits as possible and we were often chatting and saying how many hours have you got and so forth and one day we asked one of the Czech pilots, Ruby, how many hours he had. He took his long cigarette holder out of his mouth and said,
“Hmm, about Too Tousant!”
He was a great chap and a terrific pilot and a great player of Cravat, which he taught me and used to take quite a bit of money off me in the process. He would also challenge people to play him at Shove Ha’penny, for sixpence a game and he would come up and say,
“We play for sixpenzz? A schillink is better!”
Long after I’d left 111 Sqn and after I’d come back from North Africa, I met up with my old Flight Commander on 111, Laurie Clifford-Brown and he told me a story of Ruby, which I don’t think has gone too far, which is probably just as well. Apparently when they were stationed at Debden, they used to do Rhubarbs, which as you probably know, are two aircraft, going into low cloud, flying across to France, nipping out of the cloud and shooting up anything you could find, nipping back into cloud and coming home. On this occasion, Ruby and The Honourable Wentworth Beaumont, or Wendy Beaumont as we used to call him, were told to go up on a Rhubarb, so they took off from Debden, flew low over the sea, then up into cloud, came down again over the sea, up to the coast, up over the cliffs and Windy saw a train, which they proceeded to shoot up then tore back into cloud and returned to Debden. When they got back, they were quite surprised to be called into the Station Commander’s office, to find out exactly what they’d done and what they’d been shooting at. So they told the station CO, they’d seen this train, shot it up. Did they do much damage? Yes, quite a bit, back into cloud, no damage to them, and got home. The only snag was, the train they’d shot up, was just off Margate!
It was obviously all hushed up, but Ruby got quite a rocket from the Station Commander. It didn’t affect him a great deal, he pretended he couldn’t understand English, which was very untrue, so they got another Czech pilot in with him and the Station Commander was blasting Ruby up hill and down dale and the other Czech pilot was translating for Ruby, who was just standing there as though he was the soul of innocence. I don’t know what happened to Wendy Beaumont, he probably got a Knighthood for it later on!
One day we were told we were going to have a coach trip to Harwich and Felixstowe to have a look over some Motor Gun Boats and corvettes and whatever else was there and see how the other half lived. It was more than interesting inasmuch as a couple of the gunboats had just come in having shot up some Jerries, just off Ostende, and they were quite pleased with life. When we started chatting to them we found that one the boats had recently picked up one of the chaps from 111 Sqn who’d baled out in the Channel, so it was all very jovial. Some of us were taken out in a corvette, where we were treated like lords by the Naval types, who gave us tins of tobacco, pounds of butter and all sorts of things that we didn’t get, but that they got Duty Free.
Coming back we were supposed to stop at Colchester station for a couple of coffees and a bun, before proceeding back to Debden or North Weald; I forget which station we came from at that time. Anyway, we went into the waiting room and then into the buffet, had our coffee and so forth, went down under the subway and got back into the coach. Now, we’d got to Colchester somewhere about half past eight and by the time we’d wined and dined there, we got back in the coach about half past nine and they found there were six people missing – all the Czech pilots. There was nothing we could do, we just had to sit there. So we sat and we sat till about half past eleven, when, lo and behold, all the six Czech pilots arrived. Naturally the Flight Commander who was in charge, did his nut, started screeching as was his wont, and it turned out that whilst we were on Colchester station and before we’d come under the subway, a train had come into Colchester and just stopped and it stood there for the best part of two hours before moving out. Now the Czechs, not knowing what to do, waited for the train to go; they knew they had to get across to the other side of the station some how or other, and when the train left, they climbed down on the railway, across the lines, up on the other platform and across and back to the coach. When the CO said,
“Why the hell didn’t you come with us?”
All they could say was, “Train in way, yes? Train in way, yes?” and that was the end of that.