WOP/AG Peter Jensen. Instalment 6
I spent three weeks in Ely Hospital. My main memory of that is being dosed up on the new drug – sulphanilamide. When they sewed up my leg, they left a drain pipe hanging out of it. It would start to heal and I would go off the drug and my leg would swell up and I’d go on the drug again.
At the beginning, I couldn’t sleep too well – I would start to drop off and I would hear the ‘scrunch!’ as the aircraft hit the ground, and I would be wide awake again. However, I gradually regained normalcy and after three weeks, I was transferred to Littlport Convalescent Home.
This was a pleasant time. I was in a ward with four or five other airmen from different squadrons flying different aircraft and we spent many hours arguing over religion, politics, the merits of different aircraft and anything else we could think of.
I had my twenty-second birthday there and celebrated it like any other day – flat on my back.
Later, I learned that during my convalescence, two other prangs happened at Suttonbridge, one, like us, a lost engine during takeoff and the other during fighter affiliation when a Spitfire ran into a Wimpy. All in all, nine pupils, including my room-mate Town, and three staff pilots killed and three pupils injured. It certainly ruined the station’s safety record.
After two weeks there, I took my first tentative steps, albeit with a walking stick, and then, after a few days, I was walking without aid, but with a pronounced limp. I went for a medical check and expected to be posted back to the squadron, but to my dismay, I was sent to Loughborough Rehabilitation Unit. There, I had lots of physiotherapy, exercises, swimming etc. and finally convinced the authorities that I could walk without a limp. I finally got my posting back to the squadron, plus a couple of days leave.
On my way back to the squadron, I stayed a couple of nights with my friends, the Brown family, at Bournemouth, and that morning, about 10 a.m., there was an air raid on the town by several FW190 fighter bombers. Up to that point, Bournemouth had not had many air raids apart from a couple of bad raids early in the war, and the locals had become quite blasé and didn’t bother going to shelters when the alert sounded (which was often, as the bombers constantly raided Southhampton).
It was a lovely warm sunny morning. I was in the lounge room - (the others were in the dining room talking to neighbours) – when the windows started rattling. I went to the window and looked out to see a FW190 popping cannon shells down the street. All I could think of was “glass!!”, and found myself hard up against the opposite wall. (I must have jumped back in one bound.) I raced into the dining room where there was a ‘Morrison’ shelter, (a table made of plate steel). The only one in the shelter was Bonzo the dog. I was about to dive in and join Bonzo when I realised that the others were sitting around chatting. I yelled: “Raid! Get in the shelter quick!” But they wouldn’t believe me. Anyway, the raid was over and the air raid alarms began sounding the alert – a bit late!
I went outside and was staggered to see plumes of smoke going up in all directions. It was a bad raid, with many people killed and injured, and yet I had not heard one bomb go off, and neither had my friends and others I spoke to!
As I looked around, I noted that one plume of smoke came from the direction of the home of the Durrells, so I set off to find out if they had been hit. As I got there, the ARP (Air Raid Precautions) had the area cordoned off, but they let me in, where I found that the house behind theirs had received a direct hit. Their house was OK apart from smashed windows on that side, and the occupants, Mrs Durrell, the two sons, Leslie and Gerald, along with their Greek maid, Maria, were unhurt but badly shaken.
There were lots of candles burning in the house, so I asked Mrs Durrell why it was so, and she explained that when they realised their close escape, Maria had lit a candle to her patron saint and they thought: “what a good idea!”, and lit every candle they could find in the house. They were most irreverent people, had no time for religion, but they reckoned it did no harm, and you never know – it might do some good!
During my absence, the squadron had moved from Poole to Pembroke Dock in Wales. I arrived there on 1st June 1943. On arriving, I found that a couple of changes had been made to the crew. Larry Donnelly, our WOM, had been sent on a pilot’s course, and I had been made 1st WOP. Les Baveystock had been commissioned and sent on a Captain’s Course - (he ended up on 201 Squadron) – and we had a new WOP, Horrie Morgan.
Our aircraft was W6077 – letter ‘U’ – and my first flight was an A/S (anti-submarine) patrol down the Bay of Biscay on the 5th of June 1943. This lasted 13 hours 20 minutes. The next trip was two days later and it lasted 10 hours 45 minutes. (We were recalled early as the weather was closing in and we diverted to Mountbatten.) We flew back to Pembroke Dock the next day.
Things were beginning to heat up in the Bay and we were flying constantly. Occasionally, we would sight suspicious looking aircraft, but there was usually some cloud we could duck into – (we called it ‘life insurance’) – but no U-Boats were sighted.
That is, until 30th July 1943.
Last edited by Wiley; 1st Feb 2010 at 00:18.
Reason: Typos, new info from PJ