A Spitfire Pilot - Part 23
A real dogfight.
We shared the Biggin Mess with the third Eagle Squadron, 133, and 124 Squadron. Now one of the Eagle pilots had a little tiny dachshund puppy and one of our chaps, Jack Wratten, had a little tiny, Bitzer puppy, what it was we never found out. Anyway, the dachshund was called “Hoiman the Goiman” and Jack Wrattens’ little dog was called Major, because, said Jack, he was a brown job. Now we used to take these little pups into the mess and after lunch we’d all sit around in the hall, up the stairs, and all the way around and the idea was to get the two little pups to play or fight each other, but neither of them did any damage to the other, but it was really comical to watch. They’d wriggle and squeal and roll about and more often than not little Major would somehow get Hoiman on his back and the poor little dachshunds’ ears would flap out of either side and Majors’ front feet would often stand, one on either side of his head, holding his ears down, whilst he growled and tried to bite chunks out of the little dachshund. It really was the funniest thing we’d seen for ages.
There were several dogs roaming around the aerodrome, some belonging to pilots and some just spares that came in when the NAAFI wagon arrived and got fed by everybody. Brain Kingcome had a bull terrier, called Gus and at this time we had a squadron mascot, a rooster, and we used to watch Gus chase Ben, the rooster, all over the place. He never really did him any damage, but he’d rush at the rooster, and Ben would immediately leap into the air, Gus would shoot underneath and the rooster would scuttle off. Now that was fine as long as the grass was short, but the grass near the dispersal hut was quite long and Gus would often manoeuvre the rooster into the long grass which made leaping about and dashing and dodging him a bit difficult and all the pilots used to line up and shout at the rooster,
“Get out, Ben, get out Ben, you stupid buggar!!” and so on. It was quite funny.
72 Sqn June 1942 – Martlesham, a missing gun panel and new wheels
We were sent to Martlesham for a week, theoretically to do air-to-air firing, but also to give us a bit of a rest and it proved quite a pleasant change. The idea was, that if you were lucky, you got on your air-to-air firing early and then you had a day off, so I tried to organise my air firing as early as possible, bang away at the target, come back and land, then fly back to North Weald, leave the aircraft there and go and see Mum, which was great.
George Malan and I had a day off at the same time and we were also on the early show for air firing and I took the first bang and shot the drogue off, which pleased me immensely, but it was more luck than judgement. We immediately shot back to Martlesham, picked up our gear, got it back to the aircraft and went to North Weald, left the aircraft there and transferred ourselves to 76 Kings Ave, where Vicki, George’s girlfriend, had come down for a couple of days. We met her in London, had a very pleasant time, then came back to Woodford and as we only had a day we had to rush about a bit and Mum and Vicki decided they’d come to North Weald with us and see us take off. So they came on the little chugga-chugga line (The now-defunct London Underground Central Line branch that ran from Epping to Ongar, via Blake Hall and North Weald.) and we said cheerio to them, walked to the station, which wasn’t particularly far, got in our aircraft and flew off. We thought we’d have a bit of a show for the girls, beat up North Weald and the train. Well we started to beat-up North Weald and my outer gun-panel blew off. Now as it was supposed to be checked by the North Weald groundcrew before I took off, I should have landed straight away and put in a big complaint, but as I’d spent about ten minutes beating the place up, we didn’t think it was a very popular move, so we just flew back to Martlesham.
Being on operations, if you owned a car, you were entitled to some legal petrol coupons. Well I didn’t have a car, but Ferdie (Future Father-in-law of Robbie, and, perforce, father of "Connie" - my mum!) did, a little Hillman 10, which he’d laid up as he wasn’t allowed petrol and I had a chat with him and said if he’d like to make the car over to me, I could get the petrol, I could run it, it would be better for the car, it would also be better for Con and everybody else. So Ferdie agreed with this and on the next day we had off, George drove me up to Woodford and then tackled the business of putting Ferdie’s car in order. George, incidentally, before being called up or volunteering, had worked at Austins in Birmingham, so he knew a fair bit about cars. Anyway, it didn’t take him too long to get Ferdie’s car running, and I was as pleased as punch. I said cheerio to Mum and drove happily back to Biggin Hill, the proud possessor of a car and legal petrol coupons. Now they didn’t matter so much, so long as you had one or two to show the police if you were pulled up. As most of us had cars then, we used to fill up at the bowser on the dispersal and we were never short of petrol!
I had some groundcrew service the car, which I used to leave in the road outside my billet and they really did a good job, although “Timber” Woods did come up to me one day, when he was looking for certain groundcrew, and said,
“I’m bloody fed up Robbie, if they’re not working on your bloody aircraft, they’re working on your bloody car! Get ’em back!”
But he didn’t really mind.
Having a car was an enormous help inasmuch as if we were released at any odd time, all I had to do was jump in the car and belt back to Woodford. Obviously on day release and weekend leave, I was able to run about quite a bit. I took Mum and Ferdie and Else down to Southend one day, we had quite a pleasant time, and at that time anyone living or working near the coast, had to have a special pass and we were just driving down towards the pier and a policeman walked into the middle of the road and stopped me. I let down the window and he said
“You have got a pass, sir, haven’t you?”
“Of course”, I said and put my hand in my pocket, not bringing anything out, because I hadn’t got anything to bring out!
“Righto, sir, carry on” and that was that. Mind you, Ferdie was a bit worried.