Old Comrades
Off by train to London for Christmas leave. Same overwhelming thoughts, same dazzling effects of our startling transformation evident to all who understood these things. Two pretty girls sat in our compartment, with four new “saviours of civilisation” to make eyes at them. One of the girls (the prettiest one of course) had a puppy that she kindly asked me to nurse for a few minutes. My day was made - until she said quite innocently, "What do you do, in the Air Force?" Oh, callow youth! How to be deflated, in one single instant! Why couldn't she see what an important young Sergeant-Pilot I had become?
We arrived at Kings Cross Station, London, in the late afternoon, and it was already getting dark, being mid-winter in England. There was a smell of fog in the air. My mates left me for their own homes. I went to find a telephone, and rang my father, "Major Walter Eacott, DCM, Middlesex Home Guard". After about half an hour's wait, he arrived in an army car driven by a soldier, and collected me complete with my white kit bag, for the pleasing drive home to Chingford.
What an exciting Christmas followed. Mother and sister were both as pleased as Punch to see me. In spite of the black-out, the eternal shortages of food and the other limitations of wartime, we had lots of celebrations, a Christmas party or two, a wonderful Christmas dinner (by Mum of course) and plenty of visits to see friends and family members around Chingford.
The leave was all too short. Before January 1942 was more than a week old, I was off to my new training school, called "Operational Training Unit", otherwise known as 54 OTU, at RAF Station Church Fenton, in Yorkshire. There I was to fly Blenheim twin-engined fighter-bombers, in preparation for my role as a night fighter pilot, and it was another very memorable experience.
Yorkshire is a bleak, cold County in winter. Church Fenton didn't depart from the normal. Snow lay around for the rest of the month, and well into February. We managed to continue our training, sometimes having to take part ourselves in the job of shovelling and sweeping snow off the runways so that the aircraft could take off and land. The aeroplanes were old, and almost obsolete. They were the nearest approach the Air Force could give us to the deadly Beaufighters, on which we would fly solo before we left Church Fenton, but which were far too scarce and expensive to waste on training us!
We flew a great deal at night, naturally, as this would be our active task when sent to Squadrons. Lots of day flying was also carried out, and I can still remember the difficulty of finding our way around northern England with the ground below carpeted for so many weeks in snow.