THE PARKHOUSE MEMOIRS – Part 11
The memoirs of Sqn Ldr Rupert Parkhouse, recorded in 1995 – Part 11 . First post in this series is #9775 on page 489 of this thread.
NEXT DAY, Tuesday June 11, we stood by in the estaminet all day, the phone ringing occasionally and sending shivers through us. After afternoon tea and we began to hope we would not operate that day but about 5pm the phone rang and we were called to the ops room.
We were briefed to attack German tanks which were approaching Le Havre from 8000ft. I was supposed to fly No. 2 to a New Zealander called Hayden but after takeoff I could not find him so I flew off to Le Havre on a beautiful day. We had no trouble finding Le Havre, there was a great pall of smoke coming from the port. I didn't see any other Battle aircraft at all, nor a single thing on the road. I wondered vaguely whether I should go down and find something to strafe but I dissuaded myself from that rather foolhardy course of action and we landed back at Souge at about 7.30pm.
On the way back I was wondering whether I was the only one who had not dropped any bombs and that put me in a state because I thought I'm going to be the butt if I was the only one to bring my bombs back. The other aircraft had landed and it was with intense relief that I saw their bombs doors opening and their bomb racks coming down and every one had bombs on.
I've never forgotten the joy of the ground crews as we stopped at dispersal, they leapt up onto the wing and undid our straps for us. I must say there was an intense feeling of joy that one had got the first operation over, and one hoped that the trepidation before takeoff would not be quite so bad the next time.
At 10.30 that evening I was detailed as Flarepath Charlie so I went out and watched six Battles take off to bomb targets at night. At that time it was the flying pattern that the experienced crews would do the night sorties while we youngsters would fly by day. About midnight they all came back safely which was a great relief.
During this time I made a special friend of Davy who had survived the Maastricht raid. He was always quoting poetry, one of his great poems being Say not the Struggle Nought Availeth. He pulled my leg because I was Cranwell and he was short service, but we had the same background and we got on extremely well. It has always been a great sadness to me that he was killed later in the Battle of Britain.
Next day there were no operations, we hung around in the crewroom all day waiting for the phone to ring and having our meals, which were bully beef and potatoes with some kind of tinned vegetables.
NEXT POST: With only 218 hours in his log book, Rupert takes off on his second and final mission and finds himself trapped in his blazing aircraft.