The introduction to squadron life was less sobering for others, but still disconcerting. On the advice of the Squadron Adjutant, Andy Wejcman had changed his name to Wiseman. His identity disc said he was Church of England. When Andy asked why, he was told that most recruits were C of E; changing the religious denomination to Catholic or Jewish meant stopping the machine that stamped the letters, a process the Women Auxiliary Air Force members found unduly laborious.
‘I can get it changed if you want,’ Andy was told.
‘What’s the difference?’ he replied.
‘You’ll be buried in accordance with Christian rites when your charred remains are found on the continent of Europe.’
Andy didn’t want to be labelled as difficult, and decided it didn’t matter; he would be dead. The denomination remained.
He was posted to 466 Squadron Royal Australian Air Force at RAF Leconfield in Yorkshire – ‘A Polish Jew, flying with the Australian Air Force!’ – as a bomb aimer. ‘I really enjoyed squadron. The camaraderie was lovely and the Australians treated me as an equal. If we argued, my pilot used to say, “Don’t give me any airs just because you went to unifuckingversity!’ But he didn’t mean it seriously.’
When Sam Harris and his crew finally made it to Elsham Wolds on that icy January Sunday they were pointed in the direction of a Nissen hut in the corner of a field. Their living quarters was a room with 14 beds, six of which were surrounded by piles of clothes and books which two NCOs were putting in freshly labelled kitbags.
‘What’s going on?’ Ken asked.
The men stopped what they were doing. ‘We’re the Committee of Adjustment,’ one of them answered. ‘We’re collecting the property of the crew that were here. They’re listed as missing; we look after their belongings in the meantime. If you give us some time we’ll get the hut cleared and you can move in. I hope you have better luck than they did.’
The crew stood silent for a few seconds, watching as the two men cleared away the lives of their predecessors. Ken suggested they head to the mess for a stiffener.
The first crew member to experience the fire and fury of an operational raid was normally the pilot. As part of his training on base he was required to tag along with an experienced crew on a watching brief, a routine known as flying ‘second dickie’. Some did not survive those flights; many a fledgeling crew lost their skipper before they had even started a tour.
Ray Francis (front row, far left), end of tour
Ray Francis, a flight engineer with 622 Squadron at Mildenhall in Suffolk, barely slept a wink the night their pilot, an Aussie named Ray Trenouth, went on his first op as second dickie. His crew just lay on their bunks praying for his return. Eight hours later, to their great relief, he walked back into the married quarter which was their home on base. He said nothing, kicked off his boots, sat on his bed, pushed his cap to the back of his head, lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. His silence was more than the others could bear.
‘What was it like, Ray?’
He blew out a cloud of smoke and chuckled. ‘Just wait until you blighters go!’
Ray Francis had joined up after seeing his home city of Birmingham suffer under the weight of the Luftwaffe bombing. He wasn’t going to be easily deterred. ‘In the early days on the squadron we knew that people were being shot down and killed. But we never talked about it. We never related casualties to deaths. If 20 aircraft went up and two got shot down, you never said to yourself at that time, “That’s 10 per cent gone, so we’ve got to do 30 ops, therefore we’re going to get the chop three times.” We were just keen to get in and take part. You never expected to finish a tour, but then again you always thought it’ll happen to the other fellow and not me. Now that’s a bit daft, isn’t it?’24
Norman ‘Babe’ Westby was the youngest member of Rusty Waughman’s crew. As a bomb aimer his role was to guide the pilot over the target and release the bombs at the right time. He spent most of the op next to or behind the pilot, but moved down into the nose during the bombing run, the point at which the aircraft was running the gauntlet of the enemy’s most focused flak defences. He would lie down and look through the bombsight as shells exploded and shrapnel flew around him, to usher the bomber calmly into position.
It was not a job for the faint-hearted. In Norman’s opinion, it guaranteed him the best view of the unfolding drama: the searchlights scouring the sky and the fires burning on the ground; the kaleidoscopic ‘target indicators’ released by the Pathfinders to mark his aiming point – or, when visibility was poor, the skymarkers, coloured flares attached to parachutes. And to round off the show, as he thought of it, were the ‘fireworks’. ‘Isn’t it pretty?!’ he would cry, surveying the flak-blasted stage. ‘Isn’t it beautiful?!’
‘For Christ’s sake, Norman, shut up!’ the rest of the crew would chorus. They just wanted to hear that the bombs were gone and they could head for safety.
When another crew went missing, ‘It wasn’t worth thinking about,’ Rusty Waughman says. ‘We would raise a toast to them: “Here’s to so-and-so, he’s dead, and here’s to the next one to die.” Or: “Death put his bony hand on your shoulder and said – Live, chum, I’m coming.” We were young and naive. We didn’t have the mental capacity to truly understand the reality. The chaps who suffered most were the highly educated ones, who understood what was happening and knew they were likely to die.
‘If the other crews in your hut didn’t return, then the Committee of Adjustment arrived to remove all their personal belongings. One minute they were, the next minute they weren’t, and then a new crew arrived to replace them. People just disappeared. You didn’t see dead bodies, even though thousands of my colleagues died. People simply weren’t there any more.’
Alan Payne remained an irrepressible optimist. He always thought there was ‘a gap in the flak’ where he and his crew would find safety under the heaviest fire. Roger Coverley was a fatalist. ‘I knew I was going to get the chop because all my mates around me were getting it. So many aircraft were being lost that it felt inevitable. But it did not affect me. I thought, whatever happens, happens. No one shed any tears about it. We laughed at it really. We thought, let’s get on with it and then have a drink.’
Drink was not discouraged. Even Bomber Harris believed his men needed a release. ‘I have always considered that the strain imposed by sustained bomber operations requires that aircrew personal should enjoy the maximum amount of freedom from restraint, and should be relieved, as far as can be done without loss of efficiency, of routine station duties.’ He added: ‘The last thing I would wish to do would be to impose on aircrew personnel an irksome regime of inspections, parades and spit and polish.’25
The focal points of the men’s life became the pub and the mess. Any entertainment was welcomed which might take their minds off what lay ahead, whether it was the cinema or just a good sing-song in the mess.
Sam Harris and his crew were regular visitors to the Oswald pub in Scunthorpe on their free evenings. It had a gramophone; the barmaid would put on Bing Crosby singing ‘Cow Cow Boogie’, and on Saturdays there was a large back room where ‘some of the aircrew would go on stage and do their party piece, usually when the night was well advanced