“Afterwards,” Malcolm says, “They met up with Bernard and me. We had returned to UK about 10/14 days earlier, crossing from France in an LCT which bowed between bow and bridge, up and down, in a most alarming manner. We were convinced the craft had broken its back; most likely it was the normal action of an empty LCT.
“When we arrived back at Gurnard Pines, nobody seemed to want to know anything about us. We settled into a chalet, slept in until 10.30 or 11.00 every day, emerging only for dinner and a gentle stroll down to Cowes. After about a week of this near-Nirvana, we were rudely aroused one morning by a Petty Officer checking the chalets, who threatened us with all kinds of dire penalties, which somehow did not materialise, but in no time at all we found ourselves down in Cowes scrubbing floors and performing menial tasks.
“The second half of B5 returned to UK shortly after the first lot, crossing in an LST loaded with wounded, German as well as British and Canadian. Prior to embarkation Alf Grundy and Len Jeffrey had helped to take some of the wounded onto the LST. Alf recalled that some of them, presumably tank crews, were badly burned and he helped the medical staff with the dressings on at least one of them. Len recalled that one young soldier took his hand and squeezed it so hard he thought his fingers would break. Shortly afterwards he was talking to men of 1st Battalion East Lancashire Regiment, who told him that their 5th Battalion had suffered very heavy casualties. Len’s brother was in the 5th Battalion and was amongst those killed. His death was confirmed the day Len arrived home on leave.
After their return, members of B5 were granted leave. None of them are quite sure how long the leave was, possibly ten days, nor when it was. Some weeks later, the whole of the Section were in Nissen huts at Exbury House, where they were “at a loose end” says Malcolm. “Nobody quite knew what to do with us. Some of them somehow managed to take a few days ‘unofficial leave’ without being missed or repercussions ensuing.” Malcolm says he accompanied Johnno to Leigh-on-Sea.
Not long after the story of the Battle of Arnhem and the evacuation of the survivors was broadcast, B5 heard the section was to be disbanded. Malcolm, who had been offered the prospect of a change from Beach Signals by the CO of SNOL LC1, and had opted to remain with it, found this ironic. Some of the section returned to General Service, one went to another Section and some kicked their heels still more all through the winter of 1944/45. Two, Bernard Stone and Stan Edwards, joined B3 which went to the Far East, and took part in the assault on the Morib Beaches at Port Swettenham (Operation Zipper). “Fortunately for all concerned,” says Malcolm, “The surrender of the Japanese meant they landed as a re-occupation force instead of an invasion force.
“Alf Grundy had the vague idea that after B5 was disbanded he took part in the re-occupation of the Channel Isles but he remembers being demobbed in February 1946.
“Len Jeffrey found himself in Devonport, instructing on Type X Code/Cypher machines. He was then drafted to the destroyer Fame as Leading Coder.
“I was at Dundonald until the beginning of May ’45 when I was drafted to one of two flotillas of Beach Survey Craft [Eureka Boats] based in Argyllshire, working up for service in the Far East.” In the winter of ’44-’45, the cold bit into the damaged fingers of his left hand and what was worse, he had “some affliction which resembled glandular fever.” Life improved for him when he was joined for five months by his wife and two-year-old son. He was also joined at work by another former B5 member, Alan Chadwick. He was already in touch with Tom Chapman, who had his wife in Troon and who had suggested Malcolm invited his own wife and son to stay nearby.
Malcolm says their flotilla was not sent East, the war having then ended. He was demobbed in November ’45.
Malcolm adds that two former members of B5, not with the section during the Normandy landings but still in touch with those remaining, were Jack Payton, an RAF Wireless Operator, and Norman Weston, a Naval Signalman. Jack returned to the RAF and soon found himself in India. Norman was in B7 for Normandy and landed on Juno Beach. After three weeks there, his Section was relieved by a newly formed Canadian Beach Party and after a brief spell in UK, they went back to France with a party of civilian intelligence people, for whom they maintained communications through Belgium, Holland and Germany, finishing up at Flensburg, Denmark.
It quickly became evident when the fight proper was joined with the German Kriegesmarine, that air power was going to be a crucial part of the struggle for the dominance of the seas. The attack on the Bismarck by the stick-and-string biplanes of Eugene Esmonde’s Swordfish squadron was a classic illustration of the way in which a sleek, modern battleship could be hobbled by older technology, if caught out in the open by air attack, and undefended.
The story told by Lieutenant Humphrey Dimmock is no doubt typical of many.
“I was, before the war, a professional pilot, giving instruction. I volunteered. I trained at Eastleigh - the war-time training. We flew TAG - Telegraphy, Air Gunners. We took them out. All we had to do was fly them and back again. I suppose we were learning how to fly naval aircraft, and naval discipline. After that, I volunteered for first line work and my name went up amongst others, and I was sent to a place where we learned to fly Swordfish, and drop torpedoes and bombs. And I passed off of that, I know, with top marks. Then I was posted to 823 Squadron in the Orkney Islands, where the work I was doing [was] searching for German submarines with depth charges on your wings, up in the Arctic. We flew open aircraft. We had to wear gloves. You couldn’t do any writing on paper, you were flying all the time. You had to do all calculations in your head and I’m good at that.”
He was posted to 781, flying VIPs, mainly because before the war he had been a professional pilot.
“I always considered myself top of my rate. I was cocky in those days, you know? Then I was posted to 781 where I was senior pilot immediately and eventually became CO and told others what to do. But I had to lead them on and I taught a lot of people some of my ..tricks if you like; sort of how to do things. Training. Good training.
“I lived in Gosport at the time. I was at Bangor on the front. Had my own little boat and would go fishing at night. I was posted to Number Three Wing.” [Number three wing was flying Spitfires.]
“When did you learn to fly Spitfires?”
“Oh, years before that. There were six of us. All the Spitfires in the country, from the Royal Air Force, and manufacturers, and took them to a place in Scotland, where they were training Spitfire pilots for dummy deck landings. Which meant you hit the deck pretty hard. And I hadn’t done dummy deck landings in a Swordfish. I knew what they were up to: they were breaking them at a rate of ten a week, then having broken them, they were mended there. And we took all the Spitfires, after breaking and temporary repair, we were flying back to Royal Naval Air Repair Yard at Fleetlands, or to Hamble, where they had hooks put on and they were called Hookfires for actual deck landing. And they had the strength in them to stop them crashing, I’m sure.
“The six of us collected all those Spitfires, and flew some of them as many as three times there and back again and back again, and we never had an accident. We were never late on going places. We were totally dedicated. We made an ETA [estimated time of arrival] before we left, and we jolly well stuck to it. We had a female pilot flew from here down to Cornwall to see her boyfriend (before I’d taken that Hurricane for delivery at Manston in Kent). A shocking thing to do! We heard it afterwards, mind you, but she should have been strangled. Fancy doing anything like that in war-time!”
“What’s the Spitfire like to fly?”
“Much better than Hurricanes. Hurricanes, you had to fly it all the time, as if you were in a link trainer. If you flew in cloud in a Hurricane,