The Armourer’s Tale (1): Prologue

I was sitting on a 250lb depth charge sawing in a disinterested way at the bomb hook to modify it for easier loading on to a Coastal Command Liberator, when Corporal Orchard came up the bill to the bomb dump and said
"You can stop doing that, Mac, we won't be needing it".
"Why", I asked, "Is the op cancelled?"
"No", he replied "The war's over!"
I had been in Iceland for about fifteen months as an LAC Armourer (Bombs and Guns), and had endured one of the coldest winters I can remember. Now, the summer, such as it was had arrived and with it VE Day. I shall never know the peculiar way the RAF postings to squadrons worked, but, having started my war in 1941, I had done my best to get killed but always some perverse hand had directed me otherwise. Even the depth charge I was working on was not supposed to explode until it reached a certain depth in the water, and mostly we treated them with some indifference. Perhaps the only time we remembered they could be fairly, if not totally lethal, was when we went to de-bomb a Liberator and found the bomb aimer had fused the bombs but not dropped them. Then, but not often, we remembered that the first stage detonator we had finally screwed into place in the tube in the primer was made of fulminate of mercury, and reputedly one of the most sensitive of all explosives.

But, in the beginning in 1941, I had volunteered to be a pilot, and after a fairly gruesome medical was passed fit for training. As far as I remember, the officer who conducted my interview did not ask if I had any experience of anything mechanical, nor were we given any test to see if we had any co-ordination of hand or eye, or any reaction test to gauge how we might perform under stress. Either no-one had thought this might be useful and cut out "wastage" or the country was so desperate for pilots that these questions had been deliberately forgotten. I had been fortunate in 1932 in that I had passed the scholarship examination and gone to a day public school and my interviewer seemed more interested in finding if I had known any of the former pupils now in the RAF particularly a famous night fighter pilot. I had one defect, however. My sight needed greater depth perception and better focusing.

To rectify these matters I was sent for "eye training" in London and was billeted for six weeks in the commandeered luxury hotels in the St. John's Wood area, fairly adjacent to Lords Cricket Ground. This as far as I can remember took about an hour and a half a day, and as I had recently become engaged and my fiancée lived in Croydon, it was not too arduous to be endured! Daily we squinted into a microscope-like contraption and saw with one eye a picture of a lion and in the other eye a cage. The oculist, usually female, would then slowly adjust the instrument so that the images came together and you saw the lion in the cage. She would them separate the images slowly and you had to try to keep the lion from moving out of the cage thereby hopefully strengthening the ocular muscles.

After this fairly lengthy session, we were introduced to another strange machine situated in a tunnel-like structure. At one end, faintly illuminated, there was a post something like a cricket stump and at the other end a seat on which the eye trainee was seated. Into both hands were put ropes which controlled two stumps which moved forwards or backwards on either side of the central stump as you pulled or pushed the ropes. The middle stump in the far distance was moved backwards or forwards by the operator and the trainee had to pull and push the ropes until, as far as he could judge, the stumps were in line.

This went on for six weeks until we came to the final tests. One of these was to test our night vision, We sat blindfolded for about twenty minutes to develop our "visual purple (the more you had the better) and then were led into a darkened room where we sat for some more. Then we were given a board with braille-like markings on it and a marker of some description. A paper clip was fastened to our collars so that we could not lean forward and a screen in the room was dimly illuminated. We were told to watch for and then draw the shapes we saw on the screen which would be squares, triangles etc. The operator then said "Object No 1". I could see nothing at all not even the screen. "Object No 2". I might as well have been sitting in another room? This went on interminably and, such is the power of the imagination, that in the end I was seeing several shapes at once! We had handed in our "pay-books", the universal RAF document at the beginning of the exercise, and when I received mine back, I saw that all the categories under the heading "night vision" ranging from "Very good" to "Very poor" had been crossed through and a hand written note added "Extremely poor". So, no night fighter me!

I cannot remember what we did during those six weeks. We polished our buttons and our boots almost incessantly, desperate to achieve the well worn look and lose our newly-hatched appearance. All our efforts seemed to be in vain and it was not until I was posted to IW (Initial Training Wing) that the secret of shiny boots was passed on to us by an inebriated corporal. We were told to smear our boots thickly with Cherry Blossom black boot polish and them set light to them. This treatment oft repeated would burn off the grease with which they were impregnated and give us the mirror like finish we craved. Of course, it ruined the waterproofing but who cared about damp feet when we dazzled all onlookers. Apart from the polishing and the fatigues I remember with what pride I mounted my first Guard Duty. It was two hours on and four hours off for 24 hours and then, as befits the intrepid guardians of our freedom, a day off. I remember my patriotic duty was to defend, with my life if necessary, two dustbins outside an obscure back entrance to the flats. I was given a short and stubby truncheon to put the fear of God into any Nazi paratroopers who would risk all to storm the dustbins and presumably capture the rather smelly refuse.

I can remember, also, the weekly pay parade, when we were drawn up in strict lines and, as your name was called, stepping up to the pay table, giving a smart salute and calling out the last three numbers of your RAF number. Someone who was in the account department once confided in me that the RAF pay accounts branch worked on the principle that they always underpaid you and, if you were lucky, at some time in the future, paid you some large and unbelievable sum , but only if your pay records caught up with you. The amount you were about to receive was called out together with an explanation i.e.". Twenty four shillings and two pence, less Barrack Room Damages, ten shillings and fourpence" The damages item was, of course, completely spurious, and, we believed, made up by the clerk to cover mistakes in the accounting. As an added bonus, and I do not know whether this is a general experience, I have never forgotten the seven digits that were my official RAF number. As we were in St. Johns Wood in London, we were paid in Lords Cricket Ground and also fed daily in the restaurant of London Zoo. It was a bitterly harsh winter and, in my minds eye, I can still see the squads of men stretching along the road with a red light being carried by a corporal leading his men. Mostly. I remember waiting in the snow for early breakfast and the wheezing and coughing of the platoon or "flight" as it was called and the sounds of stamping feet as we waited for our daily portion of dried egg and brittle hard bread. Not surprisingly, most of us were declared fit for flying duties once our eyes had been "trained" and so, flushed with triumph, we eagerly awaited our posting to I.T.W. (Initial Training Wing).

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