The George Adams Interview — Part Ten

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Bill Ross of the ‘Action Desk — Sheffield’ Team on behalf of George Adams, and has been added to the site with his permission. Mr. Adams fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

Other parts to this story can be found at:
INDEX: A7544630

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This is a transcript taken from audio footage made by the Department of Sound Recordings at the
Imperial War Museum,
Lambeth Road,
LONDON SE1 6H7.

It has been copied almost exactly as recorded, therefore the terminology and grammar are as spoken and have not been manipulated in any way. Where place names that could not be found in an atlas, and/or unfamiliar terminology are mentioned, phonetic spellings are used and are subject to alteration.

On some occasions, sentences were not completed; the following symbol is used to denote that: ……………………
Only repetition has been suppressed.

Bill Ross — BBC People’s War Story Editor.
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Int: Had you got any escorts?

GA: Yes, they were still with us, but they wouldn’t have stood much chance against the might of what they’d got out there. And we pulled into the harbour, and that was it. Then we all opened our iron rations because we were starving.

Int: Had you had any other meals given you? You’d had this one meal…………..

GA: That was all.

Int: That was all you’d had on the whole journey?

GA: Yeah.

Int: So, for nearly three days, you’d had nothing to eat.

GA: Yeah.

Int: Your iron rations, you’d been told not to eat had you?

GA: No, they hadn’t said anything. We hung on and hung on until we found out we weren’t going to get anything more — we couldn’t get anything because there wasn’t anything — so we opened them up and had those.

Int: You weren’t supposed to give up your iron rations when they had this collection.

GA: No, you could hang on to those.

Int: That was spare food was it?

GA: Yes.

Int: So you opened it when you got there.

GA: That night. I took this horrible black chocolate away, had a drink of water and that was it.

Int: Did you think you were out of the woods then, when you……………..?

GA: No, not really, because they were taking everything in front of them. We knew that sooner or later, they’d have to stand there and make a battle of it, or else they’d be giving up, which happened of course. They more or less surrendered, Java. There wasn’t much fighting at all.

Int: So what happened next, to you then?

GA: We were transferred to a grammar school

Int: All the ships?

GA: No, they were split up.

Int: Were you back in a unit, or were you just……………?

GA: They tried to keep us as a unit. I think they realised that — there must have been some word gone round that X Party were to be kept together as much as possible. The bulk of us did go up; not all of us. We didn’t meet some of the lads until later in Java. A lot of us moved up to this grammar school, quite a lot of us moved up there, and we’d billets up there.

Int: Just lying on the floor.

GA: Just lying on the floor.

Int: What about food and things, I mean, you’d now eaten your emergency rations.

GA: Well, they’d made preparations for that; they’d done the best they could. Apart from that, we were in a city, and we’d still got money and we could buy food if we wanted, which we did.

Int: What about the state you were in, were you able to get cleaned up, get your uniform sorted out, or was that not a priority?

GA: I can’t remember actually what happened, I think they gave us — did they give us some more kit? I can’t remember, but somehow we got cleaned up reasonably well. We stayed there about, nearly a week. We had two or three days up at one of the airfields. That was the first time we’d done any work on aircraft, with a Hurricane squadron that came in.

Int: But you were still being used as a sort of pool of labour, rather than being sent to a squad.

GA: Yes, yes.

Int: What work were you doing up there?

GA: Just servicing the Hurricanes that they’d got, and daily inspections, but we were only kept up there for two or three days. Then — that was about the second or third day we were there — we were only on Java for a week, because………….

Int: You left about the twentieth, the nineteenth or twentieth.

GA: Yes, something like that; probably a bit later than that, about the twenty second. We were a full week there — no, that’s right, the fifteenth we heard they’d surrendered, we got there on the thirteenth. We would, we’d leave about the twentieth, something like that. It was most unexpected, they called us together one night: “Get what kit yer’ve got, yer going down to the docks,” which we did. It was dark and we got down to the docks, and there was a P&O boat in. We each got a blanket and we went aboard. On board was an Australian division.

Int: A whole division.

GA: Yeah, I believe so, as I remember, they’d come down from the Middle East. Was it Curtin who was their premier? He’d insisted that they, with Churchill, that they strengthen Australia. They pulled this division out of the Middle East and brought them down. They were going back to Australia, but before they went back, we got on board, and we sailed back up to Ceylon.

Int: Was there any trouble on this voyage?

GA: No. They were a good crowd o’ lads, they were.

Int: No, I don’t mean with them, I mean with the Japanese.

GA: No, we got away with it there. We came out, down the coast — nothing.

Int: Had you been able to let your parents know, or your family know what was happening?

GA: No, they’d never heard anything for weeks and weeks.

Int: Did they know you’d been to Singapore?

GA: Oh yes, they knew I was there.

Int: So they must have been worried.

GA: Oh yes, very worried.

Int: But you couldn’t get news through.

GA: No, we couldn’t get any news at all. It was worse for the people who of course were prisoners, they never heard anything for months and months; probably twelve months.

REEL 8:

I think we had one night there, and next morning, we moved out from Colombo by train. Various parties were awaiting shipment to India. We stayed on the island and moved out the next day up to China Bay, which was the air station for Trincomalee, to make the squadron up there.

Int: Which squadron were you joining?

GA: 273.

Int: What were they flying?

GA: Well, at the time there was a general reconnaissance squadron, but they’d got the most ancient machines. I think they’d got — if I remember rightly, they had a few Fairy Seals and a couple of Albacores, and I think that was it. Sorry, not Albacores, they were Wildebeests; about ninety five miles an hour, top speed, bi-plane from about late nineteen twenties, early thirties actually.

Int: And you went straight into work servicing these.

GA: Yes, we went straight up there, onto that section, onto that squadron. But we hadn’t been up there long, a matter of a few weeks, probably a fortnight, when we took over the Swordfish, that were across on the fleet air arm cramp, on camp. We fetched the Swordfish out of storage and put them into a serviceable condition, which they were in a fairly reasonable condition. They’d been looked after, and they hadn’t been flown a lot. Some of them came off the Hermes, but some of them had been in storage in the hangars on the fleet camp for quite a while. We towed them over and got them all serviceable and from then on, we started as a general reconnaissance with the Swordfish.

Int: What did yer think of the Swordfish as a plane because……………

GA: Well, for its time, I suppose it was a marvellous plane; apparently, it was fairly easy to fly, of course, not very fast, but I think they expected too much of them, which was proved in one or two of the actions during the war, but they did a marvellous job when you think of the period. It was a squadron of Swordfish that attacked the Italian fleet, and they did quite a good job really, but they were very ancient and very slow.

Int: From your side, were they reliable?

GA: Very reliable. We had very little trouble with those. We’d a mixed squadron; we’d got a sub-lieutenant, a naval sub-lieutenant pilot from the fleet air arm. We’d a marine — I believe he was a marine lieutenant or made up to captain when he left us. We’d quite a mixture of pilots, we’d got - two of our pilots were R.A.F. ex army corporation pilots. One of those was a test pilot with AVRO. When he came out of the forces, he went back to AVRO and he was their second test pilot, co pilot to Rowley Falt, who was their top man and Jackie Wales became their second pilot. But he was killed some years after the war. He was testing this Lincoln when she ran out of power and just crashed.

Int: How were you fitters organised within the squadron?

GA: They split us into two flights. We’d got the armourers on each flight, electricians, air frame fitters, engine fitters, riggers, mechanics, we had the normal maintenance section for bigger jobs. The only trouble was shortage of tools. It was a case of share out and for a few weeks, we’d very few tools, then they started to get a few more through to us. There was very little on the island really, they’d never expected this huge defeat and of course, they hadn’t built up for it.

Int: Do you remember any of the sort of repair work you had to do, what sort of problems you’d deal with there?

GA: Well strangely enough, on the Swordfish, we’d very little. Even the engine people had very little; changing plugs and things like that. We’d occasional patching on the fabric, but there was very little work to do, they were in good condition. The armourers did have a fair amount of work to do on the guns. They weren’t in very good shape when they came to us, but they — taking it all round, they were in fairly good condition. They didn’t have a lot of work on them.

Int: What about the living conditions……………?

GA: Very good really. The living conditions themselves were very good. They had barrack blocks. They were a two storey, just a ground floor and second floor, and I believe there was a third floor on the barrack blocks. There was a NAAFI up there; quite good substantial buildings, all brick built. The normal hangars, they were quite good hangars. The only problem was there, was water. It was in short supply. It’s very dry on that north east coast of Ceylon as you come up from Trincomalee. Even in the heavy monsoons between May and October, you don’t get the amount of rain like on the other side. We found we’d probably have the water on for a quarter of an hour in the morning, just enough time to dive under the shower and whatever yer could do, and that was it.

Int: Were you actually thirsty or……………..?

GA: No, not really, because whilst it was on, we managed to get a couple of jugs and store, we’d get two or three jugs of water. The only time — when I look back now, with this problem, the biggest problem, once yer’d left the billets, the water was off. You had nothing on the drome, and the temperatures really soared up there on that — very very dry, and they really soared, and yer’d nothing until, in the morning, the NAAFI van would come round and perhaps have one mug of tea, and that was it. You were nearly dehydrating at times. I know I’ve found once or twice that when we’ve been on standby in an afternoon, the hottest parts, I always remember one afternoon, I didn’t have the strength to get up to go to the van for the tea, my friends had to bring it for me. Once I’d had it, I was starting to pick up, but it could get bad there for water.

Then we found, next to the power dispersal point, there was a well. Of course, everyone was instructed that we mustn’t touch any water other than what came through the system. That was all chlorinated, not with the gas or anything. They used to fling the old powder in, the chloride of lime, it was foul stuff to drink, so we used to pep it up a little bit with — buy limes and slice them and kill it with that, the chloride, a little bit, but it was foul to drink. You had to drink it, that was it. We found that this well — we had a bucket full out — was marvellous stuff, nice and clear, so we rigged a shower up, over the well with a four gallon petrol can with holes in. Two or three of the lads would keep pouring it through while we took it in turns to get under. We also used to have a drink of it too and no one had any ill effects, we never had any medical problems with that, but I’m sure if the M.O. had known, he’d have gone absolutely berserk on that. But I think it was a Godsend to us, down on that dispersal.

Int: How did you get on with the Ceylonese?

GA: They were quite good really. When we first got there, we had room boys. They used to do your — clean your shoes and things like that. They were nearly all Tamil, those were. We’d go down into Trincomalee; there wasn’t much there. It was out of the way, up on the north east coast, rather deserted. There was a nice little café on the waterfront where you could get a small meal and drinks. That was run by a Welshman, strangely enough. We’d sometimes pop out there, but as the number of troops increased of course, supplies got less and less. You could still get certain things there, and yer could get certain things in the odd shop in Tricomalee, but most of them were the old teak type native stalls and everything like that, where at times, you wouldn’t buy anything off ‘em ‘cos all you’d see was a mass of flies over the top of everything, but you’d be very careful; everyone was very careful. Occasionally, there was quite a bad outbreak of Cholera up there. Usually, once or twice a year, there was a cholera scar when you had to have injections. It was a beautiful bay, beautifully situated, a tremendous bay. You could get the whole of the fleet in and not know it was there. All coves: we used to spend quite a lot of our time, whenever we were off, just roaming round these coves, just looking round, it was quite interesting, and swimming; we hired a little dug-out with an out rigger on, and we used to paddle out to the various little coves and all round the coves. We’d swim from the beaches there when we had time.

Actually, if the food had been as good as the natural surroundings, it’d have been a holiday camp really.

Int: Where would the unit fly the reconnaissance to?

GA: Out into the Bay of Bengal, on that area.

Int; Were they finding anything?

GA: Nothing at first, everything was pretty quiet when we first got up there.

Int: So how long did the quiet period last for?

GA: Just over a month, but in the meantime, the Swordfish had gone back to the air arm, and we’d taken a delivery of Fairy Formers from the fleet air arm. We were still classified, at that period, as a general reconnaissance squadron. Then they altered the designation and classified us a fighter squadron. Why, I never knew, but they classified the Fulmer as a fleet fighter. It was a twin seater, very heavy and quite slow compared to the Hurricane or the Spitfire, very slow. We were short of tools and spares for those, but we managed to get along.

Pt 11: A7543190

Pr-BR

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