My War - Chapter 4

Chapter 4 Canada.

The indefinite leave was the usual two weeks but we managed to have a few days in Scarborough before I got the instruction to report to Heaton Park Manchester. Which was a massive camp for trainees waiting for the results of the grading and of course posting to the next stage of our training. Each hut was the size of a small hall with a large number of beds. It was a long walk to the office block and the assembly hall where we were supposed to gather each morning for any news. However two people were expected to stay behind as hut orderlies in each hut so if you didn’t go to the assembly and you met the orderly officer you only had to say “I am a hut orderly” and no questions asked. Eventually the gradings were posted and I was down for bomb aimer training. Soon afterwards we were sent on embarkation leave and on return packed off to Liverpool to go on board the Mauritania. Conditions were rough on board two meals a day and we trainees all had to do fire watching duties. We had posts allocated and the shifts were the same as other crew members i.e. 4 hours on and 8 hours off with a dog watch which was 2 hours on, that meant that the shifts rotated.
The sea was rough soon after we set sail and I became seasick and it lasted three days. We got two meals a day. I had to queue up for my food, place it on my bunk and go and be sick then lay down and eat it. Then I had to stay on my bunk until I had digested the meal. As long as I was laying down I could digest my food. After three days I got my sea legs and have never had any trouble with seasickness since.

The crossing took seven days and then we found ourselves sailing up the river to New York passing the statue of Liberty. We were marched off the ship straight into a railway station where American ladies in uniform equivalent to our Red Cross gave us tea and doughnuts. Once on the train we could not leave the train until we arrived at Dafoe where we were to spend the next three months, presumably in case there was any risk of us causing infection during the journey through out the country. A quarantine period I suppose.

The training was similar to ITW but more advanced and also included air borne exercises in navigation and lots of bombing practice.

New subjects were also introduced i.e. aircraft recognition and reading morse code messages sent by aldis lamp. This involved us being stood on a mound some distance from a hanger and inside the dark doorway messages were sent to us by aldis lamp.At first the only thing we could understand was “come in” but we soon got the hang of it.

The aircraft recognition instructor hammered home the identification with aid memoirs such as‘dog like Dakota’and’cat like Catalina’, this was a reference to the shape of the tail fin. The aircraft we trained on were Avro Ansons and we were all air sick every time we flew so paper bags were provided in abundance. A nice swimming pool was available but costumes were not allowed, the WAAFs had separate times allocated to use the pool.

We also had intruction on the browning machine gun and how to dismantle it for cleaning and reassemble it. The breach block contained a few small parts and at the end of the course when we were being tested one of these would be hidden under a larger part which was fitted later. That tested whether we knew what we were doing.
After I had taken the test the lads asked how I done and I said ‘hundred percent’ as I knew that I had noticed the part was missing. After that I was known as hundred percent Hanson.

The Group Captain i/c the camp was reputed to be 70 years old and he had a tiger moth for his personal use. It was said that when he used it he would climb aboard, put on his spectacles to carry out his cockpit checks, put them away and take off. He decided to buy a riding school while we were taking the course. So a number of us gave it a go. The horses all followed one another in orderly fashion so another day I wanted to have another go but no one else would come so I went by myself. They mounted me up on a horse and led it out of the enclosure and left me to it. But the horse didn’t want to go so it started to wheel round its front legs went up a steep embankment obviously trying to tip me off. Eventually we set off. We went out through the camp gates and were trotting along very well until we came to a crossroads and on the left corner ahead was a white building I don’t know if that spooked the horse but it refused to go across so again we were prancing around. A passing crowd of chaps started shouting ride “him cowboy”. So I took the right turning. I found a path leading into the woods and the horse agreed to go down it. As we went along the path got narrower and the undergrowth became denser so that I felt that I could not turn back. After a while we came to a tree, which had fallen across the path making a barrier about three feet high, so I went into a panic, wondering what to do now. But I left it to the horse and he just took it in his stride. Eventually I found a place to turn round and the horse happily returned to camp.

After the final exams were completed the Group Captain asked half a dozen of us, me included, to accompany him. We were taken in a truck to a beer hall about thirty miles away where we all had to apply for a liquor licence and then we were left to sit at a round a table and drink lager to wait for him. He returned with a crate of whisky and said that we could have three bottles for our graduation party. It seemed that the hard stuff was restricted to one bottle a month. He let each of us keep the licence. No doubt he worked this fiddle once a month as each course ended.

The actual graduation ceremony took place on the parade ground, which had a flag pole mounted on a dais in the centre. The whole group was marched out to watch and each of us had to march forward in turn to receive our wings and stripes. We were now sergeants. So we had to get out our ‘house wives’ and sew on the stripes and our bomb aimers badges.

After that we were sent to Rivers in Manitoba for a six-week course in navigation. The emphasis being on map reading. So we were flying about in the good old Avro Anson with a briefing at the start of each trip but we had to keep a log. One trip was at low level and a lake was on part of the track and one of the pilots spotted two fishermen standing in a boat so he flew so low over them that they fell overboard.

When the course was over we were soon packed off to a large railway station to await a train to Halifax. There must have been a thousand of us of various categories all heading for home having completed the training. After a while they started singing bawdy songs and, the leader managed to alter the dirty words to avoid offence to the civilians present, guiding everybody to replace them with more acceptable words. After a wait of an hour of two the train finally arrived and we were on our way.

At Halifax they asked us to volunteer to go apple picking, since it was harvest time in Nova Scotia. I thought anything was better than just hanging about waiting for the boat to take us home so I went along. We went to a small town and then were driven each one to a different farm. Mine was a farm with only one farm labourer. I was put to work on a large tree which, because of its size, was difficult to reach the apples.The farmers mother had a milk separator from which milk came out at one side and cream on the other and the cream had lots of house flies swarming over it. At breakfast I noticed that the butter had bits of fly in it and the housekeeper saw me looking at it and told me to use her private butter. She clearly did not see eye to eye with the old girl. On the Sunday I was told that I need not work but I said that I had nothing better to do so up my ladder I went. After lunch as I was picking away when a couple of chaps came along and invited me to have a drink. The drink turned out to be a gallon jar of apple jack. We shared a few drinks as we made our way to the hut in which they must have been living then one of them said ‘would I like to go into town and meet his sister Gerty so of we went in a truck. I met his sister and they then left me to it. I also met Gerty’s friend and a Canadian army lance corporal soon joined us, and we spent the evening playing on a fruit machine, and drinking Cokes. Apart from the liquor store which the Group Captain took us to when we were at Dafoe Cokes were the only drink we were able to buy in Canada and I wasn’t to keen on it.

When I got back to the farm it must have been at least 2 am but I found the door unlocked so I locked it and went to bed. The next morning I got the sack. It seemed that the farm labourer found the door locked and as he couldn’t get in the cows didn’t get milked. So I was in town and no where to stay. All I could do was to book myself into a hotel. It took them a week to find me another farm. This one was much better as they had about eight other apple pickers all residents like me on full board and they were more my age. The toilets were unusual just middens i.e. a board with a hole in it and a box underneath but one of them was more unusual as it was called a courting toilet as it seated two people. On the Friday the lads were all raving about the bean pie that was served for dinner on that day. It turned out to be a deep pie dish full of baked beans with a nice pie crust on top. On the Sunday I found out that we were being returned to Halifax on the Monday so I returned to town and spent another night in the hotel. At Halifax there was a few days delay before we embarked so one afternoon I took a bus into the centre of the town to have a look at the shops. I did not realise how cold it was the sun was shining. In the shops it felt normal but when I waited for a bus back to the quarters it wasn’t until I got onto the warm bus that I realised how cold I had been waiting there. Eventually we went on board the Mauritania for Liverpool and a spot of leave.

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