My War - Chapter 5

Chapter 5 Pre A.F.U. {Advanced Flying Unit.]

The reporting instructions came ‘as usual after two weeks’ to take a train to Carlisle. From there we were picked up in a lorry and taken to the airfield. It was in fact a field with temporary buildings. The aircraft were Tiger Moths once more. There were trainee pilots and bomb aimers. Our job was to practice keeping a log and map reading to help the pilots find the way back to the airfield after a trip. Some times we went with a staff pilot and at other times with a trainee. Just as it was at Grading School the weather was absolutely freezing for flying in an open cockpit, as Christmas was drawing near. At Christmas we were all offered the choice of having a few days leave but a volunteer was needed to stay on the camp. My friend Jock Henderson decided to stay. I arranged for my wife to come to Carlisle and I booked us in to a hotel for the long weekend. It was more of a boarding house than a hotel and guests were five or six army couples besides us. We all spent an evening in a public house together but we complained that the beer was too cold to drink so the landlord brought a red hot poker and dipped it in our beer. Another day we took a bus to the camp to visit Jock. At teatime the cook invited us to stay for a meal. The meal turned out to be a whole tin of salmon on each of our plates. We never found out how she managed to produce such a luxury out of the war time rationing. We played darts all evening helped along by Jock having the keys to the bar and had a wonderful time but we found that we had missed the last bus back to Carlisle and had a five mile walk back to the digs. One trip I was with a staff pilot and we flew due south above the clouds for about an hour then turned back. We had no idea how far we might have drifted so eventually the pilot decided to descend through the clouds to find out where we were. I was pleased to find that we broke cloud at a comfortable height and made our way back to the airfield. After about a month we were sent on leave to await the call to the next stage of our training.

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.