A Wireless Operator's tale, Part 9

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Bill Ross of the ‘Action Desk — Sheffield’ Team on behalf of Jack Morley and has been added to the site with his permission. Mr. Morley fully understands the site's terms and conditions.
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The stories were transcribed from audio recordings made and supplied by Jack. When some of the foreign place names that are mentioned could not be found very easily in an atlas, they have been typed as they sounded, as have some of the technical and coded terms with which I was not familiar, therefore, they will probably be misspelled................. Bill Ross, BBC People’s War Story Editor.

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Other parts to this story can be found at:
Part 1: A5041397

Part 2: A5041531

Part 3: A6023701

Part 4: A6039722

Part 5: A6081257

Part 6: A6081301

Part 7: A6126077

Part 8: A6126167

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Then came the time to move on. It was about when V.E. Day had finished, we suddenly, one day saw on the notice board, a list of crews that had volunteered to go to South East Asia command. All the instructors' names were on and none of us had volunteered. We were granted embarkation leave, so we had a little meeting in the sergeants’ mess and we decided that we would all take the embarkation leave, then we would all write to the Air Ministry and say that we shouldn’t be going on operations abroad because we’d already done our tour of operations, or two tours in some cases. It turned out that this worked, because although I went back to Wing, and one or two more did, gradually, we were all posted away from the station. In the meantime, whilst I was there, there was a Warrant Officer Edmunds who’d been badly burnt in a crash earlier on, and he was a great mate of ours. He said one day, “Would you like a trip around the bombed cities of Europe?” I said, “Yeah, I would.” About eight of us went with him, in a Wellington, all stood up, but he took us all around to show us the bomb damage and it was absolutely terrible. I don’t know how they could rebuild it so quickly, but anyway, it was a sight to see. Then, when the prisoners started coming back from Germany, they were all coming back with their little souvenirs. The WAF’s were taking the souvenirs off ‘em and marking ‘em, whose they were, then sending them (the POW's) into a tent to be deloused. They had to leave their clothes when they went in. Then there were new uniforms for ‘em at the other end when they got out, and they got their own souvenirs back, and this was wonderful. They were starving, but they were all starving in Germany. There were food kitchens for them, but they were only allowed soup for two or three days until their stomachs got used to taking food. Now that was alright, I met two of my friends from Sheffield at that time, but when the prisoners started coming back from Italy, these all appeared to have been beaten up. They’d got broken arms, black eyes and allsorts, and no souvenirs. They’d been taken off ‘em by the Italians and I swore that if I ever got the chance, I’d get me own back for them. This happened later, before I left the RAF. VJ Day was announced and I was in transit somewhere, but I’d been back to Blackpool in the meantime, as a warrant officer. I got my own back on Flight Sergeant Frazer because, I had to report to Blackpool for a couple of days, until they got a permanent warrant officer, and then I was to move on. I was moving on to Bruntingthorpe, near Leicester.

The first morning at Blackpool, Flight Sergeant Frazer came walking in and he came over and said, “Hello.” I said, “Just stand to attention when you talk to me.” He stood to attention, and I said, “Take that white flash out of your cap.” He said, “Well, I always wear this.” I said, “That’s for air crew under training and you’re not air crew under training.” So he had to take it out. While we were at Blackpool training, there was a boxing match between various sectors and we all cheered when another flight sergeant from another flight, gave our flight sergeant a real good pasting, and we all cheered and cheered and cheered. But, he really was a bully, our flight sergeant, whereas our squad corporal was a gentleman and we treated him well when we left.

I said to Flight Sergeant Frazer, “Now, I’ve got a message for you to take down to Squire’s Gate.” He said, “Shall I get transport?” I said, “No, get on your bicycle and go down on your bicycle.” While he was going to Squire’s Gate, I got my new orders; a new warrant officer had arrived and took over from me, and I moved on towards Bruntingthorpe, so I was only there for a couple of days, but I got my own back in that couple of days.

When I got to Bruntingthorpe, everyone was being demoted a rank, all the air crew, so that meant I was going to go down to being a flight sergeant, but a corporal met me as I arrived at Leicester station. He took me up and said, “The station commander wants to see yer.” I went in and saluted him, and he said, “Well Mr. Morley, you’re lucky aren’t yer?” I said, “Why?” He said, “Because you’re going to keep your rank because I haven’t got another warrant officer on this station, so you’re it, the station warrant officer while you’re here.” I said, “What do I have to do?” He said, “Nothing in particular, we don’t have a deal to do, but we have a lot of prisoners of war who work on farms, more Italians than Germans. I want you to sort that out. The farmers are complaining about them not working hard enough.” “Oh,” I said, “Right.” It seemed that for every six or seven Italians, there was one German, so I formed them into little squads and I put the German in charge of the Italians on each squad. When they went out to the farms in the morning, I said to the Germans, “Don’t forget, make them work.” Most of the Germans, in fact nearly all of them spoke very good English. They did make them work while they were there. The Italians used to grumble, but I made sure the Germans got better treatment than the they did, with regard to getting food etc.

Eventually, I had to start going down into Leicester to pick up pay for the staff at Bruntingthorpe. This was quite good because I used to go there into the recruiting office where I’d fetch the pay from; it was already made up, and I used to try and talk ‘em into getting more recruits, so that I could get out. But eventually, I did get out and I visited various places on the way. I was sent to Uxbridge for demob. I was just going into Uxbridge when my little flight engineer was coming out. He’d been demobbed. He hadn’t time to talk; he was going home to Edinburgh. We just said, “So long, we’ll keep in touch.” We exchanged addresses, and that’s the last I saw of the job. I was sent down to Wembley to collect cigarette rations and to get the demob suit fixed up, and then back to Uxbridge and off home to Sheffield. I was out. That demob was in September of 1946, but I’d got some leave and some money, and it was effective for a month later in October. So, I was actually finished with the Air Force on 28th of September 1946

I think this is about the end of my story now. I’ve told you all the little bits and bobs. I started this after the unveiling of the memorial stone which had been bought from subscriptions. We all went back to Ludford to be there at the unveiling of the memorial stone and to see our old commander do the unveiling. It was appropriate that as he was the commanding officer of 14 base, he should do the unveiling. The squadron lost more men in the period from October to the end of the war, than any other squadron in Bomber Command, due to the fact that 101 flew on every major bombing mission from October 1943 to the end of the war, using ‘Airborne Cigar’ to disrupt the enemy fighting controllers.

I think that’s all I have to say now, thank you for reading. I hope this is put on record: first of all that Dennis Goodliffe was the man who started the association, because after that unveiling, he was asked to form an association and he did so, and Les Burton became his assistant, as secretary, while Dennis continued as treasurer. Dennis finally handed over the treasurer’s job. We got a member to be our first chairman and from then on, the association has gone from strength to strength.

When the Falklands War intervened and the squadron was disbanded, I’d already taken over from Les Burton because he was very ill when he started doing the job, and I used to help him with the books. After I’d been and fetched the books from his home, he suddenly died. He was a very young man. I carried on with the job until the next meeting of the association, and in conjunction with — they wouldn’t let us have Waddington any more, we’d had it in the crew room. My first one was in the crew room at Waddington, but then we moved to Swinderby where they used to let us have the ‘newcomers club’ for our weekend celebrations. During this period, the squadron had disbanded and I was told there would be a liaison officer from 150 squadron, but in the event, I never saw this man. My main contact was a sergeant, the warrant officer in charge of the officers’ mess at Swinderby.

He did a good job, as did the one at Waddington. Eventually, the squadron reformed at Priors Norton, and then in 1984, I got my own liaison officer, Andy Gray, a wonderful man. If I haven’t mentioned him in this tape, I will do another tape and mention how he came about.

Pr-BR

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