A varied war: life in the RAF ground crew

This story is taken from an interview with Ron Black, and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions. The interviewer was Conan Elphicke.

RON BLACK JOINED THE RAF IN EARLY 1939 AND SERVED IN FRANCE WITH THE BRITISH EXPEDITIONARY FORCE (BEF), IN ENGLAND WITH BALLOON COMMAND, AND IN THE MIDDLE EAST.

I joined up in March 1939 when I was 20 years old, well before war broke out. I was working in the family business of fruiterers, green grocerers and market gardeners. But after an argument with my brother I jumped on a train and went to the Kingsway recruiting office in London and joined the RAF. I was in a right old mood.

On joining, I was sent to West Drayton in Middlesex where I was officially given my service number, the ‘King’s shilling’ and my uniform etc. I was then sent to RAF Cranwell, Lincolnshire where I received my basic training (‘square bashing’). After two or three months I was sent to the RAF driving school in St Athan, South Wales. I had been a lorry driver before I joined up and I enjoyed it; it was something I could do well.

We spent half the day in the classroom, receiving training in car mechanics, and the other half learning how to drive everything from vans and ambulances to large lorries. If your vehicle broke down in the middle of the desert you had to know how to get it home.

In August, around the time of my 21st birthday, I was posted to my first unit: the Aircraft and Armament Experimental Establishment (A&AEE) at Marsham Heath, Suffolk. It was there I saw my first crash. It was a Saturday morning and I was refuelling planes when I came across four sergeants who were going up in a Bombay troop carrier as crew. I asked them if I could join them and they agreed. However, back at the transport yard the sergeant there told me I’d got to work that afternoon. Someone was off ill and I had to do his duty, driving the fire engine. So the Bombay took off without me, loaded with lead ballast. But the pilot couldn’t get the height and so the plane hit some trees, and it was gone. It just went up in flames. A lot of things happened like that. Twists of fate. They’re things you just accepted.

Just as I accepted it when war broke out in September. It didn’t come as a surprise as there had been talk of war for some time. There’d been Munich the year before. I never believed we would have peace.

In September, the A&AEE moved to Boscombe Down (on the Salisbury Plain), which is where it is to this day. Every kind of aircraft and bomb was tested there, including all manner of queer things. We worked on a converted Halifax bomber that would fly low over the sea and draw submerged mines to the surface with a magnetised loop. The mines could then be shot at and destroyed. Also, the first 1000lb bomb was dropped on its bombing range. We tested a fighter called the Whirlwind, which had a large tail. It had had cannons fitted instead of machine guns and when we were testing the guns someone mustn’t have restrained one properly because the recoil took the tail off.

At Critchell Down nearby they were working on all manner of chemical substances. At the A&AEE they asked for volunteers to act as guinea pigs, offering them leave as an incentive. Some of those foolish enough to agree might well be suffering the effects today.

Whilst stationed there I married Olive Hester on October 21st 1939. When I got back from leave, they said ‘You’ve got to report to the orderly room first thing and draw your tropical kit because you’re off overseas’. So I thought I was going to Singapore or somewhere like that. But the movement order didn’t come through in time and two weeks later they told me I’d missed the boat and that instead I was going to France with the BEF. I might not be here now if I’d ended up in Singapore, because it fell to the Japanese a couple of years later. Fate again.

FRANCE

Soon after I arrived at Le Havre I went to a reception centre at Nantes before being posted to the headquarters of 60 Wing, which was in charge of Hurricane squadrons. I was stationed at an airfield in Lille Seclin, where there were also two Hurricane squadrons, Nos 85 and 87, members of 60 Wing. I was one of the two drivers and my main role was to drive the wing commander. I messed with members of 85 Squadron. It wasn’t an easy life. There was just one hut and it was freezing, as it was a very harsh winter. The food was just bully beef and hard tack. We had two blankets apiece which I sewed together into a sleeping bag. My eyebrows would freeze overnight. The airfield received a lot of attention from Jerry so we spent a lot of time in the zig-zagged slit trenches.

Whilst I was on a fortnight’s leave in May 1940 the Germans had broken through the Maginot line and the BEF was in retreat. Instead of returning to Boulogne, I ended up at Cherbourg where I met three sergeant pilots who were going to join the squadron. We chummed up and caught a train consisting of just cattle trucks to Lille. We only got as far as Amiens when the driver refused to go on because it was too dangerous. So the four of us decided to continue across country to Lille, about 100 miles away. For a couple of days we walked and got lifts from the Army. At one point a French woman gave us a bottle of wine and some eggs. When we hit the main road it was choked with refugees and they were getting it left, right and centre from the Luftwaffe. All we could do was swear at the Germans and, when the strafing began, push people into the ditches and throw ourselves on top in the hope of protecting them.

Finally, we jumped on a lorry that was going to Lille Seclin, but when we arrived we found the whole camp was moving out. So we moved back to an airfield at Merville, 35 miles or so west. I heard later that the three sergeant pilots were killed within a week.

Soon afterwards, a sergeant driver from 85 Squadron was sent off early in the morning to get petrol from Lille Seclin. As he never came back, they asked me to go to see if I could be more successful as I knew all the roads. They gave me three army chaps with rifles as escort. The roads were covered in refugees, so we often had to cross fields. But we got there and loaded the petrol, only to return to Merville to find that almost the whole squadron had gone. Only two or three personnel and planes, and a few soldiers were left. They took the petrol, gave me a different lorry — a three- or four-tonner — and told me to load it up with as many army chaps as I could and make for the coast. There were three of their sergeants sitting in the front with me. I asked ‘Where to?’ They said to try and make for Boulogne,

It wasn’t easy getting to Boulogne because apart from the refugees on the road, the signs had been taken down to make it harder for the Germans. But I more or less knew the roads because I’d been attached to a wing HQ rather than a squadron and so had had to get around a bit. Otherwise I probably wouldn’t have found my way. The Germans weren’t far behind and we were constantly under attack. The Stukas would scream as they came down. The noise would really put the wind up you. The lorry was covered with a camouflage netting. On the way, one of the soldiers poked his cigarette under the netting and caught it alight. There was quite a blaze and we ended up with barely a platform as a lorry.

Eventually we got to Boulogne and it was just plain hell. Constant bombing and strafing. We saw the hospital ship in the bay get bombed. When we arrived they said to get rid of the truck, so it was pushed into the water. The three sergeants and myself laid down behind this pile of stuff until someone screamed at us that it was ammo. So we found a footpath that led away from the docks and spent the night there under the protection of the cliffs. Next day a ship arrived full of ammo but rather than dump it they decided to take it back. We went aboard and there were so many men that I remember being pressed against a rail, unable to move. As we steamed for England, packed with troops and ammo, Jerry was after us all the time. Planes were coming at us, though we had our own fighters driving them off.

When I finally saw the white cliffs of Dover that day it was the best thing I’ve ever seen in my life.

BALLOON COMMAND

Soon after I returned to England I was transferred from Fighter Command to Balloon Command at Stanmore in Middlesex, where I was based for the next three years. We were what was known as ‘Line of Communication drivers’ (LOC drivers), responsible for keeping lines of communication open in the event of invasion, which seemed likely then. Later, around the time I became a corporal, it was my job was to keep 50 barrage balloons supplied with gas. We had to drive all through the Blitz, right round London — Clapham Common, Buckingham Palace, Houses of Parliament, Kensington. It was dangerous of course, driving lorries full of hydrogen cylinders through the bombing, but we did it for so long that familiarity bred contempt. As with everyone in the Services, you knew you had to do these jobs, so you would just do it. You would have to accept it and deal with every day as it came along.

I was also involved in producing the hydrogen, which was made from ‘water gas’, and training up the civvies at gasworks in places such as Chelmsford.

At one point I found myself transporting small bombs for use in anti-aircraft balloons. These were spherical free-floating balloons with weighted piano wire dangling from them. When an enemy bomber touched the wire, a bomb would come sliding down and blow a wing off or whatever. We weren’t sure whether they worked but when communiqués about air raids came in they’d say that so many bombers were destroyed by anti-aircraft fire, so many by night-fighters and so many by ‘other means’, which we took to mean these balloons.

Similar balloons would be sent over the Channel with propaganda leaflets instead of bombs. A long fuse would be lit, timed to release them when they were over occupied France.

MIDDLE EAST

In 1943, I was sent out to the Middle East where I joined the only RAF motor transport company out there: 51 MT. We were based in Cairo and were responsible for supplying equipment etc to squadrons and RAF units all over the region from Tripoli to Palestine and Iraq, driving ten-tonners with sixty-foot trailers. Convoys would cross the Sinai twice a week, for instance. I ended up as a sergeant doing office work, detailing the drivers for their journeys. Sometimes they would be away for several weeks at a time. We would often have to transport bombs, which was a bit hairy in places like the Trans-Jordan Pass with its steep cliffs. That was a hell of a trip, particularly when your brakes were overheating. I also remember the sand storms that would have you arriving with your uniform covered in sand.

It was approaching Christmas ’45 when I was sent home from Cairo. I flew back in a Dakota, via Malta. When we left Egypt we were in shorts but by the time we arrived at Herne airport we were wearing greatcoats and everything else we had, while the flask of coffee by me on my seat had frozen solid.

Looking back on the war, there were good and bad memories. Just as there were good stations and bad. Each unit you went to, you made your own group of friends, and we made our own entertainment. We would have our own concerts, and played cards a lot. I remember one night, at a camp near Cairo, there was a tent full of Welshman singing beautifully — their voices drifting across the stillness of the desert.

But the war itself — that was a terrible thing.

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