A family represented at sea, air and land.

This story is taken from an interview with Sam McAutry, and has been added to the site with their permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions. The interview was by Walter Love, and transcription was by Bruce Logan.
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My family was represented at sea, air and land. My brother was lost at sea in the first year of the war. His ship was sunk. An Ulster “Head line” ship. My father was a merchant seaman, his ship was torpedoed about a year later. At the age of 59 he was still in the war. He got in a lifeboat and got back home.

Of course, I was in the RAF. My brother was in the North Irish tank regt, so whenever bulletins came over at night — the Air Ministry, War Office and Admiralty — my mother would sit listening to each of them. Tense, listening, because all through I was flying with the RAF out in the Middle East. So if they started out with the “Middle East”, my brother told me [who was at home] she used to just walk out of the room.

I went into the RAF without any plans of any sort. I was a flight mechanic, and not a very good one. But when my brother was lost I decided I’d like to fly, because he used to tell me to use what brains I had and stop acting the goat.

I went in and studied for Navigator. The question came up, what kind of aircraft I would like to fly. And I said “I’d like to go and blow up ships”.

And that’s exactly what I ended up doing. Daylight attacks into ships. Into harbours, attacking them in convoys. I enjoyed myself.

[The war continued after VE day until VJ day]

I was in Greece when the war ended. There wasn’t a lot of celebrating there. The Greek people had had a thoroughly bad time of it. They were starving. And in particular you could see the girls with the marks on their legs, boils and ulcers and so on through malnutrition.
The Armed Forces celebrated, but the civilians didn’t.

I was in hospital when it finished. There were several officers there. An American was the first to hear, and he ran up and told us “Did you guys hear? They got some kind of a bomb, and the war’s over.”

And there was this awfully British bloke put down his newspaper and said, “oh really?”

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