THE MISSION AND THE MEN

For men and women of my age, World War Two shaped our lives, just as the first World War shaped the lives of our parents. What follows is a vignette of life and of men in England in 1943.

PART ONE - THE MISSION

You are in the briefing room of a Nissen hut on an English Bomber Command airfield. There is a map on the wall and a strand of colored wool stretches from the airfield, across England, across the Channel to a place deep in enemy territory.

There is a clatter of voices from the men sitting in rows facing the map. The noise ceases. The men are intent on listening to those who address them - the navigation officer, the gunnery leader, the intelligence officer, the met man and others. The briefing culminates with a 'good luck boys' from the commanding officer. The men know where they are going that night, how to get there and what to expect.

The men are in the mess now. On the tables is an operational supper of baked beans and Spam.

They move to a crew room. They dress in their flying suits, their fur lined boots and jackets, their white polo neck sweaters. They clasp flying helmets, maps, sextants, navigation bags and parachutes.

Now they are in a covered truck driven by a young WAAF. She takes them around the perimeter of the airfield, stopping beside each aircraft.
The men get out, have a last cigarette and a nervous leak.

If you listen you will hear the sound of the mighty Merlin engines starting up - port inner, port outer, starboard inner, starboard outer. The aircraft trundle along the taxiway, wait for take-off. You may feel, with the crew the tightening of your stomach as the green light flashes and the captain and flight engineer open the throttles wide.

You hear the mighty roar of the four engines as the aircraft speeds down the runway and takes off into the dark.

There is a sound of gunfire as the gunners test their guns over the Channel.

The navigator's voice is calling changes of course to the captain.

Suddenly you hear an urgent call from the gunners as they sight an enemy aircraft closing in from behind.

They have passed the enemy coast and the flak is all around. First the light flak - greens, reds and whites curling lazily into the air, luckily below the aircraft. Above there are puffballs and a smell of cordite as the flak gets close and the crew know that the enemy are getting their range and position more accurately.

The target is in sight. The searchlights are probing the sky for a victim; the target indicators from the Pathfinders are floating lazily down to the fires already burning on the ground below.

The calm voice of the bomb-aimer directs the captain on to the aiming point - 'left, left.... right;...steady, steady....bombs gone, flashlight away'.

There is a feeling of relief as the captain turns the aircraft for home and warns the crew not to relax.

At last the crew are back in the briefing room, sitting at a table in front of an intelligence officer. There is a savoury smell of cigarettes and coffee - but there is anguish on the faces of the men as they read the names on the operations board that do not have 'landed time' beside them.

That was a night in the life of your airman relatives and friends who served with Bomber Command of the Royal Air Force in the dark days of 1942 and 1943 when the loss rate on a tour with Pathfinder Force was 83 per cent - a survival rate of 17 per cent of those of us who took part.

PART TWO - THE MEN

People influence lives perhaps more than events. Below I introduce you to some of the men who accompanied me on journeys similar to that on which you have just been. They were good men, brave men, men who in the biblical sense, I grew to love. They have all died but I remember them with gratitude and affection.

Bob Nielsen was the navigator, a clerk in the NSW Water Board when he joined the RAAF. He became my navigator when we met at 460 Squadron in June 1942. Bob was an exceptional navigator, one of the few to graduate from a Spec N course, which was the highest test of a navigator in the Royal Air Force. Bob was always cool, calm and collected even when clouds prevented him from getting an astro sight of the stars, or when it became obvious that there had been a change of wind which made his flight plan useless. His bravery was undoubted. Time and time again when we were in trouble and I was manoeuvring the aircraft to dodge searchlights, flak or an enemy night fighter Bob kepi his head down plotting the movements of the aircraft so he would know its position when the danger had passed. He was awarded the Distinguished Medal. Bob stayed with me throughout our operational flying and then performed a magnificent piece of navigation to guide Queenie Six thought the first flight ever from England to Australia from east to west.

At Breighton Bob introduced me to Bill Copley a wireless operator with the recommendation that I add him to the crew. I hesitated because Bill was different from other men I knew. He was a cabinetmaker from Perth; rough hewn, loud voiced, hard swearing, hard drinking. Nethertheless he won his way into the crew with his knowledge of and skill in using the communications equipment in the Wellingtons, which we were then flying. It was a good choice and Bill, Bob and I stayed together for the 15 months of our operational flying. Bill was also awarded a Distinguished Flying Medal.

Next to join was Eddie Wertzler from Regina in Saskatchewan, Canada. I think we chose him because his hometown was Regina, which is Latin for Queen. This added to the mass of coincidences in that our aircraft was Q for Queenie, my pre-war office was in Queen Street, Melbourne, my parents lived in Queens Road and the name of Bob Nielsen's mother was Queenie. Ed's career with us ended when he was wounded in the leg and eyes while shooting down a JU88, which was paying us too much attention while we were on our way back from Karlsruhe in Germany. Ed was awarded a Distinguished Flying Medal, recovered from his wounds but was confined to non-operational flying.

Don Delaney the oldest member of the crew was one of two married members. The other was Bill Copley. Don was a motor mechanic with the service department of the NRMA in Sydney before he joined the RAAF. Having the Irishman's fire his belly (as well as a lilting tenor singing voice), he hankered for a more adventurous life than maintaining the engines of Bomber Command aircraft. So at the age of 34 he volunteered to transfer to aircrew as a flight engineer. For us that was a lucky decision because from the time he joined us until the end of our operational career he made sure the ground staff did their job, that the engines, fuselage and instruments of successive Q for Queenie's were always in first class condition. On our flight back to Australia and while we were flying around the continent and New Zealand where no Lancaster had ever been before, Don with the help only of Claude Spencer our Fitter 2A and a manual, had to maintain and on two occasions repair Queenie Six under aeronautically primitive conditions. Don was mentioned in Despatches.

Joe Grose was our mid-upper gunner. When he was posted to my crew he had only 26 hours flying time, had never flown at night and had not been through an Operational Training Unit. We shuddered when we heard his CV. But we misjudged Joe. On his first operation with us, we were attacked by a German fighter as we were crossing the Zuider Zee. Joe who was violently air sick at the time overcame his sickness sufficiently to open fire and hit the JU88, which broke off the engagement and dived toward the ground with smoke pouring from the fuselage. I credit Joe with saving our lives that night. Later during an attack on Berlin, Joe was badly wounded after his turret was hit by a bomb dropped by an aircraft flying above us. Despite a spell in hospital, Joe came back to the crew.

Alan Ritchie , our bomb-aimer was a slow speaking lawyer from Sydney who joined us after Ed Wertzler was wounded. He was meticulous about dropping our markers and bombs in the right place and caused us minutes of concern as he directed me on to the aiming point. It was Alan, from his position in the bomb-aimers position in the nose of the aircraft, who guided me out of a maze of searchlights and anti-aircraft fire as we dodged our way at low-level across Germany and Occupied France after we had been hit by anti-aircraft fire over Berlin. Alan was awarded a Distinguished Flying Medal.

We had a series of rear gunners. Johnny Swain was the first. He stayed with us until we agreed to join Pathfinder Force. Johnny who had done a great job decided to stay with 460 Squadron and continue flying with Main Force. Regrettably he made a wrong decision and died on his first operation with the new crew.

Johnny's place was taken by a series of replacements, the last of whom was Archie Page , a farmer from Plenty, Tasmania. He and Joe Grose were a troublesome twosome on the ground but in the air did a great job in guarding our rear and mid-ships.

My crew were an example of the great diversity of Australians - their callings, their parentage, their up bringing, their religions. Delaney, the Roman Catholic mechanic, Ritchie the Anglican lawyer, Nielsen the Presbyterian clerk, Page the Anglican farmer, Copley the Methodist artisan, Grose the Anglican playboy, Isaacson the Jewish journalist. We gave no thought to where the others came from, how they prayed, what school they went to. We judged them on their merits as humans. We lived with them as all people should live - in relative harmony, with respect for each other. Oh, that we, the world over, could live that way today.