Air Fronts: Theaters of Operation - European Theater of Operation: Hubert Griffith - R.A.F. in Russia - 2. Assembly
R.A.F. IN RUSSIA; by HUBERT GRIFFITH; DEDICATED TO WING-COMMANDER H. N. G. ISHERWOOD, D.F.C., A.F.C., Order of Lenin, and MAJOR - GENERAL KUZNETSOV, Red Air Force ; to the Fighter-Boys of No. 151 Wing, R.A.F. and to their Soviet opposite numbers. LONDON 1942.
CHAPTER II - ASSEMBLY
August, Peak Moor, Yorkshire. Friday
Arrived after a comparatively hellish night journey. Overslept in the train and was carried as far north as Darlington. Transport gets me from Waverley to Peake Moor about the middle of the morning.
Yesterday I had an Air Ministry telegram that said very much in very few words : - " F/Lt. H. G. will report forthwith as Wing-Adjutant to No. 151 (Fighter) Wing for service overseas." Being on leave at the time, I rang up my Station, a Recruits Training Centre, in Lancashire, to ask what the signal might mean. Reply : - " Can't tell you anything over the telephone. But it's probably the job you asked for." Hush-hush and silence descend. But Soviet Russia had entered the war a few weeks previously ; knowing Russia from many peace-time expeditions there, I had immediately asked to be sent to Russia in any capacity, if any of the R.A.F. were going in that direction - and the Air Ministry telegram was evidently an answer to my request. A Fighter Wing is being sent to Russia.
First glimpse of the Yorkshire Station - built on the lines of scores of Fighter stations scattered up and down the country :-large luxurious mess-rooms and living-rooms, acres of scattered barrack-blocks, stores-buildings, hangars ; and an aerodrome that seems to stretch away over the horizon. The air is black with flying Hurricanes and Spits ; the hangars agog with mechanics servicing them ; the floors of the hangars slippery with engine-oil from sumps.
"HTO-TO CJIEILLIHTCSI pOAHOe"
(A celebrated line of Russian poetry, meaning " some-thing of long familiarity sounds in the ear "-or in other words, " I have been there before.") After nearly a year spent in training recruits, with all the button-cleaning and parade-ground drill involved, it is like a month's holiday even to be in the atmosphere of an operational station again.
I am set to work immediately, because everyone else of the projected Wing for overseas (not the residential operational squadrons of the station) is either already away on leave, or going away on leave - the Commanding-Officer (already away), the S/Ldr. Admin. who has been helping to get the Wing together, all the clerks, all the airmen, all the pilots, and the two Squadron-Commanders. It's very foxing to find that everybody seems to know much more of the projected business of the Wing than I do, but no doubt one will catch up in the end. Also, exciting to be in the new surroundings.
Saturday
A dull day. Everyone (of our own racket) now away on embarkation leave. We got the last of the five hundred and fifty of them away yesterday afternoon. It took a bit of doing - they each have to have three separate documents signed by an officer - leave-passes, and railway-warrants, and rations-cards - and the mass-emigration almost choked up the local railway-station.
Monday
Nothing doing-except that the Wing is gradually re-forming. There are a few absentees, small in proportion to the total number, and remembering that many of the airmen have to get to and return from enormous distances within forty-eight hours. In the end all except one reports.
Tuesday
Life on a Fighter station is extraordinary - after months of Training Command, in one of the so-called beauty-spots of Lancashire. Everyone here wears whatever he likes. Everyone does (after the day's duty is over) whatever he likes. It is like a dream of heaven after the strict (if necessary) disciplinarian routine. A single example : - there is a strict R.A.F. rule throughout the whole of Training Command that no one except a Commanding-Officer or a qualified transport-driver shall drive a Service vehicle. Here - one is expected to get into a Snipe and drive it all over the place if only the prosecution of the war will be helped thereby by a couple of seconds.
Wednesday
How quiet the boys keep ! -an impression that one continually gets on R.A.F. operational stations. Today the Resident Squadrons of the Station shot down a J.U.88 when out on patrol over the North Sea. No one said anything about it. Late in the evening one of the Station Intelligence-Officers was airing a grievance that his story of the combat, in rough, had got through to Fighter Command in a quarter-of-an-hour, and that the story, complete, had been through in an hour. His complaint was that Fighter Command had not thought this quick enough. This was the only indication from any of them - this personal squawk from the Intelligence-Offiicer - that anything at all had happened. Otherwise, I should have known nothing at all - nor anyone else.
Hectic Air Ministry signals continue to come in as regards a few additional postings to the Wing. " Air Ministry to Sutton Valence :—Dispatch immediately by road to Peake Moor two sergeant-pilots complete with parachutes, Mae Wests, and dinghies." " From Sutton Valence to Air Ministry : - Two sergeant-pilots with parachutes, Mae Wests and dinghies despatched by road 28-7-41." Another signal crossing this :-" Air Ministry to Sutton Valence :-Please confirm immediately two sergeant-pilots, parachutes, Mae Wests, dinghies, despatched by road Peake Moor," . . . and so on and so forth. Is the celebrated Hollywood film-star gratified to know that she has an honoured place in the routine R.A.F. code-book ?
Thursday
The formation of the Wing goes on - in its own curious fashion. (The Wing was technically " formed," when the Wing Commander arrived on July 28th, took over, and gave himself and some other pilots some leave.) The Wing-Commander returned from his own leave a couple of days ago, and yesterday morning met most of his pilots and most of his senior officers in the empty crew-room (down on the fringes of the aerodrome) that has been allotted to us as a Wing-Office. I shall long remember one curious feature of this first official getting-together, where met for the first time, as complete strangers, so many people that were ultimately to get to know one another infinitely better. The Winko himself was sitting there in his official chair of office, thumbing through the multitude of telegrams and instructions that had come in during his short absence ; and his officers were one by one coming in to be presented to him - and in the background one of his Squadron-Leaders and a couple of pilots were engaged in chalking, on a huge wall-blackboard with the names of all the Wing-Officers on it, a nickname for each against each - either the nicknames that they knew from past service together, or the nicknames that they thought would later come into use. It seemed a curious and casual way of conducting what was after all at least a semi-official occasion ; but I noticed that the Wing-Commander, in between his reading of the telegrams and his shrewd summing-up glances at newcomers, was not displeased with it, and appeared to have the situation admirably in hand.
About midday today Air Ministry rang up and asked him " if he could find it convenient to be at a Conference in Whitehall at 3.0 p.m." His instinctive reaction must have been " Hell, do you think I'm living somewhere just round the corner from you ? " However, he agreed ; lunched in the Mess, flew a Spitfire to Northolt, got a car from there to Air Ministry - and arrived five minutes early for the Conference. Pretty good going, seeing that he had come down from Yorkshire ! He was back, having drinks before dinner with his Command in the ante-room, by 6.o p.m.
He is a New Zealander, thirty-sixish, grey-haired, with a mouth that shuts like a steel trap. He is a test-pilot of long standing, and has probably forgotten more about flying than many young R.A.F. pilots have yet learnt. Also, he seems to like a joke.
Friday
A very good party happened in the Mess tonight, of which more shall be recorded in a moment. The resident Squadrons on the station got two Huns today. One of the two resident Squadrons is almost entirely Czech, with a few English officers.
Saturday
The re-assembled Wing had a little route march this morning, by way of a change. I had suggested it for the ground-troops, partly to be annoying, partly to give the ground-troops something to do to keep them occupied. The Wing-Commander had thought it a first-rate idea, and had approved of it enthusiastically - adding the rider that not only every airman of the Wing, but every senior N.C.O. and every pilot and sergeant-pilot was to go on the march. Hence a pleasant summer morning's walk through the green Yorkshire lanes for everybody - most people grumbling furiously at the time (for route-marching is not supposed to figure in the normal routine of Hurricane pilots) and nearly everyone admitting after-wards that they had quite enjoyed themselves. (Viewed in a four-months' later retrospect, this route-march turns out to have been curiously prophetic. One of the last doings of one section of the Wing on Russian soil was a route-march down to a waiting ship, the winter roads having been frozen into a state of icy slipperiness when no mechanical transport of any sort could function ; when one airman participating fell down and broke his elbow ; and when his pack was taken up for him and carried by a marching Hurricane pilot.)
Sunday
The Advance Party, that should have moved off this morning, has not moved off. Postponement orders have come through. Typical of all overseas drafts and their movements. . .
A V.C. Squadron-Leader, a guest-visitor, turns up to supper in the Mess. He has the gift of the gab. He talks incessantly from 6.0 o'clock to the end of the evening, without ever once closing his trap - and very good, amusing, informative talk most of it is. The legend of the " strong, silent man " dies hard. It is time it was killed.
" Napoleon never stopped talking from the cradle to the grave, and left three hundred volumes of correspondence." Vide Philip Guedalla.
And why not ? It is a pleasure to hear such people as crack modern fighter-pilots talk. I think two in particular of the pilots who are coming with us, the Rook's (major and minor - one a Squadron-Leader, the other, his cousin, a Flight-Commander) will be very good value for money. Squadron-Leader Rook is tall, about six-foot-one, with a ferocious up-twirling black moustache, and a chin like the Philip IV of Velasquez. He looks almost too much like a stage fighter-pilot to be true, but has a very creditable record in the Battle of Britain. His cousin (who religiously calls him " sir " in Mess) is even taller, about six-foot-four, and has charmingly kindly and easy manners. I prophesy, after only the shortest of acquaintance with them, that the two will loom large on the 151 Wing horizon - in its frozen Arctic wastes.
The region of the Wing's ultimate destination, Murmansk, has already become a pretty general rumour. Murmansk - can anyone believe it ?
To revert to the party which was touched on above : -
In an over-worked R.A.F. term, it was wizard ; meaning that it was extremely good. It had a unique quality about it. Up to a point it was exactly like all other R.A.F. Mess-parties - with a certain amount of drinking, noise, and general rowdiness - but then had come in the individual and foreign elements. The Czechs and the Poles had been there ! There had been the Czech Spitfire squadron, and some attached Poles, and they had been in residence on the Station for some time. We may have taught them our songs, but they have certainly taught us theirs. A Czech Squadron-Leader, a pilot with decorations, is a real performer on the violin - a rare accomplishment in an English Mess ; he can accompany with absolute truth any tune that is sung to him - and he can also keep us true in our own singing - and if you had heard the singing in most R.A.F. Messes you would appreciate the difference.
About 11.0 p.m., suddenly, as though by magic, a change came over the Mess : - everyone (unpremeditated) took off his tunic and collar, everyone pulled out his shirt and tied his tie round his waist over his shirt as a belt, converting the shirt into a colourable imitation of a Russian peasant-blouse - and there, in a trice, was a complete ante-room full of Russian muzhiks singing away like anything, grouped round a Czecho-Slovakian fiddle. . . . There should have been a photograph of the scene. It would have been unbelievable as referring to an English Mess.
The resident English squadrons were asked if they had done the same trick before on party-nights, and if it were the recognized local " drill " ; but they assured us that it had been the first time, and was quite spontaneous. The party, like many other R.A.F. parties, was given about nothing in particular ; it " happened " rather than had been planned, and indeed, had not even been thought about till half-way through the evening. But in its spontaneous way it was one of the pleasantest.
To revert to the assembly-period - the period of waiting in the last ten days has been, understandably, a difficult time. The whole Wing had its short 48-hour embarkation leave more than a week ago, and then had to come pelting back to Peake Moor expecting to have to move off at any moment. Then, as the days went by, the Wing still didn't get its movement-order. The troops began to feel that, as they weren't to move (or at least hadn't moved) for a week, they might at least have been given a little more than 48-hours. A difficult period, but common to all formations waiting to go out on overseas drafts.
Even if they had been able to be given a second period of embarkation-leave, it would probably have been an anticlimax as regards the home and domestic circle. As the C.O. sapiently puts it :-" What's the use of any more leave any way ; it upsets the wives too much. They've said good-bye once, and had a good cry, and straightened themselves up again. If the troops come back on another leave, all the wives will be able to say is " Good heavens, here's that man again ! " How true.
One thing in the past week has impressed me a lot - the friendliness and co-operation of the Air Ministry officials. As Wing-Adjutant-with the C.O. often called away to - attend to various matters - I have had to telephone the Air Ministry authorities continually - sometimes two and three times in a morning, and again two or three times the same afternoon. Always friendly and co-operative voices have answered at the other end :-" If you're in any doubt or difficulty, give us a call here. We're here to help you. Don't be afraid of ringing." No doubt this is precisely the attitude that high staff-officers should adopt to their juniors - but it is all the same very pleasant (and helpful) to find it actually being carried out.
Tuesday
The vessel pulls up the hook and sails out into the windy estuary at about 2 p.m.
