John Mathews
2035
214 Squadron (FMS) - Federal Malay States Squadron (Bomber Support)
Tape 1


01:00:47:00

Q: John as we spoke to you before we want to kick off the first tape just by you giving us a time line summary of the important things in your life from when you were born up until now.

A: Well that's alright.

Q: Off you go matey.

A: Well I was born

01:01:00:00
on the 30th of September, at home, in Hornsby. Fairly happy childhood, three brothers followed, then a sister. One famous little bit; oh you don't want anecdotes yet, do you?

Q: No, anecdotes come later.

A: Educated at Hornsby Public School then North Sydney Boys High School and I had to leave because

01:01:30:00
of the pressure of a family of five and education being a lot and went to work for Hornsby Council and went to study local government. While that was on it was obvious that I was going be called up during the war, and went into the army for a few months to begin with and then went into my chosen area of the air force. I was completely trained in all

01:02:00:00
the basics in Australia and went England and did specialised radio and radar on Jurby, then to a conversion unit, ending up on a squadron on Altron[?] 214 Federal Malay State Squadron. I did forty four tours over Germany and was then shot down and became a POW.

01:02:30:00
After that was released by the Americans, returned to England, mainly in very poor health and was in hospital. Sad sort of trip home in what should have been a hospital boat. Great greeting on arrival back and it was terrific to back and I took up live with Hornsby Council and then found employment

01:03:00:00
with the ABC [Australian Broadcasting Corporation] beginning in Hobart, then to Perth, then to Melbourne, then to Sydney, managing the ABC's orchestras. Round about mid 1970s poor health took up due to war injuries and I was superannuated out and then took an interest in horticulture, which follows me around to today. I'm a judge at the Royal Horticultural

01:03:30:00
Society and volunteer guide at the Botanic Gardens.

Q: Wonderful, that's a good distinct summary. Thank you John. Let's go back now then to the beginning then. You mentioned that you were born at home in Hornsby, whereabouts in Hornsby?

A: Mildred Avenue, just down from the electric car sheds and a local nurse was also in attendance,

01:04:00:00
Nurse Towells.

Q: And how many siblings did you have?

A: Four, three brothers and then the final one in the family was a sister.

Q: Now you said there was a famous incident that happened while you were in Mildred Avenue?

A: Yes, well there were several actually. Occasioned by the Depression years and I was thinking the

01:04:30:00
birth of my youngest brother and he was born in Mildred Avenue as well under the auspices of the doctor and Nurse Towells and this great big, tall man came out while I was sitting by the fire and the baby was dangling there and he looked at my father and said, "Mr Mathews, your Depression baby," and he was long and skinny and everything he shouldn't have been because we'd been well fed

01:05:00:00
during the Depression. He should have been a nice, plump baby like all the rest of us.

Q: Had your father been in the First World War?

A: Yes, he was at Gallipoli and he was in France and, but mainly he was an ambulance officer, so he was not directly in the

01:05:30:00
front but he did suffer gassing badly and his descriptions always veered me away from ever wanting anything to do with the army.

Q: What sort of things did he tell you about his First World War?

A: Oh the difficulties of retrieving wounded people or dead people. The awful conditions that they worked under, just generally as we know from the army, as we see all the time

01:06:00:00
and the lighter side of it, the wonderful camaraderie that was always there.

Q: Was he quite willing to talk about his experiences?

A: Not really, not until the end of his life and I think this goes for a lot of people. I'm finding it is much easier these days too.

Q: So having a father

01:06:30:00
who was a World War I veteran, was Anzac ceremonies a part of your life as a child?

A: Yes.

Q: What did that involve for your family?

A: For us, my father had a feeling about it and we went to the Dawn Service, that the Dawn Service was sincere but the marches were perhaps a glorification of war. And I sort of still feel much the same.

01:07:00:00
I feel more comfortable and happier going to a Dawn Service.

Q: So you think that the actual march was a bit of banging the drum?

A: Possibly yes, I see its need and I see that it gets more people interested, therefore I see its importance but it's just my personal bit is that I know the Dawn Service has its remarkable moments.

01:07:30:00

Q: And do you think that was the case when you were a child going to these services as well?

A: Yes, yes, I think that was almost instilled into us.

Q: And what, and I mean by that which Dawn Service did you go to?

A: Hornsby.

Q: And whereabouts was that held?

A: In the, at the Cenotaph, almost opposite the railway station.

Q: And what did your father do for a quid?

01:08:00:00

A: He was a railway employee, a guard on steam trains and then electric ones.

Q: Suburban ones or?

A: No, not always. He did quite a bit of time, three years altogether, at Goulburn and Harden.

Q: Did the family move with him?

A: Yes, my second brother was born in Harden, otherwise the rest of us were all born in Hornsby.

01:08:30:00
My sister had the luxury of being born in Nurse Towell's hospital.

Q: So what are your early memories of growing up in Hornsby?

A: Oh wonderful freedom. I was very used to being down in the Hornsby Valley, which was a wonderful place and as I got older I strayed further afield to the fish ponds,

01:09:00:00
which had wonderful fish holes in them and just generally the whole of Hornsby Valley. Occasionally we would do a big walk and go along Galston Road and down to Berowra Waters and that would be quite an interesting thing.

Q: Sorry John, you were saying sometimes you would go to Berowra Waters?

A: Yes, but also to the other side. Father was a keen fisherman

01:09:30:00
and we would go down from Berowra Station across the hills and down onto the waters near Berowra Waters and it was wonderful outings. A little later, of course he did get a boat and we had that at Hawkesbury River, so we were up in that sort of area, lots of fishing involved.

Q: What sort of facilities were down in Berowra Waters in those days?

01:10:00:00

A: Very little. Basically a garage and a few petrol bowsers and that was about all.

Q: Was the ferry there then?

A: Yes, the ferry was there then.

Q: Because I'm from that area and I grew up fishing around there as well and I noticed that the fishing

01:10:30:00
these days isn't very good there and it's been a bit overfished. Was it good in your day?

A: Yes, we used to do very well and I don't know we ever went without getting enough fish for the family.

Q: You must have had better luck than me mate. And so sometimes you said you'd go to Berowra Station and walk the other way down to Waratah Bay or Jerusalem Bay?

A: Yes, Jerusalem Bay.

Q: What sort of fish did you catch, do you remember?

A: Basically bream were the main ones but

01:11:00:00
in season the hair tail, which were very popular. Also an odd snapper and an odd flathead but basically the main fish we got were the bream.

Q: I can only get leatherjackets down there at the moment.

A: The leatherjackets would have been considered a pest.

Q: It's all you can get these days.

01:11:30:00
With your dad having a steady job with the railways, how did the Depression affect your family?

A: Well we were considerably lucky because of the railway men decided to have two and a half days work a week without any sackings, so there was a steady amount of income coming in. We lived on a large block of land so my father had ample poultry. He was


01:12:00:00
a very good vegetable grower and in the local paddocks we ran a cow, so basically we had food all the time. There was no shortage of it. My mother was a very good manager and she was actually a very good seamstress, for the want of another name. I didn't have any bought clothing until

01:12:30:00
I went into long pants, which is quite a considerable degree. I have to correct that, maybe Christmas and birthday presents were underclothes. My father's uniform was cut up and made into shorts for us and little jackets and they were handed down from one son to the next.

Q: So by saying that I assume your father got a new uniform

01:13:00:00
issue regularly?

A: Yes, they were still issued their uniform every year, so there was always this beautiful serge to make the clothing with.

Q: You mentioned that your dad was on two and a half days a week, why was that system implemented?

A: Well that meant that they could all retain employment, rather than half of them sacked and the others and it was a, and it just made life much easier.

Q: What sort of hours did your dad

01:13:30:00
work on those days he was working?

A: Very variable, whenever the trains were running and the electric trains were running from Hornsby at that stage.

Q: And on the days off during the week what would your dad do?

A: Basically garden. That was his, and he had a

01:14:00:00
great interest in it and as I say it was a very large block of land. In fact as youngsters we made our pocket money by selling the excess vegetables.

Q: What sort of vegetables?

A: The whole range. The family used all the soup vegetables including celery, bean, peas, cauliflowers, cabbages, you name it, it was all there.

01:14:30:00
Potatoes, tomatoes.

Q: How did you go about selling them?

A: We'd weigh them up and wrap them up and go to people we knew that might be able to buy them and they were generally happy to get fresh vegetables at half the price of the shop.

Q: And the money from the sale of the vegetables, would that remain with you kids or go into the family pot?

A: No, it remained with us kids,

01:15:00:00
so it was something we used for a night outing and it was the source of where we dipped into to buy birthday presents and Christmas presents, so it was an added freedom that we had, the luck of living through that sad time.

Q: Sounds like food and nutrition were not a problem in your house at all?

A: No, we

01:15:30:00
were well off and generally a very healthy family.

Q: With the pocket money you made there from selling your veggies, what would you spend it on as a treat?

A: An occasional ice cream but mainly for the dipping in area so we would buy each one of us a Christmas present and a little token at birthdays.

01:16:00:00

Q: Hornsby these days half of it is covered by a massive Westfield shopping centre, whereabouts would your family go to buy things from shops?

A: Our side of the railway line, there was very little over there. There was a Wright's furniture store and that was about the major bit. Up from that, right along up to the

01:16:30:00
Pacific Highway there were four doctors' residences and a private hospital on the corner and that's now all in the Westfield Plaza, so it was a different site altogether.

Q: So you're talking about side of the railway line that's on the far side from where the cenotaph is?

A: That's right, yes.

Q: And what about on that side where the cenotaph is?

A: That's where all the shopping areas were.

01:17:00:00

Q: And that's where your mother would buy groceries?

A: She actually had a grocery man call and he took the order and bought it back. Daunt's, they lived a little way up the street from us and it was a great convenience. He would also say, "Mrs Mathews, there is a special of a half side of lamb at the butcher's, would you like me to bring it to

01:17:30:00
you?" "Yes." And that would be supplied for something like ten shillings, twelve and sixpence and that was a lot of meat that would last the family for two weeks.

Q: As long as you were happy to have lamb every night?

A: Almost, beef was a luxury and pork was also a great luxury. It was an expensive meat those days.

01:18:00:00
We were also very well off because my father bragged, "All my hens lay. If they don't lay in the nest, they lay on the table."

Q: So chicken was a staple part of the diet?

A: Chicken was fairly staple.

Q: So tell us what you recall of Hornsby Public School, which is sadly no longer there anymore?

A: Basically a very happy time. I enjoyed school.

01:18:30:00
It was a good, almost a mile walk to and from. No luxury as these days of someone taking you there. In fact we would have been embarrassed if my mother took us to school. That's sissy stuff that. Just vital, a completely different side of things,

01:19:00:00
but interesting. My horticulture was expanded there because we had the start of quite a large garden in the school and we used to be allowed to stay after school and work in the garden, under supervision.

Q: So you obviously developed that love of growing things at a very early age?

A: Very early age, yes.

Q: From your father perhaps?

A: Father and mother. She was quite a good gardener.

01:19:30:00

Q: What sort of man was your father?

A: Small, actually a little higher than me. I'd say five foot seven, stocky, well built, typical Welshman, although his family had been here for many years. Had a beautiful voice and sang very well.

Q: What

01:20:00:00
about his character?

A: I'd say an average Australian bloke. Smoked heavily, interesting that his four sons didn't and his daughter did but basically a very happy loving man. Loved romping on the lawns with his children.

Q: What sort of

01:20:30:00
things did you inherit from your father in as far as your outlook on life?

A: Well certainly an interest in garden, it would have been manifest. I was probably the despair of his life because I have no mechanical bent and he was quite a good, adept carpenter and various things I'm hopeless at. Just one of those

01:21:00:00
amazing things, you have it or you don't.

Q: Now what about your mum, what sort of lady was she?

A: A very, very, lovable mother because a, "mother" is the word you could consign to her. Painstaking, a good cook, a good sewer and a good provider and with affection all the time.

01:21:30:00
We'd do very many lovely things. We had a holiday every year, thanks to the railwayman's pass and that would take us up to places like Nambucca, fishing and the beach, healthy times. A little later my father allowed me and then as the other two boys got older, to use a pass during school holidays,

01:22:00:
and to go off on our own from the age of ten. That used to be quite a feat and quite exciting. Go off and find some exciting place.

Q: Can you explain exactly what a railwayman's pass is?

A: Yes, they were allowed so many passes a year for holiday purposes. It was like an addition to their

01:22:30:00
salary. It was a free pass for just a couple of them to go somewhere for their holidays.

Q: And you'd said you'd go places like Nambucca with the family?

A: Yes.

Q: What did a family holiday involve?

A: Basically rental of a holiday home. You would have to take sheets and towels and cutlery very often, but it was inexpensive but we would just spend

01:23:00:00
the time fishing, bathing, swimming, being in healthy pursuits all the time.

Q: And I understand that was particularly undertaken in the summer.

A: Yes, ye.

Q: And going off by yourself with your brother from ten years old, whereabouts did you go?

A: Well even to Queanbeyan, Dubbo, and

01:23:30:00
oh several other places in between.

Q: What would you do?

A: Just sit on the train and watch the scenery, get out and wander around the destination, and then come back, maybe stop at another place and look at it.

Q: And where would you sleep?

A: Wherever we felt comfortable, on a railway station, more often than not and quite frequently in the train.

01:24:00:00

Q: It's quite a phenomenal adventure given today's worries about safety and so on?

A: Yes, I think that sort of safety was more, well things did happen to children then but I think parents were willing to take the risk and we didn't hear so much about it in the press that was made

01:24:30:00
such a song and dance about it, so you didn't feel that you were doing anything that could be dangerous. And I must admit that I never experienced anything that looked as if it was dangerous.

Q: So there wasn't the paranoia?

A: No. No, I think we were freer, more open living in those days.

Q: It's a shame perhaps that that's being lost?

A: I think it is. One of the characteristics of Australia that

01:25:00:00
has gone.

Q: Now I'll go back again to Hornsby Public, what sort of student were you at primary school?

A: Adequate. I did everything I had to do and probably no more. I was a much better

01:25:30:00
student once I got to high school.

Q: What about at primary school, their school sport?

A: Well basically because I was so small, football was out so I was involved in playing cricket, tennis and dodging it.

Q: You weren't a sports freak?

A: I wasn't a sports freak.

01:26:00:00

Q: They'd call you un-Australian these days?

A: I said earlier I loved the bush and I'd much rather go hiking around in Hornsby Valley than anything else. It was just a wonderful experience.

Q: What sort of evidence of wildlife was there in those days in the Hornsby Valley?

A: There was a lot of birdlife and there were the occasional rock wallabies

01:26:30:00
still around, very large colonies of snakes, particularly green tree snakes.

Q: You were obviously reasonable enough at school and it was decided to send you onto high school?

A: Yeah.

Q: How did you get down to North Sydney?

A: Well I walked to

01:27:00:00
the station and back and then electric train to North Sydney or to Crows Nest and then walked to North Sydney High and returned the same way.

Q: Was there such a thing in those days as the school train pass?

A: Yes, yes. We had no problem with that. There

01:27:30:00
was no free pass though for the tram so that was saved by walking, taking extra time getting there and getting home but that was saved and that was pocket money.

Q: I guess I should mention on the way up there did you ever have any run-ins with the

01:28:00:00
boys from Barker College en route?

A: No, but Barker College was only a very small college in those days. We were aware of it. I think there was a tendency for us to sneer at Knox College boys as we were going by and we'd meet them on the train.

Q: Okay, so there was a bit of rivalry with that?

A: That's a bit of rivalry.

Q: On the way through Warrawee?

01:28:30:00

A: Yes.

Q: What uniform did you have at North Sydney Boys?

A: Grey short trousers and a little blazer, the regulation white shirt and the school tie.

Q: And the short pants were worn throughout the school years?

A: Throughout the school years, yes.

Q: Was the cost of the uniform

01:29:00:
a burden on your family?

A: No, because again it was made by my mother. She would go to the Hub in Sydney and buy materials in large quantities, a dozen yards at a time and so it would be inexpensive and she made school uniforms as well.

01:29:30:00

Q: What would you do for lunch on school days?

A: Take the packed sandwiches from home and pieces of fruit?

Q: And was it Vegemite in those days?

A: Vegemite was fairly popular. I had a penchant for cheese and apricot jam together.

Q: Gosh John, I think you've made me feel sick.

01:30:00:00

A: Decadent.

Q: I see and why do you think it was that you were a better student at high school?

A: Perhaps the teachers had got me interested and even then some of them didn't. I did have a gift for mathematics

01:30:30:00
and okay ninety two percent at the end of the year and the highest mark was ninety two and a half and the next mark was eighty eight and the remark was, "He could do better if he tried."

Q: How did that make you feel at the time?

A: I thought he was a bit mean but I've got to admit yes, he was right. I would do other things even during the maths

01:31:00:00
lessons.

Q: You were distracted by other pursuits?

A: No other subjects that I needed to spend time learning. One maths lesson I got bellowed out to the board and he said, "Why does that angle equal that angle?" And I spouted out an answer to him and he said, "Well I can't tell you you're wrong. In six weeks' time the rest of the class will do that theorem.

01:31:30:00
What were you up to?" "French translation." "Get back and pay attention." So I'm not surprised he did that to me.

Q: So what were your weak areas?

A: Languages other than English. Things like history and geography. I thoroughly enjoyed the English language

01:32:00:00
but doing French and Latin was not easy. I think perhaps the mode of teaching didn't help. When I see the present day mode of teaching, it's so better, so easier.

Q: How would you describe the mode of teaching in those days then?

A: Basically

01:32:30:00
strict to grammar and strict to exact translation both ways.

Q: How would you describe the level of discipline in the high school?

A: Strict without being overbearing. In fact we were quite frankly involved in pranks, even

01:33:00:00
with the masters.

Q: Do you recall any of those pranks?

A: Oh one poor gentleman, wonderful history teacher and it was in an out block where we had the lesson and someone had an Alsatian dog and he'd gone in. They tied it outside the door and pushed it in and closed the door and he was terrified to come up near it.

01:33:30:00
Cruel thing to do but youngsters think it's a great joke.

Q: And what would be the typical fallout from such a joke?

A: "I will not tolerate you doing it again."

Q: No corporal punishment?

A: No corporal punishment, no. Corporal punishment was only meted out

01:34:00:00
when it was really needed. In fact I can remember more of it at Hornsby than I can of it at high school. I was there at the height of the headmaster that was still considered today way out in front. He used to turn out

01:34:30:00
all the top classes in Intermediate and Leaving Certificates, as they were known in those days.

Q: I can assure you I can remember corporal punishment at Hornsby Public as well, John. That was my first and last experience with it. Obviously there was some financial pressures against you continuing on with your high school career?

A: That's right, yes.

01:35:00:00

Q: How did they manifest?

A: Well it was a consideration of there were five children so actually at the end of the fourth year I left and went to work for Hornsby Council. I commenced the Shire Clerk's Certificate but I also continued private study and did the Leaving Certificate and

01:35:30:00
fortunately got quite a good pass on that.

Q: So how old were you when you left school?

A: Sixteen.

Q: Now John at that time, sixteen would put us into 1939, by your age?

A: Yes.

Q: What had you known about the build up to war in Europe in the year or two up to there?

A: We were aware that there were things happening.

01:36:00:00
The word, "Hitler" was bandied around and Nazism and generally, yes we were aware of it.

Q: How were you aware? Through what media?

A: Mainly radio, well we didn't have television. We had by 1939 a radio. I can remember the first radio thing I ever listened to was

01:36:30:00
a Test Match being broadcast from England, in which Bradman made a century. It was up in the radio shop, great excitement.

Q: And your father having been a World War I veteran can you recall what his feelings were about the Germans on the road again?

A: Yes. , "It is happening just like it happened before and will they learn?

01:37:00:00
Is it part of their character?" I think he would have been happier if we weren't involved. My next two brothers actually started to become engineers so they did not get called into the services but one I think was their sacrifice.


01:37:30:00

Q: So when war actually did break out in 1939, towards the end, what were your feelings all about it?

A: "I wonder what this is all about? I have met German people. I haven't found them awful, so why should we be involved?" But then

01:38:00:00
a sort of a slow war was showing not very much but gradually I think you were induced into the hatred and it was obvious I was going to be called into the services so I elected to go into the RAAF.

Q: In your home situation, given your father's experience, did the Germans have a bad name?

A: No, the German people not.

01:38:30:00
The regimes had the bad name and it was the horrors of the trench warfare, all that sort of thing. It was the horrors of it, not the German people themselves. My father used to say, "You can never forget that Christmas Day when they ceased hostilities and spoke to each other.

01:39:00:00
If you can do that once, why can't you cease it all together."

Q: When you left school at sixteen what were your ambitions for yourself?

A: My ambition had been to be a school teacher, for some unknown reason, and I think the

01:39:30:00
idea of all the school holidays was the reason behind it and hence, that's why I went to on to continue the Leaving Certificate to get the entrance in and of course, the war prevented it.

Q: How did the war prevent you continuing with teaching being a reserved occupation?

A: No, it was not a reserved occupation. A lot of

01:40:00:00
teachers did go off in the services and a lot of ex-teachers were taken back into the teachers service.

Q: Then you felt that teaching wasn't an option once the war broke out?

A: It was not going to be an option because obviously I

01:40:30:00
was going into the services so I just went ahead and continued with the Shire Clerk's Certificate and studies and courses at night and thought, "Well that's looks where fate is going to push me."











John Mathews
2035
Tape 2


02:02:00:00

Q: John could you give me an idea of how important the idea of Empire was to you and your family as you were growing up?

A: Empire was important.

02:02:30:00
We were drilled into it. We sang the national anthem at school everyday. It was accepted that we were part of the British Empire and it was for starters similar if you like, we wouldn't have thought otherwise.

Q: And was it something that

02:03:00:00
you personally carried on after the earlier years where it was sort of drilled into you, was it something that you held dear to yourself personally?

A: Yes, except that I'd have said oh by the thirties I was thinking otherwise but then also

02:03:30:00
experiences with visits to America and etcetera I would never want to live as they were, so it had its head of state that I find interesting in how you go about it and who you have.

Q: You said in the thirties that you thought otherwise, is that in your personal, when you turned thirty or during the years?

02:04:00:00

A: Leading around that age, oh I can't put a point to it what prompted the thoughts but it became apparent to me that Australia should be for Australians. I think probably Tasmania had a marked effect on it where

02:04:30:
I was so conscious that so much of the products of Tasmania went to England and were sold relatively cheaply, even cheaper than we could buy in Tasmania and what are we doing this for?

Q: What role did the church play in your family as you were growing up?

A: We were encouraged to go

02:05:00:00
to church, to Sunday School. In fact we went off as a little group to Sunday School. My father was never quite sure of it. His attitude was he believed in Christianity not in Churchianity but my mother had been well bought up

02:05:30:00
in sending children to church and to things. And also the church was also very much the social life of everything that went on, particularly when you reached into your teenage areas. It was where the dances were held, it was where you went for little social functions, so it was important in that way.

02:06:00:00

Q: What denomination church did you attend?

A: Church of England.

Q: So it was a part of your life where you gained friendship?

A: Yes, I made good friends there but then again they were basically the same friends that I was at school with, so I can't say that it was specifically

02:06:30:00
at church that it happened.

Q: Could you explain to us a typical church dance?

A: Yes, it would begin promptly at eight o'clock and finish before eleven and it would be all the old standard ballroom

02:07:00:00
dancing that was popular at the time with probably things like Gypsy Tap and oh, the other things that were. Rock and roll and etcetera hadn't started.

Q: And how would the music be provided?

A: By a live band and all live pianist, no recordings and

02:07:30:00
certainly no amplification.

Q: So how big was a typical band?

A: Generally three, pianist, violinist and cellist or double bass.

Q: Were you able to make requested for favourite tunes?

A: Yes, yes, although you'd almost know they were going to come out during the course of the evening. It depended

02:08:00:00
on the dance that was going to be performed.

Q: And how were you at, "cutting a rug"?

A: I enjoyed it, yes.

Q: What was the procedure to approach a partner for a dance?

A: It was very much one-sided, boys almost on one side and girls

02:08:30:00
on the other and you went over and bowed and said, "may I have the pleasure of this dance?" And you would return her to the seat at the end of it and go back to yours and wait for the next one.

Q: And were the tables ever turned? Was there a part in the evening when the girls would ask the boys for a dance?

A: Yes, there would be one dance in the evening where it was called, "Ladies' Choice"

02:09:00:00
and in things like the Progressive Barn Dance you would dance with quite a few partners during it.

Q: When you were around sixteen and you'd left school, was going to dances a big part of your recreation?

A: No, it was only, I would only go to it as part

02:09:30:00
of the church's activities. In fact I would possibly be more interested in some of their other activities.

Q: What they be?

A: They had a reading circle and a music group where being a music student we were expected to perform at these little evenings every now and then and do our party piece.

02:10:00:00

Q: So music was a big part of your life as a youth?

A: Yes, yes. Background to that, my mother was a very competent pianist. In fact before marriage she had earned a living as a pianist playing for the silent films and something quite out of the extraordinary because

02:10:30:00
she played at Richmond and the first half would take that film up to the hills and it would be played up there the second half. She'd stay overnight and reverse the order of it and going backwards and forwards by horse and sulky. For an eighteen or nineteen year old girl something

02:11:00:00
rather taxing and exciting.

Q: Indeed. And so what was your instrument and how old were you when you started playing?

A: Basically piano and I started when I was nine.

Q: Was it something that you took to naturally or was it sort of forced upon you?

A: No, I had no problems even electing to get

02:11:30:00
up quite early in the morning to do the prescribed practice. No, I enjoyed it. There was no problem.

Q: When you got a little bit older, say up around sixteen, what sort of music was really your passion at that stage?

A: Mozart, Beethoven and beginning to lean towards opera.


02:12:00:00

Q: And what about picture shows? Were they something that you were interested in?

A: I went to my first picture show when I was fourteen, which was after actually when my other brothers went because they got packed off the day of my sister's birth and I had to stay home

02:12:30:00
and carry the bag for my mother to the hospital. But from fourteen onwards, yes, Grandmother was living with us and she used to take us. It was more for her outing but we would go and see a film I suppose once a month.

Q: What sort of films were you keen on at that stage?

02:13:00:00

A: Probably the entertainment was the Wild West or my father was instrumental in saying, "Oh, there's Steffie and Mo, let them go to that." So comedies and they were actually quite hilarious. Slapstick as slapstick should be, I guess.

02:13:30:00

Q: And those films would be coupled with a newsreel?

A: Yes, newsreel first and then an animal cartoon then a supporting picture, an interval and then the main picture.

Q: So all up, how many hours of entertainment are we talking about?

A: Three.

02:14:00:00
Around about three.

Q: You said through the church you had a music group?

A: Yes.

Q: And a reading circle?

A: Yes.

Q: Tell us how a reading circle worked?

A: It was just to basically read the novels and Shakespearian plays or other

02:14:30:00
plays that were being studied at school. They set ones for them for the major exams and we could read through them perhaps taking parts in the readings of them and just to stimulate interest more than anything else of what there was in the content that was in the books.

Q: Had literature captured your imagination at that stage?

A: Yes.

02:15:00:00
We'd been encouraged to always read and it's something that I still do today. I read for at least fifteen minutes before I go to bed at night.

Q: When you would socialise at around the age of sixteen would you date a girl or would you go out

02:15:30:00
with a larger group of mixed company, what were the various scenarios?

A: Yes, it would be a larger group of people. Even up to, I suppose even up to fifteen it was sort of a taboo thing to have a girlfriend. I think we did but it was not that normal

02:16:00:00
sort of thing. I think the girls were a little bit more sheltered too and rather more looked after than they are now. There was not the freedom for it, however from sixteen onwards, yeah.

Q: Would your parents have frowned upon you having a girlfriend from the age of sixteen?

A: No, no, we would frequently

02:16:30:00
have people home after Church at night on a Sunday and it would be a mixed bag of girls and boys and part of that also would be a sing song around the piano with my mother playing and my father leading the singing. And that would have been all the

02:17:00:00
old Irish, Scotch, Welsh songs more than anything else.

Q: Would the family often gather around the piano for a song together?

A: Yes, it was one of our favourite methods of entertainment.

Q: Was there any time of day or day of the week in particular that that was done?

A: Sunday was fairly frequent.

02:17:30:00
In fact I would have said every Sunday because after church it was a happy place for people to come. Somehow they liked to come to the Mathews'.

Q: We were talking earlier, well you were talking with Mat [interviewer] about getting a sense that war was forming and

02:18:00:00
inevitably it did come along, in your mind what did war mean to you? Were there elements of perhaps a sense of adventure attached to you at that stage or was it something you were anxious about, fearful of or was it a combination of emotion?

A: No, I think it was basically a combination of adventure,

02:18:30:00
and something that was going to happen for me. I was going to be involved so let me choose what I think is going to be my meteor or whatever. But I don't think there was any great depth to it that I was in danger of losing my

02:19:00:00
life. That didn't happen until halfway through training.

Q: So the thought that you would inevitably be involved in the war, was that a thought that you were looking forward to?

A: Yes, I think I could say yes, I was looking forward to it. I'd been looking at it and it was inevitable and let me make the

02:19:30:00
best of it and let me go into the air force.

Q: Working at the Hornsby Council, was that a busy place to be a part of in those days?

A: Yes, it was a, well the council was almost a part of your life in those days. You were more aware of things that were happening.

02:20:00:00
Men did the work not machines so you were aware of the men doing the repairs to your roads, your gutters, your footpaths and much larger crews of people than there are today where they're reliant on machines. I think that everyone was more aware that councils were functioning,

02:20:30:00
useful parts of society.

Q: So what sorts of jobs were you carrying out?

A: I was basically what would be termed a junior rates clerk, which was formulating the rate notices, collecting them as they were coming in as they were being paid and putting them through the processing machines.

02:21:00:00

Q: Could you see a future for yourself in the council? Did you have ambitions to get to a certain level in the council?

A: Oh yes, in my case it would eventually be a Shire Clerk and hence my doing the technical course for it.

02:21:30:00

Q: And how long a course was that one?

A: That was about four years depending on your prowess, whether you get through it or not or whether they let enough people through. If they weren't looking at a lot of shire clerks being needed well there'd be some pretty tough exams turn up

02:22:00:00
that you wouldn't pass, maybe you'd have to have two or three goes at them.

Q: So there was a fair bit of competition for that sort of a job?

A: A lot of competition, yes, yes.

Q: What sort of changes did you notice to your day-to-day living when the war did start?

A: Very little, except to take note

02:22:30:00
more of radio broadcasts and to listen to the seven o'clock news every night, which was not very revealing because there was not a great deal other than propaganda being reported in it.

Q: Do you think you were aware that what you were listening to was propaganda at that age or is that something you realise now?

A: No, no, it's something I realise now.

Q: Were you also a

02:23:00:00
reader of newspapers or was it mainly radio for you?

A: No, we had the Sydney Morning Herald delivered daily and I was a very avid reader of that and I also became an avid doer of the crosswords, which were of a high standard, and still are.

02:23:30:00

Q: Did the family often talk about news and current affairs, say when they were together around the dinner table or something like that?

A: My father was quite adamant that we discussed a lot of political issues and it goes back even earlier, about the mid thirties [1930s],

02:24:00:00
where there was talk of nationalisation of banks and he bought it up at the dinner table. He was against it and my mother and I were for it and the next night he changed his position and so had we. We were encouraged to take an interest in what it was all about.

02:24:30:00
He was interested in politics himself and yet I would never know his voting ideals.

Q: So you weren't indoctrinated into one particular persuasion?

A: No, we were made to think and look at both sides of every question,

02:25:00:00
including he took me at one stage to a Communist Party meeting and he took me to a United Australia Party meeting, the conservative one, so the indoctrination was seeing both.

Q: Do you think you had a particular leaning when you were sixteen, one way or another?

A: No,

02:25:30:00
leaning came with me after that, probably accentuated during the war, "Why am I being victimised by this? What else is there?" And that's probably where the doubts came

02:26:00:00
and doubts in all sorts of facets of life. Religion was also being tossed in there as part of it.

Q: In those years before you did join the militia do you recall things like blackouts or rationing or air raid exercises?

02:26:30:00

A: No, there was problems with Sydney's electrical supply and it was contemptuous. It was bung her on, bung her off and but I think that during the war it improved and then it became bad

02:27:00:00
again after the war. But apart from that no, I don't recall anything that made me feel untoward that life had changed greatly at all.

Q: When you did come across items of propaganda, say in the newspaper, do you think

02:27:30:00
they were tugging at your heart strings at that stage? Were you feeling, were those bits and pieces making you consider making a commitment?

A: Yes, they were prompting you that you were necessary to the commitment that you were making and there was glorification of everyone that did

02:28:00:00
it and despising of others that didn't.

Q: Was that glorification enticing?

A: Not really, no. No, with me it was acceptance. I realised I was not in a reserved occupation, therefore I would go to war.

02:28:30:00
And therefore nothing was going to change really.

Q: So how did that path towards start for you then?

A: It started on my eighteenth birthday and the papers called me into the army to begin with and they were getting you ready in case you weren't wanted by the air force.

02:29:00:00
I suppose useful in that it served in that a lot of basic training was done. All the drills are essential for all the services and then three months later I was into the air force.

Q: So when you got called into the militia, had you already applied for the air force?

A: Yes.

Q: You applied to the air force before you turned eighteen?

A: Oh yes, long before, yeah.

02:29:30:00

Q: Did that involve any preliminary meetings or it was simply paperwork?

A: Paperwork and a bit of discussion with my father.

Q: How did that discussion run?

A: He was saying, "Have you thought this? Have you thought that?" and, "Why the air force? Don't you think maybe it's glamorous?"

02:30:00:00
I said, "No." He said, "You know what you'll be called?" And I said, "Yes." Because we call them as we see them, Blue Orchids and I said, "I don't want to go through what you went through and I don't want to be drowned, so that's the option".

Q: And did he accept that?

A: Yes, he

02:30:30:00
quite acceptable. I think he would have preferred that I was not going but it was the law of the land and that was it.

Q: Did mum have any involvement in those discussions?

A: I think she was sitting there. No, she was more instrumental later.

02:31:00:00

Q: So what was involved in your early days in militia? Where did you originally have to report to?

A: Straight to North Head and probably one of the memorable incidents there I was on leave and we were phoned up and told we had to get back.

02:31:30:00
And I went across, I went into Sydney and Manly Ferry across and didn't realise there was anything on but it was the day of the Japanese submarines in Sydney Harbour and that's why we were being called back in case, untrained thoroughly as we were, we may have had to man North Head.

Q: What impact did that

02:32:00:00
realisation have on you, that the Japanese were suddenly on our doorstep?

A: That to me was reality, that's, "Yes, there is something to happen and I've been lucky."

Q: Do you think you sensed a shift in the way people felt

02:32:30:00
about war commitment after that incident?

A: I think people were far more convinced that there was a war and it was beginning on our own homefront.

Q: Did that sharpen your resolve to get to the air force and get involved with what was going on?

A: Yes, because the next day I was over the air force people to see when I was going to be

02:33:00:00
called up.

Q: Can you tell us a bit more about the sort of training that went on at North Head?

A: Well basically the normal marching skills, the drills with rifles, rifle practise, just normal military beginners stuff.

02:33:30:00

Q: How did you take to the military lifestyle, the discipline?

A: I just accepted it, a necessary evil. I can't say that I was thrilled about it one way or the other.

Q: What were the living circumstances like at North Head?

A: Not bad actually because it

02:34:00:00
was a regular army base. The barracks were rooms with four beds in them so it wasn't a great long barracks as we experienced later with about thirty or forty people in the one room. Comfortable and

02:34:30:00
more or less almost four private areas so you could be a little bit private for yourself. Ample hanging space for clothes, but deeply regimented on the same side as everything had to be in its right place.

Q: Having that little taste of the army did that swing you one way or the other as far as what you thought of the army?

02:35:00:00

A: Yes, I wanted even more to get away from it.

Q: Did you get a chance to make a few mates during that time?

A: Yes, I did. I think one in particular, no, actually two and one because he was in the same room and we seemed to go on leaves and things together. The other one was a guy

02:35:30:00
I'd been at school together with and he was like me, busting his guts to get into the air force, which we both ended up going in there together, so he was an important friend later but there was just the one. I think mainly it was a day to day thing and you're four room mates you got along with or you didn't and

02:36:00:00
the great, deep camaraderie that comes was not quite there at that stage.

Q: Did you get to handle guns much at that stage?

A: Yes, mainly 303 rifles.

Q: How did you find you were? Were you much of a shot?

A: I wasn't too bad actually but I was a very small guy

02:36:30:00
and I found them probably a bit hefty to lug around. I was five foot two and very lightly built and it almost felt as though they were as big as I was.

Q: So there were three months or so in the militia before the air force call came along?

A: Yes, yes.

Q: Can you take us through what happened when you did hear from the air

02:37:00:00
force?

A: Yes, we went to Bradfield Park for more or less an initiation of a week and then we were sent down to a holding unit at a place called Tocumwal and it was basically some guard duty and air force indoctrination, a little

02:37:30:00
bit of what was going to happen to us and then we came back to Bradfield Park for the full initiation course.

Q: And what did that full initiation course entail?

A: It went into basic flying, basic navigation, basic radio, learning Morse code, so you all went through that and at the end of it you went before a selection committee who selected

02:38:00:00
what you were going to do.

Q: What elements of that training did you enjoy the most?

A: Basically the radio side of things and which was quite a, because part of the interview you

02:38:30:00
got asked what you would like to be and I had said a radio operator or a navigator. , "Not a pilot?" "No." "Why?" "Well I'm small and I would be committed to a fighter on my own and I would prefer to be with somebody. A crew is what I would like to be

02:39:00:00
with and I'm too small to be a bomber pilot."

Q: When did you figure that out for yourself?

A: During the time at Bradfield Park and it was just one of those strange things that came and I was told I was probably

02:39:30:00
headed onto a radio course because the results had been phenomenal.

Q: What was it about radio that really captured your imagination?

A: Probably that it was the language that I could conquer easily as I had not conquered any other language but the Morse

02:40:00:00
code had got me in and I became very adept.

Q: Had you ever been in an aircraft at that point?

A: No, no, looked up and seen them and that was it.

Q: Had you taken a little bit of an interest in aviation as a younger man?

02:40:30:00

A: No, no, No mechanical interest whatsoever.


John Mathews
2035
Tape 3

03:00:33:00

Q: We're at Bradfield now but I did just want to go back and ask you one question about Hornsby Council, you did touch on it a little bit. These days Shire councils have a bit of a reputation of being full of bureaucratic duffers and dead wood, how would compare that to your day?

A: They were looked up to in those days and I think people like I say particularly the building inspector, he'd gone through a

03:01:00:00
lot of training and he knew what he was doing. The road engineers I think much the same. I think there was a greater respect by the public for the councils in those days than there is now.

Q: Do you think in both cases that's justified?

A: I'm going to say probably not. I think we're

03:01:30:00
tending to look at blame and you're also pushing me into an area, "Yes I will open my mind up". At the time of the discussion on whether we become a breakaway from the Commonwealth.

Q: The Republic?

A: Yes.

03:02:00:00
There was a marvellous guy who put out a booklet that was incredible, abolish the States. His estimate was thirty one billion a year savings. That things like education, health and railways

03:02:30:00
are completely in the hands of Commonwealth. If that had happened we wouldn't have had all the different gauges of railway we've got and the councils are given, made slightly larger, which is beginning to happen and that they have a little bit more local autonomy and that the State parliaments go.

03:03:00:00
I think that would be, and he pointed out a few very interesting bits in it, for example, if England, not the United Kingdom, but England was governed under the same numbers as Australia was, England would have forty seven parliaments. We're ridiculously over governed.

03:03:30:00

Q: Okay, let's move back to Bradfield then or at the close of it, you obviously went before the selection board there and were told you were going to be a wireless air gunner, how did that suit you?

A: I was quite happy about that. It was within the alternatives

03:04:00:00
and the idea of the wireless somehow was intriguing and I also developed a few navigational skills from it, from the course, so that was the thing that was being of interest to me.

Q: I guess in those days wireless technology to you was almost like

03:04:30:00
computer engineering might be to people today?

A: Yes, I think but a little later even more advanced.

Q: When you were selected to be a wireless air gunner at Bradfield, what were your movements from there?

A: From there, there was a six month course at Maryborough on wireless and of course Morse and other codes and that

03:05:00:00
was again quite an experience.

Q: Tell us about that course?

A: It was trying to get the operational speeds up and I got stuck in the eighteen words a minute hut and I said to the instructor, "What am I going to do?" And he said, "You're going to go in and take every one of them". He said, "I've

03:05:30:00
got no doubt that you're going to pass and I'll tell you why afterwards." So I went in to the exams and took forty, thirty six, thirty two, twenty eight, twenty six, twenty four and twenty two and twenty and I didn't take eighteen

03:06:00:00
and he said, "Did you realise?" And I said, "Yes, I'm translating at eighteen." He said, "Yes, it's a block period for you." He said, "You're still saying da-dah is A, whereas the other way you're just writing it." And he said, "The consequences are


03:06:30:00
you took forty perfectly and you're going to operate at speeds of, people are going to tell you to slow down." And that's exactly what happened.

Q: So explain to us again, what was the problem that you had in getting past that eighteen words a minute?

A: Of thinking instead of saying da-dah and

03:07:00:00
writing it, writing A, you're saying da-dah, A, write, so it's too slow and you were missing too much along the way.

Q: So someone who's talented at Morse, what would they be doing?

A: Most people these days I think operate around about twenty four or thirty, and the exceptional ones are about thirty two.

03:07:30:00

Q: Do you think that translation that was going on inside your head was a consequence of the way that you'd been taught language at school?

A: I think it could be but a lot of others had it and they didn't seem to get out of the fourteen words a minute or the sixteen for a while and they were having it at that level where you're not operating automatically in your translation and you're

03:08:00:00
going through basic slow translation.

Q: What was the minimum pass rate?

A: Eighteen words a minute.

Q: And when you said you were in the eighteen words a minute hut, what did you mean by that?

A: That was various huts where you operated at those speeds and somehow if you didn't pass you didn't move to the next hut.

03:08:30:00

Q: How were you tested? What sort of exercises were you doing?

A: There would be a three-minute receiving and a three-minute translation in each go, so and I think you were allowed five errors.

Q: And what about sending?

A: Well that was it, transmitting and three minutes of each, receiving

03:09:00:00
and sending.

Q: Can you still remember your Morse these days?

A: Yes, strangely it often comes out particularly the old Q codes.

Q: What's a Q code?

A: It was a code preceded by Q and two other letters and

03:09:30:00
going through the alphabet and it just cut down a great number of words and phrases and you began to know what they were and I was reading something the other day and my mind immediately said, "Da, da, da, dit, dit, dit, der, der, der" which was its call sign.

03:10:00:00

Q: About an aerodrome or something was it?

A: Yes, it was, yes it was one of the big operating aerodromes.

Q: So for commonly used locations or phrases there were shortcuts?

A: Yes, there was shortcuts. For example, "A S" was a bar, which meant you sent it together, meant, "Please wait" and it was just simple,

03:10:30:00
made it more easier.

Q: There must have been a phenomenal amount of these things to learn?

A: It was incredible but you also had a booklet that covered them for you.

Q: How did you go about memorising those things? You can't remember?

03:11:00:00

A: Yes, I can. I was going to say without difficulty. People sort of look at me in amazement and say, "How do you remember all those botanic names?" And I think it's the same thing, application and they do, they just register and that's it.

Q: The other members of your course, at this wireless course, were

03:11:30:00
they also at an advanced level like you or was this a general course?

A: No, this was an advanced school. It was all people who were going to be radio operators or basically the good old term was operator air gunner.

Q: How did you get on with the other guys in the course?

A: I had a couple of good mates.

03:12:00:00
Yes, it was good friendship, into mischief. I got caught numerous times with a nice, clean trailing aerial, not because I'd misbehaved but because the pilot, bored with all this other used to go down on the Mary River and leap over fishing boats

03:12:30:00
and of cause the trailing aerial would get washed in the salt water and could have ruined it.

Q: So you weren't only operating in huts, you were airborne as well?

A: Oh yes, it was, yes in the good old Wackett [mono-plane] trainer.

Q: The good old Wackett, and you obviously seemed to think it was mundane work for the pilots?

A: Yes, I think they were bored to death with it.

Q: How did you like flying?

03:13:00:00

A: I enjoyed it, loved being up there.

Q: What sort of accommodation was there in the back of a Wackett trainer for a wireless operator?

A: Not enough, it was cramped and even for me as small fellow and I don't know how some of the other fellows managed it at all. And you progress into larger aircraft, thank goodness the space was bigger.

03:13:30:00

Q: It begs the question of obviously in a plane like the Wackett, I don't know if it changed in larger planes but how much did the noise of the aircraft and the slipstream affect what you were hearing on the earphones?

A: Basically because of the clamped nature you were cutting out most of that noise, so the reception was pretty good.

03:14:00:00
But the moment you took it off, no, there was a lot of noise.

Q: Now we've covered the wireless part of wireless air gunner, what about the air gunner part?

A: Oh that was a transfer to Evans Head and that was a very happy time. I quite enjoyed the gunnery.

03:14:30:00
And I sort of kept saying to myself, "I hope I don't have to use it". I'm far more interested in the other side of it but it was also a happy association because in Grafton my father's sister's family lived, so I was getting to see

03:15:00:00
cousins of my own age who I'd hardly seen and it was a nice contact of renewal of family, as well as the gunnery school was good fun. And it was interspersed of course with being able to get down on the beach and surf at Evans Head.

Q: What did the gunnery training

03:15:30:00
involve?

A: The use of air to air weapons and the use of air to ground weapons and you had to pass out on a fairly high competence of both.

Q: Can you describe to me how those exercises were carried out?

A: Yes, with the, actually the Wackett trainer would have something

03:16:00:00
towed behind it and you would be told when to fire and the pilot would zip and zig and the thing was going all over the place and then they would register how much went through the material that was being dragged along behind you. And then the

03:16:30:00
air to ground was another one where you flew in at a set target and they measured the repetition.

Q: What sort of aircraft were you riding in?

A: Wackett trainers still.

Q: And what sort of weapon were you using?

A: I have no idea. I don't think I even registered what they were then.

Q: That's fine.

A: They were whatever was installed in the aircraft.

03:17:00:00

Q: And you mentioned that you got to keep in touch with cousins and so on up in Grafton?

A: Yes.

Q: Were any male or female cousins in the services?

A: I had a cousin, Phillip, who was in the air force, strangely on the same squadron that I was on but not at the period that I was. It was while 214

03:17:30:
Squadron was in the Middle East he was there with it and he was ground crew.

Q: Okay, why was it that you were aircrew? Did you join specifically to be aircrew?

A: I joined specifically to be aircrew and basically you would be weaselled out if you weren't suitable and you would have gone to ground

03:18:00:00
staff.

Q: Now at Maryborough and Evans Head what sort of off duty socialising and recreation would you get up to?

A: Local dances I guess or films on site. In the six months at Evans Head I only recall only ever having one leave and that

03:18:30:00
was a week to come back to Sydney for a week and we would generally have Saturday night, Sundays free, which would allow us to go into Maryborough itself.

Q: And that's when you'd go to dances and things?

A: Go to a dance or a film or go down onto the Mary River and have a swim?

03:19:00:00

Q: And how did you fly boys get on with the locals in these towns?

A: Not very well with the males but very well with the females. , "You're pinching me girlfriend", so it was, yeah it was that sort of attitude.

03:19:30:00

Q: And were you pinching their girlfriends, John?

A: Oh we were taking them out. They could have the responsibility after we left but then another course came in wasn't there?

Q: So there was some tension between the young bucks of the town?

A: There was a lot of tension between them.

Q: Did that ever get to a physical confrontation?

A: Not when I was around

03:20:00:00
but I did see the results of it a couple of times. Big dressing downs of, "Not air force behaviour" but it just happened.

Q: Was alcohol part of your life there?

A: No, we'd never been deprived of alcohol

03:20:30:00
so it had never been anything that was important and at that stage, no.

Q: The gunnery course at Evans Head, how did you perform?

A: Actually very well, the highest marks of all the course for the air to air

03:21:00:00
and I thought, "Oh I don't think I like this, I might end up as a gunner", and quite well with the air to ground.

Q: And you mentioned a few minutes ago that you hoped you wouldn't have to use the gunnery part of it and you were obviously uncomfortable with it or was it a case that you were more interested in the wireless?

03:21:30:00

A: I was interested in the wireless and no, with my innate nature I don't think I wanted to kill anybody and I think that it was probably a relief ending up on the squadron which I did, because we were involved with saving lives rather than killing.

03:22:00:00

Q: It's an irony in a way that you could join Bomber Command and reconcile that with killing?

A: I know because it was Bomber Command Support.

Q: So even though you had joined the forces quite willingly you were still uncomfortable with the nature of the thing?

A: Yes, I can't

03:22:30:00
even today see why it is necessary to kill each other except it's nature at work saying, "You overpopulated the world and let's get rid of some of you."

Q: After you passed out at Evans Heads, where did you move from there?

03:23:00:00

A: We had a week's leave at Sydney and were taken to Bradfield Park and put straight into a bus that took us to Central Station and we went straight to Melbourne and straight out onto the wharves and straight out onto the boat.

Q: So what did you do for that last week of leave in Sydney?

A: Basically spent a lot of it at home.

03:23:30:00
I don't recall anything else. Maybe seeing some of the one family that was living nearby, a cousin and an aunt, and they visited but otherwise, no, it was basically with the family and

03:24:00:00
a couple of church visits.

Q: What sort of emotion was there in the parting there with home?

A: Not as difficult, except we knew we were going overseas and didn't know where. Apprehension, "When will we see you again?"

03:24:30:00
I guess but, "Let's enjoy ourselves while we've got the chance too, before you go." And some fatherly advice.

Q: Which consisted of?

A: How to behave in a foreign country.

03:25:00:00
you take note of their laws as distinct from your own and obey if you want to live happily and peacefully.

Q: It must have been quite something for your father given his experiences to be sending his son off in his footsteps like that?

A: Yes. I don't think he was the least bit happy about it all.

03:25:30:00
I know one strange thing he did say was, "Mum, I'll have a bet with you. I bet he comes back smoking and drinking". And he was fifty percent right.

Q: I guess that's better than not coming back at all?

A: Much better than not coming back at all, yes.

03:26:00:00

Q: Where did you think you might be heading off to?

A: I actually did think probably Canada as that was another training ground, or possibly South Africa, where there was another advanced training ground.

03:26:30:00

Q: And where did you think your ultimate destination might be?

A: In the lap of the Gods at that stage.

Q: You had no idea if you'd end up in the Pacific or Europe or?

A: No, except there was from what had been said to me at Bradfield Park, I thought, "Well it looks

03:27:00:00
to me as though it will be England." But I was thinking there would be extra training somewhere along the way.

Q: At that point when you were just about to step onto the boat to leave, what did you know about the role of Bomber Command in Europe and its attrition rate and so forth?

A: At that stage it was an improving

03:27:30:00
situation. There were more aircraft obviously available and we were hearing less of numbers, unfortunately our number of aircrafts that didn't return on the news bulletins and it seemed to

03:28:00:00
be less. It seemed somewhat maybe a bit safer but in the long run, no it wasn't.

Q: Were you frightened?

A: No, not at that stage.

03:28:30:00
I might have been on the boat apprehensive, yes, because I didn't want a watery grave and it was a boat that went off on its own. It was the Normandy and not realising

03:29:00:00
that I got used to the idea of all shipping went in convoy taking troops around but yes, it was quite safe because it could out-speed submarines. Then again it was

03:29:30:00
an eye-opener, I wondered where in San Francisco harbour.

Q: What were the conditions like on the voyage over?

A: At that stage it wasn't too bad on the Normandy. It hadn't been converted to a troop ship so we had cabins. Okay there were three or four of us in each cabin but it wasn't too bad, then we had

03:30:00:00
literally a fortnight crossing the USA, by train, which would pull in at strange little places and we would do a march through them and then have a little civic reception after which we found that the idea was to educate the Americans that a place called Australia existed. And the remarks were quite incredible,

03:30:30:00
"You can't be Australian, you're white", "How did you get here, by train?" That was why the American general public didn't know much about anything other than America, so it was bringing them up to date with us and tied in with getting us on time to New York to get the next boat.

03:31:00:00

Q: So as you toured across America you were being used as a PR exercise?

A: We were a PR exercise, yes.

Q: How did you find the American people?

A: Can I say not very interesting.

03:31:30:00
Perhaps because of the inane questions we were asked and yeah, that's it.

Q: And as a barefoot bush boy from Hornsby what was it like arriving in a place like San Francisco?

A: Actually exciting,

03:32:00:00
because we did have a minor event. There was an earthquake that nearly sent the boat over and it happened when the second course people were down having their meal and the mess down there and the way they looked when they came up with their breakfast all over them was rather horrible, and for those that were on top we almost slid along the decks.

03:32:30:00
Fortunately nobody went over but then you're under the Golden Gate and it's a remarkable sight.

Q: When you say, "The second course people," how were the meals organised on a ship like the Normandy?

A: To cover the number that could get into the dining rooms, three courses, three sittings.

Q: Was it a crowded boat?

03:33:00:

A: Yes, yes.

Q: And what about arriving in New York, that must have been even more exciting?

A: Yes, it was. It had moments but we didn't have enough time to get really into it. Time to go into the city and climb to the top of the Eiffel Tower, not the Eiffel Tower, the

03:33:30:00
Empire State Building, and that was literally about all and then back over and we were on the Queen Elizabeth the next day. No messing around with time.

Q: It sounds like you virtually had no time to stop, from the time you left Melbourne you were more or less travelling constantly?

A: It was constant

03:34:00:00
and then even, we went into Glasgow and trained, straight on the train and down to Brighton.

Q: You sound like you had a little bit of paranoia about being lost at sea, the Atlantic run must have been a little bit fearful for you?

A: Again perhaps

03:34:30:00
forethought would have made it happy because the Normandy did it so well on its own and the Queen Elizabeth was faster, so you knew there was no real danger unless the U Boat was going to confront you. It was so quick, uncomfortable but

03:35:00:00
it moved fast.

Q: Why was it uncomfortable?

A: Oh it had been turned into a troop ship and the typical bit, you slept in a hammock with your feet between two heads and you had your head between two pairs of feet and all your living space underneath. Huge numbers of people would be moved.

03:35:30:00

Q: When you arrived in Britain you said you whipped straight down from Glasgow to Brighton, what were your first impressions of this country, Britain, at war?

A: "Oh, it's happening", because there was an air raid within an hour of arrival in Brighton and

03:36:00:00
it was only, oh it was on an area not far away and, "We're in it." And we were there at Brighton for about two weeks waiting for to disband into our other training areas.

03:36:30:00

Q: Were there other air raids in those two weeks?

A: Yes, almost constantly, German aircraft coming over and it was one of their typical area to come in and bomb through and they'd just take off.

Q: What did you think the first time you saw German planes in the sky?

03:37:00:00

A: Learn more about them so you can recognise them while you're up there if need be.

Q: And what was life there like in Brighton? I know it was stacked with Australian aircrew.

A: Actually it was quite exciting. To be in the Hove, a

03:37:30:00
monstrosity built by one of the Princes of Wales, had been turned into a dance hall and there was dancing basically nightly and it was a great pastime with oodles of girls around the place. Australians weren't all that popular though there. The Americans were the popular ones.

03:38:00:00

Q: Why the difference in popularity?

A: Money, they had so much more to spend.

Q: What were your impressions of the Yanks?

A: Huge numbers, huge amounts of money and massive amounts of equipment. I think exactly as it is today.

03:38:30:00

Q: Was there rivalry between you and the Americans?

A: Yes, I think it was all other forces against the Americans and it was jealousy of the amount of money they had to spend, and I think that was basically what it was.

Q: How did the rivalry manifest itself?

A: On bad occasions actually

03:39:00:00
in brawls until you learnt, "This is no way to go, just ignore it."

Q: Did you ever witness any brawls?

A: Yes, one bad one on Brighton station and that would be because the Americans were boarding the first class seats and we were


03:39:30:00
boarding the third class seats, until you learnt to cheat.

Q: Can you elaborate?

A: Yes, we bought a return ticket to London and then coming back you bought you bought a return ticket to Clapton and then next time you bought a ticket from Brighton to the first station, so all this bit

03:40:00:00
in there you didn't have to pay for. It was one part of rail service that line didn't use to give servicemen any free travel. Others of the commercial lines did.

Q: So how did that work then? Tickets were only checked at the barrier or?

03:40:30:00

A: You give a ticket in and your only problem was if inspectors came through during the other bit but manpower being what it was, it wasn't very likely.

Q: So you'd just connect the dots with the return ticket that you had bought?

A: And they were available over a period of weeks, so they

03:41:00:00
must have lost thousands with so many people doing it.


John Mathews
2035
Tape 4

04:00:32:00

Q: In Brighton John can you take us through the various nationalities that you were mixing with?

A: Yes, quite easily. We were stationed in the hotel

04:01:00:00
and it was exclusively Australians with a few New Zealanders. Basically while I was there each time I would say each time exclusively Australian, so we weren't mixing and all our activities were confined in that area except when we went out on leave. But there were New Zealanders and

04:01:30:00
Canadians around the area. There was sort of a lot of resting places in the seaside hotels and they were taken over.

Q: So when you did go out you'd be spending your time with Australian guys?

A: Australian guys, yes mainly, yes. You didn't, there was no close proximity. You might run into them in a pub or

04:02:00:00
at the dance hall or something like that but that was about it. Probably one notorious bit where we fraternized with the New Zealanders was Brighton Beach, which actually had some surf and the Australians and New Zealanders were in it.

Q: How did you guys relate to the New Zealanders?

04:02:30:00

A: Very well. New Zealanders and Canadians seemed to get on particularly well.

Q: Was there a sense that New Zealanders were a rung or two below the Australians?

A: No, the sense was New Zealand's the

04:03:00:00
eighth state.

Q: So what sort of training was going on in Brighton?

A: Virtually nothing, acclimatisation before we were moved off to where you were going for further training.

Q: So you ended up spending round about how long in Brighton before your training commenced?

A: About four weeks.

04:03:30:00

Q: Okay, so what happened after those four weeks?

A: I was sent to Jurby on the Isle of Man and that was a specialised radio radar school, for six weeks intense work and very obvious afterwards

04:04:00:00
where it was heading us to.

Q: In what way was it obvious?

A: Well we were using radar screens and on that squadron and few radar screens were used elsewhere, for navigation aids perhaps. But the jamming practises we were involved in it was a case of not only having to learn how to operate them but to

04:04:30:00
be prepared to repair them and things like that and for me that was a lot of work. I don't have that mechanical gift so that was really learning.

Q: So the hands on side of things was a little bit more demanding for you than the technical and sort of theoretical decisions?

A: Yes, all of that was no problem and

04:05:00:00
even the Morse and other signal methods, no problem at all.

Q: The technology of jamming radar, how new was all of that at that stage?

A: It was relatively new and I would go as far to say that it was radar that won the war in Europe.

04:05:30:00
Well this gets onto the squadron, do you want to talk about that now?

Q: We'll hold back if you don't mind and we'll go into greater depth then. So you were spending, it sounds like a very intense period of study where you were absorbing a hell of a lot of new information?

04:06:00:00

A: A hell of a lot of new information and becoming familiar with quite unfamiliar equipment. Suddenly being faced with television sets and television in sort of its early days.

Q: And that was the first time you'd been exposed as such?

A: Yes, yes, and

04:06:30:00
that was a new ballgame, sheer fascination.

Q: Can you explain to us how you were using those cathode ray tubes?

A: At that stage we were using them for communication. We were using them reading how to track fighters in a bomber stream,

04:07:00:
for trying to piece together their possibilities.

Q: Can you give us a rough idea if you were tracing the movement of a fighter, what would you be looking at on your screen?

A: Well a bomber stream

04:07:30:00
has a set course and you're all basically flying in the same direction. If something is coming slightly different to it and but it is generally at a faster speed, you know you've got a fighter.

Q: And what would that look like on the screen?

A: Another blip.

Q: Amongst many?

A: Yes.

04:08:00:00

Q: Was there, well first of all you were saying as far as the hands on technical went that was a bit challenging for you, did you feel that you overcame that personal hurdle through those six months?

A: Yes, yes, it's like anything that I've done mechanically. I've had to

04:08:30:00
apply such a concentration to do it. It's not natural. For example if I wanted to replace a screw under there I'd have to get down and lie down and understand it and work out and work which way to turn it and other people would normally get in and put that screw in. Not me.

04:09:00:00

Q: So can you give me more of an idea of some of the new things that they were teaching you at that point?

A: At that stage it was just getting to know how to manipulate them, not so much all the areas they were going to be used on. Basically that would have been for the secrecy of the whole thing.

04:09:30:00
The squadron was not even known generally through the air force, so it was a select group that knew where we were going and what we were going to end up finding there was still a mystery.

Q: Was that sense of being in a select group, was that

04:10:00:00
apparent to you all at the time?

A: Yes, because of the number that I trained with and went over to Britain with, there were two of us.

Q: How many blokes altogether were doing the course then?

That would have been forty.

Q: Two of forty were from the original group?

04:10:30:00
So was that a group of mixed nationalities?

A: The others were, yes.

Q: Which took in?

A: Canadians and New Zealanders basically.

Q: No Poms?

A: No. No. Pom expertise came out

04:11:00:00
as pilots and navigators.

Q: Why do you think that is?

A: There's no feeling about it. Australians made good pilots and wireless operators. New Zealanders made good pilots and bomb aimers.

04:11:30:
That's just how, you can't touch to find any reasons why.

Q: The Aussies were known as good WAGs [Wireless Air Gunner]?

A: Good WAGs [wags?] yes, maybe because that's our nature, isn't it?

Q: Indeed. So were you learning any sort of advanced codes at that point?

A: Yes, we were learning a lot more codes.

04:12:00:00

Q: Can you tell us a bit more about that?

A: They were basically how codes worked and this would be a type and they would be obsolete. Our other codes we did not learn until we got on the squadron and those, they were an ever changing thing because your codes would change.

04:12:30:00

Q: Was all this training going on on the ground?

A: Yes.

Q: Were you ever up in the air at this point?

A: Yes, but not very often. It was, the Isle of Man was nicely quietly situated. No interference with air raids or such like. Very conducive area to intensive study. I'd

04:13:00:00
have said probably university standards at their absolute best and cramming people's minds with it. Very little reprise from it. It was just solid.

Q: Was it too intense? Did some of the blokes struggle with that level of intensity?

A: Yes, yes.

04:13:30:00
They were just sent back.

Q: So there was very little time for recreation in any way?

A: Very little. The little bit we did get was very interesting because we were not far from a farming area

04:14:00:00
for us to get off with the Land Army girls, who were just as intriguing about what they were doing as what we were doing and it was a very interesting association with them, particularly one group that were working forestry stuff and we became quite friendly with them.
04:14:30:00

Q: Where would you fraternise with them?

A: In their mess or them in our mess, as easy as that. There was very little, I think in the six weeks there I went into Jurby itself once and that would be the only leave that we had in the whole time.

Q: Was there much to do in Jurby?

04:15:00:00

A: Sightsee, old films which I didn't go to. It was basically go in and 'sightsaw' and went back.

Q: How big was Jurby at that time?

A: A population of around ten thousand.

04:15:30:00

Q: And what were the conditions like on base? What were your quarters like?

A: They were relatively comfortable although it was in a Nissan hut but I think there was only twenty of us in each hut so it was relatively easier.

04:16:00:00

Q: Were you starting to get a chance to make strong friendships with blokes who weren't necessarily Australian?

A: Yes, yes. Two of the Canadians and we two Australians seemed to stick together,

04:16:30:00
but I think it was because we were enjoying what we were doing and the intense study of it, we were good foils for each other.

Q: So you found as a group the four of you were thriving on the challenge?

A: Yes.

Q: And would you study together?

04:17:00:00
Would you help each other through?

A: Yes. And some were better in some aspects and some were better in others so we would kick them off each other, which was a great help.

Q: What were you best at, at that point?

A: Breaking codes and certainly using the Morse,

04:17:30:00
because they didn't believe that anyone could work at the speed that I was using.

Q: So you were becoming a little bit of a Morse legend?

A: Oh yes, it was, an instructor said, "You needn't go at that speed, you'll never operate, you won't be allowed to operate at that speed in ops."

Q: So what was your speed up to at that point?

A: I had no trouble at forty words a minute.

04:18:00:00
And it's too fast for most people.

Q: It's virtually unheard of I would imagine?

A: Well it meant I was operating and sending it in what they called a, "Nerve and serve" using this method I was, a whole nervous thing with it, which enables you to send much faster.

04:18:30:00

Q: So rather than going certain of going, "Tap, tap, tap" you can get it down to a twitch situation so you can go even faster.

A: Yes, yes, it was incredible.

Q: And that twitch was fairly foolproof?

A: Yes. Unless you made an error of judgement and if

04:19:00:00
you were comfortable with it, it was marvellous. Your dashes would be there and your dots there.

Q: Was that a technique that many of the blokes were using?

A: No, No. I and one of the Canadians were the only two.

Q: Was it something you sort of taught yourself or it was shown to you?

04:19:30:00

A: We were shown it and I found it easier somehow than and yet from having played the piano I should have been used to this.

Q: Just to go back to your Canadian friends,

04:20:00:00
why do you think it tended to be quite common for Canadians and Australians to get along so well?

A: I think basically we're very alike.

Q: In what sort of ways do you think?

A: We're both Colonial offshoots of the British Empire, but oh look it goes right along, having been to Canada

04:20:30:00
numerous times. We've very similar life styles, very similar outlooks. Politically I think there is one slight difference with Canada and that's its French influence but that's confined to areas. Certainly on the

04:21:00:00
west coast they could be Australian except for a few differences in vowels, Canadians with their broad A.

Q: What attitude did you find Canadians had towards Americans?

A: Not very happy. They didn't like being called Americans and I

04:21:30:00
would certainly say easy enough to differentiate between the two.

Q: So the course went for six months?

A: No, six weeks.

Q: Sorry, six weeks, did it culminate in some exams?

A: Yes.

Q: How many and how did you go?

04:22:00:00

A: Very well. Sounds like bragging but

Q: No, that's alright, that's the truth.

A: But more than happy with all the results.

Q: So what were the various areas that you were examined on?

A: The aptitude to radar, the use and possible use of radar, where imagination had to come into it, and breaking

04:22:30:00
of codes and the institution of codes.

Q: That area of bringing imagination into radar, can you tell us more about that?

A: No, I can't even think what I came up with on it. It's more coloured

04:23:00:00
by eventually getting to the squadron.

Q: So in general it was an area of sort of creative application of radar?

A: Yes. Yes, how do you use the television set basically and how can you repair it.

Q: And at that point you had no problems repairing?

A: That's where the Canadian was great.

04:23:30:00
He was excellent there and I was better on the aptitude with tunings and things like that. And it was a big learning curve on both sides.

Q: What sort of tools would you use to repair?

A: We had a tool kit of general spanners and an electric welder, a

04:24:00:00
little bit of welding material and snips to cut the wires and able to twist and join them again and then some insulation, how to use insulation tape and keep them separated.

Q: And you had to have a reasonable knowledge of electronics at that point?

A: Yes.

Q: And how were

04:24:30:00
you with physics related to electricity and electronics? Was that something you were okay with?

A: That was where I had to learn. The use of tools was okay.

Q: Alright, so what happened after those exams?

A: Well back and

04:25:00:00
straight to the Operational Training Unit, where you virtually went through the process of crewing up.

Q: Where was that?

A: That was at a place called Halfpenny Green, just south of Birmingham and it was, there

04:25:30:00
would be a number of pilots, a number of navigators and a number of bombers and a number of wireless operators and two gunners and enough to form so many crews. And the Canadian guy and I were told where we were going.

Q: So you were assigned to a crew? It wasn't

A: No, you go through

04:26:00:00
being selected to a certain extent only my skipper was told that it would be advantageous if he would have me as his radio operator.

Q: Why was that?

A: He was very experienced. He'd already done one tour of operations and they wanted that expertise

04:26:30:00
of a skipper on the squadron, so.

Q: So you were virtually assigned to him?

A: I was, I think we were assigned to each other. He could have had me or the Canadian, I think. We just got on well together. He was a New Zealander.

Q: Do you recall his name? His name was?

04:27:00:00

A: George Stewart.

Q: Did George have the rest of his crew together when you guys were there?

A: No, we basically then selected a few of the others. And

Q: How do you go about doing that?

A: Oh you talk to them and then you sit through various things with them. You actually flew with a few of them and I came up and said

04:27:30:00
"Have you talked to this guy Mac? I think he's probably a good navigator." And George said, "Yeah, I've been looking at him. Will we approach him?" "Yes". And he said, John Winston was another New Zealander and he said, "Let's use him as a bomb aimer."

04:28:00:00
I said, "Yeah, but we might lose him" and he said, "Well 214 Squadron doesn't have bomb aimers." And I said, "Well you'd better tell him what you know and

04:28:30:00
see what it's all about." I said, "I don't really know until we get to the squadron."

Q: So you were speculating that you were going to end up at 214?

A: Oh yes, not exactly that squadron but we knew we would definitely be going to a Bomber Support Squadron.

Q: But had that been officially communicated to you?

A: Intimated.

Q: So had you

04:29:00:00
been told the sort of aircraft you were crewing up for or was it a general concept of having a crew?

A: No, this was all done on Stirlings [four-engine bomber]. We had no idea of what we would have to do and then we were talking to a Canadian guy, a gunner, and he said, "We've seen you four getting

04:29:30:00
around together nice and happy." He said, "We're both so young." They were eighteen and a half and they'd done their gunnery school in six months, so we took those two. They were our two main gunners, becoming the tail gunner and the mid upper.

04:30:00:00

Q: So this process of crewing up, it sounds like it took a number of days just to get to know the blokes and?

A: Oh, over three weeks and you get to know and you could change. It was pretty amicable and then it was a case of getting together because you knew this

04:30:30:00
was the lot that was going to be your major group.

Q: So once you had this group intact would there be bit of bonding over a cleansing ale?

A: No bombing.

Q: Bonding?

A: Bonding? Oh yes, bonding, yes, I think by the time we left there that nucleus of the crew was bonded solidly.

04:31:00:00

Q: So can you then take us through the names and the positions of the crew that you ended up having?

A: Yes, the skipper was George Stewart, flying officer.

Q: You said George had already done one tour?

A: He'd done tour.

Q: So how old was George at that point?

A: George was

04:31:30:00
late twenties. The navigator was Mac Hugh McClimont, a Scotsman and

Q: Round about how old?

A: He was around about the same age as George, a married man with two children.
04:32:00:00
John Winston was the bomb aimer and he was a New Zealander from Christchurch.

Q: Round about how old?

A: He was about twelve months older than I was.

Q: So at that point you would have been around twenty?

A: Twenty, and then Harry

04:32:30:00
Henderson and the other Mac, were the two gunners.

Q: And they were the young blokes?

A: They were the two young blokes.

Q: Alright. How did you feel about the fact that you were crewing up with a

04:33:00:00
pilot with experience?

A: I think satisfied he's been through part of it and he'll know what it's all about, and I should add, he had not completed that tour so he was able to undertake the thirty trips for the full tour and

04:33:30:00
it would be treated as his second tour.

Q: What had that first tour been for him?

A: On small bombers and well just operating from England and over Germany,

04:34:00:00
but his specific targets were anything.

Q: So you crewed up and once you were crewed up did you do any further training at that point?

A: No, once all that's done and you're working together and you do a little bit in the air and you learn your flying, you do continual circuits and bumps, which is take off and land and take off and land

04:34:30:00
and going through all those procedures.

Q: What were you flying then?

A: Stirlings and from then there we then went to the squadron where we did the conversion unit with the addition of four other people into the crew.

Q: So you were posted to 214?

A: 214, and Fortresses [Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bomber]

04:35:00:00
which meant we had to go right through learning the whole habit of it. It was another six weeks learning and we were given two waist gunners. We didn't have much in the way of choice here because we were down to small numbers and who they have and maybe in some cases it could be leftovers from other crews that had

04:35:30:
through physical mishaps had to disband but in our case they were all guys that hadn't done anything. That's where we got the second wireless operator and that's where we had to teach my bomb aimer that he was a wireless operator. He operated equipment known as Carpet.

04:36:00:00
Relatively easy to manage so it didn't really need a full radio trained person. You didn't need to take Morse and his major thing was operating a radar machine and tossing out stuff called Window, strips of, you know what it is?

Q: Explain to us?

A: Silver paper or

04:36:30:00
silver paper and various sizes and strips and it would be thrown out once you'd gone through Mandrel [one of several operational activities to jam enemy radar], which was a screening up there on the coast, which was run by Sunderland Flying Boats.

Q: A radar screen?

A: Yes, and when you go through that that would be dropped and each one would be registered on German radar as an aeroplane [to confuse the enemy].

Q: How big would that

04:37:00:00
piece of paper be?

A: The paper was of varying sizes, in a bundle, and he would drop them sort of at a regular, every minute, so you've got these. We could go out with two aircraft and do a spoof, what was called a spoof raid. Go through Mandrel and drop these things and

04:37:30:00
they'd be plotting a thousand bombers coming in.

Q: So on average how big was a typical piece of paper be to create?

A: They were always about two feet long and anything from six inches down to half an inch, various. And the various sizes would affect different radars.

04:38:00:00

Q: Was there some sort of a weight or something attached to them or were they just let go?

A: They were just left to go as they were, to go down very slowly, so that it looked as though there were new planes coming in all the time.

Q: Can you give us a little bit more information about the Mandrel Screen?

A: Yes, Mandrel was a jamming squadron done by Sunderland Flying Boats

04:38:30:00
up and down the English Channel and it jammed all their things so that any signals basically from England, except the HV [Hours Variable] was completely jammed. Any signals happening in England, except VHF [Very High Frequency] would be blocked.

Q: So

04:39:00:00
how far out from the country was the Mandrel placed?

A: Basically considered up and down the middle of the England Channel, right though covering from Spain to Norway and they just fly up and down to crosswise each time.

Q: So

04:39:30:00
the task of carpeting is the business of throwing the Window out?

A: Yes, and operating his machine but it was sort of electrifying in a way as well.

Q: So he would be bouncing radar off that Window too to create that mirage?

A: Yes.

Q: So that's a total of three wireless operators?

04:40:00:00

A: Three wireless operators. The third one was German speaking.

Q: And can you just give us his name, his nationality and his age?

A: He was Canadian, Nick.

Q: That will do

04:40:30:00
for now.

A: Probably the least bonded of us all. He was strange French Russian Canadian extraction.

Q: Quite a combination?

A: Yes, quite vastly different from the rest of us.

Q: How old was he do you

04:41:00:00
think?

A: He was an older man in his thirties, Nick.

Q: When it does come to you, just let us know.

A: So the two waist gunners were Ken Phelan and Jim Gulson.

04:41:30:00

Q: Nationality?

A: Both English and the last one who joined was the engineer and Peter Mulhall.

Q: From?

A: English.

Q: Round about what age:

A: Twenty one, twenty, two years older than me.


John Mathews
2035
Tape 5

05:00:33:00

Q: John, you mentioned that your pilot had already done one tour, or most of one tour, what could he tell you about life in the air over hostile territory?

A: Basically just what to expect in the way of flak and also what he

05:01:00:00
would think were ways of telling fighters. An idea of what to expect if you looked down on the target and saw anything happening and basically how important it was to keep communications absolutely to a minimum,

05:01:30:00
to the point and without it being personal.

Q: Why was minimum communication important?

A: Basically particularly if it was broadcast it was always a danger for the German fighters to pick up a signal, a continuing signal and they home in on it and they can just home in under you and the guns

05:02:00:00
go straight up and get you and it's a straight down action.

Q: It must have been quite a surprise for your pilot to be assigned onto a V17?

A: Yes, it was. I think it was a surprise to us all because it was an American aircraft but it had been adapted for what the squadron was doing.

Q: Well then I'd like you to run me through how your RAF V17

05:02:30:00
had been adapted as compared to like the standard American bomber mode?

A: Right it was because of the size of the bomb bays, which were perhaps the largest of all, although the Lancasters probably carried heavier loads. It was the space that allowed all the radar equipment to be housed in it as

05:03:00:00
we didn't carry bombs, we carried the radar, and that was the source of it. So the Fortress probably is better equipped with larger, longer range anti-aircraft guns on them, so they can open up with rounds about a thousand, I've got to say yards,

05:03:30:00
and whereas most of the others were eight hundreds, so there is an added advantage in that. And that was particularly important when we were circling over a target, which could be the whole session of the bombing.

Q: Now as far as that defensive armament went, how was that different to a standard V17 bomber? Did you have the same amount of guns?

A: The armament was no different. That

05:04:00:00
was one of the reasons to select it because we could be vulnerable and the opportunity to open up at an earlier range would be beneficial.

Q: Did you have like the ball turret, the belly turret on your plane?

A: No we didn't have a belly turret. We had a mid upper gunner, a waist gunner, no, two waist gunners and

05:04:30:00
a rear gunner.

Q: So no gun positions in the front?

A: The two positions in the front were the carpeter[?] and the navigator and the skipper and engineer.

Q: And whereabouts were you sitting in the aircraft?

A: Basically in the middle on the, on the left hand side and the German speaker on the right.

Q: And did you have a gun

05:05:00:00
position that you could take over if needed?

A: No, no. We were all trained though to take over other sections. I was trained as a navigator as well and also learnt to fly and it was just the skipper's feeling that that was one other thing that was very important but if someone went haywire you had someone that could complete the

05:05:30:00
duties.

Q: So how were you taught to fly? What point?

A: At the conversion unit and on the Fortresses and it was, it made me realise that it was a great decision not to fly.

Q: Why?

A: Because I was so small, they were so hefty to use and it needed a big bloke.

Q: So what sort of muscle power did you need in those

05:06:00:00
days to fly a bomber?

A: I think a lot more than I had and he was a big guy, the skipper.

Q: So it sounds to me that some of the guns that would ordinarily be on a V17 had been removed to make way?

A: Yes, I think some were removed and some

05:06:30:00
also removed because aerials and things went in where they were.

Q: So what was the equipment that had been added?

A: Anything up to thirty two cathode ray tubes, depending on areas where we were going and what we were likely to experience. Army intelligence would know a lot about this but basically they were there

05:07:00:00
a lot of the time.

Q: I want you to take us through the routine of a typical mission for you, starting with the briefing, taking us out on the trip, what you were doing on the trip and then how you get back and so forth?

A: Well the wireless trio would go off to wireless briefing, which

05:07:30:00
would be anything for an hour. At the same time you'd have the navigator doing his briefing then we would all go into general briefing, which would be an hour. The whole route would go up and you would know where you were flying, tactics that were being taken and used. Things like

05:08:00:00
flying at three hundred feet above sea level from the English coast to the Norwegian coast, pretty dicey sort of stuff, but again not allowing signals through to Germans of where you were coming from. The general briefing would also tell you where you were expected to fly in relation to the

05:08:30:00
rest of the bomber stream and the circling height above the bomber stream for successful operation.

Q: And your wireless briefing, what would that involve?

A: That would involve anything that maybe was a new technique, a new piece of equipment and I'll add there with that the English

05:09:00:00
were three, four and five steps in radar ahead of the Germans all the war. We would trial equipment and wonder what it was being trialled for and eventually when we'd learnt how to jam it, it would be installed.

Q: So how common was it for you to have new techniques and equipment on a mission?

05:09:30:00

A: I'd say every second one there would be something changed. The developments were pretty great. One exercise we did with equipment and also supported by things from the ground was to assess what the plane would need to overcome with

05:10:00:00
ten times the strength of a thousand bomber, a thousand pound bomb going off. Well in hindsight, yes, we were testing out for what the atom bomb would do.

Q: Testing you mean in flight stability?

A: In the flight stability, flight height possibly to fly out with safety for the aircraft and its

05:10:30:00
personnel. It was considered it was worth saving one aircrew because they'd cost us as much as each aircraft.

Q: So when you wireless operators had your briefing, what would be the procedure from there?

A: From there well we would go to general briefing.

Q: Sorry, what time of the day would this usually all be happening?

A: Variable.

05:11:00:00
Mainly with us, because we were bomber support, it would be night bombing but anything, look we've taken off from one o'clock in the afternoon to midnight. Sometimes it would be on the length of the trip, sometimes quite early for

05:11:30:00
spoof raids, which meant that there would just be two of us. Two aircraft from our squadron would go out and for a short distance through Mandrel would drop the Window and return and we always used to moan if we got those because they were considered only half a trip.

Q: And at general briefing what would happen?

05:12:00:00

A: We would see the whole course. We would know who we were flying with, what groups were involved, who was the perpetrator of the operation and it was nearly always Butch Harris. A nice term for him wasn't it? But he adapted some pretty hairy tactics and they always worked.

Q: Okay,

05:12:30:00
with general briefing I take it that involved all the aircrew together?

A: The whole crew would be there together, with occasionally something variable.

Q: When the target for tonight was revealed what sort of different reactions would occur depending on where it was?

A: Moans, particularly if it was somewhere like Munich or Chemnitz, Dresden.

05:13:00:00
I think there was resentment at bombing Dresden from the crews, whoever it had been pre-empted and they had leaked of raids of Dresden warning that it was a target because it was now a concentration of troops, not just people.

Q: Why were those eastern German cities moaned about?

05:13:30:00

A: Historic cities, basically peaceful cities and real art centres and it was that feeling that Chemnitz and Dresden particularly and no-one wanted to bomb.

Q: What about the reaction to being assigned a target of either Berlin or somewhere in the Ruhr

05:14:00:00
Valley?

A: It was always hot but it was short, about four hours to Berlin. What about ten hours, Munich, Wurzburg twelve, so somewhere in Poland would also be twelve. Probably Hamburg was as tough a target

05:14:30:00
as any but the strategies adapted there were very good, on a Butch Harris trip.

Q: What do you mean by that? What strategies?

A: Well from sea, no more above three hundred feet, sea level to the Norwegian coast, climb

05:15:00:00
to twenty one thousand feet and into Sweden and you fly down Sweden, which is a neutral country, so they're supposed to answer with anti-aircraft fire. If you were anywhere near the Swedish flak you were off course. It was reputedly accepted that they fire at a mile away from the bomber

05:15:30:00
stream and then it would be a dive to the target and bombing done on the diving run and then a dive out, straight to the coast to zero, as low as it was possible.

Q: And that would more often as not get you out?

A: Oh you'd be, the first time we did one of those and was coming

05:16:00:00
back over the Isle of Silt[?], the most heavily fortified part of Europe, yeah, that's alright. You're two hundred feet going over Silt and Silt's gone like that and they can't get at you.

Q: So after the general briefing, what was the procedure after there?

A: You would then be taken out to the aircraft?

Q: How would you get out to the

05:16:30:00
aircraft?

A: A bus or a wagon of some sort and then you would all go through your equipment tests.

Q: With you what did that involve?

A: With me that would be checking the sets I was going to use, that they were workable and you can only do cursory ones, but you would find they were working.

05:17:00:00
And well the skipper would be assessing that the aircraft was worthy to take off, just the same as we do with commercial aircraft today.

Q: How many aircraft would the squadron put up for a standard raid?

A: Maybe four, at the same time you'd probably have two going a little earlier to throw off a spoof

05:17:30:00
raid and another two maybe going off afterwards for another one, confusing particularly the fighters.

Q: Okay, so you would take off, sorry, would you get anything to eat before you took off?

A: Oh yes, there was a pre-flight meal, usually steak and eggs, the boosting foods and always looked

05:18:00:00
forward too.

Q: Quite a luxury in wartime Britain?

A: Oh yes, yes.

Q: What about any rations for the trip if it was a long one?

A: Not really, no, nothing, unless you took it yourself.

Q: And what would you be wearing?

A: Our uniform with the flight

05:18:30:00
suit over it, a heated jacket and the flying helmet.

Q: Did you or any of your crew have any pre-flight rituals or superstitions?

A: Yes, we stood and said goodbye to each other, that we'd see you tomorrow.

05:19:00:00
It was a strange, strange one but basically almost all of us did it.

Q: Who would board through which door of the aircraft or would you all go in the same one?

A: No, in the front underneath part a ladder would come done and the carpet guy would go in.

05:19:30:00
In the mid upper, the navigator, the engineer and the pilot and the other five of us would go from the lower part of the aircraft.

Q: Was it cramped in the aircraft?

A: No, no there was ample room to move

05:20:00:00
and I wouldn't say the most comfortable place that I've ever sat but no, you could move and you could actually get up and move around a little bit.

Q: Describe to me what was at your station where you were sitting?

A: I was confronted by anything up to thirty two cathode ray tubes. Some of them my minute and probably I wouldn't need to do anything about.

05:20:30:00
The main ones I would be looking at, once we'd gone through Mandrel, certainly looking for night fighters, tuning onto the frequencies frequently used by the Luftwaffe, to hand over when I got the instructions going to German fighters. And

05:21:00:
that was then for the German speaking guy to start operating and controlling that and controlling H2S, which originally a navigational thing but we used it as a navigational but also a fighter detection unit.

Q: All those cathode ray tubes, what did they represent, what

05:21:30:00
were they displaying?

A: A lot of them displayed what I ended up having as a nickname, Blip. They'd have little blips showing up on them and you could tell to a certain extent where and what it was. You got adept at reading and you knew fairly well where you were

05:22:00:00
placed in the stream. The MOP[?] had the right to come back and say corrections to the navigator and the skipper and he was actually the head person in the aircraft and at that stage could give directions for the evasion for fighters that he could see. They were often confirmed, almost at the

05:22:30:00
same time by one of the gunners. Then sort of keeping the German speaking guy operative and prepared to send off his messages at his set periods, back to base and receive any messages from them, so it was a full

05:23:00:00
time operative thing, switching from one machine to the other, just checking and seeing if things were working.

Q: What sort of wavelengths was all this equipment scanning?

A: We were scanning and transmitting a huge range of frequencies. This was why there were so many

05:23:30:00
machines. They were bombarding the low frequencies and the high frequencies and the VHF stuff and the other ones we were on fluctuating things, particularly searching for the fighters.

05:24:00:00
I'm sorry, searching for the German night fighters. They would vary their frequencies.

Q: Sorry, were you looking, when you were talking about night fighters, were you actually looking for their physical signature or their electronic signature?

A: For both. Looking for both of those and listening for the directions from their bases and if it cut off you then had to do a switch to

05:24:30:00
get it. Some of the equipment, the H2S we used was very critical. It literally required four lots of tuning. You'd go right through the tuning pattern and then you'd start again and this would adjust the adjustments you'd made further up and the same and to really

05:25:00:00
get it correct you'd need four tunings of it. Very, very sensitive and actually it's used today by bush fellow people. It's very similar material and I've done a bit of work with them

05:25:30:00
on it and sort of teaching them how to operate the stuff and I said, "What's this one for?" And they said, "We never use that" and I was left there one day and I put it on and said, "Oh," and we go down and you could see all around you. They were only operating their own area and they came back and I said, "See, you can pick fires out here and let

05:26:00:00
other people know where they are." Well that is what we had, this screen that could come down and Pathfinders used it and that's where they could tune it down to picking out the whole of a target area from twenty thousand feet and they could pick out the streets. Marvellous stuff.

Q: Okay, so back to our typical raid, you get in the plane and you take off,

05:26:30:00
and fly out towards your Mandrel Screen, what goes on from there?

A: Well you just take well the directions that you'd been given at briefing. Basically the navigator instructing courses to fly and so on,

05:27:00:
and the carpet boy and the gunners all assessing where we are in the bomber stream too. I'm assessing where we are too from the aids and then just making sure we are in the position where we're given the most cover to the bomber force. That takes precedence until the target

05:27:30:
is reached and we fly at approximately two thousand feet above the bomber stream, so we're stuck out like anything, the vital area where we're likely to be attacked and we circuiting there for various periods of time until the master bomber says, "Home".

Q: So you would arrive over the target with the Pathfinders?

A: With the Pathfinders.

05:28:00:00

Q: And leave with the master bomber?

A: Leave with the master bomber.

Q: That's an incredibly long exposure time over a target?

A: It could be a very long exposure time, probably one of the worst of those was Oslo. We had only twelve bombers and the master bomber and the two

05:28:30:00
people from our squadron and he bought them down to three thousand feet. There was no flak, there was nothing and eleven U Boats in the harbour were hit and the twelfth one took his load home. It was just superb but we were an hour and thirty five minutes I think it was doing that and it was a long time

05:29:00:00
over a target.

Q: I guess that was done to minimise Norwegian casualties?

A: Yes, it was. It culminated in all the crews being given the Norwegian War Cross, but it was hectic because we did not know where to expect some anti-aircraft fire of some sort.

Q: On the more standard raids

05:29:30:00
with a mass stream of bombers say over an industrial target, being two thousand feet higher than the main stream would you be out of the range of the main flak?

A: Yes, you would while you were over but while you were with the bombers, no you were fairly right. The tactics were generally such as to avoid where there was large

05:30:00:00
flak though. It was basically not the major thing, although we bought back a lot of flak marked aircraft.

Q: You said though that being separated from the main ceiling of the bombers you were vulnerable, what were you vulnerable to?

A: We would be vulnerable to fighters and particularly with major

05:30:30:00
amount of aircraft, radar telecasts going. They can lap onto one and just come in and hone under you and boom. So the vigilance on fighters had to be very well careful there and sort of awkward to take fighter affiliation because

05:31:00:00
of the diving around you, upsetting what you're broadcasting, so just a little difficult.

Q: I just want to get more of an idea about the electronic processes while you were doing this. Say on one of your instruments you did detect an incoming formation of German night fighters, what

05:31:30:00
could you do about it?

A: Just call, "bandits" over our intercom, "Approaching" and give them the area.

Q: But I mean what I'm trying to get at is what was the role of your aircraft there? How were you confusing or counter-measuring this German stuff?

A: Oh well the

05:32:00:00
counter-measures would be working long before that, where all sorts of counter-measures as to what they'd been instructed were given. Often the German speaking guy would anticipate and do all sorts of. There were some fearful charges between the German one and our guy at times, where they would argue and your poor old fighters up

05:32:30:00
there wondering what they're supposed to do. They don't know who's who.

Q: So your German speaking colleague had more or less hacked into the transmissions of the German ground control and their fighters and he would send them the wrong way or something?

A: Yes, oh yes, all sorts of amazing things and perhaps best explained by one of the most incredible

05:33:00:00
ones of the lot. I went up to briefing and there was a WAAF [Womens' Auxiliary Air Force] already to go and I said, "Hello" and he said, "Joan's flying with you instead of your second WOP [wireless operator]". And, "I don't think so." "Does the skipper know?" "No, you know and the squadron commander knows, that's all" "Butch Harris, does he know?" "No."

05:33:30:00
"Alright you'd better give". "When you have a male give a counter-order they're going to switch to female operators and I'm going to go with you and I'm going to get in first." And she did. Virtually I picked up the main thing, passed it over to her

05:34:00:00
and she just listened and man operating and she went straight in, "All night fighters return to base, heavy fog is settling over the areas and you'll need to go inland to Russia to land if you don't land within the next half hour." No fighters seen. The arguments

05:34:30:00
between those two women though was quite remarkable.

Q: So just to spell it out clearly you actually had a female on a combat mission over Germany?

A: Over Germany.

Q: How often did that happen?

A: Once as far as I know in our squadron.

Q: This is something that I've never ever heard of?

A: No. We were

05:35:00:00
torn strips off by Harris when we got back, the skipper and myself.

Q: So this was unofficial?

A: Oh yes, they had picked up this information and there was no way they were letting anyone else. My skipper only knew when he got to the aircraft and he'd done all his inspection. All the other crew were on and

05:35:30:00
they didn't know who this was coming in and they nearly fell over when we got back, that we'd had a female on board.

Q: So who had decided to place this WAAF on the plane, at what level?

A: She was an intelligence officer and went to the station commander and said, "Boomp, I want to go and I know it's

05:36:00:00
all wrong and etcetera but why not?" And it was a raid where I would have expected fairly heavy losses but no fighters. It was a miracle so quite a feat.

Q: I don't suppose you remember her name, do you?

A: No, I

05:36:30:00
can't. I'm trying to, no I can't.

Q: It's a shame because I think it's probably one of the very historic moments there. The equipment you were operating, okay you had your German speaking friend there doing verbal confusion?

A: Yes.

Q: Your equipment was causing radar confusion for the Germans?

A: Radar confusion and

05:37:00:00
radar interruption of all sorts of things that were going on. It was an amazing coverage of it and yet it was also amazing the information that you'd end up getting through, particularly through the VHF.

Q: What sort of coverage of area did you have?

A: We estimated that we

05:37:30:00
were covering around about a hundred miles from the aircraft and at least some of it was probably weaker but generally it would have been effective. The H2S one was, well it was

05:38:00:00
mainly reception and it was very adequate, very, very, refined part of equipment.

Q: After the bomber stream had departed from the target and the master bomber had said, "go home", what was the procedure from there?

A: That was a quick dive out from most areas and by diving you're

05:38:30:00
at a greater speed so the less problem for fighters and it's less easy for flak to get you. Then landing and into the truck or the bus and I think we all just hit the rum that was there and the black coffee.

Q: Debriefing?

05:39:00:00

A: And then debriefing.

Q: What sort of things would you have been debriefed upon?

A: Each and everything that went on during the thing. The rest of the crew would also be asked about any visual effects that were happening, anything that they observed, any points of flak that went up which may be in new areas

05:39:30:00
to what was already know and anything I found that there was something different to what we'd experienced.

Q: And what about equipment evaluation?

A: Yes, well that all part of it.

Q: So you expected that you in particular would be giving a lot of technical reportage?

A: Yes, and then of course

05:40:00:00
anything to do with any repairs or things that had happened.

Q: When you were in your position in the aircraft, what could you see?

A: Virtually nothing because we were blacked out but we could douse our lights and look out, which we frequently did over the target. Someone would say, "You two WOPs have a look at the target, it's like


05:40:30:00
a Christmas tree," and we'd look down and then blackout again because you're still radiating lights and things etcetera and better to be as black as you can.

Q: Was it frightening what you saw outside sometimes?

A: Yes, it was, yes.

Q: Were you frightened while you were over targets like that?

05:41:00:00

A: Can I say nervous, apprehensive and also, "What's down there?" And aware of every now and then you had a couple of waist gunners that were having a little game.

Q: I might stop you there because we're right at the end of the tape so.

John Mathews
2035
Tape 6

06:00:32:

Q: Ready to go now?

A: Yeah.

Q: John at the end of that tape you were saying, I think we were talking about being over a target and you alluded to the two waist gunners playing a little game?

A: Yes, hideous you're down on the ground and hear it but they used to gather up

06:01:00:00
empty bottles and insert a razor blade in the centre of them and if they were near a build up area would throw them out and they would take a long while to reach the earth and the noise they make is unbelievable, screaming, and they used to think it was wonderful.

Q: And that's the effect of the razor blades spinning

06:01:30:00
around in them?

A: Oh yes, that screaming. You think the end of the world's coming and it's near you and it's just a bottle and it breaks.

Q: Was there a special name given to those bottles?

A: No, no.

Q: And that was a fairly common trick?

A: It was a common trick in our squadron. Whether other people did it as well, that was fairly common.

Q: Were there any other little games or little jokes

06:02:00:00
that would go on onboard?

A: Yes, there was another guy, WOP, out at the same time as me and we played chess. Don't ask me how we had time to do it but a few flicks like this would send the moves and we'd both have our little pocket chess set.

Q: Would it be magnetic?

A: Yeah.

06:02:30:00

Q: What about lucky charms? Did you have a personal lucky charm at all?

A: Actually a scarf. You can have a picture of it after if you would like. It has two bullet holes in it.

Q: So you felt that was a lucky charm for you?

A: Yes.

Q: You'd wear it every time?

A: Oh yes. I think

06:03:00:00
we all had our funny little idiosyncrasy of something that was of good luck.

Q: Can you think of any of the others that the boys had?

A: Scarves were very popular. I'm trying to think what it was that Harry did. Something Harry, oh,

06:03:30:00
he kissed his guns in the tail turret before he'd get in. Mad little things.

Q: Was there any place for much humour onboard or was it pretty serious for the better part of the trip?

A: For the better part of the trip it was serious but

06:04:00:00
at one stage after a long trip to Munich and we were quite late getting back and there was a lot of damage to the plane. And we weren't that far away and the skipper said, "WOP, can you see if you can get something on the BBC to cheer us up" and I fiddled around and I did.

06:04:30:00
And it was the chorus of something and, "Turn it off". It was Vera Lynn with Coming In On A Wing And A Prayer. So it didn't always pay to have something like that happen because that's what we were, we were going in on a wing and a prayer.

Q: Would you

06:05:00:00
always be in the same aeroplane or each flight you'd be in any of the craft?

A: Well let me put it that way, the first twelve trips we did we didn't bring back a complete aircraft. Although our aircraft was supposedly AA I think we flew in every aircraft of the alphabet.

06:05:30:00
You had one that was but if it wasn't available then someone else's would be. It was a matter of having fit aircraft on the squadron for you to fly in.

Q: But often it would be the same one?

A: But often the same one. Actually from the thirteenth onwards, yes you did feel an attachment to it

06:06:00:00
but if it was not operable and you were needed and there was an aircraft available off you'd go.

Q: Did you favourite have any special markings on the outside?

A: No, not that I can recall. I think that markings business was given

06:06:30:00
over more to the Americans than to the other Allies. We didn't even put up fighters that were presumed shot down.

Q: When you did finish a trip and you were debriefed did you require much

06:07:00:00
time to wind down? Was that a long process?

A: Yes, on the way in from the aircraft there was always hot coffee and rum available. It was available, both were available during the debriefing and then you went and had a post flight meal.

06:07:30:00
Then it depended on the personalities. I would prefer to go off and talk to someone. Others would prefer to just go to their bunk and go to sleep. There were differences of winding down but I think basically

06:08:00:00
the rum and the coffee and then your post flight meal would calm you down. You're looking at an hour after landing and you're starting to calm right down. I used to indulge in walking back to the sergeants' mess and to the barracks and I'd

06:08:30:00
quite frequently went and had a hot shower before I went to bed.

Q: Would you partake of both the rum and the coffee?

A: I said I wasn't going to become addicted. After the first trip after I tossed and turned all night I had my share of the rum. I can't say I liked it as a drink but

Q: It had a medicinal effect?

A: It did have a very good purpose.

06:09:00:00

Q: What sort of meal would they put on for you after a raid?

A: Very much into the fried things, sausages and chips and fried eggs again. Everyone was rationed to eggs, so many a week and there we had two before and after a flight.

06:09:30:00

Q: Could you give us a little bit of an idea of what 214 Squadron was doing before it moved into the Bomber Support?

A: Well they were actually on Stirlings and normal bombing.

06:10:00:00
And prior to that they were in the Middle East, which is where my cousin was on the ground crew of it. I could probably find that record for you to photograph afterwards.

Q: No problem.

06:10:30:00
So your base was where?

A: Oulton. O U L T O N in Norwich, sorry, Norfolk, not far from Norwich.

Q: Could you give us an idea of how many were in the squadron and how many active Fortresses there were?

A: They tried to keep

06:11:00:00
twenty four active. It was rarely achieved. I think mostly there were twelve but it depended with what would happen, with say six out on raids. If they all came back your operative ones are down for a few days until the ground crews get them right again, depending on damage.

06:11:30:00
Also I suppose one trip in three you landed somewhere else and that would mean the squadron was depleted. They almost looked for bad weather so the whole thing could be bought up to strength, repairs could be effected and that

06:12:00:00
meant when it was prolonged we would have a leave.

Q: How many aircrew were on base?

A: They tried for sixteen crews but the loss rate was heavy and I suppose in the whole time I was there, there would

06:12:30:00
be three, maybe four for periods, often down less than that.

Q: How often would you be on a raid?

A: Variable. Once or twice in twenty four hours.

06:13:00:00
We were supposed not to go more than three nights consecutively. It did happen once and I've got to be fair that happened because I did what was known as gash raids. This was you did your second tour of duty and you flew with other crews, where their first wireless operator

06:13:30:00
was ill or injured and they needed someone to fly. Yeah, that's what the occasion was for.

Q: And that was called a gash raid?

A: Gash yes, you weren't flying with your own crew. I had to do the thirty trips with my own crew and could do the fifteen. If you waited and

06:14:00:00
did your second of operations later, you did eighteen trips. The minimum was the difference but get it away at once was the feeling.

Q: How many raids did it take do you think before you felt in the groove, confident and comfortable as a crew?

06:14:30:00

A: Comfortable as a crew from the second raid onwards, comfortable in myself becoming a really good operator, after number thirteen, which is when we virtually bought one whole aircraft back.

Q: So those first twelve raids ended up with you

06:15:00:00
having mishaps each time?

A: Yes.

Q: Did that take a bit of getting used to?

A: Yes, it did. Others wouldn't have any trouble for a while and then boomp, it would happen.

Q: So how?

A: In fact the majority of losses were people on their first and second raids. They just

06:15:30:00
hadn't gelled into it.

Q: Was your first one a sticky one?

A: Yes, it was quite nasty.

Q: What effect did it have on you personally?

A: Well basically a sleepless night, but I put that down to not having the rum and I think it was certainly not what I'd expected at all.

Q: How's that?

06:16:00:00

A: Oh the sudden discomforts, the expectancy when you're having a fighter chase at you and the bullets come in and how you missed them sometimes is remarkable. I went back down to our own aircraft one day and the

06:16:30:00
wireless repair guy, Brownstar, he said, "You're a bloody ghost, you're dead." I said, "I'm not" and he said come and look at this and he marked where bullets had gone in and out and he said, "How did you miss them? You're time wasn't up." That's when the two holes in the scarf,

06:17:00:00
they're pretty close and I think that actually unnerved me a little bit. I didn't deter me that it was there and we went out and you did it.

06:17:30:00

Q: How do you get through those unnerving times?

A: Well basically those were when I would really have a long shower, washing away the horrors it didn't, but it did help you to sleep and sleep is the best cure of everything.

06:18:00:00

Q: Did your faith come into the picture?

A: No, my faith was starting to wane.

Q: Why do you think that was?

A: Well why is a Supreme Being letting happen such horrid things? The more and the longer we

06:18:30:00
went the more I felt, "Yes, man's inhumanity to man is just incredible."

Q: Is that the sort of thing that you'd be able to discuss with crew members or is that the sort of thing you pondered personally to yourself?

A: You could not discuss that generally but I could discuss that with

06:19:00:00
John Winston because we were both going through the same feelings. He had been very strictly bought up in the church and he was reaching a stage where he didn't want to go on with the church at all.

Q: I imagine that having that one person to share these thoughts with

06:19:30:00
was a very beneficial thing?

A: Yes, we were very, very closely bonded and our whole outlooks

06:20:00:00
were very much the same. We had much the same effect with the rest of the crew, with each individual one, and referenced from the skipper, "Here's the terrible twins". So I think we just did have

06:20:30:00
those extra little bits. We were both also very close to the navigator, which meant that we spent a lot of leaves in Glasgow, with the navigator and his family, which probably was some of the best

06:21:00:00
healing processes of the lot.

Q: What would those visits involve?

A: Well it was literally going and living with a family and you've lost your family. It was, I'm still in touch with

06:21:30:00
that family, so close.

Q: Were you able to exchange letters with your family?

A: Oh yes, yes, but this was suddenly a live touch with people that wanted you.

Q: So that would be a frequent visit?

A: Yes. It.

06:22:00:00
I'm having.

Q: Right, were there any other sorts of destinations or activities that you would undertake when you did have leave John?

A: Yes,

06:22:30:00
if it was a short leave it would be generally to London. I had very early gone on a special leave to Paton[?] to a family there and again this was very pleasant, very quiet and they were right on overlooking the beach and I got to know that family very well and I still know

06:23:00:00
them as well and still in touch with them. And I would go down occasionally to them and I certainly did go down for a fortnight at the end of POW time to well really recuperate from hospital and to be somewhere quiet and somewhere peaceful.

06:23:30:00

Q: Did you enjoy London at that point?

A: Yes, I loved London. London to me is a great centre, a great city and all its landmarks are wonderful but its music and its theatre, even during the war, were unparalleled.

Q: Would you be able to take in some of that culture?

06:24:00:00

A: Yes, yes. Through the warrant officers' and sergeants' club we were able to get tickets much like the half price Ticketek stuff today and it was very easy to get in.

Q: What was the mood like in London

06:24:30:00
at that point?

A: I think full of hope. Basically by then the war in Europe had started and I think the future was

06:25:00:00
optimistically rosy and air raids had lessened and I think there was more optimism.

Q: How did the locals treat you?

A: Always very well. It was,

06:25:30:00
and particularly in pubs, something that was always very, very nice. For a days leave I would just go into Norwich and I had built up there early there a very nice association. I had gone to the Cathedral for a

06:26:00:00
matin service and it actually developed into a further service which I left and I went across to a little pub and sat. And I'd been there for a little while waiting for lunch to come on and the Bishop came

06:26:30:00
in and he came up and he said, "I noticed you. You didn't wait for Communion?" I said, "No, because I have not been confirmed." He said, "Well you have my rites now, you don't have to be confirmed. You come and take communion with me whenever you're in Norwich. What are you doing this afternoon?" I

06:27:00:00
said, "I was just going to wander around." He said, "I have a special service to take about seven miles out in the country. Please come with me." So we became good mates and he even understood the waning of the faith, so he was actually a tower of strength to go and talk to when there was something just small and

06:27:30:00
I was in Norwich.

Q: Great. What would have been the rough breakdown on the crew on base or the personnel on base at 214? Were there many Australians there?

A: No, while I was there, there were three only and

06:28:00:00
at the moment the 214 Association only has five listed, one of whom is English and has moved to Australia to live, so although they're not in touch with everyone it's not a large number. It's certainly much less than New Zealand and certainly much less than Canada.

06:28:30:00

Q: Did you have much to do with ground crew while you were there?

A: Yes, you're very close with your ground crew. They're looking after that aircraft and if you're on the good side of them they're going to really look after it and you become, I suppose bonded again with them.

06:29:00:00
They also have not only your aircraft, they're probably responsible for three or four and with me particularly the guy looking after the radar, radio stuff it was essential to have a good rapport with him and even make sure I made sure what needed looking at when I came back.

06:29:30:00

Q: Would that relationship extend any further? Would you socialise with him at all?

A: Yes, it often meant that where possible we would take them into the local pub for the night and it would be one of those things all round that would be all good

06:30:00:00
for us all and even one of them said, "I want to come on it once" and the skipper said, "You're not, you stay here and look after the craft for us". It was, yeah, it was quite a strong bond.

Q: What sort of a skipper was George?

06:30:30:00

A: A good pilot, a tough disciplinarian, a good mate but we did on what was called circuits and bumps or any small flight things around the place, we did ditching drills, we

06:31:00:00
did abandon aircraft drills until we were sick of it and until he thought we got out in time, with all the things we were supposed to take.

Q: So this was a bit of extra training?

A: Yes.

Q: Insisting on it?

A: Insisting on it all the time. The only thing that

06:31:30:00
that had strange accord with was it never worked that way.

Q: When the time finally came?

A: When the, no there were several times. I bailed out twice. Yeah, it was just the quirky things that happened.

06:32:00:00

Q: When was the first time you bailed out?

A: It was fairly way down, oh it actually wasn't with my own crew. It was a gash trip and it was a very funny episode. He just sort of said, "Bail out, bail out"
06:32:30:
and all boomp we complied and for some unknown reason some of us probably pulled our, well two of us certainly pulled our parachutes too soon. We landed on the wrong side of the line and the others all landed on the right. The two of us were lucky enough though to be

06:33:00:
taken in by a vigneron. At one stage he hid us in vats while the SS [German guards] were served wine from them and if you have ever been in a vat and they're going, wobbly all over the place, thinking, "You mustn't, you mustn't", well that was it.

Q: So you were knee deep in wine?

06:33:30:00

A: I wondered what the bubbles coming into the cask was all about. That's what he did. He said, "They won't look in a barrel that they're drinking out of". Real body in there and then the front [underground] passed us over in three days so back on duty in two more.

Q: So what region were you in? What region did you come down in?

06:34:00:00

A: Up in the Champagne area. Yeah, it was quite an experience. I think I probably went out, I went out first and I should have been fourth.

06:34:30:00
The two waist gunners and the second WOP were tardy getting down to it and I would say that was the training that the skipper had given me.

(tape stops)

Q: So round about when had that taken place?

A: That would have been oh,

06:35:00:00
in January 45.

Q: So how far into your tour were you at that point?

A: Oh about half way.

Q: What sort of an impact did that have on you?

A: I look back on it with laughter and amusement.

06:35:30:00
I still think it's very funny to have been in a vat of wine while someone was serving it.

Q: What about the whole process of bailing out, was that at all traumatic?

A: That time no, it was absolutely straightforward and a straightforward coming down and a good landing, so

06:36:00:00
that was another thing we did weekly, was dropping from parachutes, simulated drops. Again I think that was all important, the training that you did on those things that helped.

Q: And do you know why you bailed out on that occasion?

A: Yes, because he thought was out of petrol. His whole crew bailed out and he flew back.

06:36:30:00

Q: Were there repercussions?

A: No, no. No it wasn't the first time that that had happened.

Q: Did you have words with him yourself?

A: Yes, I said, "Please don't ask me to fly with you again."

Q: Okay.

06:37:00:00
So you completed your first tour of thirty operations?

A: Yes, oh no, I didn't. We went down on the last one.

Q: Okay, so you went down on which number?

A: Actually forty four. I had one gash to do and that was it.

Q: So is a case that the first tour is thirty operations and then you

06:37:30:00
have the opportunity to do an additional fifteen?

A: Well you did these concurrently, which meant that where people were wounded or sick and most of them were accepting this gash so that they could get their numbers up at a later stage.

Q: Just prior to going down for the second time, how were you feeling yourself?

06:38:00:00
Were you feeling like you were thriving on the ongoing challenge? Were you feeling like you were ready for a break? What was going on for you then?

A: Confidence in what I was going to do because we would have gone from that to ferrying aircraft, Fortresses, from America to England

06:38:30:00
and it was quite lucrative bringing in the contraband.

Q: So that was a new chapter that was about to begin and you were looking forward to it?

A: Yes, looking forward to it.

Q: Just before we move onto you coming down the second time can you give me an idea of some of

06:39:00:00
variety of targets that you did end up visiting on your raids?

A: Yes, I think I could almost say every second one was to the rural and town after town after town. I think it was twice to Munich, Augsburg, Regensburg, all very long ones, Berlin, Dresden, Chemnitz,

06:39:30:00
and Gardenia[?] and Poland, so it was a great range of targets. Hamburg twice, so it was a fair range of them.

Q: And what would be the target

06:40:00:00
that you would moan most about yourself when you were told you were heading?

A: Hamburg.

Q: Why would that be?

A: Because it was reputably so heavily fortified and it was notorious for the strength of fighters around.

John Mathews
2035
Tape 7

07:00:32:00

Q: John you mentioned that amongst the squadron the loss rate was heavy?

A: Yes.

Q: What sort of loss rate would you estimate?

A: There was, by the time we had reached our twenty first operation there were no others on the squadron

07:01:00:00
left that were there. We became the senior crew.

Q: So you're looking at nearly a hundred percent casualty rate?

A: It was a very high percentage at that stage of it. I actually don't think I know of anyone that got through the whole two tours.

07:01:30:00

Q: How would you deal with that seeming inevitability of your loss?

A: Hope and confidence and probably it could be over confidence. It was there. You accepted that you were going to do this

07:02:00:00
and those were your chances. Enough brushes with death to realise that possibly even death was preferable to some of the despicaments[?] that could have occurred. That I would say is where I was very severely

07:02:30:00
burned and went to the burns hospital in Ely Cathedral. The Cathedral was turned into a burns hospital and part of it left functioning. Five days of treatment I was back to the squadron and two days later back flying but some of the cases that I saw there where the helmets had melted into faces and the injuries

07:03:00:00
some of them were suffering was unbelievable. I was only burnt from there to here.

Q: How did that happen John?

A: A fire started in the cabin, actually in the seat and just once it hit the clothing part here it was out but I was able to reach the fire extinguisher and get at it

07:03:30:00
but it still left from there upwards and no debriefings. Straight into the ambulance and they just cut the clothing off and put you in a swing and lifted you up into a quite hot bath of salt water, four hours and then they tidied it up, sulphur on

07:04:00:00
it and you rested for the next four hours and then back into it and that was four hours in, four hours out.

Q: The fire in the cabin was as a result of what?

A: A bullet coming in from outside and probably the heat of it just set fire to the packing of the seat and it just went straight up

07:04:30:00
and probably all my clothing it just burnt.

Q: The bullet probably from a fighter?

A: Yes.

Q: Were you often under attack from fighters?

A: Oh yes, yes.

Q: You said earlier that the crew claimed to have shot down or damaged fighters, was that a common occurrence?

A: I think we had seven acclaimed

07:05:00:00
and yeah, it was not an uncommon occurrence, particularly as I said earlier over the target areas. We were very vulnerable.

Q: How do you think the stress rate or let's say your heart rate would escalate once you started getting closer towards the target and you knew, obviously you would know you were under attack from fighters?

07:05:30:00

A: The adrenalin goes up, there's no two ways about it. This is why people who are looking at that target, "Oh look at it", built up to an excitement but I think that excitement also keeps you alert. You get alive and do it all, it's the big

07:06:00:00
moments and then once you're on you're way up it's relief.

Q: This continual high and low of stress, the losses suffered by the squadron, how did that affect men?

A: Well differently.

07:06:30:00
Callous people like me I think learnt to accept it. A lot of us accepted it. Very difficult to determine that there was another one right at the other end of the scale who had the guts after two operations to go in and say, "I'm not flying anymore. I want out of this, it's too dangerous."

07:07:00:00
I think a lot of us didn't quite have that guts. Sometimes we would have looked to have been out.

Q: What happened to that person who refused to fly anymore?

A: He got an awful transfer to training and lack of moral fibre marked against him. I think it took a lot of guts to go and do what he did.

07:07:30:00

Q: What did you think of that system of people being branded LMF?

A: Appalling because basically I don't think they were. I think if I was in the situation of having to be asked by say some of my nephews whether they should go and enlist, I would say

07:08:00:00
"No." Because I don't really know why we were killing the German people because basically it wasn't them at fault, it was the system and it was parliamentarians I think that are the bane of existence everywhere.

07:08:30:00

Q: Do you think if there hadn't been such a big stigma about LMF that a lot more men would have quit?

A: Kind of hard to say. I know I said I wish he had the guts he had but then I also know I would have gone on.

07:09:00:00
Look, yes, probably fifty-fifty. And I would have probably looked at saying, "I've done thirty trips, let me do one operation but that's it", but you've committed yourself to doing the thirty with your crew.

07:09:30:00

Q: So what keeps you climbing back into that aircraft and waiting for the dice to roll the wrong way?

A: Commitment, the bonding of a crew. It's very hard to describe how close it is. I think with aircrews it's stronger than anywhere because you're so reliant on each other.

07:10:00:00
Maybe only for briefer times at a spell but those brief times are very emotional and very dangerous and whether you know the statistics, thirty three percent of aircrew that went onto active service were killed and over forty percent became prisoners or were wounded.

07:10:30:00
Big statistics.

Q: Sounds like even worse in your squadron?

A: Yes it was. It was higher and at that point it was vulnerability over targets mainly and also lack of confidence. The number of crews that

07:11:00:00
went on their first or second operation and I would say also confidence, over confidence with the last couple seemed to be those were the areas you went.

Q: You mentioned the bonding of a crew and the dependence on each other, what then would go through your mind when you had to fly one of these gash missions with a crew you'd never been with before?

A: Well

07:11:30:00
the bonding would flow out towards them particularly where I was selective of the pilot. Pilots that I knew well I would be happy to fly with but because of the difference in skippers and ours being so strict

07:12:00:00
on drilling and the others not, sometimes it would be hard to hear them using their first names instead of their positions but then that became, that was also conflicting. We were so drilled

07:12:30:00
with it. Okay our navigator was unconscious and the skipper sent me up to do it and dare to say while I was up doing the navigation I'm saying, "Navigator to skipper," and he was, "Skipper to navigator," and then I'd go back and do the

07:13:00:00
time fixtures, take the radio and, "WOP to skipper". And they're listening to it all back there because in this particular case I'd done some repairs and I'd fixed some wires so it was going out on some of the transmitters. They wondered, "What the heck's this guy up to? He's calling himself a navigator

07:13:30:00
and a wireless operator". Well I was doing both.

Q: Why was your nav unconscious?

A: Well he'd been hit by flak and he'd been put with two others of the crew in the waist area where we could push them out if we had to bail out.

Q: It sounds like you guys took a hell of a lot of fire?

07:14:00:00

A: Yes.

Q: Did you ever have any easy trips John?

A: Yes, the thirteenth one, which everyone was saying goodbye. Well we took off in aircraft L for Love, the thirteenth and we took off at thirteen minutes past one and the only thing that was missing was it wasn't Friday the thirteenth. I think it was the fifteenth

07:14:30:00
of the month.

Q: So it was your thirteenth mission on a plane with a code of the thirteenth letter of the alphabet at thirteen thirteen?

A: Everything we were doing was touching thirteens and we didn't even see flak and it was variable after that. Some

07:15:00:00
were tough.

Q: So what do you describe the fact that you were able to survive forty four operations then?

A: Luck in the early ones that something more disastrous didn't happen than it did and then there was a build

07:15:30:00
up of confidence and then our whole crew I think we knew what we were doing operationally and there was no way you can teach that. Very hard to even pass it on to new crews what to expect because every time it's going to be different and there's something becomes almost I guess

07:16:00:00
automatic. I know I could be looking at a machine and I could see a thing moving there and I could immediately come onto my H2S and get a fighter. You got used to these situations by the confidence of knowing what you're doing.

Q: Well then John, the time has come to talk us through your forty fifth mission?

07:16:30:00

A: Right, well it was a hair raising one to begin with because it was a Butch Harris and we'd gone over just above the sea to Norway and we'd gone into Sweden and climbed to twenty thousand feet. And we were raiding Harburg, an outer suburb of Hamburg,

07:17:00:00
and it was a dive over that, except that we circled and the other aircraft from the squadron were circling and for some unknown reason there was a Lancaster with us up there. There was also a Junkers 188 coming in and all the appropriate things were done.

07:17:30:00
We both corkscrewed as the Junkers between the two Fortresses we both corkscrewed into each other and as we pulled out the rear gunner said, "That bloody Lanc's opened up on us," and it ripped right through us. The skipper just said, "bail out, bail out". And that was easier said than

07:18:00:00
done because I fumbled getting my parachute on. We couldn't because of the way we were working. Some of the, all the people that were sedentary had parachutes that they were sitting on but we two WOPs in the cabin had to clip them on and by the time I grabbed the two things to take

07:18:30:00
out with me I was just slow off the mark and I got to the escape hatch and there were three bodies lying there. And the escape hatch was going like this (demonstrates) and I lent over to undo that wire holding it. As far as I was concerned there was a flash of

07:19:00:00
white and I went out. I came to at the end of my parachute. I had my legs all tied up with the trailing aerial. I know basically the flash of white was the parachute opening because I'd gone done with it like this and that's the hand that went down. The little pilot chute went out and that dragged me straight

07:19:30:00
out. I took it off because I came to and I had the escape hatch clutched up here and there's a scar still on my head from it. I undid everything. Certainly there was blood everywhere but I looked down and there was a nice straight bit. , "Well it's either a road or a river, does it matter which?" It did turn out to be a road. I did a very

07:20:00:00
good landing, rolled into the parachute and stood up and could hear the yells. The pitchfork hit me and I ran and rear gunner was bellowing for help. He'd broken his leg and I yelled out, "Shut up Harry and I'll try and come back". I went into a forest and the squeals that I

07:20:30:00
heard left no thoughts in my mind as to what had happened to him. I was tapped on the shoulder and a gentleman said, "I think you'd best come with me. I am the feldwebel [sergeant/town clerk] of the village" and I thought he also

07:21:00:00
gave me a sort of feeling of confidence. Then when we sat down he produced a bowl of hot soapy water for me to wash my wounds with. He brought some pictures of his son who was a POW in England from north (unclear). I suspect he was going to put us through the escape mechanism situation, however

07:21:30:00
one other member of the crew arrived and then a few others from the, that were on the raid. It was sort of a bit hair raising and two SS arrived. He would not hand us over to them and he said, "These are flyers,

07:22:00:00
they belong to the Luftwaffe." The Luftwaffe did arrive and we were handed over to them.

Q: I'll stop you at that point because I'd like to go back and just access a bit more detail.

A: Right.

Q: Now you believe you were actually shot down by friendly fire from a Lancaster?

A: Yes. It's confirmed.

Q: Do you know, how is it confirmed?

A: Well the squadron knew exactly

07:22:30:00
where we went down and reports showed the Lancaster was on its first operation and reported a Junkers shot down at that spot.

Q: So they mistook a twin engine German fighter for a four engine?

A: Yes, easy enough in silhouette. Nothing could be done about them because they were shot down on their second trip.

07:23:00:00

Q: Given all the damage that you'd taken in V17s over the months it's incredibly unlucky that a short burst from a Lancaster knocked you out?

A: It just hit vital parts of the engines and that was it.

Q: So theoretically in the bailing out situation, what should have happened?

07:23:30:00

A: Oh the two waist gunners should have gone first. Why the German speaking WOP was on the floor first I'll never know. He was found, the only body that was found in the aircraft. I was told that at the interrogation centre and there

07:24:00:00
were three others, no four others that got out, we don't know. Well one I do know but we assume the other three may have been reached the same fate.

Q: You mentioned that you had to take some things with you went you left the aircraft?

A: Yes, there was always mechanisms to

07:24:30:00
use for escape, a collection of maps and a small medicine chest and that was my responsibility to take those.

Q: How did you receive the gash on your head?

A: The impact of the

07:25:00:00
escape hatch going into the head. I pushed it in the flash of going out, the split seconds. The memory's never been clear and the two waist gunners said, "There was a flash of white and you went".

Q: When you landed on that road and you initially evaded the German civilians, what in

07:25:30:00
your opinion happened to the rear gunner that you could hear calling out?

A: Oh he was pitchforked to death and understandable. The Germans weren't alone in doing that sort of thing. There was many a German airman put into the fires in London.

Q: What other members of your crew do you believe shared that same fate?

07:26:00:00

A: The carpet, the wireless operator, oh sorry, the navigator and the skipper.

Q: To what extent does it weigh on you?

A: It did weigh heavily for a number of

07:26:30:00
years mainly with, "Why was I left and why did the others go and why didn't the others survive?" And with the years I rejoiced that I had known those guys.

07:27:00:00
(tape stops)

Q: Shall we go back and start again?

A: Yes.

Q: You said that when you landed you got a pitchfork in the back, your running skills obviously came in handy?

A: That's when my running skills really came to the fore and despite head wound and etcetera I suppose automatically I ran and

07:27:30:00
I had a start off because they had to scramble through fences to get onto the road, so basically I was lucky and there was a wood, "And I'm getting in there and I'll get up a tree".

Q: At that point were your thoughts of escape and evasion or just surviving?

A: Survival, " I've got to survive this

07:28:00:00
how?" And that was the thought, "get in there and they'll knot around and not see which tree I'm in."

Q: It was somewhere in the country around Hamburg?

A: Out of Harburg, yes.

Q: What sort of feelings do

07:28:30:00
you have for those German farmers, civilians?

A: Probably indifference. I reflect what I would have done if I'd have seen a man coming down in a parachute and my home had been blown to pieces, automatically would want to punish them.

07:29:00:00
I think that, I think that's basically acceptable so indifference comes in. Other bits I don't think I'm indifferent to.

Q: When you were an operational flyer did you ever think about the German civilians you dropping on?

07:29:30:00

A: Yes often, and wondering, when I saw what would happen on the other side of it in a raid on England, it was surely unnecessary. This waste of life, this waste of property and

07:30:00:00
basically that was all that. I don't think I've ever had a feeling of hatred for the German people.

Q: The town official that took you in, he was risking something by protecting you?

A: He was risking by possibly by protection but I think

07:30:30:00
basically by the SS arriving when they did we were lucky.

Q: Sorry, the SS arriving?

A: Sorry the Luftwaffe arriving.

Q: I find from just my experience with what I've read that for him to stand up was quite something?

A: Yes it was

07:31:00:00
and I think where he got that strength from was the fact that he was hoping that better treatment was being given to his son. I still think he was prepared to put us onto the escape route because he kept saying little bits of things and some of it I didn't understand because he spoke in German.

07:31:30:00
But his English was fairly good too.

Q: Did you let him know that you were an old town council man yourself?

A: Yes.

Q: What did he think of that?

A: He just grinned and said, "This is one of these funny things isn't it?" I can't help but say I liked him. There was something very human about him and he was helping

07:32:00:00
someone in distress and others so, yeah again good in the German people as well as the bad.

Q: Were you ever able to find out his identity?

A: Yes and in 1965 I went back but he had

07:32:30:00
died and I did meet his son.

Q: Can you recall the name of the man that helped you?

A: No, I can't. I probably have got it written down somewhere.

Q: But you obviously felt it was important to go back?

A: 07:33:00:00
Yes, yes, it was easy enough to find the village, which was still fairly intact and through the council and to ask and that's where they said and they said, "We'll put you onto his son". Actually it was a period of burying things. I was touring around with my mother and my sister with my sister doing all the driving and

07:33:30:
she never followed the navigator's things. I woke up that she was taking me to see all the horror spots and to see that they weren't there anymore and by doing such was burying all that side of it.

Q: You've mentioned to us, I think it was off camera, that the fate that befell members of your crew also occurred to other 214 Squadron men?

07:34:00:00

A: Yes, they are known to have bailed out and not returned. The five I mentioned to you that had the marking of, "murdered" against them, the murders were witnessed by another member of the crew who got into Luftwaffe hands and but these five had been assembled

07:34:30:00
by the Hitler Youth and they were playing games by torturing them and eventually killing them. The terror flyer summons was in full act and a horrible sort to watch and see, so the bodies never recovered and

07:35:00:00
never anything again but we knew they were out of the aircraft.

Q: You mentioned that other flight crew turned up at this town official's house that evening?

A: Yes, yes, some from the bombing stream. One of my own crew turned up there as well.

Q: Which member of the crew?

A: The other waist gunner,

07:35:30:00
Jim Goulson.

Q: At this point what were your predictions for your immediate future?

A: Probably, "How do I survive this now? Be prepared for it because you've been told all of the things that can happen to you, or a lot of things that you can

07:36:00:00
expect to happen to you at interrogation." So Luftwaffe took us, we were locked up in a gaol outside of Hamburg. It's a period where I don't know how many days we were there because

07:36:30:00
to begin we walked so far and then we were forced to get onto four ends, four of us to carry a stretcher case which was one of the waist gunners with both broken legs.

Q: What medical treatment had you been given up to that point?

A: Oh all that he had been able to do was to give me salt water and things. I did have some bandage stuff which I could put on myself but

07:37:00:00
nothing other than that. Probably thank heavens I was in good health at that stage and the wounds healed.

Q: And as you were walking along there on foot, what sort of attentions were you given from German civilians?

A: Boos, obvious we were still in our uniforms but the Luftwaffe trying

07:37:30:00
to prod us to go quicker and then as I said we left there and were marched into Hamburg and put on a train to go to interrogation at Frankfurt.

Q: So you have no idea how long you were kept in the cells at Hamburg?

A: No,

07:38:00:00
idea there and then I have no idea of the corresponding period in Frankfurt. Into a cell with no outside light, nothing in it, a wooden bed. No toilets for the whole period. I used a corner there and some food would come in underneath and eyes would peer through in a glass at me and the

07:38:30:00
heating system go on and the floor heating system would go off. You'd take clothes off because it was so hot and then you'd put them back on again and it was hot the bugs would come out so it was a good game to play, killing them. And there was more signals continuing on the pipe.

Q: Saying what?

A: "I'm also

07:39:00:00
from, you know, here as a prisoner. How did you get knocked down? What happened to you?" And I used to just go back, "I'm tired, please wait." I wasn't going to be taken in by it because no-one knew whether that was part of their act of doing it.

07:39:30:00
This wait period was always the thing because my reaction was when I was actually taken to the interrogator, "I would like to speak to the Red Cross official." "Oh why?" "Oh maltreatment." "Oh no, no." And immediate things like taken for a shower and given clean underclothes and go back

07:40:00:00
and there's a beautiful meal and proceed with, "Who are you?" The standard thing, "Name, number and rank is all that the Geneva Convention says I have to give you." He rattled on and on and his English was beautiful and he said, "Oh well, alright, well you'll go back to a better

07:40:30:00
compartment now," and I thought, "He knows what I've gone through". So that went on for about ten days of interrogation there.

Q: I'll stop you there John because we're coming to the end of that tape.


John Mathews
2035
Tape 8

08:00:34:00

Q: John, what was your impression of Hamburg when you were moving through? What sort of shape was it in?

A: Oh one gutted mess, an unutterable mess. Probably the worst I saw of anything in Germany and we marched through quite a bit of the rural, which was also a hideous mess but I think Hamburg

08:01:00:00
capped it all.

Q: Were there many people out on the street in Hamburg?

A: No, it was flat, desolate and strangely not much of the railway station had been damaged.

Q: The Luftwaffe who were looking after you at that point, did they have any English or was it all German?

08:01:30:00

A: A little bit, but generally they were more disposed to speaking German and we were expected to learn it. The commands and things you learnt fairly quickly.

Q: What was your German like?

A: Bloody awful, I'm sorry but it was the best way

08:02:00:00
to do it.

Q: You hadn't learnt that much from your Canadian friend?

A: No, I did Latin and French at school and that didn't equip me to handle the German language.

Q: When you'd been held prior to being moved to Frankfurt, you said it was hard to gauge the days passing by, could you explain why?

08:02:30:00

A: Because there was no daylight coming in and although I had a watch it was secreted, so I did not know. None of us sort of knew, we lost time.

Q: What sort of attitude were you getting from the people who had locked you up there?

08:03:00:00
Were you being intimidated or were they being at all kindly to you?

A: Not perceptively except they were not in contact. We were left in there basically to our devices with

08:03:30:00
food coming through the doors and that would come at various hours. It ended up all so confusing the issue. It was not like judging by their meals a day and I know I slept a lot. I've fortunate thing I think I've had with life is an ability to sleep and I think that's

08:04:00:00
a cure all for a lot of things.

Q: What was the food like that they did offer you?

A: Muck, but when you're hungry you'll eat it. Occasionally rye bread would come through and surprise, surprise, I didn't mind it but the others who had been bought up on white bread thought

08:04:30:00
this was the end.

Q: What impact did that waiting have on you?

A: "What's going to happen next and when?"

Q: What were your expectations?

A: Well expectations were certainly at that stage of , "I will now be taken to

08:05:00:00
the interrogation centre and then I know what I have got to do".

Q: And what is it that you knew you had to do?

A: Well we were warned about the techniques of interrogation. I guess it helped in a lot of ways to know the confrontations and things that would happen.

08:05:30:00
And the general techniques if you'll like I'll go through some of it?

Q: Oh right, yeah, it's probably a good time, so we know that you ended up in Frankfurt and you had that initial waiting time again and you finally had your first meeting with your interrogator?

A: Yes.

08:06:00:00

Q: So then your conditions were improved a little bit and the process of interrogation proper began?

A: Yes. I was being objectively polite I guess in saying my name, number and rank and, "That's all I have to give you under the Geneva Convention" and he said, "Oh well, that's all very nice, we'll see about it and off you go.

08:06:30:00
I will see you tomorrow morning."

Q: So what was your first impression of the interrogator after that meeting?

A: My impression was, "You speak beautiful English, I wonder why?"

Q: How old do you think the chap was?

A: I'd say late twenties

08:07:00:00
and I thought, "Oh yes, you're going to be very difficult to deal with".

Q: How's that?

A: And so the next morning yes I went and he went, "Oh yes, name, number and rank. You don't want to tell us anything,

08:07:30:00
we'll tell you." He went through it and he gave me from day to day everywhere I had been and he could even list the raids I had been on over Germany. He could name people on the squadron of importance and much to say, "See, we know everything anyhow. Now come and tell us about

08:08:00:00
this" and there was a room and it had some of the equipment we had, not all of it. , "How does this thing work?" "I don't have to tell you that." And I could see how right, they're blocked with this thing because you've got to go through it four times tuning it to get to the top of it. , "That will be the number one thing he wants here and what the others are for and

08:08:30:00
they're specialist things and then he can know how to build in a counter for it." So I fought all of that for several days. He was pleasant enough about it and nothing sort of happened.

Q: How would the to-ing and fro-ing go over the course of those days?

A: Oh he'd just send for me, maybe in the morning,

08:09:00:00
maybe in the afternoon and then I was left alone during the day but at night the door was opened and a very beautiful blonde came in and she had a tray with the most beautiful meal and a bottle of wine and I said, "Oh yes, I knew this was going to happen."

08:09:30:00
And she's there to get the information so I eat the food and I didn't drink any of the wine because that was known to be the thing that would have chemicals in it. Maybe the food could have and I sat there and resisted all her wiles knowing that that's what she was there for.

Q: Can you tell us a bit more about the wiles?

08:10:00:00

A: Oh she used everything in the lovemaking book to show how beautiful she was, what a wonderful body she had. She did have two amazing breasts, both were disclosed but I think she realised that I knew it was her exercise and

08:10:30:00
after a couple of hours she departed.

Q: A couple of hours? Wow, that was quite a nice time too?

A: It was stamina on both sides I think. I even giggled I know a few times through it. I thought, "Oh come on, this is obvious."

Q: Did she explicitly say, "If you just hurry up and tell me this, we can have a wonderful time together?"

A: Yes, she did but, " I'm not proposing to tell you that

08:11:00:00
because maybe I don't know it." "Oh well if you do." "Oh well" I said, "That's your right to think that. I might be just a stupid dope you know." Well I got it the next day, he was so rude. , "You didn't like our Fraulein?

08:11:30:00
You've got no brevets on or any of your insignia. You have been dropped over here as a spy. Stand up, we're going to have you shot." Out came the pistol and for close on half an hour I had that pistol at my head being told

08:12:00:00
all the wickedest things I had done and sworn at in German, not very pleasant.

Q: Was this the interrogator holding the gun or somebody else?

A: Oh yes, he was the one holding the gun.

Q: Was it just one on one?

A: Yeah, it was one and one and I'm saying, "He's not going to kill you, he want's information, he won't kill you" and

08:12:30:00
eventually we went back in and, "Are you ready to talk? Show us what to do?" I said, "No, no".

Q: So you wore him down and he eventually put the gun down and gave up?

A: Put the gun down and I almost said

08:13:00:00
"You shouldn't call people's bluff if you're not going to do it" and I thought, "No don't, that's getting back."

Q: Did you have any moments while the pistol was up at your head that you thought, "just in case this is my life on the line, should I just tell him something and be done

08:13:30:00
with it?"

A: Yes. Should I, I thought, "Should I tell him lies? No, he'll know if they're lies and that gives him a better reason to shoot. No, keep thinking he wants your information, therefore he's not going to kill you." And I think that what was got me through it.

08:14:00:00
It was a completely different personality the next morning, "I'm sorry for what I did yesterday and blah, blah, blah." Talked about all sorts of nice things and aspects and that sort of thing and I said, "Is that your wife and family?" And he said, "Oh you're not supposed to see that." We were just talking about all sorts of things and

08:14:30:00
I thought, "This is the next one. You get levelled down and you're talking and talking and then he'll just automatically do the other." But no, he sort of withheld it and that night there was sounds and I thought, "Small arms fire. They could be about to come over the Rhine at Frankfurt,

08:15:00:00
hang on for a few days and you might be right." The next morning I went down and I noticed kit bags in his room and it was all nice and dry and he said, "if you come and show me how to work that material today you can leave with the rest of your crew that are here." I said, "Why should I? I heard the small arms fire." He said, "Oh that was only people down

08:15:30:00
on the rifle range." I said, "Oh yes, you're all packed up to go. I'll stay". He said, "Oh right, you're going. You've been a tough nut to crack." He said, "What in the bloody hell are you doing here? Why

08:16:00:00
aren't you fighting Australia's real war? Why are you here in Europe? Why aren't you attending to the Japanese?" I said, "Because fate sent me here." He said, "Well you should be looking at our mutual enemy. I was educated at Adelaide University."

08:16:30:00
And I was shattered. I think he could have at that stage got things from me but I left that afternoon with the other people. It was a shattering thing to know that this beast, this nice man was an Australian and no wonder he spoke beautiful English.

08:17:00:00

Q: And ironically enough that was when he did crack you but it was too late?

A: Yes.

Q: Do you recall what this chap's name was?

A: No, because I didn't ever get anything other than Wilhelm and we knew it was no use asking because they would not ever divulge it and you couldn't get it anywhere else.

08:17:30:00
The guards wouldn't tell you. I think they were aware what was going to happen at the end of things so this was protection.

Q: Was he wearing a uniform?

A: Yes.

Q: What sort of uniform was he wearing?

08:18:00:00

A: About equivalent to a colonel or very distinguished person but hard to assess. Either a bastard, a pig or a very good actor, probably the later at what he did.

08:18:30:00

Q: You mentioned earlier that you had been prepared for what might come your way in interrogation situations, what was the correlation between your expectations and the reality of what happened?

A: I didn't expect the episode with the pistol to be as long drawn out as it was but I did expect most of the other. I did not expect

08:19:00:00
to be confronted with the whole of my career being known but reflection of a few hours showed me, "Oh yes, well VF's have signals anywhere. That wouldn't have really mattered." And then the confrontation that he was an Australian, educated in Adelaide was

08:19:30:00
really the, it was a bit of a crunch that I did not expect but all the other tricks we were told and warned that you'd never know where and what they would do, including the beautiful girl.

Q: What do you think was the most unsettling, traumatic

08:20:00:00
aspect of what you were put through in interrogation?

A: Oh the pistol episode. For half an hour with that gun at your head, even though you're saying to yourself, "He's not going to kill me because he wants information", it still is not comfortable.

08:20:30:00
(tape stops)

Q: Are you comfortable to move on?

A: Yes.

Q: Okay. Can you give me a description of what your cell was like while you were going through the interrogation?

A: Yes, certainly not comfortable. The wooden plank to sleep

08:21:00:00
on and it was relatively warm because it was heated. I didn't have the problem of it being switched on and off as the first cell and I was allowed to be taken out to shower and be cleaned once a day, so that was more comfortable.

Q: Did that one have a toilet?

A: No,

08:21:30:00
no, I had to have them take me out to the toilet.

Q: Were you exercised at all?

A: No, except to go to the toilet or to the, I guess yeah, there was a fair amount of walking to the interrogation office and

08:22:00:00
back and going to the shower and going to the toilet.

Q: Did you ever see other POWs at that stage?

A: No, but they had actually seen me. The guy with the broken legs saw me being marched along with the pistol and thought, "Oh God,

08:22:30:00
is that what's going to happen?" I think he went through more hell over that than I did and Jimmy Goulson also saw that happening from his cell.

Q: What sort of things would go through your mind in between the interrogation sessions when you were in the cell by yourself?

08:23:00:00

A: Well I kept reflecting on family and wondering if and when we would see each other again.

08:23:30:00
It was bought to me the importance of family and it was basically a comfort and I felt I would feel much better when I would think along those lines so I kept coming back to it because I felt it was helping me. And thinking of all the incidents of childhood and

08:24:00:00
etcetera and there was nothing to read, nothing else to do, so I think reflections of the past, yes were and of course what will the future, where and what is it going to do with me?

Q: Was it hard to keep your spirits up and stay optimistic about your situation?

08:24:30:00

A: I think yes, not all the time but yes but it would be relieved when I was being taken to him, "I know I'm in a fight". That, "I know that I can cope now"

08:25:00:00
so that last little bit of it was relatively easy because of the pistol episode I guess. And that old thing that you don't bluff unless you're going to pursue it.

Q: So once the pistol went down you felt like it was fairly evident he wasn't going

08:25:30:00
to kill you from then on?

A: Yes, from the moment he put it on the desk and, "I have won." There was, from that time on there was quite a feeling of strength built up. In fact I was cheeky to him occasionally.

Q: So can you explain to us what then happened when you were told you were leaving?

08:26:00:00

A: Yes, we were on a march and sort of we didn't go all that far because around about four o'clock they stopped at a farm and they put us all into a barn and locked the barn up and that meant

08:26:30:00
they could go and eat, drink and be merry while we were in the barn. One thing we were given as we were leaving on that was a blanket apiece and being cold in the barn well you burrowed a hole in the straw and you put one blanket down and one on top of you and snuggled together and kept warm.

08:27:00:00
But being enterprising Australians in there it wasn't long before we were aware that the German barn is quite remarkable. It has stores of sugar, flour, root vegetables. It has rabbits in it and it has poultry in it, food.

08:27:30:00
So it went and we went off on it and it soon became evident when you cooked it at lunchtime and you handed them some pieces of chicken or some pieces of rabbit and they were only ever getting sausage if they were lucky, "Oh it was a good place to lock these guys up in, in a barn". So we

08:28:00:00
ended up being basically in barns by three o'clock in the afternoon and whipped out at three o'clock in the morning.

Q: And invariably you'd find the right supplies?

A: Indubitably there was food.

Q: How many of you in the group at that stage?

A: Round about two hundred and a German barn would sleep about two hundred and thinking we're safe and

08:28:30:00
so.

Q: Just to get reconnected with the time frame now, the interrogation in Frankfurt commenced around about when?

A: Oh would be around about the end of March.

Q: And went on for?

A: For around about a fortnight, into early April.

Q: So you started moving through the barns in April?

08:29:00:00

A: Yes.

Q: So this was an ongoing process where you were being herded off?

A: No, shortly after two barns we went into a train that took us further south until we had learnt that we made a compact with the guards

08:29:30:00
that if we were strafed we would leave the train but come back on a motion of honour. We pulled into a marshalling yard at a place called Mucke, M U C K E, and strafing began and we just left. There was another

08:30:00:00
train with political and Russian prisoners in it. If they tried to leave they were shot and a lot of them fled and came back but as they came back they were shot and anyone able was then made to dig a ditch and these bodies went into it. No.

08:30:30:00

Q: So you were spared that fate?

A: We were spared it but we weren't spared the spectacle. I think that was one of the cases where we were Luftwaffe prisoners and the Geneva Convention was being adhered to. The others weren't, they were political prisoners or Russians who were not in the thing and it was just

08:31:00:00
fair crack of the whip massacre. From that we just.

Q: You were directly involved yourself in the clean up?

A: Oh yes, yes. And of course that was the end of rail and the next week we headed down through to Munich and came out at the top of

08:31:30:00
Munich to the big POW camp at Moosburg.

Q: Had they told you where you were heading or was it just?

A: No, no, it was hard to know but it was easy too because of the pictures of Munich to know where we were.

Q: Were you speculating amongst yourselves

08:32:00:00
at what state the war was in as far as the Germans position at that point?

A: Yes, we were still speculating but we were still aware there were bombing raids nearby and things going on. The POW camp was quite a funny mixed bag

08:32:30:00
in that we were separated, Australians, New Zealanders, Canadians, and English were put into one compound, Russians were in the next and Americans were taken to another one. Geneva Conventions were obeyed. We strictly got our Red Cross parcels and I'd like to open up about Red

08:33:00:00
Cross parcels?

Q: Please.

A: They were not just food. The tins that the food was in became our drinking cups, our eating plates. They also became utensils for making a "push me, pull you" stove. I was lucky enough to have teamed up with another Australian

08:33:30:00
who had been there and he knew, he had his stove and you fed your little bit of wood in and every little grain of it was useful to get you something hot to eat or drink, and so this wonderful fan worked through the tins arrangement and thrust all the heat through to where you were cooking.

Q: Were they hard to make?

08:34:00:00

A: No, not if you were adept.

Q: Can you explain how the fan was made?

A: Yes, it was a pulley thing that went round and going through contrived, what do you call those things with grooves in them and? Whatever and they

08:34:30:00
just functioned quickly and made this other thing rotate.

Q: A spindle?

A: Yes, yes and it made the bottom one move all the faster. It was worked so instead of going round and round, it went round and round this way and shot the air up through the wood.

Q: So that could be made with a couple of cans?

A: Yes, about three cans. Very ingenious, very

08:35:00:00
but it wasn't the only thing. We were taken out on wood parties which was marvellous. I was a non smoker. We got ten cigarettes. It was frowned on very much if you exchanged those for a smoker for his food, but outside

08:35:30:00
they were wonderful. You could get a loaf of bread for two cigarettes. You could get a dozen eggs for four cigarettes, so it was.

Q: Trading with?

A: Trading with the Germans that you would meet outside, basically farming communities nearby. And while there you were collecting your wood to bring back, a marvellous source

08:36:00:00
of extra food for people.

Q: Were the guards aware that this trade was going on?

A: Yes, I think they allowed it because they were hard put to feed us. They were hard put to feed themselves and the farming community still had modicums of food as they were producing it so they had it.

08:36:30:00
The other thing we had was occasionally taken to the cheese factory and when you went you were given a special pair of pants to wear which held up and fixed here and no belts and you'd wrap the cheese up and pack it

08:37:00:00
and wrap the cheese up and put it down. Sorry.

Q: That's alright.
(tape stops)

A: Red Cross parcels again, in the food was always a piece of hard cheddar cheese. There was also a cake of literally unsweetened black chocolate and

08:37:30:00
they kept me alive. I developed chronic dysentery and they were both known as, "bung hole" and my mate for three solid days fed me chocolate and cheese while I sat on the toilet and after three days I was still alive and it had stopped, so hidden medicines amongst the food.

08:38:00:00
Also there were things that became rather nice entertainment. I had one chess set from the plane. It was never for some unknown reason taken from me and one day there was another one in the Red Cross parcel and I found through the wire a Russian who played chess and

08:38:30:00
we used to sit there, each with our little set and play wonderful occupation, wonderful feeling between us both. Never anything nasty said by the Germans about it. The other one was quite interesting because the cigarettes had

08:39:00:00
bought utensils outside too. I think they must have laughed at what we could have wanted them for but frequently there were woollen garments in the Red Cross parcel. Mostly they'd never fit. I had a scarf. I think I pulled it apart and remade it twenty times.

08:39:30:00
All the others sitting around knitting. Mine was a crocheted one so I had a crochet hook that, occupation therapy and you're not thinking about yourself. To see a group of guys sitting around knitting was a quite a funny sight but golly the Red Cross parcel had given us that. Yes,

08:40:00:00
if you were cold it would go on but it was almost too small to do anything, so it was amazing just what we got out of the Red Cross parcels.

Q: How were you being treated by the guards?

A: Relatively well.

08:40:30:00
They were not awful except when we played up and about once a week the word went out, "it's blanket cleaning day" and all the blankets would be taken out and put on the barbed wire and we would shake them violently, a) to clean the dust and muck out of them and the lice but these

08:41:00:00
barricades would send the guards into horrors and they'd come into see what it was all about. I think we were having humour from it and watching them being so awful about it but I think they were all aware the end was in sight, so there we are. There was also a traditional tunnel, which people

08:41:30:00
used.

Q: I'll just get you to hold that John.


John Mathews
2035
Tape 9

09:00:33:00

Q: Once you got amongst the other prisoners John and were able to compare notes, what interrogation stories did they tell you, how did your's compare with theirs?

A: Mine was more horrific but I think understandably because I knew how to operate the material, whereas the other members of the crew wouldn't and it was as easy as that.

09:01:00:00
If it they could get onto how to correct some of that jamming and particularly the H2S then they may have had another go at something. There was no relentlessness at it. I did forget

09:01:30:00
one bit that just prior to the pistol there was a slapping, which was pretty brutal because I'd lost teeth with it. That was just a momentary thing I'd forgotten. It becomes important later in life.

09:02:00:00

Q: Had other men do you think caved into their interrogators?

A: Yes and I would forgive anyone that did, but basically it was those that were operating those specialised things, they were wanted at that stage of the war. I think other members of my crew

09:02:30:00
said they just got the ordinary little bits. They all had the visitation from a beautiful girl with a beautiful meal but certainly none of them went through the pistol business.

Q: Did anybody ever manage to get any freebies out of the beautiful girl?

A: I don't know.

09:03:00:00
I don't think that anybody would have admitted that they had.

Q: I'd be tempted to make something up. At what point did you realise that some of your crew were missing?

A: Not until I got back to England.

Q: We'll leave that to that point then. So what members of your crew did you meet up with in prison?

09:03:30:00

A: In prison, actually at the interrogation centre, I did run into Ken Phelan, a) because he had his legs damaged and I was allowed a visit to him in hospital. There was Jim Goulson, one of the waist gunners, and Peter Mulholland, who was flying gash

09:04:00:00
with us as mid upper gunner and they were on the march with me, those two.

Q: How in this, do you know what prison camp you were in actually?

A: Yes, Stalag 7A.

Q: In what way were the prisoners separated according to nationality, rank and etcetera?

A: Well basically all aircrew were either sergeant

09:04:30:00
or above, so we were just separated and told and move ourselves into in this case Europeans, sorry, English and English Colonies and Americans. There were only basically the two lots and we had the Russian contingent separating us in the middle.

Q: What sort of state were the Russian prisoners in that you could

09:05:00:00
see?

A: Not as good. They did not get Red Cross parcels. They also bought to light one of the most horrific things of the war. We had large cauldrons of soup, rich in flesh

09:05:30:00
and it was very sweet and I actually didn't like it and I thought it was making me ill. They came up with teeth, with gold fillings in them and someone identified what were bones of a hand.

09:06:00:00
There had been a hefty air raid twenty four hours before. , "Well three of the bodies make a soup of them," and we had been cannibals.

Q: How often had that happened?

09:06:30:00

A: It was once and it was once too often.

Q: Do you believe the bodies involved were German civilians or Russian POW's?

A: No, German civilians. We understand it had happened elsewhere too. It saved the massive number of graves that

09:07:00:00
could be encountered but the flesh actually offended me. Maybe, I don't know why but it offended me.

Q: What was the reaction amongst the other prisoners once you'd worked this out?

A: They were often violently ill. The reaction was to just throw the whole pot out.

09:07:30:00
I possibly at that stage was probably quite unreceptive to a lot of food because I'd got down to round about six stone, with the three days on the

09:08:00:00
toilet and I was still trying to come to grips with eating anything.

Q: What was your fighting weight before you went in there?

A: Round about eight stone, no, ten stone.

Q: So you'd lost nearly forty percent of your body weight?

A: Yes, it just went. You could almost see it go.

Q: Was that a typical reaction amongst many of the POWs?

09:08:30:00

A: If you managed to get amoebic dysentery, that's what it did and I'd have said something like ninety percent of them died. You needed a mate that cared enough to make sure your blanket was put around you and you had the chocolate and

09:09:00:00
the cheese pushed into you.

Q: Who was your mate?

A: An Australian who'd been a POW for nearly two years.

Q: His name?

A: John, only John.

Q: Why only John?

A: We just said it to each other one day, "It's strange, we're just both John".

Q: So you don't know his surname?

09:09:30:00

A: No.

Q: Did you ever see him after the war?

A: We arranged to meet but he didn't turn up. It was just one of those strange things.

Q: In what way did you Commonwealth prisoners

09:10:00:00
organise yourselves, I guess rank had something to do with it but I mean the typical World War II tale of the prison is there a committee for this and a committee for that, was that the case in your prison?

A: Yes, there were committees and you did have to go to them if you had any ideas for plans for escape but it was almost too horrendous

09:10:30:00
to think of going out at that stage. You were almost safer in the camp because the public, the populace would have gone for you like, you'd be right out of fashion. They're losing seriously and you were not safe and

09:11:00:00
certainly would not have been safe from the Hitler Youth and the SS.

Q: I guess at that stage as well you were probably going to be liberated before you managed to get out?

A: Exactly, there were some radios down in the latrines and someone sat and took the news bulletins if they could get them, so we were relatively aware of where things

09:11:30:00
were and we only really had a couple of more weeks to wait.

Q: You did mention though that there was a tunnel?

A: Oh yes, which had been used for escape but the fascinating thing was the farmer had harvested his potatoes and he'd stacked them within ten feet of the

09:12:00:00
prison barbed wire, so it was not too difficult for the tunnel, which was almost underneath it, to get an opening and the guys would lie in the tunnel at night and the potatoes would come back through the tunnel and were distributed around. It slowly disappeared and nobody seemed to notice or say anything about it.

09:12:30:00

Q: So you were using the tunnel to bring things into prison?

A: We were using the tunnel to bring potatoes in.

Q: At this stage, just a further comment on the parcels that you were getting. The German people at this time were living a quite austere existence, the guards must have been quite jealous of the parcels you were getting?

09:13:00:00

A: Yes, we think possibly they purloined occasionally, but we did, we honestly got our Red Cross parcel every week and that is what kept us all alive.

Q: Were there ever occasions when you saw guards steal from prisoners?

A: No, no.

09:13:30:00

Q: What about prisoners stealing from each other?

A: I don't ever recall that. I think that, it would have been such a downright feeling of dishonour done. Occasionally you would exchange

09:14:00:00
some of the food. I was happy to exchange a can of beef for a can of salmon.

Q: Oh that's fair enough.

A: And that was fair enough.

Q: You mentioned though that it was frowned upon to trade smokes to a smoker?

A: That's right, yes, because he

09:14:30:00
had enough there to keep him alive. He could have also benefited by trading his smokes outside, to take his food away from him was the wrong thing.

Q: What were your guards like as far as character and discipline, brutality?

A: I can't say anything of brutality.

09:15:00:00
They would be very concerned when we had the blanket episodes and but there was no brutality. Somehow they had appeased themselves. Maybe it was even a case of letting off steam when it was all going on, but by then I think the escapes

09:15:30:00
were not being contemplated.

Q: There were obviously men who were prisoners for years longer than you were?

A: Yes.

Q: What condition were they in?

A: Well not too bad. You have to realise that where I was it was NCOs and officers.

09:16:00:00
We could elect to go to work, as we did in the cheese factory, or elect not too. I think they were always slightly better treated than the non-commissioned officers, oh, non-commissioned ranks.

Q: Do you know of any rumours or indications of spies or turncoats amongst

09:16:30:00
the prisoners?

A: Rumours of it, yes, yes.

Q: But you never directly encountered it?

A: I didn't directly encounter but I heard, "Avoid him, don't talk to him." But whether it was founded or not, I don't know.

09:17:00:00

Q: In what way does your real POW experience compare with the Hollywood version of a POW camp in World War II?

A: Almost nothing like it. The Great Escape's etcetera are Hollywood movies and that's all. They probably have some foundation about

09:17:30:00
them but some of those episodes with well fed men on motorcycles jumping and leaping over fences, a joke, an absolute joke.

Q: And what about that Hogan's Heroes image of everybody taking the mickey out of the Germans and having them over a barrel?

09:18:00:00

A: Well maybe that was after war. I think it was just a conception to get a funny film going.

Q: Did you have any humorous incidents in the camp?

A: Yes, there were funny ones. The blanket episode was always

09:18:30:00
a funny occasion. Yeah, mild things of humour, anything for a laugh in some instances.

Q: You said that mateship was quite important in your survival?

A: Yes, somehow you teamed up with someone and you were very close, you were doing things

09:19:00:00
for each other, you were sort of expressing emotions to each other, you were sort of bringing tales of home to them. In my case this guy wanted to know so much of what had happened in Australia while I was there before I left because he'd been gone so

09:19:30:00
much longer. , "What was this?" And he'd heard this and the other and was just only too pleased to get even stale news.

Q: It sounds like anything to pass the time was of interest?

A: Anything that would pass the time, yes. It was bad to lie back and mope.

09:20:00:00
I think that almost signalled that you were facing the end.

Q: Did you ever see any incidents of what we would call these days depression or mental illness amongst prisoners?

A: I'll say depression rather than mental illness. Yes, I think we all had our moments of being depressed

09:20:30:00
and that's when a mate could bring something out and make you laugh, bring you back to earth and make things feel much better for you.

Q: Tell us about the end of the war and how you came to be liberated?

A: We were literally, the walls were

09:21:00:00
wiped down by the Americans as they advanced and went past us.

Q: So what had happened to the guards by this stage?

A: The guards had gone.

Q: Could you hear the front approaching?

A: Oh yes, we could hear it coming. There was a great, well advice went out from the various people in control, "Keep in your huts for the next twenty four hours until this passes over.

09:21:30:00
Let them do anything, there's enough signs, they know it's a prisoner of war camp, but don't be outside in case the stray bullets, which may be fired at guards get you. Watch carefully your food because you've got to keep it because you won't get any from outside." And basically that was it. The only things you needed to go out for was

09:22:00:00
toilets.

Q: So you just sat tight and the guards were gone?

A: And the guards had gone and the Americans were there, small handouts of chocolate bars and cigarettes.

Q: Can you describe in what manner the Americans arrived?

A: Yes, basically all we saw were guys in tanks and they just mowed down all the barbed wire.

09:22:30:00
Pre-empted, actually the Russians were out first and they made no bones about it, they headed straight down to the farm and back came the slaughtered animals. They hadn't had decent food for so long, so they went and got it. I think the second day I went for a walk and

09:23:00:00
went down into the little village and sort of even talked a little bit to the people. They were depressed but some of them were being very pleasant and nice. But again it was not exactly safe. You were better back in your camp and the third day we were

09:23:30:00
bussed up and went to Brussels for transfer to England. We arrived in Brussels at about two o'clock in the afternoon and sent into the shower and sent into be deloused and given new clothes and then we were given some money and they said, "Go and have a night out in Brussels,

09:24:00:00
and be back here at ten o'clock tomorrow. My mate, oh waist gunner Jim Goulson, we went in and he said, "Let's go and get this cut off". Aircrew had long hair to being with; it was quite fashionable and it

09:24:30:00
annoyed the Germans no end why the POWs just let it grow, even beards and so this long mane of hair. So we both went in and sat down to have our hair cut, it was done and we went to pay and the guy said, "Do you think we're going to accept anything from you? Get out." So there

09:25:00:00
we were, looking all nicely spruced up and went in and sat down to have a drink and went to pay for it, "No, the couple there have paid for it. They want to buy you a drink." Before we knew what it was we were talking to one couple and he said, "Oh come home," and a week later we got back and

09:25:30:00
got flown over to England. We had a nice week, we had trebled our money.

Q: Alright I'll just back up a bit and cover some of that in more detail. When those American tanks rolled through the wire, what were your feelings?

A: Hurrah, at last, now we wait. How do we get back? What do we do but wait?

Q: And what did the American tankers say to you guys?

09:26:00:00

A: Basically, "Good luck mates" and, "Have a chocolate bar" or, "Have a cigarette".

Q: And then they just kept going?

A: And then they kept going, yes and then it was left to the mopping up people to come along and do the rest of it.

Q: You mentioned there that the Russians went down to a farm and??

09:26:30:00

A: Slaughtered the animals and...

Q: There's often been descriptions of liberated Russian prisoners going on a bit of a rampage, did you see any evidence of them being out of control?

A: I think they were basically out of control the way they went straight down. It was thought they had it all planned as they had not and were not getting the food

09:27:00:00
that we were and they didn't have the Red Cross parcels to boost them up.

Q: Was there anything to stop you guys just wandering back off westwards?

A: Yes, but we were advised not to. We had to wait for officialdom to do it.

Q: The interaction you had with the German villagers, was their any animosity on your part,

09:27:30:00
retribution carried out?

A: No, I think I was just, I just wanted to see that little village as it was very picturesque. We'd skirted all around it with wood parties and actually had met a few of the people, who we did meet again. I think

09:28:00:00
they'd been stripped of food and stuff by then so there was no more bartering going on. We started to get some wholesome food, not in huge quantities which was very wise because our stomachs probably wouldn't have accepted it.

Q: As far as age and gender goes what was the population of the village like given the conscription?

09:28:30:00

A: Seventy percent women, the rest young boys and old men. I would say not a male over fifteen, between fifteen and say fifty in the village, just old people, young boys and women.

09:29:00:00

Q: None of the prisoners attempted to use the German women of the village?

A: I don't know of any personally that did. The rumours were yes, they did. Again we had been cautioned

09:29:30:00
"Please don't," because you can be held up for a war crime as well. I think also the debilitated state the guys were in the sexual drive had gone away to a certain extent.

Q: Now you mentioned that you were, we'll just

09:30:00:00
go back and relate that story because we were kind of interrupted there with the electronics of the hair cut in Brussels, the barber?

A: He just said, "No, we don't expect you boys to pay. You've gone through enough. We know what it's all about. This is our little way of saying thanks." And it wasn't just the haircut. It was literally the works because there were manicurists doing hands and we didn't ask

09:30:30:00
for it but all of a sudden we just got treatment. Shampooed and then the hair cut and back to where we wanted it.

Q: You said you trebled your money, how do you mean that?

A: Well there were two things with this. The guy was a high ranking fellow in the post office so he was

09:31:00:00
able to send telegrams to our families in Sydney that we were okay and to Jim's family in England. They took us to a race meeting and said, "Have a good bet on this one," and we did and that's where we got our money. We couldn't spend anything, we couldn't spend money anywhere but

09:31:30:00
there we are, we trebled it.

Q: I'm surprised you can remember anything of that week?

A: Mmh, good food, good people and where they got their food from?

Q: So how did you get back to Blighty [England]?

A: Well we went

09:32:00:00
back to the area where we were supposed to go the week before and they made no bones about it, "Oh no, you're not the only one".

Q: Oh I didn't actually understand it before. So you were actually absent without leave in a technical sense?

A: We were absent without leave, yes but that was all waived and the next morning back to Blighty and back to Brighton.

Q: By air or sea?

A: By air,

09:32:30:00
no bones about that. Then began the hospitalisations and the cures.

Q: Can you describe what that process required for your case?

A: For my case I was actually kept in Brighton but went off a place in Hove where

09:33:00:00
they were sort of treating with diet because I was still getting the dysentery and they were trying to build up some weight on me and probably physically I was down a bit. One of the things that they made us do there was play bowls, lawn bowls. I will

09:33:30:00
admit it was the most marvellous thing for building strength back and it was getting me back into pretty good shape although I still was getting the dysentery and was not putting weight on as quickly as I should have but that was one of those things.

09:34:00:00
Eventually, oh it would have been what? I did get out on leaves to see the families in Glasgow and I got back to the squadron to catch up with some of the news there and also to visit the Goulson family there. I went down to Paton to visit the family I was friendly with there.

09:34:30:00
I think they were horrified at this ghost that walked in on them but part of the thing there was I went sailing with the daughter of the family for a couple of days down around the Scilly Isles and it was just so relaxed to get out in the freedom of the boat and get out into the ocean again and she'd never sailed it

09:35:00:00
and it was one of her father's designs.

Q: I should actually ask you, when you were shot down what was informed as far as your family went? What did they know about your status?

A: Missing on active service, that's what they were notified. They could get no more information than that until they did get a letter then from

09:35:30:00
Ken Phelan who was released at Frankfurt and he did drop a letter to them. Mail got through very quickly, unbelievably, these air letter forms and they were photoed and they went off and hundreds of them in one little reel of film and processed and out the next day.

09:36:00:00
And he sort of said boomp, he'd seen John in Frankfurt and boomp, they took it as they didn't hear from me in Frankfurt that the worst had happened, not accepting that we'd be moved on.

Q: At what point when you came back to Britain did VE [Victory in Europe] Day occur?

09:36:30:00

A: VE Day had already occurred.

Q: Okay.

A: We had VE Day in Brussels.

Q: Hence the magic week.

A: Hence the magic week, yes.

Q: So you must have been looking pretty forward to heading back to Australia?

A: Yes, and the state, the group I was in we were told we would be sent back by hospital ship. We

09:37:00:00
went off to Liverpool and there was the hospital ship and we were taken onto HMAS Bellson[?] and we walked off it and we were beautifully conned by an officer who said, "Come back on, I can talk to you up there. I can't talk to you down here on the wharf, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." And we all like sheep got led astray and of course the Orion was taken away,

09:37:30:00
out into the middle of the harbour and he had all these guys that should have been on there. That hospital ship had American officers going home on it. These guys who were ill, there were seven hundred of us, we had one medical officer. It was a troopship, head between two feet, feet between

09:38:00:00
two heads and a bench below on which we ate and under the bench was our belongings. We were ninety percent of us lousy. There was some twenty percent of us doing medical orderly jobs, just like treating the day to day tinea, the day to day lice, to save the poor old medical officer some time

09:38:30:00
to do something else. Several of us actually leapt to shore when we went through Panama and we got through to the other side, alerted the Australian authorities there the plight that that boat was in. We had specially came

09:39:00:00
on great supplies of fresh fruit, particularly I think was important for us and things seemed to be a bit better, a little better but really not much. Unbelievably there were also New Zealanders and we pulled in, as we were going into Wellington there was a great to-do as

09:39:30:00
there were a lot of British troops on board as well who were coming out to be, join in the Japanese war and the captain of the boat announced that, "Lots had been drawn and the first people to unload in New Zealand would be the British troop contingent, then the Australian contingent and then the

09:40:00:00
New Zealanders." the home-comers. So there was an immediate thing with the Australians who said, "Send the New Zealanders off before us. They should be going off first." and it got through that that should happen and it did. They then caused a disturbance on the wharf of yelling, "Let the Aussies off next."

09:40:30:00
Well that occurred too and we had a nice, very nice little visit in Wellington.

Q: Sorry John, what was the name of this ship?

A: The Orion.

Q: That was an Australian or a British ship?

A: No, a British ship.

Q: A civilian ship or??

A: Yes, normally one of the high class liners of the Orient Line.

Q: And you felt you were tricked onto this ship?

A: Yes, we were tricked onto it, there's no way about it.

09:41:00:00

Q: How do you fathom that it was so ill prepared for receiving sick men?

A: It was prepared to take troops who were going to the Pacific region but they weren't all there so they substituted the New Zealanders and the Australians that should have been on the hospital ship.

John Mathews
2035
Tape 10

10:00:50:00

Q: John, you were telling us about the situation in Wellington?

A: Yes, well the New Zealanders bellowed, "Let the Aussies off next". It was

10:01:00:
such a furore, that's what happened. Then we had a pleasant day, a nice actual civic reception in Wellington which augurs well. We were a little bit more comfortable because we were able to move into the space that the New Zealanders had. There was no extra troops came on

10:01:30:00
so there was extra space for us to go for the next few days to Sydney.

Q: What sort of shape were you in by that time?

A: Oh perhaps six stone seven. I'd been indulging with the medical people which had kept me occupied. Mind you also seeing that my own disabilities

10:02:00:00
were being cared for but then there's something about Australians that bring out the worst or the best in us but as we approached Sydney Heads, blankets suddenly appeared and went out of portholes and they hung over all the Orion, signs

10:02:30:00
and they had HMAS Bellson right across them. Pictures probably available from the Sydney Morning Herald because they featured it and it raised a furore as to what it was all about, why? And the treatment that we'd been meted out. Docked at

10:03:00:00
Woolloomooloo and we'd been told that we would move straight out to Bradfield Park where relatives and friends would be allowed, a certain number only for each person. Stood looking into the Domain and amongst the crowd there

10:03:30:00
my mother and father, and that was emotional. But even more in the bus as we turned around at Wynyard I saw my youngest brother and my sister, unseen for four years and recognised them and it was a great emotion. I

10:04:00:00
think a great relief, "I am home." and then it was a wait at Bradfield Park until they arrived.

Q: So you weren't actually able to make contact with them until Bradfield Park?

A: No, not until Bradfield Park. This was because they wanted the whole lot there at the one time. This was hospitalised, actual

10:04:30:00
hospital cases as well and so it was all done in the one episode as a welcome home to everybody and being reunited with your families and allowed you, it was a Friday, come back on Monday. , "You'll all have a leave pass given to you as you go through the door and we expect you back sometime on Monday."

10:05:00:00
And it was jubilant and home and then there was another welcome for very close friends and other members of the family. I guess a very emotional time. Monday saw me off to Nowra for two weeks in hospital.

10:05:30:00
The major treatment was for tinea which was rampant all over my body. A very interesting treatment, "Here's a chit [docket] for the mess, you're to drink a bottle of red wine a day and you're to go up onto the northern end of the beach and you're

10:06:00:00
to sunbake and get sunburnt all over." Okay tear the tinea in layers off and something in the red wine fights it from inside. Three lots of that treatment, yeah the tinea had gone and I did have another bit of time down at Nowra with intervals of coming home for weekends

10:06:30:00
and by, it was September when I got back, by January I was back at work with the Hornsby Shire Council. I used to hate Sunday nights as I wouldn't go to church but all the others would come in and they would never want to know the nice things that had happened. They'd always want the gory

10:07:00:00
horrible bits. I did burst out of the house one Sunday saying, "You're a lot of ghouls, let's talk about something nice when I come back." Hard to overcome, but the family were family again.

10:07:30:00

Q: Did they have a lot of questions?

A: Yes, there were a lot of interesting bits. Perhaps one of the nicest stories was that they had after Frankfurt become depressed, not knowing or thinking of moving on


10:08:00:00
and they decided they would take a holiday to Nambucca to sort of get over the shock and they left their new address with the post office. The first day in Nambucca the postman arrived with a telegram from the air force saying, "He's free and back in London." So

10:08:30:00
they ended up having a pleasant, thoughtful holiday in Nambucca. It was interesting readjusting to them, four years away is a long time from anyone and but it was very,

10:09:00:00
very pleasant and very comforting particularly with the two younger ones to see how they'd changed and altered in growth and so on in those four years. Then I guess we go on with the rest of my life, back to Hornsby Council for a while, hating it. My mother saw a

10:09:30:00
job advertised and said, "This is up your street. You can use your music and all that clerical stuff that you've learnt at the council." so off I went to Hobart as the orchestral manager and other things related to it. Moved onto being, after three years, to being

10:10:00:00
orchestra manager and music librarian in Perth for fourteen odd years.

Q: Those situations were with the ABC?

A: Yes, and then to Melbourne for three and then back to Sydney for another three plus and was there for the opening of the Sydney Opera House, a lot of very interesting people and a very interesting career.

10:10:30:00
Time doesn't give us much more to it. In 1974 the head injury asserted itself very dramatically. I had an epileptic fit on a plane going to the Philippines taking the orchestra on an overseas tour. I had no idea. I thought something drastic was happening and

10:11:00:00
I was flown back and treatment was very, very quick. I was amazed at some of the treatment that I did get, diagnosed as epileptic and a lot of strange things happened, mainly dealing with a later trip with the orchestra to Europe.

10:11:30:00
In the three months another guy, an ABC who can I say had political pull thought, "Ah, this is how I can go." and I dug my heels in and said, "Well if he's going he comes and does all the preparation." and a lot of things happened and so on and I asked to be sent to the Commonwealth Medical Officer

10:12:00:00
and a lot of funny things he told me. They'd done all this without their guidance and he had to take note of what one of his colleagues had written down, which was, "His doctor and specialist should be consulted but it may be politically sensible to not let him go on this exhausting tour." He said to me, "You've

10:12:30:00
shown me there are more exhausting tours that they expect you to do here and I'm going to tell you you're being retired." He said, "First of all I'm giving you all your sick leave on full pay, converting half pay to full, and in twelve months time you're going on full superannuation." That prompted me to, "What am I going to do with the rest of my life at fifty four?"

10:13:00:00
Well from a family of gardeners and having been a gardener myself I went back to the horticulture college at Ryde, completed the horticulture certificate taking in the four year bonsai course while I was there, doing numerous courses on Australian native plants and followed that up

10:13:30:00
shortly afterwards becoming a volunteer guide at Sydney's Botanic Gardens. I became a judge at the Royal Horticultural Society. I have spoken in Denmark, in Poland, England, USA and New Zealand on horticultural matters, frequently around Australia.

10:14:00:00
I go twice a year judging to Hobart. I thoroughly enjoy life in the horticulture field and hope and look forward to many more years to come.

Q: Good for you John. I now just want to jump back and ask you a couple of questions here and there. First of all you were on board the Orion on your

10:14:30:00
way home when the Japanese surrendered?

A: Yes. A beautiful announcement, "This is the Captain of the Orion speaking. I am pleased to announce that war with Japan has terminated today. There will be no relaxation of any regulations of this boat. No smoking out of the

10:15:00:00
decks whatsoever." Well understandable did the submarines get the messages, did what else, yes, but it seemed a little hardship for those that wanted all those luxuries.

Q: So little bit of anti-climax?

A: Little bit of an anti-climax.

Q: Can you tell me a bit more about how challenging it was readjusting back

10:15:30:00
into your normal civilian life after such an incredible experience?

A: It was basically an uptake of boredom, doing that day-to-day work with the council was utterly not me.

10:16:00:00
I had, well periods I would go on the counter relieving the teller. That was all right. I didn't mind dealing with the public and sending them off in the right directions or receiving their rate notes and payments and such likes but the rest of it, sitting in there working at rate notice books

10:16:30:00
was incredibly boring. So when my mother found this other possibility, joy, joy, joy and I was quite amazed actually that I was selected to do it.

Q: Did you find yourself at all traumatized or haunted by any of the things you'd been through in the war?

A: Not

10:17:00:00
traumatized but for several years I kept having a recurring dream where I would meet the skipper and the carpet operator in a train. I think wishful thinking. Probably the fact they were both New Zealanders and would have been close handy

10:17:30:00
and possible related to it or wishing those two had appeared.

Q: Did you have contact with anyone from the crew from them on, or anyone who had been through a similar experience that you could talk to?

A: Yes, yes, actually another guy who had been on the squadron but had not been shot down.

10:18:00:00
A guy I'd been at school with and we used to see each other occasionally in Sydney and then when I went to Hobart I sent a card the first Christmas and I didn't get a reply and I have found since, at that time he moved to Canberra, so we're about to contact each other. This is only in the last

10:18:30:00
week came from the 214 Squadron, he is now the fifth one we know in Australia that's left. Contact still with one waist gunner, Jim Goulson and certainly with all the McKymer family in Glasgow,

10:19:00:00
who I stay with, we have a wonderful time together and they treat me, they call me the long lost son and I do feel part of their family, so that helps. At one stage the other waist gunner, Ken Phelan came to live in Australia. Romantically he married the WAAF that

10:19:30:00
packed his parachute and she was not exactly happy in Australia so they returned and I have lost contact with them after that.

Q: You said that you got fed up with people hounding you wanting all the gory details of what you'd been through, what became your attitude about talking about the war? Did you feel like it was something you wanted

10:20:00:00
to discuss or??

A: No, I didn't, I wanted. I literally felt, "I don't want to talk about this. I want to get on with my life." And then I'd think, "Well why can't I talk about all the nice things that happened?" but people didn't want that.

Q: So that remained your policy for a long time?

A: Yes.

10:20:30:00
Basically that was a policy until the nurse from Korea sort of said, "Come on, get this out of yourself and don't be so backward in remembering it because you can't forget it."

Q: Why do you think she was so motivated to help you to see that?

A: Well

10:21:00:00
I think she was a very critical nurse. I think she realized long before counselling occurred that one needed counselling and that was what she was giving me.

Q: How have you found the process of going back and looking at all of that and talking about it?

10:21:30:00

A: Every now and then there's some sheer emotion. I did break up quite severely with the recorded session at one of the very happy spots. I've felt occasionally here there's deep emotion that's occurred but

10:22:00:00
in full retrospect I'm very grateful for having done this.

Q: Fantastic.

A: And very, very grateful for the absolute thoughtfulness of you two boys today. It's a revelation to know that there are people that can be sympathetic and helpful when there's some trauma coming.

10:22:30:00

Q: Thank you so much John, it's a pleasure. I wanted to ask you how you thought your experience in the war how that changed you as a person?

A: It has made me more aware that friendships and family

10:23:00:00
are very important things. There'll never ever be anything like a bonding of an aircrew. It takes those special situations for that to occur. I think most servicemen will agree that that is one of the things that service does.

10:23:30:00
It certainly has caused me to look at my church upbringing. Perhaps if I say I would like to believe but I don't why I can believe. As I said earlier how can a thinking, caring God allow such things to happen?

10:24:00:00
It's probably also motivated me politically in some ways. I think my family consider I'm heavily Greenie. I've been tied up to a tree in Daintree and I've been tied up to a tree in Tasmania but that's because I thought

10:24:30:00
those were very right and ready objects. I felt a decry[?] a few years ago at the injustice handed out to prisoners of war by our illustrious Howard. When the small print was read it was

10:25:00:
Japanese prisoners only that benefited from the handout. No feeling that those of German had had a mental harassment rather than the physical harassment that the Japanese had meted out and certainly no thought for the Koreans and Vietnamese

10:25:30:00
boys who probably suffered the worst of all.

Q: Why do you think you survived?

A: Determination of life, of wanting life to go to its fullest and oh, I won't go quite there but the family tell me I am like

10:26:00:00
Great Aunt Ada who was killed on a cross walk when she was a hundred and four. Okay, I'm in pretty good health for my eightieth and I think yeah, there's a few good years left in me. If I get to a hundred and four and I'm like Ada, okay. If not, please put a needle in me and get

10:26:30:00
rid me. I would go so far as to say despite a Depression, despite the World War too, I have lived through the best part of Australia.

Q: What did your war experience show you about Australians and Australian

10:27:00:00
spirit?

A: That Australians will stick together. They'll also stick together as the New Zealanders do and the Canadians do. I think we're very, very alike. I don't think it's any small matter that we link Anzac together as Australians and New Zealanders

10:27:30:00
because we'll stick together and support each other.

Q: Is that Anzac tradition an important thing for you?

A: I think yes, my tendencies are generally at the Dawn Service because there is to me something

10:28:00:00
very satisfying, deep feeling and very honest about people that get there. I think I said earlier that my father thought the March was perhaps aggrandisement of war and maybe I subscribe a little to that as well. But now I think with the way young people are taking more

10:28:30:00
notice of it perhaps I will give that a second thought, particularly as I'm getting young people asking more questions about it these days and they seem to know more about Anzac from the Anzac parades than they do from the Dawn Service.

Q: You've returned to Germany haven't you?

A: Yes.

10:29:00:00

Q: How was that?

A: Uplifting, certainly a wonderment of why we ever fought that war. I've met nice people in Germany and of course the many I've struck through music. It's, well I think my sister purposely

10:29:30:00
took me through certain areas to show me those horrors didn't exist. We did go through Moosburg and no sign of those barbed wires or that place. It was erased and I think that was done purposely to let me see it.

Q: You'd recommend it as a healthy thing to do?

A: Yes, yes and

10:30:00:00
I have been back also a second time from that to it but these latest visits have been mainly in Scandinavia, particularly Denmark and of course Poland.

Q: How do you feel about war as a general phenomena, a concept these days?

A: I once read

10:30:30:00
that other countries of the world when there is conflict in the offing should send as their representatives their leading comedians and everyone would laugh and no war would take place. However I guess the Bible says, "There has always been war and there will always be rumours of war".

10:31:00:00
Is it part of nature, as gruesome as it is, to get rid of us when we're overpopulating the world?

Q: The problem of epilepsy that came to you later on in life John was that speculated as a result of the escape hatch hitting you on the head?

10:31:30:00

A: Yes, yes. The lesion is a scar on the left temporal lobe and well I wasn't aware of it and as you age scars move slightly and it just a scar internally and this spot floated and would touch the brain and cause the epilepsy.

10:32:00:00
The medication I'm on just floats that scar away and I am as healthy as it's possible to be.

Q: Very good. Finally I just wanted to give you an opportunity, if you think there's something about your war experience or your feelings about war that you haven't had a chance to express or a message related to those concepts that you want to

10:32:30:00
pass on to Australians of the future, I want to give you the opportunity now to express any of that? Anything come to mind.

A: Try to avoid war at all costs. It's destructive of humans; it's destructive of their homes and their belongings.

10:33:00:00
It provides cruelty, to be avoided at all costs. Enough.
INTERVIEW ENDS