The Red Line: The Gripping Story of the RAF’s Bloodiest Raid on Hitler’s Germany

CHAPTER 4

In the Face of Death

Members of Rusty Waughman’s 101 Squadron kit up prior to take off

Sam Harris and his crew travelled by train to Elsham Wolds, home of 576 Squadron, in early January 1944. They pulled up at a small rural station and Sam leaned out of the window to ask the lone porter on the platform if it was Elsham. He nodded and they lugged their bulging kitbags off the train.

As they looked around, wondering what to do next, the porter approached them. ‘Are you boys after the airfield?’

Sam raised his eyebrows and surveyed the featureless Lincolnshire countryside. They were in RAF uniform, they were laden with kit. Did the man think they were here to enjoy the scenery? There wasn’t any scenery.

‘Yes,’ one of the crew replied wearily.

‘In that case, you need the next station. They’ll pick you up from there.’

The train had sounded its whistle and was starting to pull away, but they managed to grab their stuff and climb back on board before it was too late. They flopped back into the seats they had left a few moments earlier. No one said a word.

Finally Ken spoke. ‘Six bloody months to get here and we get off at the wrong bloody station.’

Though operational crews had little say in their immediate future, Rusty Waughman asked to be posted to 101 Squadron; Paul Zanchi, who had become a friend during training, was based there. He was told by a Flight Commander that 101 was a ‘special’ squadron, where only the best pilots were sent.

By the time Rusty arrived at Ludford Magna he discovered that Paul had become yet another casualty of the Battle of Berlin. On the night of 26 November, one of his first ops, he had been sent to bomb the Big City and never came back. ‘It was a real shock, an eye-opener, an awakening; a realisation of what it all meant. I felt a sense of real sadness and I knew then that things weren’t going to be as easy as they seemed to be in training.’

In November 1943 Reg Payne, a young wireless operator, had crewed up with two Pilot Officers, Michael Beetham (later Sir Michael Beetham, Marshal of the RAF and the Chief of Air Staff in ultimate command of the legendary Vulcan 607 bombing of Port Stanley runway during the Falklands War) and Frank Swinyard, and been posted to 50 Squadron at Skellingthorpe. Shortly after he arrived, he was told that his mother had sent a telegram asking him to come home. His brother had been shot down. His new Wing Commander initially refused him permission to do so. He feared that Reg’s parents, after losing one RAF son, would make him promise not to fly; they did not want a new crew of such promise to be broken up.

His boss relented when Reg promised that he would return regardless of his parents’ pleas. ‘As it was, my mum and dad didn’t try to dissuade me. They just said, “Reg, whatever you do, just be careful.”’ A few months later they discovered that his brother was alive and being held in a prisoner-of-war camp; he was one of the lucky ones. ‘We were always losing crews. There was a Canadian crew in our hut and they all got the chop. They used to have loads of cookies, cakes and biscuits sent to them from Canada. They would leave boxes open and say to us, “Just help yourselves to anything you want.” One morning they didn’t come back and we were left with all the cookies. A crew came and took all their personal stuff away. They didn’t exist any more.’23

The introduction to squadron life was less sobering for others, but still disconcerting. On the advice of the Squadron Adjutant, Andy Wejcman had changed his name to Wiseman. His identity disc said he was Church of England. When Andy asked why, he was told that most recruits were C of E; changing the religious denomination to Catholic or Jewish meant stopping the machine that stamped the letters, a process the Women Auxiliary Air Force members found unduly laborious.

‘I can get it changed if you want,’ Andy was told.

‘What’s the difference?’ he replied.

‘You’ll be buried in accordance with Christian rites when your charred remains are found on the continent of Europe.’

Andy didn’t want to be labelled as difficult, and decided it didn’t matter; he would be dead. The denomination remained.

He was posted to 466 Squadron Royal Australian Air Force at RAF Leconfield in Yorkshire – ‘A Polish Jew, flying with the Australian Air Force!’ – as a bomb aimer. ‘I really enjoyed squadron. The camaraderie was lovely and the Australians treated me as an equal. If we argued, my pilot used to say, “Don’t give me any airs just because you went to unifuckingversity!’ But he didn’t mean it seriously.’

When Sam Harris and his crew finally made it to Elsham Wolds on that icy January Sunday they were pointed in the direction of a Nissen hut in the corner of a field. Their living quarters was a room with 14 beds, six of which were surrounded by piles of clothes and books which two NCOs were putting in freshly labelled kitbags.

‘What’s going on?’ Ken asked.

The men stopped what they were doing. ‘We’re the Committee of Adjustment,’ one of them answered. ‘We’re collecting the property of the crew that were here. They’re listed as missing; we look after their belongings in the meantime. If you give us some time we’ll get the hut cleared and you can move in. I hope you have better luck than they did.’

The crew stood silent for a few seconds, watching as the two men cleared away the lives of their predecessors. Ken suggested they head to the mess for a stiffener.

The first crew member to experience the fire and fury of an operational raid was normally the pilot. As part of his training on base he was required to tag along with an experienced crew on a watching brief, a routine known as flying ‘second dickie’. Some did not survive those flights; many a fledgeling crew lost their skipper before they had even started a tour.

Ray Francis (front row, far left), end of tour

Ray Francis, a flight engineer with 622 Squadron at Mildenhall in Suffolk, barely slept a wink the night their pilot, an Aussie named Ray Trenouth, went on his first op as second dickie. His crew just lay on their bunks praying for his return. Eight hours later, to their great relief, he walked back into the married quarter which was their home on base. He said nothing, kicked off his boots, sat on his bed, pushed his cap to the back of his head, lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. His silence was more than the others could bear.

‘What was it like, Ray?’

He blew out a cloud of smoke and chuckled. ‘Just wait until you blighters go!’

Ray Francis had joined up after seeing his home city of Birmingham suffer under the weight of the Luftwaffe bombing. He wasn’t going to be easily deterred. ‘In the early days on the squadron we knew that people were being shot down and killed. But we never talked about it. We never related casualties to deaths. If 20 aircraft went up and two got shot down, you never said to yourself at that time, “That’s 10 per cent gone, so we’ve got to do 30 ops, therefore we’re going to get the chop three times.” We were just keen to get in and take part. You never expected to finish a tour, but then again you always thought it’ll happen to the other fellow and not me. Now that’s a bit daft, isn’t it?’24

Norman ‘Babe’ Westby was the youngest member of Rusty Waughman’s crew. As a bomb aimer his role was to guide the pilot over the target and release the bombs at the right time. He spent most of the op next to or behind the pilot, but moved down into the nose during the bombing run, the point at which the aircraft was running the gauntlet of the enemy’s most focused flak defences. He would lie down and look through the bombsight as shells exploded and shrapnel flew around him, to usher the bomber calmly into position.

It was not a job for the faint-hearted. In Norman’s opinion, it guaranteed him the best view of the unfolding drama: the searchlights scouring the sky and the fires burning on the ground; the kaleidoscopic ‘target indicators’ released by the Pathfinders to mark his aiming point – or, when visibility was poor, the skymarkers, coloured flares attached to parachutes. And to round off the show, as he thought of it, were the ‘fireworks’. ‘Isn’t it pretty?!’ he would cry, surveying the flak-blasted stage. ‘Isn’t it beautiful?!’

‘For Christ’s sake, Norman, shut up!’ the rest of the crew would chorus. They just wanted to hear that the bombs were gone and they could head for safety.

When another crew went missing, ‘It wasn’t worth thinking about,’ Rusty Waughman says. ‘We would raise a toast to them: “Here’s to so-and-so, he’s dead, and here’s to the next one to die.” Or: “Death put his bony hand on your shoulder and said – Live, chum, I’m coming.” We were young and naive. We didn’t have the mental capacity to truly understand the reality. The chaps who suffered most were the highly educated ones, who understood what was happening and knew they were likely to die.

‘If the other crews in your hut didn’t return, then the Committee of Adjustment arrived to remove all their personal belongings. One minute they were, the next minute they weren’t, and then a new crew arrived to replace them. People just disappeared. You didn’t see dead bodies, even though thousands of my colleagues died. People simply weren’t there any more.’

Alan Payne remained an irrepressible optimist. He always thought there was ‘a gap in the flak’ where he and his crew would find safety under the heaviest fire. Roger Coverley was a fatalist. ‘I knew I was going to get the chop because all my mates around me were getting it. So many aircraft were being lost that it felt inevitable. But it did not affect me. I thought, whatever happens, happens. No one shed any tears about it. We laughed at it really. We thought, let’s get on with it and then have a drink.’

Drink was not discouraged. Even Bomber Harris believed his men needed a release. ‘I have always considered that the strain imposed by sustained bomber operations requires that aircrew personal should enjoy the maximum amount of freedom from restraint, and should be relieved, as far as can be done without loss of efficiency, of routine station duties.’ He added: ‘The last thing I would wish to do would be to impose on aircrew personnel an irksome regime of inspections, parades and spit and polish.’25

The focal points of the men’s life became the pub and the mess. Any entertainment was welcomed which might take their minds off what lay ahead, whether it was the cinema or just a good sing-song in the mess.

Sam Harris and his crew were regular visitors to the Oswald pub in Scunthorpe on their free evenings. It had a gramophone; the barmaid would put on Bing Crosby singing ‘Cow Cow Boogie’, and on Saturdays there was a large back room where ‘some of the aircrew would go on stage and do their party piece, usually when the night was well advanced and a quantity of beer had been consumed. A favourite was a Flight Sergeant from 576 Squadron who was in charge of “discipline”; he sang a rude song about a woodpecker. It was always greeted with applause and the crowd joined in the chorus.’

Not everyone could use these diversions to escape the feeling of impending doom. Chick Chandler’s pre-war job – manufacturing parts for anti-aircraft guns – was a protected occupation, but everyone he knew had joined up and he didn’t want to be left out. ‘I can’t say I really enjoyed life in Bomber Command. It was always in the back of your mind that tomorrow might be the day that you might die. Even when you were going out, there was always the thought that it might be the last time: that this would be your last pint, or this might be your last dance. I wanted to join up and be part of the war effort, but the reality wasn’t quite as I imagined. Nobody told me they shot back!’

The other release was female company. The objects of their desire were the girls in the local town who might have an eye for a young man in uniform. There were also the WAAFS, members of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force who worked alongside the men on base, doing clerical jobs in operations and control rooms and working in technical, electrical and mechanical roles to free the men for flying duties.

Norman ‘Babe’ Westby had been a virgin when he joined Rusty Waughman’s crew. ‘Taffy, our mischievous wireless operator, took it upon himself to introduce him to the ways of the flesh. He knew of a full-bosomed woman in Grimsby called “Luscious Lil” with a penchant for revealing outfits, who’d be the ideal target for Norman’s first operational sortie with the opposite sex.’ He organised a pub crawl. ‘By the end, Norman was rubbing his hands with excitement. The sight of her black stockings with the thin black lines at the back made it almost impossible to bear. Needless to say, the evening concluded satisfactorily as far as most parties were concerned, and Taffy took great pride in his achievement of turning a boy into a man.’

The married men worried about those they had left behind, and might leave behind permanently. When they were bombed out of their home in Portsmouth, Ron Auckland’s family moved to Porchester. Another family who had also suffered the same fate lived two doors away, and Ron became friendly with Sheila, a friend of their daughter. ‘As soon as I saw her, I knew she was the girl for me.’

She was equally smitten. ‘I felt safe with him.’

They became engaged in 1942, shortly before Ron was posted to America for his pilot training. A year later they married. Ron’s best man was Alan Barnes, another pilot whom he had met during the recruiting process at Lord’s Cricket Ground. Their group had been assembled in alphabetical order and the two men ended up next to each other in line – it was the chance start of a great friendship. They were soon stationed together as trainee pilots and became inseparable. Posted to different squadrons, they vowed to try and meet up every time they were on leave.

In January 1944 Ron called Alan’s base to put a date in the diary for a pint. He was told Alan had gone missing on a raid over Berlin. ‘I knew he was dead. It really brought home what we were all facing.’

Alan’s body was never found.

Sheila had only met him at their wedding, but his last words to her were: ‘If anything happens to Ron, I’ll always look after you.’

Ron and Sheila Auckland’s wedding

‘It was a great shock,’ Ron recalled. ‘Of course people you knew were dying all of the time. In Portsmouth I went to a lot of the Navy dances and we lost many of our friends when one of the ships got torpedoed. We knew the war. We understood it.’

She and Ron never discussed the dangers. ‘Sheila obviously knew what I was doing in Bomber Command but I didn’t speak to her about the operations or the losses. I never wanted to worry her. She just expected me to turn up when we’d agreed.’

Sheila also did her best not to distress him. ‘I cried every time he left but I never let him see me cry. When I saw him off at the railway station, he kept opening the door to say goodbye one last time. The porter shouted out, “Close that door and put that light out!” But Ron kept on opening it. In the end I said to him, “You’ve got to go, you’ve got to go.” It was so hard. My sister’s husband was in the Navy, so we both used to cry together.’

They ended up living together. ‘I could talk to my sister about it. We would listen to the radio and some bad news would come on and we’d end up crying. She’d say to me, “Let’s sleep together tonight,” for comfort. But the men never knew about any of this.’

On one occasion Ron came back to the house unexpectedly to find Sheila in tears. ‘I was upset because he saw me crying. I tried to be the brave girl because I didn’t want him to worry. That was the wartime attitude. But it affects people on such a personal level – the fear that I had was being replicated by hundreds of thousands people across the country night after night, day after day. But you never showed it. No, we went dancing to take our mind off it.’

Each day Ron was away, Sheila lived in fear of the ‘telegram boy’ and what he might bring. ‘One day he arrived with an envelope and I didn’t want to take it. I thought it was telling me Ron was missing or dead. My aunt opened it. It was from Ron. He was telling me he’d won the Distinguished Flying Cross. The silly man sent me a telegram!’

The unceasing tension took its toll. Rusty Waughman was forced to replace his first flight engineer. ‘He was fine in training, but as soon as we were on operations he would just sit on the floor and quiver. He was incapable of carrying out his duties. I stuck with him for a couple of ops, but during one our starboard engine was on fire and the poor guy was unable to do anything about it. I had to take all the emergency actions myself. It reached the point where it was affecting our safety, so I reported him to the CO, and he left the station that afternoon so as not to affect the morale of others. I don’t know if he was made LMF or not, but he should never have been because, although he knew of his condition, he never refused to fly on ops.’

LMF – shorthand for ‘Lack of Moral Fibre’ – was the label given to those deemed to have lost the will to fight, branded as cowards and removed from operations in disgrace. The threat of it was the sword of Damocles that hung over every airman’s head. During the operation in which Chick Chandler had become confused about how much Window to throw out of the plane, their Stirling bomber developed a technical fault. The crew began to argue over whether they should turn back or continue to the target. ‘We were facing mortal danger, but we were more worried about what would happen if we returned. I knew we didn’t have a chance of surviving, but someone said: “They’ll say we’re LMF.” It was an ever-present fear in Bomber Command. They were more scared of being called a coward than they were of flying. People were willing to risk their lives to avoid being branded LMF.’

Any early return from an op came under the kind of scrutiny that induced many to press on regardless. One can only speculate upon the number of aircraft which might have perished because the crew decided that dealing with any mechanical problems was a less daunting prospect than the disgrace of being labelled cowards. Bomb aimer Campbell Muirhead recorded an account in his diary of the treatment of a sergeant who had refused to fly: ‘There he was standing out in front, all on his own, in full view of every person in the unit, to be stripped of his wings and then his sergeant’s tapes. They had all been unstitched beforehand so they came away easily when they were ripped from his uniform. He was immediately posted elsewhere.’26

Alan Payne was sent to find and bring back his mid-upper gunner, who ran away after two operations. On the return journey, once he had assured them he wouldn’t try to escape, they attempted to lighten the mood by taking him to a dance hall in Nottingham. It only provided a temporary respite, however; once they got back to Lincolnshire, the gunner was stripped of his stripes and brevet and posted to a camp in Sheffield to be ‘retrained’.

Alan and his crew were sympathetic, but didn’t dwell on his fate. Once gone he was barely mentioned; there was always another operation, and life in Bomber Command was hazardous enough without having someone on board who might be incapable of carrying out his job at a critical moment.

Andy Wiseman had the misfortune to see what went on in an ‘LMF camp’, though as a visitor and not an inmate. ‘I remember seeing one of the bases they used for people who were branded LMF. They were allowed to be drilled for 55 minutes, and they had cold showers in the morning in winter. It was terrible. LMF was one of the great unfairnesses of the war. Though I suspect that some of the LMF people were cowards, most of them were just deeply affected by their experiences and couldn’t cope any more. I think it took more courage to admit you were afraid and couldn’t go on. Bravery only lasts for so long …’

Men could serve on so many operations before the bank of courage from which they had drawn was empty. Some found the will to carry on regardless, perhaps because they were too ashamed to admit to their fear and dreaded the accusations of cowardice that might follow. Harry Evans served his early ops with a mid-upper gunner, ‘a proper Jack-the-lad’, who soon found it difficult to cope. ‘The crew didn’t tell me till much later, but he went to the Gunnery Officer and asked to go. The officer talked him out of it. On ops he would have panic attacks, especially if we were being shot up. He’d start shouting: “We’re all going to get killed!” or “There’s holes in the tail!” We’d just say, “Shut up, you …” But he got stuck in from then on. I look at it in two ways: he wasn’t the best mid-upper gunner because of the panic. On the other hand, he was too scared to doze off at his position …’

Rusty Waughman believed the mental scars were worse than any physical wounds. ‘I know one airman who pressed on. When they were damaged by flak during an op, he blacked out, left his seat and wandered to the back of the aircraft. The rest of the crew tried to talk to him, but he couldn’t speak and he had no further recollection of the op. He was transferred to the hospital at Matlock, where he was unconscious for several days until a nurse dropped a metal dish. He woke up screaming, “There’s another poor sod going down. Look at the flames! Look at the flames!”’ The man was eventually invalided out of the service.

When men suffered a nervous breakdown because of the stress and exhaustion of incessant ops, they were given medical and psychiatric treatment rather than punishment – and given the relentless nature of life in Bomber Command it is surprising that so few men suffered psychological problems. Only 0.3 per cent of aircrew were officially classified as showing a Lack of Moral Fibre, though countless more suffered from a spectrum of what we would now term post-traumatic stress disorders.

Jack Watson’s crew was joined by a Mosquito squadron on base at Upwood. Jack was in his room in the old married quarters when a Mosquito which had become lost in the fog careered into one of the adjoining buildings. ‘The house was ablaze, and as we were running towards it we could see three of our lads who had just come back from a raid sitting on the bed. We could see them sitting there; they still had their uniforms on. They couldn’t get out and we couldn’t get in to help them – and there wasn’t a thing anybody could do about it. Suddenly the house crashed down and collapsed on them and they disappeared into a cloud of flame and smoke. One of our mates tried to get in to help them out, but he got badly burnt and in the end he had to jump out.

‘At the end of the terraced houses there was a little brick wall and I went down there to find the navigator and pilot of the Mosquito. They had come straight through the top of the aircraft canopy and had hit this wall. They were just lying there. That’s something which shook me. They were a real mess, but they were still completely in their flying kit, which virtually held them together. And when they put them in a blanket it just folded up into a ball … I have never seen anything like it.’