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Extract from Cliff Gascoigne's RAF memoirs, 'The Life of an Erk.'

Once the rest of the squadron came back to join us we had a few days stay at Tobruk. Nothing much happened except the lads decided that I was mad. We were all sat in a circle talking when one of the chaps saw that I was scraping something I was holding in my hand and asked what I was doing. I told him that I was scraping the explosive from inside an Italian hand grenade. Suddenly and with rather a lot of foul language, they all got up and moved away. I was disgusted; fancy not trusting me, the only fitter armourer on the squadron, to take the explosive out. Anyway I got it out, leaving the detonator in. I don't really know why I did it myself, bored stiff just hanging around with nothing to do I suppose.

Two things happened at one of the ‘dromes we stopped at for a few days. We had two Italian POWs arrive to do some labouring. They had a ‘pup’ tent pitched near us, but when we got up one morning they had disappeared, along with their tent and all their belongings. We did not bother too much about them, but the next morning when we got up the tent was back. When asked where they had been they said they had been back to their POW camp to visit their friends. Now what do you say to people like that. It would be a huge joke to threaten to put them back in the cage when they had already been back for a day to see their friends.

The other thing that happened could have been fatal for me. As we were on the move so much all the revolvers were kept in a cupboard, with the door locked and screwed up in our tent, and I had the key. Someone sent an airman to me to get a revolver as he was going to do some dispatch riding. I looked at the cupboard with all the screws to undo and decided to let him have the one I kept under my pillow when on the move. I told him that he could have mine as I did not want to open the cupboard. The first chamber was empty for safety, I put it on my bed and turned away to get some paper for the airman to sign when there was a loud bang. There he was shaking like a leaf with the gun in his hand saying, "Nothing happened when I pressed the trigger the first time." It must have missed me by about three inches at the very most. The ammunition we had was dum dum (soft-tipped lead bullet that made a bigger hole by the lead spreading on the way through) so it would have made quite a large exit from my body. This type of bullet was declared illegal a short while later. One of the chaps had a brand new Italian tunic hanging on the tent pole. He’d wanted to keep it as a souvenir, unfortunately it now had quite a hole in the sleeve, so away went his souvenir. I may add that the air in our tent was blue for a few minutes! The funny thing is that the chap who owned the Italian tunic made more of it than I did, of course it did not matter if I got hit, but to ruin his beautiful brand new Italian tunic, oh dear!

We were in retreat once again, I cannot remember any stops except for a night sleeping under the stars. We were told we were to have another rest period at Luxor. We travelled from Cairo on the overnight train leaving early evening and arriving mid morning next day. A 3-ton lorry then took us to RAF Luxor on the banks of the River Nile. We passed the Winter Palace Hotel, which was closed, all the shops were closed and the place was dead. Nowadays people pay hundreds of pounds for a holiday there.

We were accommodated in tents and pyards (wild dogs) used to come scavenging at night. They were a nuisance so we decided to have a shoot. We were down the road from the camp when another party came out. The people I was with were about 400 yards down the road from the other crowd when a dog came across the road, there was a bang as someone in the other party took a pot shot and missed. The bullet hit the road about half way between the two parties and spun off over the top of us - it was a tracer bullet (had a light in the back to show where its going). After that the py dog shoot was cancelled.

We returned to the war zone once again and got re-equipped with American Baltimores, which were very much like a Hampden to look at. They were better than the Hampdens except that when pulling out of a dive they tended to be tail heavy and some of them failed to pull out, apparently the tail would not allow the aircraft to start its upward climb and would cause the tail to catch the ground and cause the crash, and then we would have lost another crew. On operations, there would be 12 of our Baltimore aircraft and 6 others from American squadrons with them.

The aircraft were doing about five raids a day. With 12 aircraft, each carrying six 250 pound bombs, this meant we had to load 360 x 250 pound bombs per day. We had 4 crews of 3 men to load these bombs and did not use the winch as this would take too long. The method of loading involved one man on the nose and one man on the tail, with the third man on his hands and knees alongside the bomb but underneath the bomb carrier. The men on the nose and tail then lifted the bomb high enough for the man on his hands and knees to get under the bomb and take the weight until we were all comfortable (about 5 seconds). The chap with the bomb on his back now had to get off his knees and lift the bomb up to the carrier while the other two steadied and guided it onto the bomb hook and made sure it was safely hooked on. A good crew would probably load six bombs in about 15 to 20 minutes.

We were likely to get sand storms at our ‘drome so, once again I was nominated to go with the armament officer to look at two "dust free ‘dromes". A dust storm could hold up flying so the idea was that when we heard that one was approaching I would go off with my merry band to one of these “dust free” places and carry on as best we could to keep aircraft bombing.

We gave an American a lift from just outside Cairo who insisted that he wanted to go our way and would not take our word for it that we were going north and he wanted to go south. We had to pass through an American camp to get to ours so when we saw an American sergeant we stopped to drop him off - we had brought him about 100 miles north of Cairo and he wanted to be about 100 miles south of Cairo! We decided that while the sergeant was giving him a right old telling off we should depart, in case he tried to give him back to us.

At that time a Wellington aircraft arrived on the ‘drome with a fellow wearing a funny looking helmet and knee britches. We all wondered who and what he was. After a couple of days the Wellington took off after dark and we did not see the man again, but there was a Wellington there again the next day. Word went round afterwards that he was a paratrooper being dropped behind enemy lines armed with wire cutters to cut as many wires as he could find to mess up the German communications.

There was a Wellington there for a few days, whether it was the same one we did not know, but we had to bomb it up one day. It was evening, when we bombed up and I was driving up the side of the ‘drome in a clapped out old wagon when someone shouted and I stopped. It would not start again so I got out and started to run. There was a very loud explosion but I did not stop to look. When I found some slit trenches I found that I was in the armoury area, I then set off for our office tent. I had gone about 10-15 yards when just in front of me a person in a flying jacket appeared, pointing towards the burning aircraft, “Look at those poor blokes, my mates.”

When they got the aircrew chap into the slit trench he told them what happened. He was the rear gunner and on take off he pointed his guns at 90 degrees to the fuselage and sat with his hand on the door release, looking straight down the fuselage towards the front of the aircraft. Suddenly it was like a raging inferno inside the aircraft, the flames seemed to start near the front and move to the back very quickly. This was his cue to operate the door release and go out of the gun turret backwards without a parachute, as they had not got enough height to use one. I would think that they must have been anything up to 100 feet off the ground when he left the aircraft. He also said that he had done this once before! I still had a good head of hair in those days but it stood up on end so fast I thought I was bald.

I carried on down to our office tent. I got on the phone and asked for an ambulance. We were one side of the exchange and the ambulance and the Officers’ Mess were on the other side; these were shared lines. I had a bit of a problem as a very slurred voice, came on the line, “Officers mess here.” I said I wanted the ambulance. This happened a couple of times, then a very loud voice came on the line "He wants an ambulance, get off the line you idiot." He did too and I was able to tell the medics where to come.

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