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OTHER SQUADRON MEMORIES. At Hemswell we were very fortunate, and largely escaped enemy attack during the last year of the war. However one night in late March, our crew had gone out on the town and all had too much grog, and sometime after midnight, hit the sack. Doc, Rosie and I all shared the same large room on the third floor of our barracks. Anyway, when I got up in the morning and came down for breakfast, everyone was already up, and really in a foul mood and very growly. I asked what the problem was. It seemed that buzz bombs had come over, air raid sirens were going, and everyone had gone to the air raid shelter and spent most of a miserable night there. Meanwhile I had slept peacefully through it all, and had a good night.
Big Ben, a pleasant giant of a man, was the owner of a pub that our crew visited frequently. For some reason, he practically adopted our crew, and many pleasant hours after “Time Gentlemen Please” was spent in the company of he and his family. Usually before heading back to base, we would be served with bacon and eggs — a real treat indeed. Of course they were also rewarded with extra ration coupons, and goodies like nylons, chocolates and cigarettes from packages from Canada. It was great though, to be treated almost like members of a family.
Quite often, after crews on the battle order had taken off for the nights targets, we would go into town and end up in Big Ben’s. We would have no idea what the target for the night happened to be, but the barmaids could always tell you. When crews returned from hotly defended targets, it seemed that perhaps the enemy also knew in advance what the target was to be.
During the last few months of the war, Bomber Command was doing a documentary film entitled “Target Berlin”. Much of the filming of briefings and crew room shots was done at our Squadron, and a lot of aerial action over the City of Lincoln. I never did see the finished product, but some air crew who came home to Canada after we did, said that they saw a shot of IQ-Willie taking off from base and also shots of me at briefing, looking much too happy for it to have been a raid on Berlin.

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