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Michael Evans spent nearly seven years in the RAF during W. W.II. Finally he returned from Burma and India as a Flight Lieutenant to be diagnosed with tuberculosis but made a full recovery at RAF St. Athan Hospital in South Wales. After reaching the rank of Flight Sergeant in the new RAF Regiment he was commissioned as a Flying Control Officer and served at RAF stations at Croydon, Lympne and Skebrae in the UK and Meiktila, Baigachi (Calcutta Airport) and Lahore overseas. Due to be dropped behind the Japanese lines with No. 96 Mobile Flying Control Unit in 1945, they were stood down after the atom bomb was dropped and Japan surrendered so, they never had to face the drop in a glider which in itself was always a hazardous affair.
Here he describes his first few months in the RAF during the Baffle of Britain

“I decided to volunteer for the RAF as a Ground Gunner. I was 19 and not yet due for ‘call up’, but I preferred to choose the service I joined and as a Ground Gunner I might be able to see some action. My friends had gone for Air Crew but my short sight meant I had no hope of this. I took the bus to Adastral House, Kingsway, wondering what would happen to me. A sergeant strode up and down shouting strange orders.”Get your nose in a line and show your pink form to the WAAF”! All became clear; we had to fill out a pink form demanding many ‘No’ answers and the sergeant’s remarks began to make sense as I showed my pink form to the lady in WAAF uniform and it was accepted.

I was sent to Blackpool for Initial Training. Mainly drill and ‘square bashing’, as we called it. I still remember the melancholy regular corporal who had the job of transforming a bunch of civilians into Aircraftsmen 2nd Class. His favourite remark was ‘Everything in my favour is against me’. This mysterious remark seemed to give him some inner satisfaction but he was a kindly soul and gave us some advice, about service life, mainly,’Never volunteer for anything!’
I had made two friends at Blackpool, Kennedy and Hughes and the question was where would we be posted? I could hardly believe my
good luck as all three of us were posted to RAF Tangmere, a few miles from Bognor. This was the area to which my parents had moved when my father’s school, The Henry Thornton School, had been evacuated to share school buildings with Chichester High School. I was delighted that with my new friends I was able to visit my parents’ new home when we were allowed to leave camp. We were given a wonderful welcome..

RAF Tangmere was a large ‘drome’ with three squadrons of fighter planes and also the first secret night fighters and for this reason it was to come in for very heavy and sustained bombing a little later on. I think it was towards the end of August 1940 when we were walking across the main square and we looked up to see JU 87’s diving down out of
the sun, having just released their bombs. I knew where the nearest shelter was, just inside the double doors of the nearby barrack block. As I ran towards it I was lifted up off my feet by the blast, the double doors opened ahead of me and I slid down the steps into the shelter. The earth shook and shook again as the bombing continued unabated. WAAF’s who had been in the showers, now clad only in their dressing gowns, joined us and for some reason we all joined hands and started to sing together until the bombing stopped.
When we looked out the area was devastated. The top of our block was sheared off and the Armoury was still burning with intermittent explosions. One shelter had been hit and dead and injured WAAFs were being brought out on stretchers.
We found later that one of our squadrons of fighters had failed to meet any enemy planes and were returning to base when they looked down and saw their own ‘drome’ being bombed. Coming down from a height on to the JU 87’s they shot every one down.
That night, with my two friends I was despatched to guard a crashed German plane in the grounds of Arundel Casfle. There were crashed German planes all across the countryside. The night was memorable for several silly reasons. When we were dropped off in the dark to guard the crashed JU 87, we were told that the bombs might still be on the plane and there might be a German pilot who had parachuted down and would be armed. With my friends, Hughes and Kennedy it was agreed that we would put a grassy bank between ourselves and the plane in case the bombs went off. It was pitch dark and I took first watch while the others slept on the grass. I had a loaded rifle with bayonet attached and about one o’clock I heard stealthy footsteps approaching. I heard twigs snap under foot and I faced the sound with gun raised and my finger on the trigger. I took aim at a dim figure when fortunately it gave a gentle ‘Moo’ and proved to be a cow which was paying us a visit When my time came to sleep I was well away when I was awoken by a hard blow on my nose. I seized an offending arm in my panic and a desperate wrestling match took place in the pitch dark with Hughes, who had the gun, quite confused as to whom he should shoot in the melee. Eventually I got my German down in this life and death struggle, kneeled on his shoulders and started to choke him. With horror I suddenly realised that the face beneath me was that of my friend Kennedy who must have struck the blow in his sleep which so dazed me. He was equally convinced that a German was trying to choke him and accepted my apologies as best he could for attempting to kill him.
As day dawned we saw that the bombs had not been on the plane at all. We could just see the tail fins sticking up out of the grassy bank which we had chosen as our shelter from any blast. We had been lying within five feet of them.
We faced a beautiful lake and saw a rowing boat approaching us in the early morning. It was rowed by the owner of the park, the Duke of Norfolk, who enquired kindly after our welfare. Poor Kennedy had faced death twice in one day, once from the bombing and once from his well meaning but panic stricken friend.”

I was allocated to Machine GuPost Number 3 a brick built oblong, building with a circular hole in the concrete roof into which was fitted a ‘Scarf Ring’, a rotating framework carrying two Browning machine guns with a combined rate of fits of 40 rounds per second. We were to fire at the low level raiders attacking the ‘drome while the army ‘Bofors’ guns dealt with the higher ones. We had a battery of them quite close by.

Soon the attacks came regularly by night and day and we fired many thousands of rounds from those guns at attacking planes. One night the firing was so constant that the barrels of the guns could be seen glowing red hot across the ‘drome and the Station Commander sent round free cigarettes to the gunners in recognition of their work a Of course the German planes would sometimes turn and fire back and bullets would whiz everywhere. We had a team of three on duty at a time and on one occasion the chap on the guns collapsed on to the floor. The replacement jumped up to take his place and, having already rung for the ambulance, I saw to the casualty. I could find no wound or blood, but in the back of his collar, I found a hot empty cartridge case thrown out by his own guns. He came to again, and we decided that the sight of the German plane firing towards him and the sensation of the hot cartridge on his neck had caused him to faint. Our faces were a little red when the ambulance crew arrived to collect our casualty.
One night I returned from leave to find all the camp empty, no one about. It was late so I went to bed only dreamily hearing the guns and explosions. In the morning I found the base deserted - everyone had been moved out to huts and buildinqs outside the camp because of the bombing. My towel hung above my bed and in it was neatly lodged a piece of spent bomb casing that had come in through a window.
The hot water system was still kept going in the camp so to get a bath one took ones towel and warily walked over into the empty base and entered a barrack block to have a bath. A chap from another hut was in the bath when the building was hit and he landed safely on the floor below - naked, still in the bath, but minus some of his clothes. He was a bit shaken but he had a good story to tell.
We still played cricket and football in season, leaving our steel helmets handy in case of need. In a cricket match two of us went to catch a high ball and we collided together forcibly. For a week I wore a head bandage and when I went for a meal in a local cafe they wouldn’t let me pay for my meal as I was a ‘wounded airman’, I was too tongue-tied to explain that I had only been playing cricket when I was injured.
We got so used to the bombing that when we were in bed and we heard something coming down we quickly rolled beneath the bed. This saved quite a few lives. On one occasion we heard a terrific explosion early in the morning. As we were not hurt we ran out to see what had happened. A bomb had demolished the top floor of our block, blowing the walls out. Because they were made of concrete blocks containing iron rods they had folded outwards to touch the ground, making a slope up which we could climb to help any survivors. Everything was covered in a thick layer of white dust made of disintegrated concrete which made the scene less awful than it might have been. Many were dead but I saw an empty bed which was supporting a huge concrete beam and under it, in the dust, I saw a movement. Part of a face emerged through the dust and I called to the medical staff who were just arriving. I heard that the chap survived, saved by his iron bed.
Because of the bombing the blackout was strictly enforced. My parents had brought my bicycle to their cottage and so one night I rode back to camp along dark, deserted roads by the
light of a hooded lamp which gave only a glimmer of light. I turned into the entrance to ride up the road to the guard room when I lost control of the bike and found myself falling with a crash into wet mud. By starlight I worked out that I was at the bottom of a bomb crater which had not been there earlier in the day. Getting out with my bike in the dark was really a difficult job. When I went to view it in the morning I reckoned the crater was fifteen feet across by nine feet deep with two feet of water in the bottom. Some of my friends thought this was quite funny.
It might be thought that the constant attacks would depress people. Except when they heard bad news from home that family members had been injured or killed, people were determined to enjoy their time off. The pubs were full of service men and women, all far from home, as well as the locals. In this heady atmosphere many romances blossomed and some were very passionate. Looking back I am surprised that I never heard of any unwanted pregnancies among the people we knew. I heard that contraceptives were available from the sick bay and one assumed that they were being used.
When the saturation bombing of London started on 24th August, 1 knew airmen who hitched up to London’s West End on leave because they said the social life in the pubs was so good during the bombing. A feeling of togetherness in the sharing of common dangers brought strangers together in a way that is hard to imagine in peace time; beer and a sing-song made all the customers feel a slightly inebriated euphoria as they sounded forth old favourites like ‘Nelly Dee’,’I’ve got sixpence’ and the RAF favourite,’You’ll get no promotion this side of the ocean’.
During the peak time when an invasion was expected all guards were doubled up. This meant four hours on duty and four hours off, rather than four hours on and eight hours off. If you had a long walk to go on duty you only got about three hours sleep at a time and people began to get very tired. I remember a chap fast asleep at the dining table with a piece of sausage on the end of his fork. When someone gently woke him he said, ‘Halt! Who goes there?’ and was amazed to find where he was. We were all frightened of being found asleep on duty - the ultimate crime in a time of danger.
Often we would stay on at the gun post when our duty was over, The sun shone down from clear blue sky as we lay on our backs on the grass and high above we could watch the dogfights and hear the taint rattle of machine gun fire as the fighter pilots fought out their life and death duels in the air. We would see twelve Hurricanes take off to engage the enemy planes and try to count how many came safely back. Often, when our planes were damaged, or on fire and out of control, the pilots would bale out, hitch a lift back to base and take another plane up straight away.
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(The above is an excerpt from a much longer account.)

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