Are you sitting comfortably.........
Jimmy Pearson chortles when remembering his early days in the RAF when training at Bath and Porthcawl. 'Dances, pubs and popsies' all figure large in his memory. 'It was the uniform y0u see old lad, the popsies loved them'. He came a cropper a couple of times, most notably when he and a chum walked out of their camp on a Friday evening, without passes, and headed for the fleshpots of Bath. They booked in at the YMCA then went out to 'rip up the town'. They got back to the camp, tired and emotional, on the Sunday evening and were immediately arrested. Two weeks of potato peeling and latrine cleaning followed, with black marks on their records.
With training completed Jimmy found himself posted to a Blenheim squadron that was allocated to the RAF's Desert Air Force in North Africa. Leaving in early 1941 the squadron landed at Gibralter to re-fuel then flew on to Malta. 'Bloody awful place, old boy. We spent two days in an air raid shelter and lost three planes in the bombing, really don't kn0w how they survived it all'. Then it was on to North Africa and a temporary airfield not too far behind the Allied lines and the joys of sand and flies. 'I don't know which was worse, they both got into absolutely everything and we had to clear the guns of sand all the time to stop the sand clogging them up'. Things soon started in earnest and at last he was shooting at the enemy. The squadron's job was to bomb enemy fuel dumps and supply lines based on info' supplied mainly by the Long Range Desert Group. The main problem was that there was very little fighter cover for them as at that time there was only one squadron of Hurricanes and these were constantly being moved around to make the enemy think there were more fighters than there actually were.
Unfortunately Jimmy's desert war didn't last very long. Returning after his sixth raid his plane was 'jumped' by a Messerschmitt 109 which Jimmy thought he managed to hit : 'the bugger got me though, put a hole in my leg. We had one engine out and smoking but the skipper got her down low and hoped the 109 didn't come back. He reckoned we could make it back. It was a bit hairy and bumpy but the German didn't return so perhaps I did cause some damage. Anyway the skipper got us down and the engine then caught fire as we stopped. They yanked me out and then it was off to hospital in Alexandria'. After an operation there he was invalided back to blighty.
On recovering Jimmy was then promoted to Sergeant Instructor and found himself back in North Wales teaching other people how to shoot. After a few months though he was back on active duty with Bomber Command. The casualty rate was such that all instructors with combat experience were being posted to operational squadrons. 'Couldn't worry about it old boy, just had to get on with it!'
Well, I'm knackered again so it looks like a Part 3 is required if you want it. This would involve Lancasters, the Peenemunder raid, Stalag Luft 3, Russians, Jimmy's return, and digging potatoes.
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