Did you lose anybody, family, to the war?

John: Well I did, I lost friends, you became friendly with your crew, you were billeted in these big Nissan Huts there would be 5 or 6 crews all in the one Nissan Hut You would on a raid one night and one crew wouldn’t come back, so you woke up in the morning to empty beds someone would come in the morning and sort there things for the next of Kin and the following day another crew would come in so you got to know them.

When I went to East Kirby where I did my bombing training it was in Lincolnshire and the very first night I was in the village we were sitting round in a circle the crew, there is seven in a crew, when we went to the bombers station we had only known each other for six weeks or so the other crews had know each other a bit longer they had been on two bombers then came to Swindon Bay , became a bigger crew and they needed a Flight Engineer which was what I did. So I had only known them for 2 or 3 weeks. So this particular night in the Nissan hut we were all sitting one chap said I come from Ayr, and I said well I come from Kirkculbry and the voice from the other side of the Nissan hut said who mentioned Kirkculbry? ‘I did, and he said I come from Kirkculbry . I didn’t know him personally but I knew the family. His father drove a threshing Mill, a big machine that went round the farms and threshed the corn not a combine harvester like today. So we became very friendly, he finished his tour and finished mine that was about the only friend that I can say that we finished our tour together. So it was a bit of a coincidence we were both there.

So I did lose some friends and some I still have in actual fact. I lost my own crew, I went into hospital with appendicitis and by the time I came back out they had done another three or four raids and they were shot down so I was left on my own, so I had to finish my tour as a spare body as it were.