Leaning into a new normal...but one that I have hated getting used to

17 Apr

Tomorrow, April 18th, is a day I now dread every year as it’s my late Father’s birthday. He would be turning 94.

He passed away just short of 2 ½ years ago and I miss him every minute of every day. They say that grief softens, and you learn to live with it rather than fighting against it and I can’t wait for that moment to arrive, or does one gently get taken over by the other? It’s a normal that I’m not keen to get used to but know that it’s a must as he is not coming back, I need to make friends with that fact.

I celebrate his enthusiasm for life and his ‘say yes now and work it out later’ way of living.

I hear his voice when things are good and also when I’m having a moment. I hear his words of encouragement and his sighs of disbelief. I hear the ‘oh Joanna!’ when I’ve been a plum and his ‘onwards and upwards’ phrase when things are tough. He didn’t understand stress but we knew when he was.

I was lucky to have had Dad for 46 years of my life and Mum had him in her life for over 53 years. She misses him desperately too but at least now we can talk about him without descending into floods of tears. Well, at least in front of each other anyway. I’ll never be with someone for that long and I can’t imagine what it would be like to be without your other half of over half a century.

Dad wrote his story a while back and I love reading it. I have chosen to share the story from when he joined the RAF in 1945 at the age of 19. He had just spent 6 months at Trinity College, Oxford and the story of his previous years tells of a different era, of making parts for bombs as part of the school curriculum, of bomb shelters and rationing, of life in an Oxford school, of 6 of the best if you didn’t have a cold shower each morning, of his boxing days at school until he knocked someone out and then never boxed again, and of his schools reports saying "shows promise but could do better". I seem to remember having the same written about me.

I have recently watched and listened to 2 particularly reflective recordings and hope that they help someone else dealing with grief, whether it’s new or you are settling into this unwelcome normal.

Checking in with Susan David on Apple Podcast - http://tiny.cc/abv7mz

Ted Talk with Nora McInerny - http://tiny.cc/3ev7mz

I hope you enjoy this walk through my Father’s life for his few years in the RAF from the mid to late 1940’s, when life was oh so different. I remember him telling me a story of his time in Palestine when beers were a 5-hour jeep ride away through the desert, in the dark, with no lights. Beer was clearly as important then as it seems to be right now, they just took more work to get them.

“The 6 months at Oxford went all too quickly and then I was in the RAF as an Officer Cadet. My first posting was to a reception centre in Torquay. More 'square bashing', lectures, plane recognition (slide silhouettes flashed onto a screen and you had to recognise every aircraft - friend and foe - from all angles) this was most important to prevent being shot down by or shooting down friendly aircraft. This lasted about 6 weeks, fortunately during the early summer of 1945 when we had lovely weather and were billeted in a reasonable hotel a short walk from the beach.

At that time there was a bit of a hiatus in the services. The war with the Germans was drawing to an end and the Americans were dealing with the Japanese. The demands on RAF pilot training were being reduced to such an extent it was only the relatively few of us who had expressed a wish to sign up for a Short Service Commission - a 4-year period - who were to proceed to flying training. I was firmly in that company and the RAF took another month to select those of us to go forward. There followed tests of all sorts, medical, aptitude and coordination, leadership, suitability as a future officer being examples. So, in the end I was posted to No.19 Flying Training School, RAF College, Cranwell in October 1945.

The timing was fortunate because the RAF had re-opened the college for officer and flying training on an interim basis during that summer. The reversion to the full RAF College syllabus was due to start towards the end of 1946. I was on the 5th. Course with 1st. Course having passed out shortly after our arrival. There were 40 of us on the course and we were all 'in college' with 2 to a bedroom. All very smart and keen to get on with our flying training. The only other OSE there was my chum Mike Whitworth-Jones. Our respective parents were good friends and we saw one another during the holidays. Mike was killed in a flying accident in 1953.

The flying training involved initiation on Tiger Moths and then moving on to Harvards. These 2 aircraft could not be more different. The Tiger Moth was designed by De Havilands shortly after the first World War - very light and skittish and not easy to land well. A number of my colleagues never mastered the technique of getting the aircraft on the ground without at least 3 'bumps'. Never mind, we all got through that stage with the very unfortunate exception of my instructor Guy Wattleworth, his student pilot and another instructor with his student pilot. All four were killed in a mid-air collision during the landing approach. There was always a jam of aircraft - Tiger Moths and Harvards - arriving back at the airfield for lunch. The Harvards had radio contact with the ground controller in the Flying Control and were guided by the latter, but the Tiger Moths had no such aids to communication. Normally landing and take-offs were signalled by a green light from an Aldis Lamp operated and pointed at you by the ground control officer. This procedure was not practical with about a dozen Tiger Moths following each other to land for the lunch break. It was therefore vital for each of the 2 pilots, instructor and pupil, to keep a very good look out for other aircraft.

The major blind spot in this situation is 2 aircraft going in the same direction with one just in front of and below the other. The leading aircraft pilots have to look immediately behind them and upwards - the following aircraft also has a major problem in that the fuselage in front and the lower wings are masking the aircraft in front and below. This was exactly what happened with these 2 Tiger Moths - Guy Wattleworth was the leading aircraft and the other just landed on top of him whilst still about 400 above ground.

This episode brought home to me that flying an aircraft whilst being immensely enjoyable is also potentially dangerous. The death of Guy Wattleworth was a great loss to me. He was my first instructor, a really nice guy and had got me off to first solo with only 7 hours flying time. I did have the advantage of having been on a school ATC glider course near RAF White Waltham during the summer 1943 holidays. This got me to a Category “C” (CA is the lowest) standard on gliders - the later move to Tiger Moths was then much easier although the Tiger Moth was much harder to land decently.

The Harvard was a typical American designed lump of an aeroplane with a retractable undercarriage, sliding canopy over the 2 seats, all mod-cons including radio and relatively easy to fly. My new instructor was Len Round, also a very nice chap with whom I got on well. The solo flying seat in the Harvard was the front, the Tiger Moth flying seat was the back seat otherwise the thing tended to fall over its wheels during landing.

The graduation of No.5 Course took place on the 14th. June 1946. I passed out 6th. out of the 40 which was pleasing, and we all got our wings and were commissioned as Pilot Officers. During our course I had expressed a preference for fighters after leaving Cranwell and the powers that be certainly listened. After 14 days leave I was posted to the OTU (Operational Training Unit) at Keevil, Wiltshire. So, it was Spitfires at last.

Looking back and knowing how pilots are trained these days the tuition at Keevil was extremely basic. Then there was no such thing then as a 2-seater Spitfire. What was on offer was the real thing, 1 seat, guns and all. The Pilot's Notes was simply a booklet, rather like a new car handbook, which told you what levers and knobs did what and explained what you might expect to happen when you opened the throttle for taxying, let alone take off, flying it and even more important the coming back.

There were, of course, lectures to back up the Pilot's Notes but it was definitely up to each one of us to learn as much as possible before the first flight. It helps to have a good dose of 'nothing's going to happen to me' attitude. After all, when you are in your late teens you do not really need to have wings and an engine to fly.

My time at Keevil and in the cockpit of a MkVC Spitfire was a great experience and more importantly no landings with the wheels up or ground loops It is surprising how many new pilots landed with their wheels up. Ground control would normally call the pilot over the radio to warn of an impending 'prang' and a 'black mark' but at a training establishment with so many aircraft on 'bumps and circuits this was impractical. A 'ground loop' is a swerve just after touchdown. The strong tendency for the aircraft to swing at this point has to be anticipated and counteracted by opposite rudder and brake. Not too much brake or the tail comes up, nose goes down and the propeller is damaged. A 'ground loop' invariably results in the undercarriage being wiped off and you end up on your belly. Hey ho - the delights and challenges of flying high powered piston engine aircraft with propellers. The more the power and larger the propeller with 4 or 5 blades the bigger the problem. Jet aircraft do not suffer from propeller torque and are relatively speaking much easier to land and take off. But I digress.

Apart from learning to fly the Spitfire at Keevil I was being trained as a Fighter Reconnaissance pilot. This involved a second string to being a fighter pilot, namely general reconnaissance and the use of cameras. One pointed straight down and the other obliquely to the left side. I took hundreds of aerial photos in the Larkhill area (Wiltshire) when working with the Artillery over the ranges and shipping in the Portsmouth and Southampton areas. Also a few of my Mother waving up from the garden at our house near Weybridge, Surrey. Flying in those days had none of the restrictions there are now. There were no civil aircraft about and we could fly at whatever height we wanted. On a number of occasions I flew low over railway lines to read the station name board to check my position. This was known as 'Bradshawing'. A namesake (but not a relation) produced a well-known railway timetable before the war. Railway tracks - many more then and before the 'Beeching axes' - were the easiest way to check positions from the air.

From Keevil I was posted to 208 squadron, a Spitfire Fighter Reconnaissance squadron based at Ein Shemer, Palestine. I left the UK during the early part of January 1947 - a bitterly cold winter, crossed the channel in a very small ferry to Boulogne and then by troop train to Marseille. The war had only recently ended and France was still in a terrible state. I remember giving the locals what little soap and chocolate we could get our hands on from the train windows whenever we stopped at stations.

After about 10 days at a transit camp in Marseille in relatively hot weather we embarked on a troopship, a Furness Withy liner, and then to Port Said in Egypt. The weather, still in January, got progressively warmer as we went East and in a few days I was swimming in the Great Bitter Lake adjacent to the RAF Transit Camp at Ismailia.

During the short stay at Dover I met the other pilot who was on his way to 208 squadron. Harry Hanagan proved to be a cheery fellow and we quickly became good friends. The 2 of us left Ismailia after about a week of relaxing and we were on our way to Ein Shemer by train. A rickety affair in every sense which eventually got us to Tel Aviv, then by RAF bus to the airfield. Ein Shemer was near the coast between Tel Aviv and Haifa.

The next 12 months were a great experience - and very enjoyable. Apart from 208 Sqdn with its gun and camera carrying MkVC Spitfires there was 32 Sqdn also with MkVC Spitfires but with guns only, and a Lancaster Sqdn. It was a very active station and we were all there to help keep control of the Arabs and Jews prior to the partition of Palestine to create Israel. 208's role was mainly to patrol the coast and report the landing of Jewish immigrant boats. Dawn patrols at low level with the cameras at the ready were the order of the day. Any landings, even a decrepit looking trawler type vessel which had been beached well away from habitation during the night, were photographed. We were also working closely with the Navy who had the aircraft carriers 'Ocean' and 'Triumph' patrolling the eastern end of the Mediterranean. The Jewish immigrants were coming from Europe.

After a 2 month return to the UK for an Air Sea Rescue course at Thorney Island near Portsmouth, I thought my stay at Ein Shemer was as permanent as any in the RAF. To be the Air Sea Rescue officer on a squadron doing most of its flying over the sea made a lot of sense and 208 did not have anybody with this knowledge. But no. Before I had even had time to set up a lecture on the subject Harry and I were posted to 249 Sqdn at Habbaniyah not far west from Baghdad in Iraq and on the edge of the Syrian Desert. Not much Air Sea Rescue to be done there!

We arrived at Habbaniyah during the middle of the night in a Dakota. It was an extraordinary sight after flying for several hours over Jordan and into Iraq mostly over desert in complete darkness here below us was what looked like a large town. Lights everywhere, roads clearly visible, signs of habitation and all surrounded by desert. This was RAF Habbaniyah with its cadre squadron (half a squadron) with about 9 Hawker Tempests and 7 pilots. The station was, however, a major transit-stop between the UK and the Far East.

The Tempest VI was a fabulous aircraft. In my view nicer to fly than the Spitfires MksVC, IX and XVIll I had flown thus far. The Napier Sabre engine with its 24 cylinders in H form produced 2500hp and made an unmistakeable sound which frightened the pants off the uninitiated on the ground. The 4 bladed propeller had an unusually large diameter which made the swing problem on take-off and landing potentially worse than the 5 bladed propeller of the Spitfire XVIII. I can picture to this day watching Harry take off with a touch too much throttle and not being able to control the swing with full rudder. The result was he veered off to the right by about 45 0 and just cleared the hangers' roofs.

Our Tempests were fighter-bombers with cannon and rockets, firing the rockets was great fun. Our main role was to patrol the oil pipeline from the Iraqi oil wells to Haifa. Pete Stieb, myself and another pilot flew a Tempest apiece to join 208 and 32 Sqdns in Palestine during the middle of April 1948. We were the rocket firing aspect of the fighter force which was on hand to contain the clashes between Jews and Arabs leading up to the creation of Israel at midnight 14th. May 1948.

After the flight back to Habbaniyah life returned to normal apart from my appointment as the Squadron Adjutant. This was an administrative post and, with the flying hours averaging only 15 per month, I turned my thoughts to leaving the RAF at the end of the year. My Short Service Commission was expiring in December 1948 so I had to decide whether to stay in or move on. The feeling amongst some of us at that time was that it was only a question of time for manned fighting aircraft (fighters and bombers) to be superseded by unmanned robot aircraft and rockets. I decided to leave the RAF and seek pastures new. This I did in December 1948 and later that month just before Christmas I joined a firm of Lloyd's insurance brokers in the City of London.

My Father was in insurance in the City and he felt I would enjoy, and hopefully be successful, as a broker. This proved to be the case and I did not look back since.

My life in business is definitely another story maybe to be written on another occasion.”

I just wish he had written the rest.