For your tomorrow we gave our today
by Bernard Trew
I was 13 when war broke out in 1939, an age where the dangers of war didn’t mean much as my friends and I used to watch the dogfights over London, jumping on our bikes to head after them in the hopes of finding any ‘souvenirs’. I joined the Air Training Corps which was run at my school, Epsom Boys School.
We were sent to RAF Kenley to assist where needed, but the one job that stuck with me was when the Canadian squadron asked us to use sandpaper on their aircraft. They wanted the planes to be as fast as possible, and sacrificing some of their camouflage on the plane was worth the risk for the extra 4 – 6 mph it gave them, just enough to give them an invaluable advantage over the Messerschmidts, during their support of the Dunkirk evacuation. Unfortunately, we saw the squadron arrive back without the Flight Leader, they saw him shot down over the Channel and insisted on their planes being refuelled and re-armed immediately to go and search for him, sadly in vain.
On my return from RAF Kenley my mother, sister and I went up to Yorkshire for a break from the bombing, staying with my mother’s cousins on a farm. It proved the right decision, as during our absence our house in London was bombed, my father and grandfather luckily taking shelter in the coal bunker. They had to be dug out but survived. We had to stay in Yorkshire and I attended school there for 2 terms, until my father was able to sort alternative accommodation for us.
When I returned to London I started my apprenticeship as an electrical engineer at Harrods rather than move schools again. A neighbour who also worked at Harrods allowed me to travel with him on my first day but the train tracks had been hit by a bomb in the night so the service terminated at Clapham. We got out and walked all the way to Knightsbridge.
The moment I turned 17 I volunteered for the Fleet Air Arms Service. Once trained they sailed us out to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), taking us through the Suez Canal on a Troop ship in convoy. When we reached Aden we broke away from the convoy and went on with a single Destroyer escort to Colombo. I serviced visiting aircraft stopping off at Columbo airfield, working on anything from a Swordfish, Spitfire or Hurricane to American aircraft.
Now, my Great-Grandson has joined the ATC at 12, a squadron run by my eldest Grandson. Life moves in circles, but I sincerely hope they never have to face such times as my generation did.