I originated in Nelson”,’ says Alan, as my parents owned an apple orchard at Harakeke. My mother was Wellingtonian. Her parents met each other in Australia although they had both come from Courland in the Baltic States. My parents had to give up the orchard and my father got a job with the Railways, working as a guard on the trains. My first recollections, then, are of Arthur’s Pass where Dad was stationed..
We were still there at the time of the Arthurs Pass earthquake in March1929, and although it happened in the early hours of the morning, there was still a lot of excitement for a six-year old boy. During the night I had been shielded from the terror that older people had had to face, but with daylight, I could see the large cracks in the ground and the twisted railway lines. Behind Arthur’s Pass there used to be a three-peaked feature called ‘The Three Sisters”. After the Quake the center peak had slid into the valley, taking a house and family with it.
Shortly after this, Dad was transferred to Christchurch because it was railways policy that when children reached school age the family were transferred to where schooling was available. We settled for a while at Opawa where I attended the Opawa Primary School. We later moved to East Belt and we were enrolled at the Richmond Primary School on Stanmore Road. I was there when the old school was closed and the pupils moved over to the new buildings on Pavitt Street. The closing of the old school should have been a solemn occasion but right in the middle of it a tram’s trolley pole came off the overhead wire and all us youngsters had our attention well and truly diverted. I do recall, however, the last act of the headmaster. He closed the doors and pinned up a notice saying, “To Let .”
In 1934 the Shirley Intermediate School was opened and I was one of the foundation pupils. Shirley was the first intermediate school in the country and took the top two forms from three primaries. I entered the Christchurch Technical College in 1936 and matriculated in 1939 in engineering just after the war started. I was unable to get an apprenticeship as no firm was willing to take on someone who would shortly be called up. I therefore excepted a job offered to me in the Social Security Department early in 1940 and became a temporary civil servant.
At the age of 17, I applied to the Airforce to train as a pilot. It had always been my ambition to fly and I approached the Airforce primarily for that reason, not to go to war. I went into uniform in May, 1941, and trained at Levin and at Taieri outside of Dunedin. Later I passed out as a sergeant pilot from Wigram and sailed for Britain in March, 1942.
The voyage was not without its moments for as we passed through the Caribbean we were warned that U-boats were operating in that area. One morning we actually sailed through the wreckage of a vessel that had been sunk during the night. There was another scare as we sailed north up the West Coast of Ireland . Just as we were about to turn east towards the Irish Sea, word of U-boats came again and we continued up, north of Scotland before turning back into the Irish Sea. I remember that it was a glorious sunny day with the coast of Ireland to starboard but over to port there was nothing but a grey blanket of murk. As the vessel turned to port we steamed into the blanket and we saw the mouth of the Mersey for the first time.
We were taken to billets that night where we slept on bare boards. The next day we were marched to the railway station and given a packet meal. Then followed an all day journey to Bournemouth on the south coast where we arrived in the late evening. We were marched hungry and dishevelled into the mess and single-filed past a servery. It was a peculiar looking meal – rather like orange coloured fish. About all we could find were bones and more bones and even though we were hungry very few of us got through it. We found out later that we had been served up a delicacy called “kipper”, and it was many years before I would touch another one.
We spent about four weeks at Bournemouth where we were given further schooling and then sent on leave. When we returned to the town we found that a hit and run raider had flown in and dropped three bombs, one of which had exploded in an underground toilet. We were transferred to Harrogate for further training and were posted to South Cerney just out of Swindon, west of London. After still further training on Blenheim Bombers our crew was one of the Squadron of thirty aircraft flown via Gibralter to North Africa . After a short stay at Blida Airfield just outside Algiers we flew onto Canrobert airfield just outside the Algierian Tunisian Border. At lunchtime that day late in February 1943, we were the third aerodrome behind the front line. By that evening we were the second drome behind the front line. There was a Canadian squadron on the airfield which had plenty of aircrew but no aircraft so we lost all our planes to them.
After ten days we were loaded into trucks and driven back; through the Atlas Mountains and along the North African coast road, to Algiers. We had a month there doing nothing except having a good time until we decided to ask what was going to happen to us. “We were told that we didn’t exist and that no one knew we were there’. Our inquiry started something and three days later we embarked on an old Greek tramp steamer to join a convoy to Southampton.
After a short leave I was posted to an Operational Training Unit on Wellington bombers. These had a crew of six. Then our crew with the addition of a second gunmen was, sent to a conversion unit to learn to fly Stirlings. After this in August 1943 we were posted to No-75(NZ) Squadron which was being re-formed for the third time. Losses in action were heavy. Thirty operations were counted as a tour of duty but after only fifteen we were the senior crew of the squadron.
At this stage it was made known that the Pathfinder Force was seeking more crews. We applied ,were accepted, and transferred to No-7 Squadron P.F.F, (Pathfinder Force), flying Lancasters.
It was Airforce practice to send the pilot of a new crew up with an experienced crew for a couple of missions so that he could get experience of night flying in combat conditions. On the night of the 24th of April, 1944, I had one such co-pilot on board. As part of the Pathfinder Force, we were carrying both bombs and target indicators to drop on Karlsruhe in West Germany.
We were attacked about sixty miles short of the target and the starboard inner engine was set on fire. We feathered the prop and pushed the fire extinguisher button dousing the flames in the engine. However, we were unable to maintain height with our full load and as we would have been unable to reach the target I asked the navigator for another place to drop our bombs. There was a poor unsuspecting town handy so we opened the bomb doors, ran in and dropped the bombs. (we could not unload the target markers, for had we done so, it was likely that the main force following us would have plastered the same place.)
As we turned for home we found that we were in a worse predicament than before. It was the starboard inner engine, now out of action, which operated the hydraulic compressor and, on a Lancaster, everything is hydraulic. We were unable to close the bomb doors and the wind drag was so great that it more than equalled the weight of the bombs we had dropped We were still losing height as we headed back across France. What was more we had to fly back through the same area in which we had been attacked. Fortunately we attracted no special attention and once over the coast. we were able to drop our target indicators in the sea. It would not have been possible for us to reach our base, however, so we made for an emergency airfield just on the east coast of England. This had been formed by levelling a huge area of ground and it was possible for a plane in almost any condition to land reasonably safely.
That was just as well for us as we could not alter the pitch of the props or operate the flaps to slow us down in the air, nor could we use our wheel brakes on the ground. I’d got the wheels down by hand-cranking and their drag plus that of the open bomb doors slowed us a considerably. We throttled back as much as was safe to keep flying speed and went in.
Once on the ground we lost speed and a man in a command vehicle came out to guide us. He was indicating that we should change direction to port but as we had no brakes we couldn’t. We shut down the engines and rolled to a stop. I flicked on the landing lights to see where we were and found we had gone just far enough – the nose of the plane was parked nicely between two large trees.
Most of us were very relieved just to be back and down on the ground in one piece but at our debriefing afterwards our passenger-pilot was elated and kept on saying, “Gee, wasn’t that exciting! ” I could have kicked him. (This incident and others led to Alan being awarded the DFC – Ed.)
On the 30th operation with Pathfinders I became the invited guest of the Luftwaffe in France. We had set out late at night on the Ist of May for an attack on a French railway marshalling yard north of Paris. At thirty minutes past midnight,without warning we were attacked and hit . With both starboard engines and the whole of that wing burning furiously the order was given to the crew to bale out.
At that stage I lost all interest in the proceedings. When I regained consciousness the aircraft was upside down and I was hanging in my seatbelt harness half in and half out of the aircraft. I released the harness and fell the rest of the way out. It was a glorious moonlight night and I had a grandstand position suspended under my parachute watching the raid in progress.
I landed in a small clearing in the midst of a forest at L’isle Adam about twenty-five miles north west of Paris. I found out afterwards that it was the only clearing in the whole area. After landing and hiding my parachute I burrowed deep under a thorn bush where I spent the rest of the night. The next morning I was extremely fortunate to make contact with the French Underground Movement and for the next three and a half months I was under their care and protection.
The Underground interrogated me very carefully to make sure that I was who I claimed to be and not a German trying to infiltrate their ranks. During this time the questioner grasped my arm suddenly and peered at a small metal clasp on my watch strap. I had been a Rover Scout back home in New Zealand and it was a scouting badge that I wore. Scouting was very strong in France but had been banned by the Germans so no Frenchman would dare to wear that insignia. By the same token no German would, either, for theirs was the Hitler Youth. It was this relationship with Scouting that established my bonafides.
During that first day in France I was made to take a bath using French soap and was outfitted in French clothes in place of my uniform I had to smell like a Frenchman The next day I was taken to Paris and billeted in a flat with three American aircrew. A week later I was transferred to the household of a manufacturing confectioner who was also active in the Underground.
Plans were under way to smuggle a group of us out of France and, in connection with this, I was taken to a hairdressers. In the back room of the shop were eleven other British and American airmen. While there I watched my civilian documents being made out. There was an identity card with my photo but the signature and thumb print were not mine. The intention was to smuggle us across the Pyrenees into Spain and to return us to England from there. So I was given a residence certificate which stated that I lived in a restricted area of the Pyrenees. Because I had to have an occupation which would allow me to live in that restricted area I was given a work permit that listed me as a mechanic in essential work. when we received these documents we had to fold and unfold them and rub them on the floor to make them look old and worn.
We left the hairdressers walking along the street in pairs with our guide out in front. This was the standard method of travelling. Each pair had to maintain sufficient distance to enable them to see the pair in front. This did away with the need for every person to watch the leader which would have been obvious and most likely to make the Germans suspicious.
Our first destination was the Metro, the French underground railway system. The steps down from the street are very wide and we walked down the middle. As we did so a column of German soldiers came up and passed on either side of us. It was the closest I had been to the Germans and I felt as if I stood out starkly as the stranger I was. But the secret was to act natural. There were many escapers who unfortunately gave themselves away by acting as they felt and attracting unwanted attention.
Once on the station, we waited whilst our guide bought the tickets to the mainline station. Eventually we entrained at Austerlitz railway station for Chateaudun, about eighty miles south west of Paris. The railway system was in a mess, largely due to the effects of our bombing, so it took us from 8.00am to 5.00 pm to teach our destination and there was always the risk that we might be attacked enroute.
We left the train at Chateaudun and were handed over to another guide who had a bicycle. He looked like a young boy of sixteen but after the war I met him again and found that he must have been in his early thirties. The plan this time was that he rode on ahead and we followed in four groups of three, well spaced out. It was a beautiful bright sunny day out in the country and very pleasant walking along. Every so often when he was getting far enough ahead, our guide would stop, upturn his bicycle and make out that he was repairing something. This was perfectly natural as all their machines were in poor repair and held together with string and wire.
Part of our route went through a French village. As we turned a corner into a square in the middle of the village, we came upon a German tank division which was resting there. There were troops all around but we walked through the middle of them and aroused no more suspicion than did the local people. After three or four hours walking we came to our destination and I was billeted with three Americans in a lonely farm house out in the country with a French couple. It was one of those buildings which had animal quarters attached and we were to sleep there in the.hay.
Breakfast was bread and coffee but both other meals were ‘lapin’ – rabbit – always stewed. A big pot of it was put on the table and we helped ourselves but after a week of this we were becoming awfully tired of rabbit. So we pooled some of the French “escape” money we carried with us and sent the farmer off into town to buy something different to change our diet. He set off in the morning and was away all day. We waited and waited until finally he came home very late in the evening. He was carrying a sack over his shoulder and we were rubbing our hands in glee until he emptied out a live kid goat. The rest of the money he had spent in a pub. The goat was tied up in the yard and we were back to eating lapin.
There was one question that we were asked everywhere we went in France “When is the invasion going to take place?” On the morning of the 6th of June, while we were having breakfast a man came tearing along on a bike, rushed into the house, and yelled that everyone should hide. The invasion had started and the Germans were rounding up all the men and commandeering all available transport. The farmer and we airmen walked a zigzag path into a ripe cornfield at the back of the house and settled down, trying to disturb the corn as little as possible. We stayed there all day in the blazing sun with no food and no water, something we had not considered in the rush to get away.
When, by early evening, nothing had happened we went back to the farm house. Later that same evening we were collected and taken on another route march across country to the middle of a forest where we found a tented camp already set up and we were told that this was to be our new home; tents which had been liberated from the Germans.
Thus we received our introduction to the Sherwood Plan. MI9 was a section of British Intellegence established to encourage the formation and maintenance of underground escape lines in occupied Europe. The principal route was south through France and into Spain and from there to England. However, MI9 realised that the invasion would cut that route and make the transfer of Allied aircrew impossible. They had several proposals which were discarded in favour of gathering the airmen together in a camp in the forest. The Germans would not enter the forests for fear of the partisans which made them the safest place for us. The proposal was that we would stay there until the Allies caught up with us. It was reckoned that if thirty escapers were saved in this way the operation would be a success. I was one of the first four men into the camp. When the numbers rose to forty, it was decided to establish a second camp in the middle of another forest a few miles away. Eventually fiftyone escapers and evaders were waiting when the Allied front passed through. We were liberated on August the 16th after spending two months in the forests. We had British, American, Australian, one Russian and myself under canvas.
It was quite an experience being part of an Allied encampment in the heart of enemy occupied territory. The tents were camouflaged so as not to be seen from the air and we mounted guard posts further out on the edges of the forest. We all took turns at sentry duty. Tents were almost impossible to come by in France so an airdrop from Britain was arranged. They sent more tents and food and medical supplies. Most of our food came from the French but supplies were, of necessity, rather erratic. We were hungry at times but we never starved. At one stage, after a shortage of supplies, we received a cabin trunk full of haricot beans. When you have had beans for breakfast, dinner and tea, stewed, boiled, baked, mashed and served in any other way you can devise, for over a week, you don’t want to see another bean in a hurry!
Near the end of June, the Americans especially, were starting to get sore and to complain loudly as it was getting near July the 4th, Independence Day, and they were going to miss the opportunity to celebrate. It was a case of no turkey, no candy, no comics and no fireworks. Then, on the evening of the 3rd of July, a flight of Thunderbolt fighter-bombers started circling the forest. We had discovered that it was a practice of the attackers to circle a prospective target before going in, though whether to take a good look or warn civilians, we were not sure. But having them circle our patch of forest was ominous; perhaps our camouflage had slipped and they could see our tents. They had no way of knowing that we were not the enemy.
Then the first plane broke formation and, roaring down over our tents, straffed a target just outside the forest. He was followed by the others and they machinegunned and bombed to good effect. They had found an ammunition convoy caught at a crossroads. It was about a quarter of a mile long and nearly the same distance from our encampment. We had the noise and the flashes of the explosions and the debris flying over our camp all night. The Yanks had been provided with their fireworks’.
After the invasion front passed through our position, we were gathered in and repatriated to Britain.The telegram I sent to my parents arrived on the birthday of one of my sisters. It was a double rejoicing for them as previous to that the only notification that they had received was that I had been posted “MISSING, BELIEVED KILLED.’
In Britain I was given the opportunity to nominate my future movements. I could have opted to stand down, for had I been shot down again and captured the Germans would have been able to trace me back to the previous escape and have made things difficult for me. However, I asked to be transferred to Mosquitoes which were a totally different experience. They had a crew of two, one four thousand pound bomb and not even a revolver for protection. I remained in Pathfinder Group No.128 Squadron until V.E. Day, 8th May 1945, by which time I had flown 23 operations in Mosquitoes.
With the cessation of the hostilities in Europe No 128 Squadron was reformed and refitted for operations in Burma. I was considered to have completed enough operations in and I was stood down and sent on leave. I was still on leave on V.J. Day and eventually posted to Blackpool in September 1945. In due course I embarked at Southampton on the S.S. Andes as one of the first major repatriation drafts of Australian and New Zealand aircrew from Britain. There were about five and a half thousand of us on board the one-time cruise ship and it was soon re-named S.S. Belsen or S.S. Altmark. About the same time the Stirling Castle had sailed with a contingent of troops on board and a newspaper reporter took it upon himself to turn us into a race for home. Subsequently the New Zealand papers took up the same idea and our journey half way across the world was followed with interest. We arrived in Lyttleton in time for Labour Weekend, 1945.
After a settling-down period I was fortunate to obtain a rehabilitation bursary and studied engineering at Canterbury University for three years. Later I returned to Britain and met Margot while on holiday on the Isle of Man in June, 1958. We were married in November of that year and set up house in Chester. My employment was at the Shell Refinery at Ellesmere Port in the Wirral, Cheshire. We left there in 1964 and went to North Wales where I was factory manager but six months later we found ourselves in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, where I was plant engineer with the Du Pont Company of America. After nine and a half happy years there, which included six years of sectarian civil war, we came back to New Zealand in October, 1974.
I obtained a position at Tasman on the 2nd of December that year and arrived in Kawerau just before Christmas when a house became available. We joined up with the Methodist Church after we arrived. Although before the war I had gone to the East Belt Sunday School, and Bible Class I had not had much connection with the church it was not until after demobilisation during my time at Canterbury University that one day when I was studying at home the minister of East Belt Wesley called and invited me to church. He was the senior padre for the army so I went along to see what it would be like. I returned to the church and eventually became an officebearer. While on the ship to England in 1949, I became friendly with a Christian couple who suggested that I should be preaching. I forgot about this when I settled down in England but the seed had been sown and, after talking with a minister, I took the local Preachers’ course in 1950. That then became the start of a deeper interest in the Church that has remained to this day.”