2 min read
I have always been a nervous flyer. In fact, I once needed a couple of sessions with a counsellor to get me in the air. A lot of people have been very sympathetic about my phobia over the years - my dad was not one of them. He simply could not get his head around the idea that anyone would be nervous about going on holiday in a modern airliner. "After all," he would often point out, "it's not as if anyone is shooting at you."
When my dad flew an aeroplane, it was in the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm and there were people shooting at him - Japanese people, German people and lots of them.
With Remembrance Sunday coming up it seems appropriate to share my father's experiences. I know a lot about them because until his death, nearly 20 years ago, he was rather fond of telling anyone who would listen.
The impression my dad gave was that he was not only proud to serve but he rather enjoyed doing so. He volunteered at 17, having lied about his age because he was so enraged about what the Germans were doing to the Jews. Within months he was flying off aircraft carriers.
Clearly, it could have gone terribly wrong for my teenage father as it did for so many of his contemporaries. The death toll among young pilots was heavy and, in his time on HMS Indefatigable, he witnessed U-Boats sinking merchant shipping on the brutal Atlantic convoys to Murmansk and observed Kamikaze pilots spinning from the sky. His chances of survival were not helped by the fact that he flew Swordfish torpedo planes, an outdated biplane so slow that, he would joke, they confused the anti-aircraft gunners.
He got such pleasure by polishing his medal
Some people, me among them, would have been absolutely terrified by the things he endured. But he loved flying, he loved the sea and he was an adrenaline junkie. But he was canny, too. Not for him the dirt and squalor of life in the infantry. He chose his theatre of war carefully. He might be risking his life in the skies but when he landed he had the comfort of his own cabin and rations that those at home could only dream of.
My brother and I eventually knew his stories as well as he did, and would take pleasure in relating them in true Ripping Yarns fashion. Not only would he go on about the war, he also insisted on watching the entire remembrance service on a Saturday night in November on the only TV in the house. But then we also saw the pleasure on his face when he got to polish his medals (a DSC among them) to march with his AJEX colleagues.
I recall once listening to the umpteenth time about how he and his mate, Jonny McLeod, were the only ones to appear for breakfast when everyone else was seasick in the midst of an Atlantic storm. I said to him that, although he enjoyed being in the Navy, there must have been some dark moments and some terrifying experiences. He puffed at his cigar thoughtfully and was quiet in a moment of contemplation, before replying, "No, not really."