William Upton 1994

Memories of The War & 'Can Do' Boys

Having been asked by good friends, and members of N.A.A.R.G., the local Northants Aviation Group to write a few lines for a magazine that is to be produced. I now have the problem of deciding exactly what to write, so I think it best that I write what comes to mind and let them choose from it what they think suitable for the proposed magazine.

First off though, the war years to me are not recalled by exact times and dates etc, but by happenings and events. All the various incidents and events are recorded by someone somewhere I suppose, but I don't recall anyone that I knew thinking greatly about times and dates.  It was the events that stayed in the mind, and that's how I personally remember the war - a series of events, and may I say that the younger aviation historians and students of World War Two who study the files and records today know far far more about the times, dates, organisation of forces, aircraft engines etc. etc, than I (we) did at the time.  We saw no records or lists, and didn't expect to, everything being 'top secret'.  Needless to say, I was rather surprised at being asked to write on the subject of my memories, as I don't consider them to be anything at all special. It was all 'how those days were', and endless other folk must remember similar things themselves, but anyhow, here goes with some memories I recall............................................................

My family lived in Irchester when the war was declared in 1939, and the house we lived in on the Farndish Road had no electricity supply and was still lit by gas-lights with mantles, so on September 3rd, 1939 we gathered around our 'Accumulator Wireless' and heard Chamberlain declare that the war was on. There were all the signs of war earlier in 1939.  We had an uncle Bill who lived on the School Hill in Irchester and he was a member of the T.A. long before the war was declared in September.  A searchlight was sited in a field at the rear of Irchester’s Infant School, and 'our uncle Bill' was a member of the crew that manned it, so my sister Olive and I went to visit our uncle and see the search­light.  We had mugs of tea with him in a tent and he showed us how to steer and turn the searchlight, which had a long girder arm with a wheel on the end to steer it. The weather came over really black with a storm brewing, and our uncle told us to run home before it began to rain.  We started for home, and were making for a style that was at the corner of the stone wall of the school playground, when suddenly there was a loud 'hissing, crackle, whoosh' sound, and a brilliant blue-green fork of lightening flew over our heads and struck a telegraph pole that stood beside the style, the pole exploded about a 3rd of the way up and then toppled over into the field taking all the wires with it.  It fell only 2 yards from my sister and myself and the telephone wired passed over us as it fell.

Although our uncle Bill had lost 3 fingers on his right hand in an accident, he went on into the army and served throughout the war. He was amongst the first British troops to enter Belsen concentration camp. Late on in 1939 Oct-Nov?, my family moved the 2 miles into Rushden so that my father could be nearer his work.  He worked for Grenson’s, and we moved into a factory, owned house next door to the factory in Cromwell Road. My father was a member of the L.D.V., later Home Guard and also did 'boiler man, fire watch' duty at the factory.

Air Raid street shelters were built beside the factory in Cromwell Road only yards from our front door and in Queen Street, but our deep underground shelter was in the rear factory yard on the Allen Road side. During the latter months of 1940 there was a constant increase in the number of air-raid alerts, and the sirens (Moaning Minnies) seemed to be sounding at nights as regular as clockwork.  The factory boilers and furnaces were a real 'God Send' during the winter of 40-41, the underground shelters were damp and chilly, no matter how muffled up you were, and it was a bad winter that year.  The boilers and furnaces could supply hot drinks and food at any time during the night.  My father would make large jugs of cocoa or tea, or Camp Coffee (whatever was available) to warm those in the shelter.  One elderly lady I recall said to my father one night "You certainly do make a lovely cup of cocoa Mr Upton, it really warms me up, gives me a glow".  This really amused Dad because what she didn't know was that our uncle Jock who lived in Falkirk, Scotland was the manager of a whisky distillery, and every jug of cocoa that Dad made was heavily laced with high proof whisky. I recall Dad laughing and saying, "Glow? another cup of that and her old cotton socks will start smoking".

The first bombing of Rushden took place at 10:18am on the morning of October 3rd 1940.  I was in the passage of our house going to the front door and my mother stood at the living room door saying something to me, suddenly there was a faint very quick 'whirring' sound, then a series of 'whump crump, whump, crump' sounds.  The ground and floor of the house shuddered and heaved in waves, and the doors and windows shook and rattled about.  My mother and I went the 2 yards to our front gate, and between and behind the houses on the other side of the road we saw that the whole town centre seemed to have erupted like a volcano. There was a huge cloud of dust and smoke rolling up the street and wreckage and debris falling all over the place, you could see puffs of dust on the house roofs etc. where the shrapnel and bits of wreckage struck and hit.  A minute or so later, while my mother was talking to a lady standing on the other side of the road, a man came pedalling around the corner from Queen Street on a bike.  I shall never forget that man’s face as he passed by us, eyes shocked and staring he shouted to my mother "Don't for god-sake go down there lady, they have hit the school and there’s dead in the streets, God it's awful," and then he went riding up Cromwell Road as fast as he could go into the haze of dust. When I reached The Ritz cinema, the police had roped off the pavement at the corner of Alfred Street, the school roof was hanging and sagging over the rubble where the rescue crews were working.  The roof totally unsupported and tons in weight poised over the rescue workers directly under it.  Just across the road from the school, Cave's shoe factory had also taken a direct bomb hit. The bomb had blown the body of one man up through the roof and draped him over a roof beam near the factories flag-pole.  It was quite some­ time before the ladders etc. were found to lift his body down.  It was the worst single bombing raid the county (Northants) had during the war, with 12 dead and 43 people injured.  There was no warning or sirens at all I recall - a Dornier bomber just dropped out a low bank of cloud and dropped 19 H.E. bombs north to south along the line of Rushden’s High Street, The Vic Hotel, Fish and Chip Shop, West Street, Caves factory and Alfred Street School all took bomb hits.

The following month on the evening of November 19th, Rushden was bombed again when bombs hit Robert Street.  Again there were no sirens sounded, but we did get a little warning because we heard the bombs coming down and took cover from them.  We sat talking and having a cup of tea in the living room when the raid came.  In the room was my mother and father, my three sisters, Olive, Joan, and Wendy who was just one year old, Hazel a friend of my sister Olive, myself and Bess, our pet collie dog. Well, there we were talking and chatting away (luckily no wireless on) when suddenly we all became aware of a faint sound and vibration in the air that was getting nearer and louder with every second.  We knew in­stantly what it was; there is no way that you can mistake the sound of falling bom.bs.  In only seconds, my mother, sister Hazel and Bess the dog were packed into the pantry under the stairs and I reached in and turned the house gas off at the meter, then pushed the pantry door shut and held it closed with my knees as I lay on the kitchen floor.  By this time the bombs sounded whistling and rushing, just as if we had a steam train on the roof of the house, and the air vibrated so much you could actually feel it do so.  I lay on the kitchen floor with my head just below the low step down from the living room, so could see my father laying on the living room floor covering his head with his arms, he had turned off the room light, but we had a fire in the grate and that lit the room. Then the bombs hit and exploded. Strange to say there was no 'boom' as one would expect with bombs, but instead every­thing went into a vacuum and I went totally stone deaf.  Until this time I never realised that solid brick walls could be made to act exactly as if they were made of rubber, but I can assure anyone that they most certainly do so.  When those bombs struck, the house floor heaved and rocked, and the walls of the living room bulged inwards in a wave action and then out again.  It was just as if the old house took a big deep breath because of the shock. Later on we found all the wallpaper had come from the wall in huge blisters, pulled off by the blast, it lifted my father right up off the floor, which was very amusing to me because he floated up from the floor, still laying flat and stiff as a plank. It was exactly like magicians float ladies in mid-air on stage, but Dad did it, no trick and for real.  He thumped back down on the floor and scrambled to his feet but wasn't in the least hurt.  When my hearing returned, all I could hear was the sound of wreckage hitting the roof of the house and thudding down in the road outside.  There was also the crash of breaking glass as the window of Mr Ekins shop fell out after the blast.  What surprised me (and no-doubt Dad) most though, was the sounds coming from the pantry under the stairs.  At first I thought that someone had been hurt and was squealing in pain, so it was a real relief when the door opened and my mother and the girls came crawling out near helpless with laughter.  It turned out that during the mad rush into the pantry, everyone had forgotten about a layer of onions left drying on the floor. My mother told me that they were packed into the pantry like sardines with the extra person (Hazel) in there as well, and while everyone was itching about trying to avoid the onions that were becoming most uncomfortable to sit on, acting like giant ball bearings, Bess the dog decided that it was some kind of game to play so decided to jump up and down on top of them all.  Despite the serious situation we were all in, they thought it all very funny and laughed helplessly.  It was then decided that it would be best to go to the underground shelter and wait until we knew what was happening.  So that's what we did, my mother and the girls stank to high heaven of onions but there was nothing we could do about that so they had to go into the shelter as they were, all 'whiffey', but luckily only for an hour or so.  One of the bombs that hit Roberts Street was very large indeed, it demolished a row of houses, badly damaged Newton Road School and wrecked roofs and house windows etc. over a wide area.  It certainly sent debris miles high, because when we left our house to go to the shelter, bricks and various bits of wreckage were still falling from the sky, hitting roofs and thudding in the roadway along the Cromwell Road.  It was around this time, 'The Blitz'  period that my father and I were making trips, at times with my uncle Alfred, who was a heavy lorry driver and living in Bedford and making regular trips down to the London Docks. On one trip we escaped the bombs by the skin of our teeth, and the last bomb in the stick that fell was only the width of a warehouse away from us, but even so, the huge Albion lorry danced and we jigged so much on the wharf that we were parked on, I thought that it was going to finish up in the Thames, and it's very strange what you recall in incidents like that.  I remember that I had a huge chipped enamel mug of tea in one hand and a large hunk of meat pie in the other, and when the lorry shuddered and jigged from the bombs, I tried not to spill my tea, it was pure reaction and sounds totally ridiculous I know - but it’s perfectly true.  As we left the docks that night, one of the roads was blocked by the bombing, and a wall had been pulled down to let the traffic go round the heaps of rubble blocking the road. My uncle Alfred knew London like the back of his hand and knew exactly where he was at all times, but I certainly didn't, and I went to places in London that I never did know the names of.  On one of the trips that we made, I recall that the police directed us around the wreckage of a German bomber that had been shot down and crashed onto one of London’s railway stations. My uncle did tell me the name of the station at the time, but I forgot it; many years ago now.  Later on in the war, my uncle came to know the U.S. band leader Glenn Miller, and I met and spoke with Glenn whilst with my uncle in Bedford one day.  I met him again some weeks later right here in Rushden, when he and Clark Gable came on a shopping trip.  Shortly afterwards Glenn took off from Twin Woods airstrip near Bedford, and vanished over the Channel while heading for France.  My elder sister Olive, actually danced with Clark Gable to the Glenn Miller Band, she was a member of the Women’s Land Army and they got invited to the U.S. base dances through the W.L.A. area offices.  This was all in 1944 of course, the year Glenn vanished. 

The first Americans to arrive in Rushden came in 1942 and were engineers. They were billeted at the Co-op Hall in Rushden’s High Street, and came to extend the runways at the local Chelveston air-base, so that they were suitable for the B17 Flying Fortresses.  Previous to that, R.A.F. Chelveston had been used for glider towing practice and transport flights etc.  These first Americans caused great amusement for the local folk, because shortly after they arrived, the air-raid sirens sounded, and they all took to running like rabbits and vanished from the streets as if by magic. By 1942 of course, no one ever ran when the sirens sounded, everyone knew from experience that the sirens were only an extra warning reminder and the danger was a constant thing, anything was liable to happen at any time, sirens or no sirens.  The Americans reacted just the same in the cinema.  I sat on the end of a row of seats in the Ritz one night, and the usual hand slide came a jerking onto the screen (sometimes it started to come on the screen upside down) saying 'The Sirens have Sounded the Alert is on' etc, well the very next second there was a rattling and thumping of feet and three Americans came galloping along the row of seats like the Grand National and vanished out the doors. They were only doing what they had been told to do in America i.e. Take cover when the sirens sound of course, but it was a great joke for the local folk.

It was late on in 1942 that the first Flying Fortresses flew into Chelveston.  In August, nineteen Flying Fortresses had flown in and they belonged to the 301st Bomb Group. The 301st only stayed at Chelveston around 3 months, and in December 1942 the 8^th’s 305^th  Bomb Group under Col. Curtis E. LeMay flew onto the Chelveston base. This was the group that stayed on the base for the rest of the war, and the group that I came to know.  The groups motto was 'Can Do' and the emblem was a mailed fist smashing a swastika with a bomb.

It was in early 1943 that I began to go to the base regularly.  Although it may sound a bit disgusting today, one reason for going to the base was to look in the dustbins there.  During the war years the bins proved to be absolute treasure chests, for all kinds of items were strictly rationed or totally unavailable to us here in England.  There were no shortages on the U.S. bases and they lived like kings food-wise, compared to the rations that we had. After having been to the base a number of times, I was there one day and a cook N.C.O. in charge of a fatigue party asked me if I could give them a hand by pulling a hand-cart that had been purloined from some railway station and painted 'shade 42', Fortress green. The fatigue party was painting stones white at the corners of the pathways as a guide in the 'black out', and the hand-cart carried paint, men’s coats and a few tools etc.  I pulled the cart for them and had coffee and doughnuts with them at the Chow truck when it came.  They also gave me some Baby Ruth candy bars, packets of chewing gum and packets of cigarettes for my father. I went back to where the hand-cart was kept a day or so later, in hopes of meeting the men again but I didn't see them.  Another man came though, a Corporal orderly, and I went with the hand-cart to the base hospital with him to fetch some men’s kit back to the hut lines.  For this trip I was given a half-crown and had dinner.  So from then I would go and get the hand­cart and fetch and carry anything that I could, coal, coke and wood for the hut stoves was a regular thing, and there was a little laundry collection round that an orderly showed me that I would do regularly.  To collect and deliver some things entailed going through the base’s main gate into the stores, offices and secure area which was full of Officers of all ranks and Military Police etc, but amazingly the hand­cart proved to be the perfect base passport. The gate guards and M.P.'s must have known the cart, or thought that I was not worth bothering about because they never stopped me going anywhere.  Sometimes one would ask where I was going and then send me on my way, all in a friendly manner.  Also no-one ever touched or moved the hand-cart at all, I found.  It could be parked anywhere and remain there until I went back to collect it.  The base was a strange sort of place in some respects.  Men seemed to be constantly moving about, coming and going to the communal sites, on duty and off duty, flying missions, etc. etc. etc. You could see and meet a man one day and then not meet him again for weeks.  Endless times men would say "How are you buddy?" and I would know his face was familiar but I wouldn’t have the least idea what his name was.  Some of the American names were impossible to remember for me, they were totally strange, and never heard over here in England.  I couldn't pronounce them, let alone remember them.  Normally it was all Buddy or a nickname, you had to know them really well to use and say the full name (a close friend of your family etc.).  On my first going to the base, I was confined in my wanderings to the communal sites and hut lines along the Higham Ferrers - Newton Bromswold Road, but once going with the hand-cart to the Tower stores and technical supply areas it became quite easy to catch a supply truck out to the bomb dumps, and the dispersal pans down the east side of the base.  The east side pans and hardstands were much more remote and isolated than those on the west side where Officers and the top brass were. The base was a large area then, I think they said it was 14 - 15 miles around.  It was easy to 'sort of get lost’ on there, well, not exactly get lost, but misjudge where you were.  Many of the dispersals and hardstands were very similar and more or less alike, and very often I forgot exactly which one I was on.  A number of times I would think that I could reach the road or main gate in 10 minutes and it took 15 or 20 minutes.  It was all due to going to various pans at different times and days I guess.  Regarding the aircraft, Fortresses etc. themselves, I find that the modern day research students and historians seem to attach far more importance to aircraft numbers and names than ever they seemed to during the war. You got to know some of the names and noticed aircraft for some reasons at times, but mostly they were so familiar and common every day sights, they became like buses at a bus station. Put it this way, 'they were normal then'.

Before the war, in the early 1930s I recall going once with my father in a little two-seater 'Morgan^’ three wheeled car to Sywell airfield, near Northampton, to watch the Tiger Moths flying. At that time they were known as 'Sywell Soapboxes'. The little Morgan car was unusual by today’s standards; its engine was bare at the front and the exhaust pipe from it was also bare and ran along the side of the car and would burn you if you touched it. My father and a friend of his ran the Morgan between them, and they went on a visit to see some friends on a camp-site. It was the fashion to wear shorts in those days and Dad’s friend put on his shorts and draped his coat and trousers in the Morgan. In a short while the cry went up "The car’s on fire," and a cloud of smoke was coming from the Morgan.  It was Dad’s friend’s trousers, he had draped them over the car and the exhaust pipe set them on fire. 

But returning now to the subject of wartime aircraft. The very first bomber I actually got close to and touch, was a Wellington at Sywell.  Being an Army Cadet I did a patrol guard weekend there one time.  I only got to go on the detail because my uniform fitted me.  This was entirely due to my aunt Ivy who was a tailor-dressmaker, and tailored my uniform for me.  Anyone who wore uniform knows that the issue was a complete joke until it was tailored to fit.  But be that as it may, Wellingtons were repaired and made at Sywell and I got to see one there.  The mine hunter Wellingtons were very unusual indeed and had a huge ring mounted under them.  The one that I first saw was flying over the Thames Estuary, but it was a long time later that I was told what it was and what it did.  The M.H. Wellingtons would fly low over the sea and the force field made by the huge ring activated the magnetic sea mines the Germans laid.

On the Chelveston base dispersal pans, I would often watch or help the ground crew mechanics, it depended on who the men were.  Mostly they were friendly, as Americans are by nature.  Naturally some of the Chiefs in charge were working under pressure at times, and it would sometimes show. One ground crew man I recall used to stand by the runway during the take-offs and wave his hat at every plane until his own Fortress came down the runway, then he would leap in the air, arms and legs spread and shout something like ' GO, GO, GO,' like they did at their ball games.  I never did know the man or his name.

When talking about the war years with Robert and Haydn, friends of mine, and members of N.A.A.R.G. I am constantly amazed at their knowledge of the war-time, the times, dates, bombing raid formations, aircraft, engines and parts etc. etc. etc. Back in those days the overall picture of things you didn't know never entered your head to bother about, and in many respects each base was it’s own island, and what happened where you were was the main concern of the men that I met on the base. Helping the ground-crews for me was just general fetch and carry, handing and taking things up the chief stands and along the wings etc. Sometimes they gave me engine parts to wash off and clean in a tray made from a sawn off oil drum that had petrol (gas) and/or oil in.  I didn't know what the engine parts were, I just cleaned them and the man would look at them to see if they were done right, then refit them back into or on the Cyclone engine. Sometimes I would lay on the wing, watch and hand a rag or spanner, but they never ever let you touch or meddle with an engine.  One of my main memories of those days were the terrible hot-aches that I got in my hands. For some reason all the war winters were hard ones, and the cold at times was horrendous on the pans.  Once, the Military Police pounced while we were crouched around a fire in an oil drum keeping warm. They came to see what we were burning in the drum because someone had been pinching and burning wood block from the bomb dumps. As it happened, the wood in the drum was scrap crate wood, but there's little doubt that wood blocks from the dumps would have burnt if they had had some, they burnt what they could to keep warm when there was no pan tent on the dispersal. The tents did contain stoves in them.  In 1943, William Wyler was filming part of his war documentary, 'Memphis Belle' on the Chelveston base.  I didn't see any of the filming being done but did see William Wyler at the Rushden Drill Hall where he showed the 'Memphis Belle' film to a group of A.T.C. cadets before it was sent to the U.S.A. for sound tracking and editing. As for myself, I didn't get a chance to see the documentary until about 3 years ago when my son got a video of it for me. In the film William Wyler featured the famous 305^th B17 'Old Bill' which was a Fortress that I did notice and know, due to its name Bill (the same as mine). It returned to base all shot to ribbons by fighter attacks, the navigator was killed, and 8 other of the 11 men were wounded. 'Old Bill' was a 422^nd B.5. aircraft, and the duty officer on the day it returned damaged beyond repair was Lt. Paxton Sherwood. The nose of the aircraft had been completely shot off, and Paxton had to remove his flight jacket and throw it over the Norden bomb-sight that was 'top secret' at the time and had to be kept strictly covered up when not in use. Paxton’s flight jacket appears in some photographs of the aircrafts damage taken at the time, May 1943.  Paxton was a pilot instructor, and in a letter to me revealed some startling information on the 'Memphis Belle'.  In the course of his being a pilot instructor he was detailed duty at the U.S. Bassingbourne base, teaching the pilots there radio, blind approach and landings etc.  His pupils flew under a hood on instruments to make the approach and then Paxton would remove the hood just before the aircraft touched down.  The aircraft used for instruc­tion was a R.A.F. Oxford, (one of four stationed at Bassingbourne for the purpose).  On this day he writes, Paxton had a pilot under the hood and they were concentrating on the approach and touch down at Bassingbourne. Suddenly, Paxton tells me a B17 Fortress flashes by the nose of the Oxford so close, the prop wash and turbulence from it lifted the Oxford and nearly turned it onto its back. The Oxford being very low, Paxton had to wrench control from his pupil under the hood and level out the Oxford before it hit the ground, this he managed to do with only feet to spare and they landed safely. The Fortress that nearly collided with the Oxford that day was the ‘Memphis Belle'. On the Belle’s return from her 25^th and final mission, her pilot (Morgan) made a totally illegal low level grass cutting pass across the Bassingbourne field. The 'Belle' missed complete disaster by only a few feet, what's even more astounding though, is according to Paxton, the whole near incident was filmed.  William Wyler filmed the 'Memphis Belle’s return so must have filmed the whole incident, but like Paxton told me, "He don't show that in his film".  (Paxton is a close friend of Charles Cramer, a 422^nd B.5. pilot who still writes me from Silver Lake, Ohio). It was a long time ago now of course, but such details should be recorded just to put the record straight. Many such facts remain hidden I suppose.  Returning to the subject of my part-time cart pulling job at the base, it was totally unofficial, unpaid, and done on a 'tips and chow' basis.  The food, dinners were excellent compared to the English rations that local folks were getting then. The top brass officers foods were served on plates in their messes, but the rank and file GIs got their chow on the infamous 'chow tray'. This was a partitioned tray with sections for the various foods served.  It proved to be for me a totally impossible balancing act from the start, you would have some meat and gravy in a compartment, then a cook would clang a huge spoonful of mashed potato on the edge of the serving container and it hit your tray like a cannon ball.  By the time you reached a table you had a dinner cocktail, there was meat, veg and gravy in with the tinned fruit, ice cream or custard, and vice-versa. Things like brussels in syrup, and peaches in gravy certainly made meals inter­esting, but it didn't really matter, it all got eaten.

The Base’s communal sites were south side of the runways, spaced along the Higham Ferrers to Newton Road, and the crewmen’s huts were the most untidy ones imaginable.  String lines criss-crossed them like cats cradles and held shirts, socks, ties etc.  The walls held all kinds of uniforms, flying jackets, shoulder bags and various gear, foot lockers served as seats around the stoves where men would play cards or shoot dice, fag packets, candy-bar and gum wrappers littered the floors, and the bunks that men were not laying or sleeping on were not made. That's how the huts were, but I suppose that when men are having to live one day at a time, untidy huts were the least of their worries.  At odd times when the mess got too bad for someone, they would find a brush and sweep the litter out the door, but I never saw any regular cleaning up.  How untidy the wartime U.S. bases could be is hardly, if ever, mentioned today, and the film made in recent years entitled 'Memphis Belle' compounded the fact by showing a clean and tidy hut; that certainly wasn't the way it was at Chelveston.  The only other man I know who mentioned how untidy the bases got is Mr Quentin Bland, the official 8^th’s base contact for Grafton Underwood.  He recalls going to the Grafton base when a boy and mentioned in a lecture that he gave just how untidy the base dispersals etc got during the war.  I spoke with him concerning the matter once and found that we agreed entirely. There's a similar type of thing concerning aircraft shown in air museums today, they are always displayed all clean and spotless with perfect paint, which is understandable in a way.  The normal work-horse B17s of the war years appeared weather beaten with faded paintwork, and oil streaked, and stained engine cowlings and wings etc.  Only new planes looked new.

But this just won't do I guess, there I am going on and on. My good friends Robert, Haydn and Shirley wanted a story for a magazine, not a 5 inch thick book, so I will draw these lines to a close now and get it into an addressed envelope and ready for the post. I don't know of course if what I have written will be suitable and acceptable to the magazine.  I don't even know what magazine the story is for.............

But this as maybe, I am only too pleased to write it for them, as in the time that I have got to know them, Robert, Haydn, Shirley and N.A.A.R.G. have given me tremendous help with times, dates and information concerning aircraft crashes that I heard, saw, and went to during the war. "There were so many crashes and news in the county in those days of them that you lost track of them all. Page after page recorded in the county of Northants," Robert told me, which didn't surprise me on looking back. Well 'that’s it' as they say.

Yours sincerely, W.E. Upton.

What you have just read is exactly as Bill wrote it, I realise that I was meant to choose just a few stories from it to type up, I'm sure you agree that leaving any of the stories out would have been a great pity, so knowing that Bill will be getting a copy of ‘Contrails’ this month I'd just like to say thanks Bill from all of us and we look forward to more stories from you (if you don't mind) for our next issue. Lynn

Note: There is a Museum at Sywell airfield today (2023) with lots of interesting items, and volunteers who are knowledgeable. Opening times currently Wed and Sat. 12noon to 4pm.
Also a bigger museum 'Carpetbaggers' at Harrington. Further information on their websites. KC