Hal Pawson's War Story - Printable Version

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Hal Pawson's War Story - zoo_heathen - 25.11.2010

I have been given the privilege of typing and reprinting a story that has been laying in a drawer for at least 40 years.

Hal Pawson wrote for the Edmonton Journal, in the war years he was a navigator on Mosquitos for the RCAF. Jane Pawson gave me six typewritten pages, annotated in fountain pen. Here it is! Annotations after the text.

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Opposed to the popular trend in war memoirs, I do not think that I won the Second Great war because I was able to see where Alan Brooke, for instance, or Montgomery or Eisenhower or even Rommel was wrong in this or that decision and was thus able to resist stupidity in higher military echelons to the glory of his flag.

Rather, as a Pilot Officer of when their were none more numerous in aircrew overseas, I operated on the theory the mere fact of field rank – whether it be among commissions in Army, Navy or Air Force, and whether it be on our side or the other - -was a fairly certain guarantee that whatever the decision, chances were even than better that it would be wrong.

It now turns out that I, and thousands, even millions for all I know of Pilot Officers like me were unconsciously on the right track. As the memoirs continued to pour off the best-seller presses, it became increasingly obvious that the field rank officers spent the war fighting amongst themselves so it was just as well the underlings such as we bumbled along getting on with the job as best we could.

However, I do recall the night we underlings gave the British Air ministry and all air officer rank in the RAF, RCAF, Free French, Belgian, Polish and assorted Allied airforces in England enough of a puzzle to keep their minds off the defects in each others decisions for all of six, even maybe 12 hours.

Perhaps the Edmonton fog of the last few nights has sharpened the memory, for our hut of Pilot Officers at Ha’Penny Green, an RAF operational training station somewhere in the wilds between Wolverhampton and Birmingham were in a fog when the crisis occurred. We were in a cold English fog, the six Canadians, eight Britishers and five New Zealanders in our group, and as the fog had persisted for some 22 days, our immediate problem was warmth.

We had burned everything wooden in the hut except the walls, doors and ceilings. The chairs, benches, tables and lockers had gone. We had raided the station coal stockpile so efficiently that it was heavily posted with guards who didn’t seem to realize that Canadians, of all Allied airmen, just couldn’t stand the cold. A few nights earlier they had rattled off several .303 rounds around the ears of benumbed Canadian raiders—whether to break the monotony of the chillingly boring pastoral night, or improve the war effort by eliminating a few Pilot Officers without the risk of losing valuable aircraft.

What ever the reason, since the guards had brought the shooting war home to the cold colonials, we had been forced to burn verey (signal) cartridges in our one little stove. A verey cartridge, in case you are interested, if it is a single colour load variety, is just sufficiently warm enough in a stove to bring cold goulash to a boil in the 30 or so seconds of burning life that it possesses. Unfortunately, the high rate of disappearance of verey cartridges from the station’s aircraft and stores in a period of three days had brought another clamp-down. Stores and planes were guarded.

This clamp-down came on the worst of all possible nights, immediately after the food parcels had arrived in from Canada for the month. It called for drastic measures, as already-cold Canadians balked at the thought of feasting on a cold stew of canned corn, peas, pork and beans, corned beef, meat balls and gravy, tomato soup and canned salmon, a glorious mixture you will admit, but only if heated.

There were other minor problems concerned with the anticipated feast, to which the eight Britishers and five New Zealanders were invited although they expressed reluctance both vocally and facially when the Canadians so lovingly tolled off the ingredients. One of these was the fact that none had a mess kit large enough to hold such a marvelous mess. Heat, however, was the main lack.

Early that afternoon, just about dark in a country where darkness seemed to fall just before two o’clock on a foggy winter day, the opportunity to the burning problem presented itself. Our hut was ordered to “volunteer” a Pilot Officer for a four-hour tour of duty in the control tower. An emergency council of war selected a nice little New Zealander, quiet, inoffensive, polite, trustworthy and obedient types they all were, as “our” volunteer. Trust the job to a Canadian and every inflammable object in the control tower and within a mile’s radius would be paced under strict guard.

A little late for “foursies”, but still in plenty of time for high tea, our courageous New Zealander who had gone against all his national traits to answer our need, returned. He had carried out his mission to the best of his ability, although why he limped back into the hut as if he had a wooden leg was a mystery for some seconds.

Earlier raids had run even the control tower out of the smaller, more common verey cartridges. All the tower had were the large emergency “signal of the night” flares. These were three, four and even four-stage multi-coloured vereys, constructed in series on a four foot pole, like a sky rocket and fired according to what that’s night colours were—two greens, a yellow, a green and red, for instance. High above even England’s thickest fog they would blossom their agreed-upon colours in turn, giving comfort to some misguided pilot who from them learned his friends on the ground had closed still another airfield to him and him with only six minutes petrol left. Still then proper colours assured him he had been abandoned up here by his friends and wasn’t above Templehof Airdrome, Berlin.

The New Zealander had secreted such a weapon down inside his trouser leg and up underneath his coat. Typical of his thoughtful people, he had been careful not to steal a rocket carrying the colours of that particular night in case it might be needed at the tower in case of emergency. He had merely selected one from a pile of the colour series for a future foggy day. A quick consolation made it obvious that to break the extra-long cartridge might ruin its quick cooking ability, so it was decided to try the overcharge in the small stove—just high enough to take the powerful cartridge—full length.

The Canada package wrappings were bedded in the stove, beneath the long cartridge, which by now had to have its head end poked a few inches up the thin stovepipe chimney. The various cans were opened and the question of a big-enough pot was being debated when the answer to even that one stumbled out of the fog and through the door—a highly confused Australian Air Force group captain, a training type who somehow had the misfortune to have his pleas for operational duty answered by some bungler in headquarters so many miles away in Melbourne or Woomeraga or somewhere back in Australia.

It was only later---much later—that we learned his rank, for a variety of reasons. Their unfamiliarity with overcoats resulted in the Australians being unable to produce one that made an officer of high rank distinguishable from an A/C1, and anyways the Australians peculiar shade of blue always came out purple after a brush with the English fog and the soft cloth stood permanently at ease so that all Aussie types looked, at their best, as if they were just arousing from a purple-blue nightmare. Besides, like all Aussies, he wore battle dress, which sneakily made group captains, even air marshals, look like men of lowest rank.

However, these were reasons of no consequence in our failure to recognize our newcomer as a group captain, for all eyes in the hut were seeing only one thing—through a purplish haze—about this man: the biggest, shiniest aluminum mess any man’s serviceman ever owned.

It glistened with foggy dew on its brilliant new metal, and the conclusion was unavoidable that this training type not only had never used the thing, even as a stein, but cherished it so highly that he shone it twice a day. The befuddled man obviously thought so much of his magnificent mess kit as he did of the egg (gold braid) on his hat. However the orderly room corporal who shoved him into our hut must have missed the egg, too, or he wouldn’t have billeted such a ranking officer with Pilot Officers.

As one, the hut descended on the misplaced Aussie, stripped him of his beautiful pan and told him to pick a bunk away from the fire. In a trice the goulash was in the pan, the stove lid removed and the shiny new kit placed over the hole, which it fitted perfectly. With elaborate ceremony, the match was lighted and the wrappings at the bottom of the stove coaxed into flame.

Experience, even with the one-colour verey cartridges, had taught us to keep a firm grip on any pan over such a hot charge of powder. In condensation to the much mightier load being used this night, extra precaution was agreed upon. The newcomers rifle---this man really had come to fight, or perhaps batsmen services embarking and disembarking from the boat allowed group captains to afford the luxury of such a novel war weapon—was placed over the lid of his mess kit, I held down the butt while a Canadian from P.E.I. held down the muzzle. This was pot was going to stay on this stove come hell or high water.

No water higher than the average English winter normal of about three feet above the surface of ground at all times made itself evident, but Hell did break loose when the vari-coloured cartridge ignited. First there was a brilliant flash of green light, blinding all in the room and before the smoke blotted out the entire scene the Prince Edward islander and I went up in the air six feet. Fortunately, we made a perfect three point landing, pot on stove hole, rifle across pot and two Canadians balanced perfectly across rifle butt and muzzle.

Contact was barely made before two great red fire balls filled the room, rocking the stove, pot, rifle and anchor men. The Aussie group captain had barely screamed “Air raid, men. To the shelters,” when the final, yellow charge took hold. This time stove and all left the floor, but once more a perfect three point landing.

By now, the less courageous were fighting their way out the doorway, to even greater confusion. Outside, airmen of all ranks were beginning to gather out of the fog, some yelling “Fire”, others “Air raid”, and still others “Enemy aircraft trying to land”. One, carried back to memories of gentler times, kept howling “Up Guy Fawkes”.

Determination to duty, however, kept two staunch Canadians at the rifle and in matter of minutes hut, stove and even smoke began to settle. This at least provided compensation for what, we learned later, now was taking place at the control tower and over the fog above it, The curious outside were beginning to press inside the hut. They agreed to a man that it had been a most spectacular demonstration, an RAF hut chimney giving off vari-coloured emergency signals, but at the tower appreciation—or even knowledge—of what occurred was lacking.

An air ministry investigation, launched in what must be record time for channels extending for Station Ha’Penny Green to Group to London and back to Group and Ha’Penny Green later that night, filled us in on the control tower picture. A Command Lancaster, carrying the Training Command Air Vice Marshall had asked the station for emergency landing permission just seconds before our cook-up started.

Back at him had come the coloured flares which should have told him landing was impossible but only told him that some blithering idiot in the Ha’Penny Green control tower didn’t even know the proper colours of the night. Hitting his mike button, he promptly blasted the tower for sending up the wrong colours. They promptly told him to go soak his head—they hadn’t fired any colours, right or wrong, and that he shouldn’t be flying suffering from bottle fatigue.

Over to the satellite station he switched, only to be told they had seen the proper colours of the night go up, but not from our tower. Probably asleep through the first two stages of our four-stage chimney signal, the satellite boys’ only alternative had been to claim they’d seen the proper colours.

A much confused air vice-marshal now was confronted with a decision, whether to admit his eyesight was going and he had seen colours which actually weren’t fired, or to admit he had somehow mixed up his “colours of the night” drill and didn’t know the nights proper identification. The natural decision had to be, his sergeant pilot had mixed up his colours and some station trying to help him had fired the proper ones.

On that theory, three minutes later he fired down our “hut” colours to the next airfield and promptly was greeted with a warning burst of light flak. Explain as he might, he was “enemy aircraft” firing down those last colours. His last, desperate recourse was his own Group Station for landing and a quick call to the air ministry, to report “paratroop infiltration in the Birmingham area, with the enemy using green-double red red-yellow verey signals to guide in their aircraft.”

If the fat was in the fire, it was little different back at the hut. Dust, confusion and free-loaders from other huts had been slowly fanning out of our hut, to reveal two Canadians still leaning on a rifle across a covered, black mess kit—with a shell shocked Aussie standing by, mouth agape in horror. The sight of the lidded pot brought a massive cheer of victory from all in the room but the Aussie. Triumphantly his singed and scorched rifle was lifted off the treasure, and expectantly, with a dramatic sweep, one of the Canadians swept the lid of the pot. As one, the heads of six Canadians, eight Britishers and five New Zealanders, in a tight circle, swooped down to drink in the sight of such a pot of goodies, merrily bubbling.

They saw, instead, a few bits of smoldering, charred wrapping paper, away down in the bottom of the stove. The heat had melted the bottom out of the mess kit. The angry cries of the bilked banquet guests was still rising when the shocked Australian group captain turned it to laughter.

As if mad with grief at what his priceless gem of a mess kit had been put through, he unfroze, leapt through the circle and seized it in both hands. He yelled with agony as the flesh of his palms seared, then grabbed the now dingy rifle and tried to knock the pot off the stove as he would stroke out a six in cricket. The room rang at the contact of metal on metal, but the pot stayed put.

It was soldered solidly to the top of the stove. The Australian stayed only seconds longer, just long enough to grab his scattered gear and head to headquarters to report the heathenish Canadian festive rites.

His pot stayed atop our stove for at least as long as we remained in camp. Besides giving the inadequate little heater a stylish, second story look, the new top made it a more efficient heater. It could now be stoked higher when fuel could be pilfered for it.

The home guard and Air Ministry remained on the outs on the Wolverhampton-Birmingham area for the “duration”. But then natives to the district often said both groups needed a good night’s excitement.

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RAF Station Ha' Penny green history, where it mentions the foggy conditions:

http://www.ns25.co.uk/Pages/Stories/Nic ... 0Green.htm

Recent pics of the airfield and control tower:

http://www.controltowers.co.uk/H-K/Halfpenny_Green.htm

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