And then one evening.
In the mess,
I noticed
didn't pay a great deal at all
attention to them for their crews
coming out.
They were all bound for Italy
the next morning,
to see if there was, I was on anything,
I'm grabbed by a burly South African,
not quite as tall as me.
Hey you you're with me.
I looked at him and said, what?
He was a lieutenant, a second lieutenant.
South African have pilot “You're with me.”
Since when?
Since last night.
Well, what happened last night?
Oh, you volunteered
I knew nothing about it at all.
Mind you,
I've got to confess.
He marched me into a little
office where there were 2
and produced a piece of paper
which had my name on it.
And the statement has volunteered
to fly with the South African Air Force.
And what looked a little bit
like my signature.
And I then and the service
of the South African Air Force
second wing heavy bombers,
34 Squadron.
And, that was where I carried out
my flying operations.
I have to say,
Lieutenant Kemp turned out to be
an exceptionally good leader and officer.
He was quite quickly a full lieutenant.
And very shortly
And he was a man I had great respect for
and I'd have gone anywhere with him.
I've trusted him and
I think
to a degree, he had great trust in me
because he had a tendency
to give me all sorts of strange jobs
And we got out really well.
In fact,
except our tail gunner
who was a little 17 year
old straight out of school,
and so who knew everything,
And he was known in the crew as Pipsqueak.
Skipper.
The pilot first
the mid upper gunner
was known as Doc
because he was a medical student.
The beam gunner was always Lal
The bomb aimer was simply Bombs.
Me, I was always Sparks or Sparkie.
