Live Chat96-year-old Bert Turner was an RAF Flight Engineer during the war. Sent on risky missions, he was shot down twice, but survived, earning his place in the Caterpillar Club – for bailing out of his aircraft using a parachute.
Bert volunteered for the RAF in 1942 and by December 1943 was assigned to a squadron to start flying. His missions were based in Europe, in Stirling aircraft, as part of a crew of seven.
“I did about four bombing runs, but mainly I supplied the SOE, toed gliders, and dropped para-troops.
“You started action when you got in the aeroplane in England. We were briefed for whatever we were going to do. You got in the aeroplane, took off and then you were in action. It didn’t stop until you landed again. A lot of it was very boring. Some of it was very hectic. I know that sounds ridiculous, but it’s the best way of explaining it, honestly.
“You’d have a target, you’d see the flak [anti-aircraft fire] and you’d look at it and think 'how the heck can you get through that?' but some way or another we did. And some didn’t. It– at the time – an everyday occurrence. It was something that had to be done and you did it.
“We broke 5 planes. Two were shot down, and one we crash landed at Newmarket Races in the middle of the night – on only one leg.
“And I remember we had some laughs too. I remember being issued my parachute and being told “If it doesn’t open don’t worry, bring it back and we’ll change it.”
D-Day
Bert took part in many of the key missions of the war.
“I remember D-Day very clearly. It was very quiet. We took off about one o’clock in the morning and dropped 20 para-troops over to France, doglegged and came home. There was very little flak. We landed and went to bed.
“The most amazing thing about D-Day was flying across the Channel: you could have got out and walked across the boats on the sea without getting your feet wet.~
Arnhem
“When we went to Arnhem, however, we took the Horsa gliders. We went on the Sunday and Monday and the trips weren’t too bad. But when we went on the Tuesday it was very rough. We were hit and very badly damaged, but we got back home.
“On the Thursday morning our pilot Dicky, was promoted from Warrant Officer to Pilot Officer. He’d received the Distinguished Flying Cross.
“We took off for Arnhem again that day at 11am. It was our 31st trip. By 3pm we’d been shot down, and our skipper and rear gunner were dead.
“I was flying second; the wireless op Mac went down the back of the craft to supervise the dispatchers throwing out the goods we were carrying. Then Jerry hit us pretty bad. Mac came back and he was covered in blood. And I mean covered in blood. My first thought was 'where the hell do you put a dressing?'. I asked 'where are you hit, Mac?' and his reply was 'the elsan' – which was the chemical toilet on the plane. A shell had burst under the aircraft, torn the elsan from its mounting and thrown it all over him. Horrible thing.
“Then we were attacked by six Jerry fighters and skipper gave the orders to abandon the aircraft. So out we went. Mac turned around and asked, 'will the chute open?' I said, 'well, we’ve two chances, Mac. It will or it won’t.'
“I can remember leaving the aircraft – and Jerry were still after us. We were only at 4,000 feet, so we were on the deck before we knew it. The navigator and myself shook hands going down. But the actual shooting down is a blur. I got a hole in my ankle, but I couldn’t tell you how I got it.
“We were picked up and taken into a farmhouse, the Dutch, they were brilliant.
“I walked back to England from Arnhem despite my injury.
“You just did your job and got on with it and did it.”
Back Home
“I had gotten married on September 14th November 1944, to my wife Elsie, a WAF on the same station. I said goodbye to her on Thursday the 21st of September at about half past ten Thursday morning. We took off. The next thing she knew, we had been shot down and she was told nobody had seen us bail out. So, they thought we had gone down with the aircraft.
“Seven days after we married, she had been told she was a widow. She had to get on with what she was doing. She was a cook and had to do her job. They didn’t say 'you’ll have to have six days leave' or anything. They said, 'get on with your job'.
“When I got back on the Sunday morning and I walked in, I was in a state. I had a hole in me ankle, I had no hat, no collar or tie, my jacket was torn, my trousers were torn. I had one flying boot on and the other I had cut down. I hadn’t had a decent wash since Thursday. The first thing she said to me was 'you stink', which wasn’t very polite!
“When I walked into my family home, an old house in London. I went in the back door, through the scullery, along a dark passage to the kitchen, and I walked through just as my dad came out. He screamed and passed out, and then my older brother, who was behind him and turned around and shouted 'what are you doing here? You’re dead!'. They had had a missing telegram from the War Office that I’d been killed.
“It happened to thousands of people, not just me.”
Getting on with it
Despite the horror of being shot down and losing friends from his crew Bert carried on.
“Today they call it PTSD, but in my day, if you didn’t get over it, it was Lack of Moral Fibre. You either got on with it or, in the air force, you went LMF. If you went LMF they took your stripes off and your beret and stamped it in very big letters on your documents.
“I saw it happen to one or two. If you refused to fly, that was it. However, Officers were luckier. They would suffer from ‘battle fatigue’, but NCO’s were ‘cowards’.”
Five months later, in February 1945, shortly before the end of the war, Bert flew to a place called Rees in Germany, with his wing commander, where he was shot down again. He made it home. But it was to be his final flight.
“We weren’t heroes or anything, we were just kids. We didn’t realise that that blood is real and death is the end. You think you’re all going to get up again.
“We should have known better. Our fathers should have told us more, but, of course, we knew better than our fathers.”
VE DAY
On 8th May 1945, when the war in Europe was over, Bert was at RAF Beccles, a station in Suffolk.
“I was serving behind the bar on the Sergeant’s mess. Beer was thruppence a pint.
“We knew it was coming. It was on the cards – we all knew that. We were just waiting for it to finish.
“That night we were all confined to camp. We just had a party in the mess.
“It’s a sore point with me because in my opinion, all the skivers got to party in the streets and the blokes that did the job were confined to their camps.
“In some ways there was disappointment. Most of us were expecting and hoping to go to the Far East, because the war wasn’t over. It sounds ridiculous, but we were young. The average age was 22.”
End of war
Bert spent most of the war as a Sergeant or Flight Sergeant and was promoted to Warrant Officer after his last trip. After the war, he left the military and worked in a number of roles, finding it hard to settle.
“It was hopeless. I went bus conducting. I worked down the pit, I worked at TI Industries, and I finished up on the pot bank. I settled on a pot bank and I worked with Beswick’s for 35 years where they made all the horses.
“It sounds ridiculous, but I’m very proud of my war service. It was the high point of my life.”