Memoirs of a Lanc gunner published

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Original link with some pics:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1179696/Breathtaking-account-Second-World-Wars-dangerous-jobs---gunner-Lancaster-bomber.html


At just 18, RUSSELL MARGERISON  volunteered for one of the most dangerous jobs in the Second World War: gunner on a Lancaster bomber. His chances of survival were slim - half of all Bomber Command's aircrews perished.
He was shot down, rescued by the Belgian resistance, hidden in the home of a millionairess, betrayed to the Gestapo and marched off to a prison camp in Eastern Europe - all before he was 21.
But he lived to tell the tale, and share it with his son, Colin, Production Editor of The Mail on Sunday, who died from cancer in 2007. This is the first part of Russell's story...

The sun shone from a cloudless sky, bathing the airfield at Stormy Down, South Wales, in its warmth. It was 11am on July 7, 1943. Dressed in fur-collared outer flying suit and fur-lined flying boots, I was oblivious to the wry smiles of the pilot and instructor as we climbed aboard the twin-engined Avro Anson.
A sickly mixture of glycol antifreeze, petrol and warm oil replaced the clean air I had been breathing. The temperature in the plane would have wilted tomato plants. Sweating freely, I sat on the baking-hot seat next to the pilot.
At the age of 18 years and eight months I had completed my basic training with the RAF as an air gunner and this was the first time I had been near an aircraft, let alone flown in one.
My father Bob, who was supervisor of casual labour at Blackburn's Queens Park Hospital, had been very worried when I joined up on my 18th birthday. He had lost his first wife, my mother, and his six other children to illness. I was his only remaining child.
The Anson took off for the Bristol Channel, where shooting practice would be carried out. The object of the flight was for the three new gunners to each fire 200 rounds of ammunition at a target drogue being towed by a single-engined Martinet aircraft. At a height of 5,000ft, with the Anson rising and sinking at irregular intervals, the instructor called the first gunner to the mid-upper turret. He quickly rattled off his rounds and in the process filled the fuselage with cordite fumes which, mixed with the other smells, produced a nauseating stench, doing nothing to help my stomach, my sweating or my headache.
The second boy only worsened the situation. It was with some reluctance that I left my seat to try my hand at this shooting lark.
After struggling to lever myself up into the turret I found myself sitting in the smallest smoke-filled sauna ever seen. My head was stuck up in the Perspex dome like a light bulb in an upturned goldfish bowl. Sweat dripped from my nose.
I had no room to move my foot, let alone my body.
'Commence firing in your own time,' the instructor commanded.
I discovered that when the hand grips were twisted towards me, the guns elevated and down went the seat; twist them away, down went the guns and up went the seat. A seesaw, no less. The combination of this, the motion of the plane, the stench and the heat turned me green.
I squeezed the triggers of the guns to get the whole performance over with as quickly as possible. The turret vibrated, the deafening noise drowned the drone of the engines. Cordite fumes invaded my nostrils until I could hardly breathe.
 Icon: A Second World War Avro Lancaster bomber like the one in which Russell Margerison flew
It was a bedraggled, disillusioned airman who eventually half fell out of the turret to be violently sick.
Back at Stormy Down I staggered towards my billet past the noticeboard on which I read: 'Flying 14.30 hours LAC Margerison.'
'You must be bloody joking,' I said out loud. 'If this is flying you can keep it.'
But as the days went by, I began looking forward to the flights, and it was a delighted group of youngsters who, on August 6, 1943, paraded for the last time at Stormy Down to have their Air Gunner brevets pinned to their chests.
I became the mid-upper gunner of a seven-man Lancaster bomber crew. Our pilot was First Lieutenant Max Dowden of the Royal Canadian Air Force. He was a craggy-faced 'old man' of 28 originally from California.
The navigator, Dave Weepers, was a Canadian, as was our bomb-aimer, Arthur 'Brick' Brickenden. Our wireless operator was 6ft 2in, broad-shouldered, big-nosed Richard 'Dick' Reeves, from Tilbury. Flight engineer Frank Moody was from Huddersfield and the other gunner, Gilbert 'Gib' McElroy, was another Canadian.
We were stationed at Kelstern, 18 miles from the Lincolnshire coast, arriving there in March 1944 to join 625 Squadron, consisting of 22 Lancasters, 25 pilots and 153 aircrew. Four days later, the seven of us watched as 19 Lancs rolled past, about to take off for Stuttgart. Max said: 'Well, you guys, it'll be our turn on the next one. Feel ready for it?'
'I wish to hell I was with them now,' said Dick. 'I was in Tilbury during the Blitz and saw what those bastards were doing and swore if I got half a chance I'd get some of my own back. If I'm lucky enough to get through this tour of 30 ops, I'll volunteer for another.'
'I'll say one thing for you guys,' said Max. 'You're sure approaching this in the right spirit. If only you could all speak goddarn English.'
The following morning we heard that three Lancs had failed to return. Since the forming of the squadron in October 1943, not one crew had completed the magical figure of 30 missions needed to complete a tour of duty.
However, Max had been right. The noticeboard on March 18, 1944 read: 'Dowden operations.'
We went to see the plane we would be flying and watched the 'cookie', a 4,000lb bomb, being winched up into the huge bomb bays, followed by eight 500-pounders and canister after canister of incendiaries.
At 17:00 hours the crews trooped into a Nissen hut that served as the briefing room. We sat on benches, facing a large blank blind above a platform.
 Young aces: Russell Margerison, centre, with his crew. Gib McElroy is first left, pilot Max Dowden is third from left and Dick Reeves is second from right.
A glance around the room would have sent a sergeant major rushing for his tranquillisers: buttons remained unfastened, hats were treated as an unnecessary encumbrance, scarves of every colour were draped around necks, and some even wore plimsolls.
A haze of cigarette smoke floated ceilingwards as the commanding officer raised the blind, revealing a map of Europe. A red ribbon stretched from Kelstern giving us the route we would take.
The intelligence officer spoke: 'There you are chaps, Frankfurt. Badly neglected by us these past few months. We aim to remedy that tonight.
'It is a vital communication centre. Eight hundred and forty-six aircraft will be bombing, 17 of these being provided by 625. New crews in particular watch out for the dummy fires they may light away from the target area.'
'Watch these three areas on the route,' the gunnery leader said, pointing at three blue circles on the map.
'They are Luftwaffe fighter beacons. Frankfurt is heavily defended by anti-aircraft guns, so watch out for those searchlights, you gunners.'
'Any questions?' asked the CO. No one spoke. 'In that case, off you go. Have a good flight and give them hell.'
The business of dressing for us gunners was a long and arduous one.
I donned my ladies' silk stockings, woolly knee-caps, fleecy long johns with full-length sleeves and high neck, shirt and trousers. I put on my normal socks and long woolly white socks.
Next came a thick white sweater and battle-dress top, followed by an electrically heated full-length suit, then my kapok-filled yellow outer suit. My electrically heated slippers went on, completed by fur-lined flying boots.
On the hands, white silk gloves, followed by electrically heated long black gloves, topped by leather gauntlets.
I then strapped on my parachute harness and finally tied on a Mae West life jacket. Anti-freeze ointment was spread on our faces. This was essential for rear gunners as the Perspex had been cut away from the front of the turrets to allow better vision, and frostbite was a real danger.
Carrying our 'chutes, Gib and I waddled out to the crew bus. We took a 'wakey-wakey' pill to keep us alert and we all climbed into our Lancaster for a final test of engines and equipment. Then Max switched off.
Enlarge    Heavy metal: A Lancaster with the 12,000lb of bombs it carried
The time had come which all aircrew dreaded: the 45-minute wait before take-off. We lounged about, talked to the ground crew, joked and forcibly laughed and got through approximately ten nervous urinations each.
Any subject was discussed apart from the operation itself and the ground crew never asked where we were bound. The airfield was deathly quiet.
At long last Max said: 'Come on, fellas, the time has arrived.'
We shook hands all round. 'Good luck, see you in the morning.' Then we climbed aboard. The evening was shattered by Lanc after Lanc starting up its four Rolls-Royce Merlin engines. We raced to the very end of the runway, Max heaving her off at the last moment. Up she went, then down she sank. Up again she staggered with her load of 1,800 gallons of fuel and 12,000lb of bombs.
As we set course, I could see aircraft above and below, in front and to the rear. Their number would soon swell into a stream of bombers stretching across the sky for some 65 miles, all heading for Frankfurt and timed to pass over the city in a 30-minute onslaught to saturate the defences.
I switched on the electric gunsight and put the guns on 'fire'. Without even thinking I muttered a prayer.
It was soon impossible to see any other planes. I switched on my intercom. 'If there's supposed to be 846 kites on this raid, where's t'other 845?'

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'Quiet, Russ,' Max retorted. I sat in my small turret where all available space had been utilised and all pretence of comfort discarded.
I stared into blackness, hoping nothing remotely like the blurry shadow of a fighter would cross my vision. All was silent, if one could overlook the roar of engines - entirely possible providing they did not change their note.
As we crossed the enemy coast, a little light flak was going up in the distance, too far away to be of any significance.
Then the ground below us was suddenly illuminated by a great splash of twinkling stars as someone jettisoned their incendiaries, possibly to help reach the 23,000ft at which we were now flying.
Dick periodically broadcast the strength of the wind back to base. Dave was busy with his charts. Frank sat alongside Max checking the masses of illuminated dials that told him how the engines were performing. One of my feet was cold, the other too hot. I made a mental note to have my suit checked.
A few searchlights appeared and it surprised me to see just how wide the beams were at our height, particularly when the tops of them flattened out against a patch of cloud, spreading a glow too close for my liking.
 Memories: Russell Margerison today
A further batch of incendiaries split the darkness below, bringing home what the bombing leader had stressed at briefing: 'Don't jettison the incendiaries. All you are doing is lighting up your route for the Luftwaffe.'
Three flares appeared above and to starboard, hanging in a straight line like three chandeliers in a banqueting hall. I could almost hear the bombing leader saying: 'I told you so.'
I tried to spot the tell-tale shadow of the fighters that had dropped them. Two bombers were flying directly down the centre of the banqueting hall. The rest of the sky might as well have been a huge blackboard.
The flares spluttered out, but the damage had been done: a short burst of tracer shells ending in a red glow told its own story. The glow grew into a vicious red ball that enveloped a Lancaster as it hurtled earthwards.
Max broke the silence: 'How long to the target, Dave?'

'Thirty minutes, Max boy, we're slap on course.'
Eight vivid, red-hot exhausts, not more than 20ft up, swept over us. I ducked as the huge black beast momentarily wiped the stars. One of our aircraft had changed course too early and was flying across the stream of bombers.
Within seconds a red and white streak announced a collision, forming itself into a gigantic pin-wheel with showers of coloured sparks flying off it. The wheel's centre was so bright it hurt my eyes. Two more would never reach Frankfurt.
A sharpish turn, followed by a levelling off, brought us in direct line with the target, the last leg of our route. After some 15 minutes I rotated my turret to face forward and could not believe what I saw.
Hundreds of beams were searching the sky for a victim, but what staggered me most was the flak.
The sky in front was one mass of bursting shells, never-ending flashes covering the whole of Frankfurt. Surely it was impossible to fly through such a ring of metal without being hit?
In this virtual daylight we could see scores of bombers sweeping across the city, then, to my amazement, a Ju 88 night fighter appeared not 100 yards away. 'Ju 88, port side down. See it, Russ?' came Gib's urgent voice.
'Got it,' I answered, swinging my sight just in front of the enemy's nose. The fighter was flying a parallel course and never wavered.
We were well aware that our .303-calibre weapons were as pop-guns compared to his lethal cannon, but somehow he had not seen us in the flickering light.
'Let sleeping dogs lie,' I said. 'We'll watch to see if he makes a move.'
He slid underneath us, the dials in his cockpit glowing turquoise. Whipping my head over to the starboard side, I heaved a sigh of relief as he reappeared and drifted away, oblivious that he had stopped my heart from beating for a full two minutes.
'Bomb doors open,' called Brick. Wherever I looked, a searing flash appeared every few seconds, followed by a greyish ball of smoke.
The Lanc shuddered time and again, rising and falling as she ploughed on. I could hear nothing of those exploding shells, but the smell of cordite was strong.
Up went the port wing alarmingly as a shell exploded below it. 'Blast it,' shouted Brick. 'Hold the bloody thing steady. Left, left. Beautiful. Hold it. Bombs gone.'
The Lanc lifted appreciably as the load and she parted company. We flew straight and level for a minute to allow the camera in the bomb bay to take its photographs, then Brick called: 'Bomb doors closed, nose down and home James.'
From four miles up, I could clearly see the streets and buildings, many of which were burning fiercely. Huge blotches of red and green markers - dropped by our Pathfinder planes - mingled with the red and yellow flashes of exploding bombs.
Surpassing all in brightness were the white streaks as photo-flash after photo-flash burst, allowing each aircraft's camera to take its automatic film.
A nearby Halifax, with its four big radial engines, brought me back to reality. It reared up until it was standing on its tail, as if having received an uppercut from Popeye, and as quickly fell.
I remember thinking in a detached sort of way that no one would get out of that one - and surprising myself that watching these aircraft going down left me unmoved. So long as it wasn't us, what the hell, and it wasn't going to happen to us, so why worry?
With considerable relief we flew out of the false daylight into the haven of darkness, only to find ourselves alongside a burning Lanc which, incredibly, was flying straight and level. Max banked away, but it followed, as if wanting company. Inexplicably, each time we banked, she banked.
I found myself wishing it would go down, for by now the crew must have baled out, but I was overlooking the fact that wounded men might be aboard, unable to get out. Eventually, the Lanc's nose dropped and it curved a long lazy path downwards.
Crossing the North Sea, I thought how it felt like a lifetime since I had first climbed in the Anson. It had developed into great fun shooting at the drogues, but now it was different. It gave me a strange feeling when I realised someone had been shooting at me trying to hurt - no, trying to kill - me. The fun and games were over.
We bombed Frankfurt again on March 22, Berlin two days later and Essen two days after that, all in Lancaster PED940, which incredibly had survived more than 100 ops. We were destined to end that run.
At this stage, superstition crept in. Before an operation, the lads began doing all manner of strange things and, although it was camouflaged by jokes and laughs, virtually everyone developed a quirk of their own.
Gib always banged the palms of his hands on the ground prior to take-off; Frank always carried his uncle's First World War medal; I was known to completely undress and start all over again because I had not put on my left sock first; Dave never flew without his officer's hat resting on his navigation table.
The life we were leading seemed totally unreal. One evening we would be having a few beers, the next we would be over a target with all hell let loose.
On a trip to bomb Nuremberg on a moonlit night I saw about 15 bombers go down.
I watched mesmerised as a Lanc's wing folded at right angles to the aircraft like a drop-leaf table. Some bombers floated down from side to side like a leaf falling from a tree; some flew straight and level for half a minute or so, even though the flames looked huge in comparison to the size of the plane; others screamed straight down. It was the most frightening two-and-a-half hours of my life, yet I never saw a fighter.
In our first month of ops, 625 Squadron had sent an average of 15 aircraft per raid and had lost eight crews. We had completed five raids. Our target of 30 seemed a terribly long way off.
A ten-day lull followed the disastrous Nuremberg raid. In the pub, Max asked what I thought of ops now.
'One thing that surprises me is that we never fire our guns on operations,' I said. 'We just do not see the fighters clearly enough. As soon as we see a blur, one of us screams "corkscrew" and we've lost him, thank God.'

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'Corkscrewing' was the most effective way of making the Lanc hard to hit. It involved throwing the aircraft into a sharp, diving turn out of the fighter's gunsight, then pulling sharply up in the opposite direction.
'I doubt if any gunner on the whole squadron has fired a bullet in anger during our time here,' agreed Max. 'If we get hit, I'll ride the baby down.'
'And me,' said Frank.
'What the hell are you on about?' I exploded. 'I've never heard anything as silly in my life. If you can get out, then get out - it's as simple as that.'
'Don't get so uptight,' said Max. 'It's a simple statement. I'll go down with it.'
'I wish I'd never sat with you buggers,' I said.
The most outstanding raid of the six we undertook in April was on Friedrichshafen, near the Swiss border. The bombing run took us on a direct course towards the snow-capped peaks of the Alps, visible beyond the target.
Continual shell flashes and puffs of smoke flashed by, great menacing light beams slowly swayed back and forwards. On the target, the reds, yellows and oranges of the fires intermingled with the greens and reds of the markers. Dummy fires and paler markers, lit by the Germans, burned on our port side. Blue and purple hues issued from a particularly large burning mass.
I looked down on the full artist's palette. Lake Constance reflected the scene as accurately as a mirror and transformed the snow-topped mountains into colourful candelabra. Orangey red flames danced on the peaks.
Fear was completely obliterated from my thoughts. How ironic that the dropping of bombs on civilians - the most diabolical thing devised by man to date - should create a picture unsurpassed in beauty by anything I have seen.
We had completed another six ops by the time we lined up for a raid on Duisburg in the Ruhr Valley.
'Max,' called Dave, as lines of aircraft stood stationary behind us, engines ticking over. 'I've forgotten my bloody hat. I'll have to go back for it.'
'Too late, Dave, sorry, we'll be getting a green for take-off any minute now.'
Dave fell hopelessly silent. We all felt sorry for our Canadian navigator. Superstition was no longer laughed at.
As we raced down the runway, there was a huge explosion ahead of us, and as we took off we flew over a mass of burning aircraft. An Australian crew had not managed the take-off and had gone in with a full bomb load aboard. We had never experienced such an ominous start to an operation.
We were on the return flight, at 23,000ft, when there was a sudden heavy rattle of cannon and vicious, sparkling white tracer whipped through us. The Lanc appeared to stop dead, as if to gasp for breath, then lurched on like a drunken man.
Both port engines were ablaze and flames spewed back over the port tailplane and fin.
The firing had lasted for no more than two seconds, but it was more than enough. Down went the nose of the aircraft, the engines screaming in agony, and my head felt as if it was going to burst with the pressure.
'Pull the bugger out, pull the bugger out,' someone shouted, and in reply the aircraft slowly responded.
'Feather port engines,' Max ordered, then immediately: 'Abandon aircraft. Abandon aircraft.'
Shocked at the suddenness and speed at which events were moving, I watched as curls of metal rolled off the huge oval tailfin and revealed the framework underneath.
Off came my gloves. I uncoupled my oxygen supply and electrically heated suit, then vacated the turret in record time.
The whole fuselage was an inferno. Flames licked at my parachute, which lay on the floor. I grabbed it and with a sharp tug tried to hook it on to the harness I was wearing. I failed.
Gib, wearing his 'chute, opened the back door, turned, gave me a thumbs-up and disappeared from sight.
Smoke and lack of oxygen were making breathing difficult as I tried, and failed, once again to clip on the 'chute. I leaned against the fuselage side and said aloud: 'Well, this is it.'
The heat was intense as I moved nearer the door. Ammunition was exploding. Through holes made by the cannon shells, I could see flames outside.
'What the hell am I doing?' screamed my fogged brain. In sheer desperation, I banged on the 'chute as I tried to attach it again. This time it stayed on, and I rushed to the door.
As soon as I poked my head outside, I was whipped out of the plane by a fierce wind. As I floated down I could hear a fighter coming closer and, as his engines became a deafening roar, I tried to curl myself into a little ball. The night was so black I couldn't see him but, thankfully, the noise faded.
It was a grim sight, watching our plane curl ever downwards, streaming flame as she went.
I had seen many go down but this was different. Some of my mates could well be inside this aircraft. The Lanc hit the ground to leave a circle of fire. I turned my head away.




NEXT WEEK: The muzzle of a revolver dug into my back. 'German Military Intelligence. You will be shot as spies at 8am tomorrow...'