An RAF Reminiscence

I publish the following with the permission of the author, whose identity is known to me but which I will not reveal.

 

‘My father was in the RAF during the war, as a flight sergeant. I had never heard him talk about that time. When he was staying with me one I suggested we might go to the RAF museum in Hendon, thinking he would be interested in it. We did go, but he seemed very quiet and subdued during our visit. On the way home he told me that he didn’t like to remember his time in the RAF, because so often he had been preparing planes for men to fly off in, men he knew well and liked, who were not going to come back.

 

‘He also said that they were well aware of what the bombing was doing to the German people and their cities and this too preyed on his mind. Our family comes from Plymouth, which suffered badly from bombing in the war, but they knew the raids on Hamburg and Dresden were far worse. My father said that he and his fellow-servicemen did what they were ordered to do, but had no interest at all in revenge and thought the raids contributed little to the war effort.’