Twenty-One: Coming of Age in World War II. James Holland

Zebra, so they could run up the engine and go through the pre-flight tests. It was a grey, damp, cold day – the kind of day that never really grew light – and drizzling slightly. Mist shrouded the airfield. The Halifaxes around the perimeter loomed like spectres. Most of the other crews had followed suit, and despite the chill stillness of the day, RAF Leeming was now a hive of activity. As well as the jeeps and trucks rumbling by, trolleys of bombs, fuel bowsers and ammunition carts were all hurrying to the dispersal areas.

      Not far away, Bill’s twin brother George was going through the same process with his crew. The brothers had only been with the squadron a month but were already considered quite a unique pair at Leeming – after all, there’d not been identical twins at the station before. Moreover, not only did they look exactly the same, they were also practically inseparable, apart only when with their respective crews and in the air. They even shared a house together. On their arrival they’d been allocated a married quarters house in Leeming. Dick Meredith, Bill’s wireless operator, shared the house with Bill and George. The twins took a room upstairs, while Dick and several other crew members took rooms downstairs. ‘They were so much alike, you could barely tell them apart,’ recalled Dick when I spoke to him some time later. ‘And so close. They never said, “Where’s my shirt or socks?” but “Where’s our shirt?”’

      Shortly after the pre-flight tests, it was time for lunch – a simple but nutritious hot meal, followed by chocolate or biscuits. Bill would always take a bar of chocolate and a tin of apple juice with him on the mission, but it was important to make sure the crews were well fed before they took off. The food was a perk of the job – and there needed to be some – for while most in Britain struggled with the stringent rationing, there were fewer shortages for the bomber boys. Bill and George ate their meal with Dick Meredith and some of their other crew members in the sergeants’ mess. Strangely, although the twins were the captains of their aircraft, they were not officers, even though two members of their respective crews were, and messed separately; the social divide between officers and non-commissioned officers might have been put to one side in some theatres of the war, but not so in Britain. Not everyone felt like eating a heavy meal – nerves and apprehension gave people a nauseous sensation in their stomachs. The key was to try not to think about it too much, and to keep the conversation going. Distraction was everything.

      Between the end of lunch and the final briefing there was not much time – the chance for a quick game of cards, or to write a letter, but not much more. In the Flight Rooms, they would put on silk underwear, thick pullovers and flying boots, then head to the Briefing Room. There, all the crews came together, not just from 429 Squadron, but 427 ‘Lion’ Squadron as well, also based at Leeming: pilots, navigators, flight engineers, air bombers, wireless operators and the air gunners, piling in and scraping back chairs as they sat down. Since that first message earlier in the day, more information had reached Leeming about the route, the bomb loads required, timings, and, crucially, frequent weather updates. In the Briefing Room, there were rows of desks on which pilots and crews could make notes, while on the end wall was a large map, covered over with a cloth until the Station Commander came in and announced the destination. This could be an anxious moment: the further away, and the deeper into Germany the raid, the more dangerous it was. Then the Navigation Officer spoke, explaining the forming-up procedure and the route to Düsseldorf, marked on the map with lines of white tape. The Met Officer was next. Despite the low cloud over northern England, the target area was, he assured them, expected to be clear. Bill listened carefully, jotting down a few notes on a scrap of paper. This was only his second mission as skipper and he felt his stomach tighten.

      The briefing over, the crews collected the rest of their kit – flight suits and Irvins, flak jackets, Mae West lifejackets, as well as chocolate and apple juice, then clambered once more into the blood wagons and set off for their aircraft. It was nearly four o’clock by the time they reached their Halifaxes, and the light was already beginning to fade. Once aboard their aircraft they waited for nearly half an hour. In the cockpit, some twenty-two feet off the ground, Bill went through final checks. It was cold in there, without the heat from the engines to warm it up. It smelled of metal, dust and oil. And it was quiet; there was no more joking, no laughter. The mood amongst all the crew was now serious, their thoughts directed to the job in hand. Christian names and nicknames were replaced with their proper titles: Navigator, Upper-Mid Gunner, Skipper – with communication through the aircraft’s intercom. The minutes seemed to have slowed. As Bill was discovering, this half-hour before they took off was the worst part of the whole trip. He felt scared – of course he did. Anyone who said they weren’t was a liar as far as he was concerned.

      At last the signal came and Bill started the four Rolls-Royce engines, licks of flame flicking from the exhaust outlet brightly against the darkening sky. The great aircraft shook and they moved into line, taxiing onto the perimeter track running around the left side of the airfield. Further away, 427 Squadron were lining up on the right. The first Halifax from 429 thundered down the runway at 4.25 p.m., then off went a plane from 427, the two squadrons feeding in turns from their respective sides of the main runway. Bill inched his aircraft forward. George was two ahead. At a quarter-to-five, he watched his brother reach the top of the runway, pause, then accelerate and lumber into the air. Three minutes later, it was his turn. As he taxied round, he saw the usual groups of groundcrew and WAAFs along the edge of the airfield. As Bill pushed open the throttle and felt the Halifax clatter and surge forward he could see them waving and holding their thumbs up in a sign that meant good luck. With both hands, he gently pulled back the control column and felt the Halifax lift from the ground, the perimeter hedge disappearing beneath them. Trees, roads, villages rushed by and then they were in cloud and climbing high into a dark and uncertain sky.

      The first time I met Bill Byers was on a warm but blustery day in May 2002 at Croft Racing Circuit in North Yorkshire, England. He was there with a number of veterans and their families for the unveiling of a plaque dedicated to the men of the Royal Canadian Air Force who had flown from there during the war. I noticed Bill because he stood out so obviously from the other veterans. Wearing a baseball jacket and cap, he moved about easily and when he talked it was with a quiet but animated Canadian accent that sounded many years younger than his eighty-two years. Wandering over, I introduced myself and we soon got chatting. He’d only been at Croft a short while during the war. It was not long after his arrival in Britain in the summer of 1943. He and his identical twin brother George had been sent there to convert from twin- to four-engine bombers. After that they’d both joined 429 ‘Bison’ Squadron, RCAF, based down the road at Leeming, flying Halifaxes. He told me about the weather that winter. ‘Boy, it was cold,’ he said. When it wasn’t snowing it was raining. Because they always flew their bombing missions at night, the lack of sunshine started to really get him down. At one point, he realized he’d not seen a hint of sunlight in over two weeks, so with no ops that evening, told his crew they were going for a practice flight and took them high above the clouds. ‘I just needed to see some sunlight,’ he told me. ‘We flew up and down the country, and felt much better after that.’

      We were still talking when someone started pointing to a dot in the sky beyond the trees at the end of the circuit. Then we heard the faint thrum of engines and in what seemed like no time at all, the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight’s Lancaster was humming past. After one flypast we began to talk again, but then the Lancaster slowly banked and turned in for another sweep over our heads. Everyone gazed skywards, mesmerized, as it then circled again and came back for a third pass. Once it had disappeared over the horizon, I turned back to Bill who introduced me to his wife, Lil. They’d met during the war. She had been a young girl from nearby Northallerton, and when Bill finished his combat tour they’d got married and after the war she’d journeyed with him back to his native Vancouver.

      ‘We’ve made the trip back to England about twenty times since the war,’ Bill grinned. ‘I love it here. And you see, my mother was English too. She met my dad during the First World War, so I’ve always felt attached to the place.’

      We met again some eighteen months later at their home in Redwood City, a few miles south of San Francisco in California. It was a couple of weeks before Christmas, but in Carmel Drive it was warm and, for the most part, sunny. They’d moved there over forty years ago – his job with the Post Office had been ‘boring