Life as an Instructor

The Diaries of Russell James Sparrow 1908 to 1991

typical type who always wore his kilt and tam-o-shanter and was full of his own importance. They visited his quarters in the early hours, picked up his bed in which he was sound asleep, carried it to the ‘sacred square’ ( the parade ground), and left him there, poor old boy!

After church on Christmas morning we all went to the Officers Mess for drinks, after which officers and N.C.O.’s served dinner in the Airmen’s dining hall, all in the good Christmas spirit. We had our meal in the evening followed by another ‘do’.

Instructing potential Air Gunners was a job of many facets and risks galore, having to fly with pilots, a lot of them Poles and Czechs, who at times did some pretty stupid things e.g. flying in from the sea at zero feet and then pulling back on the stick just in time to ‘climb’ up the cliffs, or flying through an avenue of trees in a wood and lifting the wings of the a/c to clear the tops of the taller ones. Several lives were lost in my time, including pilots of drogue towing aircraft and their operators. Six were killed in one crash near the spot where the Duke of Kent met his end. I remember vividly one occasion when returning to base from an exercise. The weather had clamped down, we were flying through heavy snow and Johnny Hope, the pilot and I (we sat side by side) were straining our eyes and trusting we were all alone up there when suddenly we were confronted – it looked near enough to touch!- with a Sunderland flying boat. I have seen some white faces in my time but none whiter than Johnny’s as he yanked back on the stick and literally crawled over the other aircraft. The weather was too bad for us to return to our own base and we were directed to the other side of the Firth, to Dalcross, where we waited for the weather to clear before returning home.

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The Diaries of Russell James Sparrow 1908 to 1991

The pupils were a varied lot, British, Commonwealth, Poles, Czechs, Free French, Indonesians and even a Russian. I made the most of time off by going to Invergordon, Alness, Dingwell and of course Inverness where we used to visit ‘The Club’ for drinks and a social get-together with the locals, playing and umpiring for the cricket team, helping with the soccer team and taking the cadets for swimming, dinghy drill etc. in the baths at ‘Snockie’.

We decided that if I could get a living-out pass and find suitable accommodation Doff and the children would come up for a time, and so, on 30th July 1943 after a lot of searching in the village and surrounding villages and eventually finding a place in Evanton they arrived. After lunch at The Novar Arms I took them to their new abode, a small ground floor flat in the village with pleasant surroundings. We soon settled in, Jean went to Dingwall Academy for schooling and Mick went to the village school. Doff was able to use the camp facilities i.e. Naafi for shopping, wives club etc. and I was able to take her to Mess functions and dances – we had some good ones I can tell you. We were also able to use the cinema for films and Ensa shows. Jean and Mick joined the local children for ‘tattie picking’ and earned themselves a few shillings. Jean and her pals organised and ran a sale of work for charity raising the sum of £37-10 shillings which at that time was quite a substantial sum.

The weather was very severe, very short days and plenty of snow. There were several Polish and Czech flying personnel on the camp and they tried to teach the children to ski, but also other snow sports. The countryside away from the shores of the Firth where the aerodrome was situated, was wooded and hilly and we were able to enjoy some lovely walks. One was to Black Rock, a local beauty spot where there was a sheer narrow drop of about 60 feet to a rushing stream below, I risked my neck by hitching over it on a fallen tree trunk but that was before Doff and the children came up. Another glorious spot was Loch Glass up in the hills and one day Doff 44