Tuesday 23 October 2012

Australians in the Battle of Britain. 24 October 1940. John Crossman


Australians in the Battle of Britain. 24 October 1940.

I have mentioned this before, but I think it warrants repeating given I can find nothing of interest operationally speaking for the Australian boys on 24 October: Flight magazine confidently asserted in its 24 October issue that ‘the Battle of Britain has been won by the Fighter Command, and...what is now going on is mere nuisance raiding, not intended to prepare the way for an invasion of this island’.

And so, yet again, I look backwards to discover what was happening 12 months ago on 24 October 1939.

John Crossman, who died in battle on 30 September 1940, arrived at the initial training wing established at Cambridge University on 16 October 1939. His quarters in Jesus College were ‘quite decent except that beds not so comfortable’. It was springtime back home in Australia but John did not miss the buds of renewed life. He discovered that ‘Cambridge is a very beautiful place especially just now as all the leaves are falling and are most beautiful colours’.

By 24 October he had well settled in but, as he wrote home to his family to tell them about life at Cambridge, it wasn’t all autumn leaves and roses.

‘The RAF have been given half of each of nine colleges and we sleep two in a room. When I saw two in room I should say a flat. The flat consists of a bedroom, sitting room and kitchen but we don’t cook our own meals...Our rooms are quite decent and we have in our rooms a lounge and two lounge chairs, a carpet, table, writing table, sideboard and a very good fireplace which, as you can guess we don’t hesitate to use...

We rise at about seven, have a bath and shave and go along for breakfast at about eight. After breakfast we parade at about nine and then march off to one of the other colleges (generally to Downing or Emanuel) for lectures. The lectures are either in Morse or navigation and we sometimes have an ARP lecture.

When I write of lectures I should say that they are supposed to be lectures. Really the whole thing is an absolute farce as the stuff we get is usually about first year high school standard and more often than not there is no lecture when we do get there.

Actually the place is just a place to quarter us until we are ready to go on to the flying training school or until they are ready to take us there.

After our lectures which last until about twelve we come back to Jesus College for lunch and parade again at about two and go for more lectures. We came back again at about four and the rest of our time is our own until ten thirty at night when we must be in bed unless we have special late leave.

...We are all pretty fed up with going along to have a lecture on some subject and finding we have to sit in the sun (when there is any) for an hour or so until it is time to come back for lunch...Jack [his friend Jack Burraston] and I feel pipped to think that we put in at least an hour’s study almost every day on the boat and so far have had no call to use any of the stuff we worked on...’

Oh dear.
 
 
A very young looking John at Cambridge. That coat was one of the few of John's possessions to make it back to Australia after his death, rather than being sold off.    

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