The Dinner Table

A glint in his eye

© Shaun P Downey

Dad may be pretty deaf and he is no longer very active, but he still has a gleam in his eye and he can be  the charmer.

Dad II

Dad

© Shaun P Downey 2012

A Happy Birthday to my Father

 

My Father is 86 today.

Dad

When knowledge of a second language is beneficial....

I know I've posted this a few years ago but I'm feeling lazy.....

In an earlier age I'm sure that my father could have been a seanachai – a traditional story. If there's one thing he likes to do it's talking and he has a mine of stories. One period of his life he likes to talk about now is his time in the RAF during WWII (but go back 25 years and he was rather tight lipped about his experiences). Joinging the RF in 1941 at the age of 15 (with a doctored Irish birth certificate) he trained as a bomber navigator and was flying on operations over Germany when he was just 16.

By 1944 he found himself based for a short while near Cairo before heading to Iraq and finally Burma. One day he was in Cairo minding his own business, looking in looking in a shop window. As a result he did not see two officers pass. The first he knew was when he was accosted by a Sergeant and a Corporal of the Military Police who were following the officers and putting anyone who did not salute them on a charge. Although he outranked the MPs as a Warrant Officer he knew he would be reported to his CO if he spoke. But he knew he had to say something so he said:

“Ár n-Athair atá ar neamh, Go naofar d'ainim, Go dtagfadh do ríocht Go ndéantar do thoil ar an talamh mar a dhéantar ar neamh.” The MPs looked puzzled so he carried on: “Ár n-arán laethúil tabhair dúinn inniu, agus maith dúinn ár bhfiacha mar a mhaithimidne dár bhféichiúna féin Ach ná lig sinn i gcathú, ach saor sinn ó olc”

The MPs looked at each other, one said “he must be a Pole or something” and walked off. When he got back to base he told his CO, a Wing Commander (equivlanet to an army Lt Colonel) and another Irishman who laughed like a drain: dad had recited the Lord’s Prayer in Gaelic at the MPs.

His had heard of these officers and their stupid little antic of putting men on charge for not saluting them and declared he would go to Cairo, find them and “have the bastards saluting him till their fecking arms dropped off”. (Nb the "e" in fecking replaces a vowel that comes rather later in the alphabet

I suppose the moral of the story is that knowledge of another language is useful....Ah well, it’s amusing when dad tells the story!

Photo Hunt - Family

The theme for this week's Photo Hunt is family. Here is a photo of my father

More of my father's stories

I have recently finished reading Nemesis, Max Hastings’s account of the final year of the war against Japan. It’s well written and definitely worth reading. One anecdote stuck particularly in my mind: USAAF B29s attacking Japan would often hit thermals bouncing the aircraft about. On one aircraft the thermals loose the toilet which emptied on a crewmember. Thereafter he became known as Pisspot Smith.

This reminds me of two of my father’s wartime stories. One occurred when he was on stand down near Basra before onward posting to Burma. For a short while he was assigned as a navigator on a C-47 Dakota. On a couple of occasions they had to fly a particularly unpleasant officer on inspection visits to Indian Army Service Corps deports in the region. He must have been particularly offensive for dad and his crewmates to wait until the officer went to use the aircraft’s chemical toilet before encountering “thermals” - at least that’s what they told their commanding officer, who accepted their explanation.

My dad is friends with a fellow Pathfinder, “Chappy” who served as a flight engineer in 582 Squadron which flew Lancasters. Over one target his Lancaster was coned – caught by several searchlight beams. A coned aircraft was usually dead meat unless urgent evasive action is taken (and usually still was). It was standard procedure to dive to gain speed then turn violently to escape the beam. The pilot did this and luckily the plane survived. During the escape Chappy was thrown to the floor and felt a hard, painful blow to his head. He then felt what he thought was blood trickling down his face. A crew member checking whether he was seriously wounded noticed that the liquid was not blood but urine. What happened was that the pilot’s urine bottle had come loose and hit Chappy. For a while he was known as “Pisshead”.

It was particularly amusing to hear Chappy’s wife tell the story at a Pathfinder Day at RAF Wyton a couple of years ago.

66 years ago a 15 year old left Cork with a doctored birth certificate and joined the RAF in Belfast. He wanted to be a pilot but trained as a navigator. He served in the Pathfinder Force with 109 Squadron and then on attachment in Italy and Burma. Like my grandfather, my father was fortunate to end the war with only minor injuries. The death rate among bomber crews was horrendous.