Yorkshire RAF Veteran, Alf Herring
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00:00I would say, a lot of the time, you're just sat around, waiting for the weather to change,
00:17or waiting for instructions where to go and what to know.
00:27Seven of you were wandering about.
00:33Seven in the crew.
00:36Not the way you went, you all went. The whole crew usually took part.
00:45I just wanted to imagine, you've got hair in it,
00:51and big pods stuck in your ear, both ears, so it cut all your sounds down,
01:04so you could hear what usually a pilot was saying to you.
01:14Oh, and all of you.
01:16It was fairly busy, so you didn't have time to look around and not bother so much.
01:28Everybody was trying to get the best out of them, get something out.
01:38The only people who had time off at that time would be, like, a gun or a flight engineer or somebody.
01:50It opens about 10 or 15 seconds after you've jumped.
01:56It don't come too much, because it comes above you, and you didn't want any of your canopy tangling in them wheels or something like that underneath.
02:12So, when you drop down and you know that German troops are searching for a look at me and find it and escaped parachuters.
02:34So...
02:42The longer you could stay out, the better chance I'd have been picked up by French...
02:52Resistance.
02:54Hmm?
02:55Resistance.
02:56Yeah, the resistance moment.
02:58You were taken, taken captive in Belgium, but you were moved, weren't you?
03:08You were moved to a POW camp, eventually, in Lithuania.
03:15Oh, yeah, that was a long time after.
03:19A long time after.
03:20A long time after.
03:21Well, long time after, a month.
03:23Yeah.
03:24Because we went to...
03:27...indelegation centers and...
03:29Mhm.
03:30.. and were questioned for...
03:32...three or four days about...
03:37...the bomber, and the...
03:41...new...
03:43...inventions for it.
03:45Oh, yeah.
03:47There was an invention called the G. It's a small box, just like a very small telly,
03:59and you also set it up and I told you more or less your position.
04:09OK, that'd be like early radar, wouldn't it?
04:13You'd be careful you didn't do anything wrong.
04:20You could get the German guard, provided you didn't step out of the way,
04:36you used to be fairly well looked after.
04:40And no food, of course. No food, yeah.
04:44No food at all, really.
04:47Some dark brown bread, which was a bit on my tough side, hard side to eat.
04:59You used to have to wet it to make it eatable.
05:08I think it was...
05:18Cold.
05:19Average food, for the time, in Germany.
05:24Right.
05:25The loaves, you didn't get much health besides that.
05:29You used to get some little bit of meat, and you used to get that ration,
05:36and they'd give you a little bit of time at dinner time.
05:39And they'd give you a little bit of time at dinner time.