Appendix 1

Escape and evasion.

This piece relates to an exercise which took place during a Friday night and Saturday of the course described in Chapter 7. It was, in its way, a significant enough event for it to be described separately and in detail: -


As aircrew it was not unreasonable to expect, in the circumstance of our being involved in hostilities, that we would fly over, and conceivably be shot down over, enemy territory. The Air Ministry, with this in mind, sought to ensure that all trainee aircrew were given practical experience of evading those forces which could be expected to find and capture them.
At Desford, as mentioned in Chapter 6, I had been on the defending side and became thoroughly cold and bored having been on look-out duty all night and seen nothing. In this later exercise I was an evader in a foreign land.
The rules were quite simple. We were to be considered caught and captured if a defender laid a hand on anybody and gripped his clothing. There was, officially, to be no violence. Common trespass was permitted but any form of damage to property, theft, or use of vehicles without permission was taboo and would be treated as a criminal offence. The start and end times of the 25 hour exercise were clearly defined. Our dress was any comfortable clothing, whether uniform or not, under a pair of khaki denims. Footwear would be of our own choice. The denims were not to be removed as they were effectively a form of recognition. We had also to carry identification. Money was not permitted. Many of us chose to carry bottles of water and a bar or two of chocolate.1
About 21.00 hours, an hour before the start of the exercise we, as 'downed aircrew', were assembled for briefing in the main hall of the Ground School. Because we were in the building in a potentially 'enemy' country it was searched, including the roof spaces, to ensure that there were no eavesdroppers before briefing commenced. Some of us, like me, carried small electric torches, others carried compasses. There was not enough of either to go round so whatever we had, if anything, was decided at random. We wore a variety of footwear, from gym shoes to heavy boots. I wore boots. Some of us blackened our faces, as did I. Listening intently, we were told that we would shortly climb aboard crew buses which had their windows obscured so that we would not know where we were going. We would be dropped, two at a time, as if we had baled out, at various intervals after a journey of at least half an hour. We were to confine our movements to within the county of Warwickshire (excluding the City of Birmingham), which represented enemy territory for the period of the exercise. Looking for us would be our own Airmen and Station personnel, those of other unspecified RAF Stations, Civil Defence personnel, Army personnel, and the county Police Force which had had all leave cancelled for the period.
Only when all this had been explained to us were we told that, in the darkened vehicles we would each, at the very last minute, be given a local Ordnance Survey map and be told the addresses of two 'safe houses' (which we had quickly to memorise) to make for, and hopefully arrive at, whilst evading capture.
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1 Sweets were still rationed and we were advised in advance to save our coupons for this event. 241