Before I Sleep (8 page)

Mavis and I tended to join those individuals and groups with a similar philosophy to our own, such as the University Branch of the Christian Student Movement. Before our marriage, we had spent several stimulating weekends with this group at a holiday house in the hills. There was a great deal of free discussion on a variety of religious topics and some very funny games. We both admired our chairman, Bill Salter, a final-year medical student whom we were later to come across in the Oxford Group. While I was a police messenger I had became dissatisfied with the sermons at Flinders Street. I discussed my discontent with Miss Edith Lee, a church member and head of the Chidren's Welfare Branch. She suggested that I talk to Ivan Menzies, a Gilbert & Sullivan actor, then in a show in Adelaide. I went to see him, and listened to his description of the principles and practices of the newly formed Oxford Group in England. I found him convincing. The Oxford Group had been started at Oxford University in 1928 by an American Baptist Minister called Frank Buchman. He recruited young, athletic types, and the group developed a manly, cleancut image and quickly spread throughout Europe and America. The group's insistence on absolute standards of honesty, unselfishness, love and purity, as well as its team support, appealed to Mavis and I, and so for a time we participated in its activities. Then in 1935, when I was posted to the Police Depot, the Group decided, without any consultation with us, that it was God's will that Mavis and I join separate teams. This arbitrary decision did not go down well with Mavis's independence, nor mine, and so we drifted to the fringes of the movement, where we have remained ever since.

There was a short time, years later when we were living in Canberra, when we became friendly with some young men who were committed to the ideals of the Oxford Group. We joined them in some of their activities, and might have again become serious members ourselves. However, when the founder, Frank Buchman, came to Canberra for a visit, he was accompanied by a group of dedicated spinsters. They told Mavis she was to attend meetings in the afternoons at 4.00 p.m. She pointed out that this was the time our children would be coming home from school, and that she had a tea to prepare. These family responsibilities were not accepted by the middle-aged, thin-lipped spinsters as reasons for non-attendance and so, despite much peer pressure, the Whitrods again withdrew from Group activity. Mavis and I continue to regard the principles of the Oxford Group — now known as Moral Rearmament — as being of the highest order; its members live frugally and are a friendly mob, but the group's practices still reflect the values of its founder, an American bachelor Baptist minister. As well, individual consciences tend to be swamped by the group mentality, and this is much influenced by the professional full-time workers.

Just before being sworn in, I asked Mavis if she would become engaged to marry me, although force regulations required me to first serve three years as a single man. She said that I had first to obtain her father's permission. I did this and at my twenty-first birthday celebrations we announced our engagement. We were the first of the younger members of the force to do so, but we were soon followed by the older of my contemporaries. I had achieved a permanent posting at the CIB and it was probably because of this that I was given permission to marry after thirty months instead of the required three years. We were married at Flinders Street Church where Mavis's parents had also been married, and we had a splendid reception afterwards provided by Mavis's parents at a fashionable city restaurant.

Mavis's bridesmaids were Gert and her younger sister Jean. Mavis looked radiant and I was the happiest man present. My CIB sergeant and some other police were there to share my happy event. We had scraped together enough money to have a short honeymoon after which we returned to a rented flat at Glenelg. The honeymoon, however, started as bit of a disaster. I had booked us into the Normanville pub and we caught a bus to the seaside township some 40 miles (65 kilometres) south of Adelaide. The pub, it turned out, didn't really cater for boarders, although they must have occasionally put up the odd drunk for the night. There was only one bedroom with a dilapidated bed strung with a sagging wire mattress. The food was dreadful. The company in the public bar was uninviting. We decided to move to Victor Harbour where we knew we would find congenial lodgings. But we had no money. I had arranged for my fortnightly pay cheque to be sent to the Normanville post office and so we stayed in the dreadful pub from Saturday to Friday waiting for the arrival of the wherewithal to pay the bill. The money arrived and we left. The publican was happy to see us go. In Victor Harbour we stayed in a guest house we knew, Clifton, and were very content.

Until recently, I have never thought about the impact of marriage on Mavis. The prevailing regulations required her to resign her position as a qualified teacher as soon as she married. She then took on, as a full-time job, the small task of keeping a one-bedroom flat clean and preparing meals for the two-hour breaks I had for lunch and dinner. We lived on the corner of Anzac Highway and Durhum Street near the Glenelg beach, but we knew no one in the vicinity. Mavis's old friends were still teaching and she must have felt the isolation of that small flat, and the loss of a satisfying career. My salary was less than hers had been so she had to exercise much frugality. We couldn't afford the entertainments we had enjoyed before we were married. The first three months must have been difficult for her. At first we couldn't afford a radio. I cannot remember Mavis mentioning anybody she had talked to during the day, and we did not then have a telephone. She never complained. She always greeted me with a smile and an appetising meal. She listened sympathetically to my tales of job woes and small successes, but in return I never gave her much listening time. I left home in the morning at half-past eight and I often didn't finish work until nine-thirty at night, although I came home for meals twice in this period. It was a lifestyle that quite suited the older detectives. Their children were no longer at school; their wives had their own circles of friends; they often managed to spend their evening shifts in the pictures (free entry with a police pass) or at the greyhounds, trots or boxing. Or they could go quietly home where a departmental telephone would summon them if anything urgent arose. Young constables had no telephones so they had to remain close to headquarters. I would patrol the central business district in the evenings looking for break-ins. But there was not much crime to be detected in this casual fashion.

Mavis and I hoped to find a more permanent home. But, except for the sum of £100 which Mavis had saved over the years from her salary, we had no assets. We talked of the possibility of buying a house on the small deposit of £100 and then raising a mortgage. It was still Depression time in Australia and money was scarce. Neither of our families could help. We eventually located a friendly builder who built us a nice house at South Plympton on the tramline, which was very convenient for getting to and from work. The house was built for £1000 and our builder accepted the £100 as the first instalment. The house had a Mt Gambier freestone front, three bedrooms, a sleepout at the back, a bathroom with a gas heater and electric light in every room. We started life in our own home with very little furniture indeed. But we initiated a small example of chain migration: soon other young policemen were buying houses in the area, attracted by each other's company and the convenience of the tramline straight to Victoria Square.

We had also spent money on our first luxury — an Irish setter pup, Kerry, who became our devoted follower. I had always had a dog at home in Halifax Street and, although this was not a Russell tradition, Mavis readily agreed to Kerry's purchase. The three of us frequently went for long walks together on the alternate Sundays when I was off duty. With the help of our groomsman, Max Dawson, who had once been a scout of mine when I was a scouter at Flinders Street, we dug up horrible onion weed, planted a lemon and apricot tree and some grapevines, and built a fowlhouse. Mavis was always a keen gardener and homemaker and, despite becoming increasingly larger in body size due to pregnancy, shared in all of our activities. She was an excellent cook and made a specialty of Cornish pasties of which I became her best fan. Mavis's biological and nutritional studies ensured that our meals contained all the nutriments needed, and her frugality meant that very little was wasted.

My salary of seventy shillings a week just covered current expenses and fortnightly mortgage repayments so we were always financially hard pressed. Since we seldom went out, we did buy an inexpensive radio. When the time came for Mavis to go hospital, we could scarcely raise the taxi fare. We had decided upon the Memorial Hospital at North Adelaide for it was reputed to have the best maternity wing. Subsequently all of our three children were born there. Although we had a minimum of furniture, one of our first purchases was an ice chest in which to keep milk fresh for Andrew, who was born a year after our wedding and six months after we moved to our first home. Mavis was thirty-one when Andrew was born. So we decided that she would be looked after by the best obstetrician in Adelaide. We told him about our financial situation and he agreed to accept time payment of his account. I remember visiting Mavis in the maternity wing with Kerry — to the delight of the nurses — when Matron was absent from the ward.

4
Lessons from the war

(1940-1944)

A
LL through the late 1930s war had been looming in Europe, but I don't remember this making much impression on us in Adelaide, even when Hitler invaded Poland and war was officially declared. It was the retreat from Dunkirk in June 1940 that suddenly brought home to us how badly things were going for England. There was a surge of popular feeling, resulting in young men volunteering for military service with little more thought for the future than a belief that they ought to go and help their mates in a crisis. England, for many of us, was an extension of Australia. The British were our mates. They were in desperate trouble, but we were sure that, with our help, they would be able to defeat the enemy in six months or a year. However, not everybody felt like this: few of my peer group at the CIB nor the males in the Russell social circle felt any obligation to volunteer for service. Yet for me there was a strong urge to go to the aid of Britain, the only nation standing up for the democratic principles we all said we believed in. Perhaps my long association with scouting and its English origins may have affected my assessment. Perhaps Mavis's similar association with the Girl Guides and its emphasis on loyalty to the King may have been behind her calm acceptance of my decision to join the RAAF.

I volunteered, but there was a six months' callup delay during which time I attended weeknight refresher courses in maths and classes in elementary navigation. Mavis, who was more learned in maths than I was, provided some extra tutoring. During this period we decided that we should provide Andrew with a brother or sister just in case anything happened to me. For me the six months passed agonisingly slowly and it was a tense time at home since Mavis and my family were facing an unknown future, but she remained calm and full of common sense. We made what plans we could.

In February 19411 reported for duty and left our South Plympton address. I would be away for over four years. At home was my pregnant wife, a very young Andrew, and Kerry, our dog. Unlike some employers, the South Australian Police Department did not make up the salaries of its staff who enlisted, so Mavis had to survive on the wife's allowance portion of my RAAF Aircraftsman Gr. 2 pay. We decided that we would invite my father and mother to live at our home during my absence and they came to stay with Mavis. Our second son, Ian, was born while I was still training at a Mt Gambier base. I was unable to get leave to visit my wife in hospital. On completion of my training, I was promoted to pilot officer — a rank, not a job description — I was a navigator. With my promotion came a small increase in salary.

In early November, I was posted abroad and Mavis, Andrew, and our infant son Ian, in a pusher, somehow managed to get to the railway station to farewell our contingent. There was also a small team of my mates from the CIB. Mavis and I had only time for a quick, sad hug. She was smiling bravely as the train left but she later told me that our four years of separation were a very difficult time for her. Nobody knew what lay ahead, which was just as well for the farewelling relatives and friends. In my own group of twelve navigators who had trained with me, eight were killed and two became prisoners.

Mavis had the worst war by far. She woke each morning to a life without my help. She had two small children, a lower income than she'd enjoyed when single, she had other people living in her home, she noted with some concern the daily newspaper lists of casualties and, without transport, she had to struggle up the high steps of trams with the two very young children and a shopping basket. Wartime conditions meant she had to hunt around for scarce fresh food, carefully husbanding the food and clothing ration coupons. All this without any companion with whom to discuss any matters of concern.

On the other hand, I was in a new environment. I spent most of the four years of war in front-line squadrons. Operational aircrew in Europe reversed the usual serviceman's view of war: “a few moments of great excitement and months of boredom”. There was much for us to do all the time. In 1942 and 1943, we flew Catalinas from Gibraltar on patrols over the stormy mid-Atlantic that could last anything from sixteen to twenty-two hours. We would fly out to sea as far as six hundred miles to meet convoys coming from the United States. We did this every third day. Since Cats carried two pilots but only one navigator, these were arduous trips for me. I had to know where we were at any moment in the event that we had to report the location of hostile shipping, aircraft or submarines. I suppose I spent about half my time in the air doing the calculations that would tell us where we were. I had to work out how strong the wind was by watching the tops of waves or by dropping flares and calculating the drift. As well, I had to take my turn at radar duty and try to make visual contact with the conning towers of submarines that might have been missed by the radar. On these operations, we had to be awake and ready for briefing a couple of hours before takeoff and it needed a couple of hours after the mission to debrief. One could go thirty hours without sleep. We rested on the second day, and then prepared for the next flight. Towards the end of my year at Gibraltar, I became quite jittery and found I couldn't sleep much before a mission. At times I had no sleep for forty hours straight.

When flying out of Gibraltar we sometimes gave similar cover to Malta-bound convoys. This was less difficult but fraught with danger from the anti-aircraft fire of the American destroyers who shot at everything. As well, the Germans had installed heavy guns on the southern side of the entrance to the Mediterranean, so we had to be very careful in the vicinity of Gibraltar. Some of our aircraft disappeared when nearing base, presumably as the result of anti-aircraft fire. Mysterious disappearances were especially threatening since there were many possible causes, and we wanted to know if there were any new precautions that we should be taking.

Apart from providing navigation, survival was my prime concern. I shared a room with my skipper, Dick, another Australian. He was unmarried. If I showed any moroseness because of absence from the family, Dick organised some activity, such as playing tennis or sharing a half-pint of weak English beer. He helped me through the worst periods. We became close mates and went on leave together. I had someone I could talk to who understood my situation. Things were different for Mavis, who was battling along on her own.

My other operational tours were in the North Atlantic and in the Indian Ocean. Navigating in the Arctic, escorting Russian-bound convoys, proved to be challenging — first finding them in thick cloud when my astro skills were useless, and then getting back to base at Akyrerie in Northern Iceland. At the time, flying boats were only equipped with magnetic compasses, and the proximity of the North Magnetic Pole meant that the compass was particularly sluggish in responding to changes in the aircraft's heading. At the time, the allies were very keen to support the Red Army on the eastern front. Any German division that could be tied down in the east meant one less division on the western front. Stalin extracted a high price for this service in terms of aircraft parts, fuel and other necessities of war. The convoys carrying this material had to sail through the North Sea and into the Arctic Ocean, eventually docking at Murmansk in northern Russia. Our job was to fly over the convoys looking for enemy battleships and submarines operating out of occupied Norway. The weather was usually atrocious, making it very hard for us to see anything, but this also meant that we too were very hard to see. We were rarely shot at.

In retrospect, I think the war taught me several valuable lessons. I discovered that I could master a complicated technical instrument like the Mk9 Bubble sextant to give me a position within a 4-mile triangle after ten hours of ocean flying, despite the chronometer's inaccuracy. My self-confidence grew to almost match that of the rest of the crew whose lives were at stake. They had great belief in my capacity since we always “got there” and “got back”. I did receive squadron assessments of “above average”.

The war, of course, dragged on far longer than any of us thought it would when we volunteered. I found that the best way to cope with separation from my family was to put life into two compartments: home life and war life. For the most part I lived in the war life compartment, and I became inured to the war. I just accepted that it was the present state of affairs. I suppose I rationed the amount of time I allowed myself to think about Mavis and the boys. I think most aircrew with families did this. Anyone who mused too long or too deeply on their distant loved ones became moody and depressed. Mavis wrote every week and usually her letters got to me; however, none of the parcels she sent me arrived, not one. I wrote back, although not as regularly as Mavis did.

I never doubted that I was flying with the best pilot in the squadron who would get us out of any scrapes, nor that I was with the top wireless operators, gunners and, of course, our excellent Belfast-trained flight engineer. I learned to trust our crew. We were a “family” and known on the Squadron as “Dick's crew” — a description we were proud of. I didn't actually swagger in the mess but I didn't pay homage to any other crew either. It was a nice feeling to know you were regarded as one of the best. Our RAF officers' mess was dominated by the squadron crews. We talked, argued, drank, played shove halfpenny, and engaged in more violent pastimes. There were ground staff there — the engineer officer, the intelligence team, the met forecasters, the padre and the doctor. They were made welcome in any discussion/drinking group, but the padre and the doc were especially regarded as “dwellers on the fringe”. They were seen as useful but not essential in getting a crew over a convoy. The last two were my age and my rank. They called aircrew by their first names as we all did, but they were set apart because they never achieved that degree of acceptance, being always “Padre” and “Doc”. I liked them both. We occasionally talked on equal terms about anything. Gradually I lost my Murrays Lane cringe when addressing medical doctors and ministers of religion. Ever since my Gibraltar days I haven't accepted any “social distance” between us, although I have noted that in Australia these two professions seek and receive more status than they do in England. The others in our crew were all volunteer RAF sergeants. Over the four years, I grew to admire their fine characters. I thought that they were superior in many ways to their officers, especially those officers who were permanent RAF. One of the less attractive aspects of the officer-men divide was that the two pilots and I had almost no contact with the rest of the crew after a mission had been flown. We might have been together for almost twenty-four hours sharing the dangers and deprivations of the patrol but, once back on solid ground, the sergeants retreated to their own mess and quarters and we to ours. It was very English.

On the other hand, I had found a very warm “second home” in the United Kingdom whenever we went on a week or so's leave while our Cat had an engine overhaul — as it did about once every six months. I had been adopted by an aristocratic family who lived on their estate just outside Winchester. The Lady Lilian Austin, a sister of an earl, offered me hospitality when she discovered I had no family or friends in Britain. Roundwood was a large country house, and even in wartime there were ancient servants and a nanny. Paintings of Hussars in full dress uniform adorned the walls. At Roundwood my socks were darned, and Lady Lilian would always write to Mavis after a visit to reassure her that I was well. I think I was the only young man to stay there who had not been to Eton College. Lady Lilian knew I was an Australian policeman but I received only the most gracious treatment from that family. I quickly noted and learned some of the social graces that had been missing from my own upbringing. This helped greatly later on in my career when I was in close contact with the royals.

Lady Lilian was friends with the local wartime doctor. He was a Harley Street specialist who had been bombed out of London and had come to Micheldever, near the estate. He was about fifty and from an entirely different social world. We became “mates”. Whenever he heard I was coming he would somehow acquire a crate of local beer and have it installed in “my” room. This was a guest bedroom set aside mainly for my use. Lady Lilian, who was an ardent reader and had a weekly order at Foyles, would also place alongside my bed a collection of books which she thought would interest me. I was not quite one of the family but I was a very welcome guest. I had come from a background which encouraged the concept of “the class war” and my High School studies of Marx and the capitalist system had strengthened the thought that the British aristocracy was unnecessary and did not, in any way, justify its privileges. Lady Lilian's caring and responsible attitude, not only towards me but also to the estate workers and their families, considerably modified that view. Later on, when I spent time alone yarning and joking with Prince Philip as we sat birdwatching in the front seat of the aged Whitrod Holden sedan, I gained further understanding of the class situation in England. It wasn't as one-sided as I had thought:
“noblesse oblige”:
meant that the better nobles certainly accepted their obligations towards the proletariat.

I was not aware that my visit to Roundwood immediately before my posting to the Middle East would be my last. I expected to return to England as I had done from my other postings. So I left two pairs of silk-woollen thermal underwear in an attic. These had been issued to me in the Arctic, but I had never worn them: they weren't very Australian. I would certainly not need them in the Middle East. But the war ended and I went home on a freighter from Aden. In the 1960s, when I was a student at Cambridge, Mavis and I paid a visit to Roundwood. I asked Lady Lilian about my long johns. They had been taken over by her brother. The Earl of Sunderland still wore them when the weather was cold.

One of the other lessons I learnt from the war is that life really is unfair. I'd had my suspicions that we aren't all dealt the same hand of cards. But the war really reinforced my belief that we don't all start off equal and we don't all have equal opportunities. I felt then, and still do, that many worthwhile contributions to the community go unrecognised. Some people receive public awards that they deserve, but many don't.