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Description
Mr. Smith describes disappointment of being assigned to army co-op duty at Grangemouth, Scotland but later perks up learning that it was a Spitfire base.
Transcription
They had things in London called RAF Information Centres or in the cities in England, I don’t know what they were but we went in to one and I said, “What is, we’re posted up to 58 OTU Grangemouth. Can you tell us what kind of OTU that is, what kind of air planes they have? ”
And the sergeant he looked, he got our new identity cards and he went back in and came out with the flight sergeant. And the flight sergeant said, “Oh, it’s army co-op!” Oh, the worse thing you could have was army co-op, you know. The army wasn’t even fighting or at least… so we were devastated. Anyway, we got the train up to Scotland and it went all night and we went by through a raid on the train in the dark, we’d hear the ack- ack and search lights and so on but we arrived the next morning at an aerodrome, at a railway station, oh quite early, about 7:30, near Grangemouth and a bus came up to gather us all so we asked the driver, “What kind of airplanes are at 58 OTU? ” And he said, “Spitfires, dozens of them!” So I had got a clean sweep, you know, wings, overseas, commissioned, fighter OTU and I hadn’t been in the air force nine months.