This memory is from before I was nine, and it is one of a very small group of memories involving my Uncle Terry. My Uncle Terry was my mother’s older brother, he died around my ninth birthday from a heart attack. He was the first relative I had who died and I wasn’t allowed to go to his funeral as I was thought to be too young. I watched Snow White at the house of a lady my grandparents knew and all I remember is her awful wallpaper and brussel-sprout-green tiles around her gas heater.
Uncle Terry was an engineer in the RAF and he worked on the old WWII planes when I knew him, he was part of the BBMF crew based at Coningsby and we often used to go and visit him whilst he was at work – we lived in Hertfordshire during term time but spent all our holidays in Derbyshire. When we visited Coningsby we didn’t have to stay with the visitors in the visitors area, we got to go and run around the wheels of the planes and go inside them too. I’ve sat in the pilot’s seat of every WWII plane in the BBMF – we even have photos of me pretending to fly a spitfire – they are great memories and I am incredibly privileged to have had such intimate access to these planes.
On one particular visit the planes were all outside and I was climbing around inside the Lancaster Bomber. I was scrambling back into the main fuselage from the rear gunners turret when Uncle Terry climbed in and told me it had started raining. I thought nothing of it but then he said to hold on as we were going to move I knew something was different. I looked around the cramped fuselage and wondered how on earth I would reach the yellow bars that I was allowed to hold – ‘don’t grab onto anything that’s not yellow’ had been drummed into me on every visit and I really didn’t want to be the person who broke the Bomber by holding the wrong bit. The only problem was everything that was yellow was quite high up, so I leaned on a desk (the wireless operators desk to be precise) and looked at all the dials in front of me. And then to my shock the engines roared into life. It was thundering inside and I got excited. Herds of wildebeest were stampeding around my stomach and tying it in knots as I grinned and felt the plane lurch forward – my Uncle tried to explain that we were moving into the hangar because of the rain but all I hear were engines. It turns out it was quicker move with the kids inside than wait to haul us all out. So, with my Uncle Terry holding on to the yellow bars and my sister nearby, we taxied into the hangar. I thought this was great fun and only years later did I realise the significance of my ride in the Lancaster. I will be forever thankful to the Great British weather for changing so quickly from sunshine to downpour.
The ride didn’t last long, and we continued to play inside the plane once it was inside (my uncle had to help lift me into the upper gunners turret). I don’t have many memories of Uncle Terry because I was so young when he died, but this one I will treasure forever. Not just because I shared it with my him, but whenever I think about it I remember all those who died in WWII and that never was so much owed by so many to so few.
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