An Everyday Hero: The Memoirs of a WWII Pilot by Flying Officer Kenneth Cockram

Author:Flying Officer Kenneth Cockram [Cockram, Flying Officer Kenneth]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: PublishNation
Published: 2016-11-29T05:00:00+00:00

On 27th October we moved from Foggia Main aerodrome to Melini close by, to make room for heavy bombers to use the long runways. In October I flew for thirteen hours on nine missions, including two over Yugoslavia. It involved flying an hour each way over the Adriatic – which was not nice, in case we should have engine trouble or suffer from enemy action and have to ditch in the sea [Adriatic].

In November I only flew one mission of 50 minutes, as I’d had a bad cough for about three weeks. In the end I had to report sick to avoid having to fly. The Medical Officer listened to the bubbling in my chest and immediately put me in the squadron ambulance. It took me to a field hospital, which was entirely under canvas. They put me to bed in one of the tents and I had five doctors come and listen to my chest during that afternoon. By that time I was getting a bit nervous. However, one of the doctors said not to worry, they were just intrigued because of the noises in my chest which were interesting and unusual. After 2-3 days in bed and keeping warm, I was feeling much better. But they decided to put me on a course of the new wonder drug M&B 693, with which Winston Churchill had been treated for pneumonia. That had the effect of making me feel worse than ever, as I was hallucinating during the daytime. After a couple of days of having what seemed like nightmares without being asleep, I palmed the rest of the tablets and threw them down the loo. I was discharged from the hospital after about two weeks and told that I’d had unresolved pneumonia. They wanted to send me to North Africa to recuperate in a warmer, drier climate – but I wouldn’t go, because I didn’t want to leave the squadron, and I thought it a possibility I might be posted to the Far East where they were also flying Kittyhawks. Several of my friends came to visit me in hospital and told me I’d received a parcel, of 200 Senior Service cigarettes, from home. “Where are they then,” I asked. “Oh, we smoked them,” they replied. Who needs enemies when you’ve got friends like that?

At the beginning of November, the Equipment Officer who was in charge of our Mess went to the CO [Commanding Officer] and told him that, unless we did something about it, we would have nothing to drink at Christmas. The CO therefore authorised him to take a three-ton lorry with a driver, and cash of about £600 that we’d collected with a whip-round. He was to go to the Naples area. The CO thought it would take him a day to get there, a day to get some liquor, and a day to return – so three days approximately. But when he didn’t return for a fortnight, the CO was hopping mad, until he explained

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