Johns' Story (cont.)
Three long weeks of mountainous seas later, our convoy sailed into the Firth of Clyde in Scotland, where we disembarked for a train ride to a small airfield (an old cow pasture with a temporary runway of steel strips) in the midlands of England.
We flew no missions from here, just continued our training flights, throwing darts in the local pub, where they had great hard cider, and learning one of two great slogans of World war two: “HURRY UP AND WAIT” and “KILROY WAS HERE.” The latter explained anything that was wrong. I pulled my first guard duty here and almost shot a cow when it failed to answer my challenge. Oh well, live and learn. We were reassigned to the 12th Air Force shortly after arriving, and in December of 1942 we took a train ride to London.There we were billeted in the Ministry of Labor building. This was located just a few hundred feet from the main entrance to Kew Gardens. If only I had known what an opportunity this was, but I never toured through the exhibits and gardens. We were only one block from the tube entrance (subway) and took frequent trips to Piccadilly Circus and the theatre district. The hotel bar in Piccadilly served the only cold beer in England, I think. I spent Xmas Eve there with Lloyd Vinnedge, where we met two young ladies who invited us to Xmas dinner the next day. We took butter and sugar as our contribution, and you would have thought we gave them a million dollars. Very nice family. In London we found two service clubs for American service men, one run by the Salvation Army where everything was free—cigarettes, soft drinks, sandwiches, etc.—the other was run by the Red Cross, who charged for everything. This policy cost the Red Cross dearly after the war, when they would ask ex-service men for donations..
One had to be in it to appreciate the denseness of a London fog. They still heated and cooked with fossil fuels during the forties. When the fog rolled in, the streets of London were virtually impassable for strangers. The smoke particles mixed with the fog, and you literally could not see for more than a few feet. Just when you thought things looked OK to cross the street, a bicycle would whistle by right next to the curb. I was never hit, but they said many people were.After this tough duty we again took a train to the southern coast seaport of Bornmouth There we had a great case of food poisoning, courtesy of the British army. Nobody made it the 50 yards to the johns from the barracks. What a night! Three weeks later we went back through London to Liverpool on the west coast to begin our most exciting sea journey of the war. From Liverpool we were to sail to North Africa to establish our first operating base.