The twin-engined bombers, with their sleek noses shining against the drab olive-green of their camouflage, circled over the field and touched down one by one on the main runway as I stood watching them from the high ground of the partly completed mess site on a bright summer afternoon. A dozen or so Mitchell bombers had arrived with a squadron of Dutch and Javanese Officers and men belonging to the Royal Dutch Naval Air Service.

An R.A.F. Administrative officer had been posted to the station together with an Equipment officer to serve the needs of the Flying Dutchmen. Detachments of W.A.A.F.S. arrived a few days later and took up their duties in the old mess buildings and Attlebridge began to show signs of re-awakening. I met the commanding officer of the Dutch Squadron a few days later and learned that the Mitchells were there for operational training. All the pilots were experienced flyers, many of them with decorations, but they were to undergo training in new tactics with different aircraft. I was requested to provide them with as much accommodation as possible and every possible facility for flying. This was not easy, as aircraft standings were in course of construction on each side of the perimeter track with concrete mixers and materials standing on the track itself and contractor's traffic running in all directions throughout the day. It seemed that another factor had imposed itself upon us to cause delay and difficulty. Obstruction signals were fixed on all lorries and plant and on the stacks of material scattered round the airfield, and when aircraft taxied round the perimeter for the take-off, it was necessary to stop work and shepherd them round the obstructions. One Sunday morning a Mitchell sank hub deep in a new cable trench just off the end of a runway and flying was suspended for the day whilst the aircraft was jacked up and towed away. A young Canadian flying officer named Gunn took over the flying control and I spent many hours with him attempting to compromise over problems as to where he wanted to fly and where I wanted to work. The Dutch were only interested in completing their course and had no great interest in the ultimate purpose of the station or in the completion of the work in progress at the time. Gradually, however, we were able to make things a little easier for them and they in turn began to appreciate our difficulties. So friendly did they become that certain of us were invited to private dances held in the sergeants' mess and I attended one myself on Queen Wilhelmina's birthday. The band consisted almost entirely of Javanese and their guitars, played in the Hawaiian fashion, soon became the talk of the district. Before the squadron had left Attlebridge, their band had played in almost every village hall within a radius of several miles and they became extremely popular with the villagers.

At last the squadron went out on their first operational flight. You could sense the atmosphere as the ground crews awaited the return of their charges. I did not know at the time the American term "sweating it out" but I came to know it later and the expression could not be better chosen to describe the tense anxiety of the period between take-off and touch-down. Late in the afternoon the first returning Mitchell was sighted; then came the second and then the third. As each aircraft touched down and taxied round to the watch office, you could hear the little groups on the dispersals calling out the aircraft's letters and the navy blue figures scurried and darted about like chickens under the ponderous form of the mother bird. When work finished on that day all the Mitchells had returned save one, and that happened to be the aircraft which parked on a dispersal near to my office.When I left for home I could still see the little group of ground crew standing vigil on the circle of concrete, but no bomber returned that night. On the following morning, however, the news spread like wildfire that the crew of the missing aircraft had been picked up in the Channel and there were no casualties. I felt immensely relieved and realised that somehow I was beginning to take part in the adventure of flying operations. A few days after that operation the Dutch squadron left us and I was informed that the Americans would shortly be sending in their first advance party. We all said goodbye to the Dutchmen with regret and once more Attlebridge was quiet save for the noise of plant and lorries hastening to make use of the long summer days whilst they could.

Life at the smallholder's cottage was pleasanter during the summer months. I was priveleged to take Judy for walks and we spent many exciting hours in the fields and along the lanes. Ernie seemed forever busy from dawn until dark. During the day it was hoeing in the fields planted with sugar beet or mangolds and during the evening he worked in his garden behind the big barn. The small lawn at the back of the house had become overgrown as neither Ernie nor his wife had time for anything save working for their livelihood. I volunteered to cut the grass and was informed that the shears were very blunt and there was no mower. I sharpened the shears and spent two back-aching nights hacking away at the tufty growth. Disposal of the cuttings was an easy matter. I tipped armsful of grass over the wall of the pigstye and the old sow wheezed and grunted in appreciation as she nosed and munched the lush greenstuff.

Every Saturday night Ernie took his leisure. It was always the same routine. He dressed in his best clothes and put on a collar and tie, pocketed a few shillings and made his way to the more homely of the two taverns in the village. He drank little, but the break seemed to do him good. He always brought home a few bottles of beer to last him through the week and he appeared to be quite content with the simple programme to which he had grown accustomed.

My landlady never went out beyond the limits of the few acres which they cultivated and she took no time off for relaxation from early morning until late at night. On Sundays Ernie still clung to old tradition and refused to work after he had milked his one cow and fed his stock. He frequently went out on Sunday with Judy and came back with a rat or a rabbit or perhaps a hedgehog. One Sunday evening I was invited to accompany him on a hunting expedition round his fields and we had not gone very far when Judy gave a shrill bark and darted towards a small, overgrown pond in the corner of the meadow.

"She's seen an ol' waterhen" called Ernie, and he set off at a run after his dog. When I arrived on the scene, Ernie was threshing about under a hawthorn bush with his stick and Judy was darting in and out of his legs giving excited little yelps. Suddenly there was a stirring in the water and a streak of tiny ripples marked the direction in which the waterhen was skimming just below the surface of the pool. A head reared itself an inch above the water in the middle of the pond for an instant and then the bird dived again and made for the shore, but Judy was there first and Ernie lost no time in following her up. For fully a quarter of an hour the game of hide-and-seek continued until in one exciting moment the bird decided to attempt its escape by flight. It sprang from beneath the bush and sped through the air some two feet above the ground. To this day I do not know how it happened, but Judy threw herself in the air after the bird and brought it down in her mouth. Ernie whooped with delight like an excited youngster, picked up the waterhen and took it home, with Judy snapping at his heels and trying to get the bird out of his hand. That night the waterhen was skinned and boiled and on the following day Judy was rewarded with a plateful of game.

One evening we heard Judy's high-pitched yap-yap coming from the direction of the cornfield. The corn was high and turning yellow and the dog was nowhere to be seen.

"She's got an ol' pig" said Ernie. "Go and see if you can find her." Ernie always called hedgehogs pigs and I gathered that Judy had discovered one of these somewhere in the corn. I entered the field and threaded my way cautiously so as to cause the minimum damage to the crop, calling Judy by name as I went. She barked in response at each call and soon I was making in the right direction towards her. When I arrived, the excited dog was running round in a small, swift circle of battered corn and in the centre of the circle was a round, brown ball of spikes. Judy was bleeding at the mouth and every second or so, she bit at the hedgehog and withdrew with a yelp. I tried to call her off but she wanted the old pig, as Ernie called it, and would not be put off by entreaties from anyone. I turned the hedgehog over with my foot but there was nothing to see but spikes. It was obvious that Judy would stay there all night if necessary and that the hedgehog would never escape so I turned the animal over on its side and pressed hard with my foot. A tiny brown snout and one leg appeared out of the thorny mass, and like a flash Judy was on it. There was a tiny squeak from the hedgehog as Judy fastened her jaws round the incautious front leg which had been forced out by the pressure of my foot and the dog raced off with the animal to show her master how clever she had been.

With summer came the inevitable question of internal decorating and spring-cleaning. My landlady decided that Ernie must sweep the chimney and she would then distemper the old walls and ceiling of the cottage. Ernie made enquiries but found that there no sweep left in the district. He called on a friend who lived in the village and asked him if he might borrow a set of brushes. One night the brushes arrived but Ernie was warned that they were not his friend's property; they had been borrowed from an old man in the village and must be returned as quickly as possible undamaged.

"Be careful you don't lose the brush in that ol' chimney of yours" warned his friend "or we'll have to find a new one between us."

It was decided that Ernie should sweep the chimney on the following day and the fire was allowed to die down in the afternoon. I did not see the performance, but I was given a vivid description of it when I arrived home for tea. Ernie had started off in great spirits, pooh-poohing his wife's instructions to be careful. Like most women, she knew more about the domestic process than her husband and she told him to get the brush up and out of the pot first and then to sweep the chimney as the brush came down. But the brush never emerged from the pot. Ernie was struggling and pushing every yard of the way and bringing down a great volume of soot and dust in the process. The going became still harder as each length of rod was screwed on until at last the brush would neither go up nor come back. Ernie was sweating and muttering, his wife was scolding and a foolish-looking length of rod stuck annoyingly out of the flue, defying anyone who tried to move it. At last Ernie made the fatal mistake. He tried to twist the brush spirally down the flue. Unfortunately he twisted in the wrong direction and the rods came down all too readily, leaving the brush somewhere between heaven and earth. There was no fire when I got home and no prospect of one whilst the brush was in the flue. It was then that I learned that Ernie was not good on heights and could not face the prospect of climbing the roof to extricate the offending object from the chimney. I had never climbed a roof myself before but I volunteered to do so. We half filled two large sacks with straw and collected the ladder and a long coil of stout rope. The former was reared against the eaves and I climbed up with the coil of rope, threw the coil over the ridge near to the chimney stack and Ernie made fast the other end to a small tree in the front garden. The roof was steep and was covered with red tiles which were not nailed or wired in any way but rattled loosely under every step. I made slow progress to the ridge, using first one sack of straw and then the other to support my weight and prevent my slipping down the mossy tiles. At length I gained the summit and stood precariously with my feet on the ridge. The stack was a tall one and I realised that if the brush was far down, a small scaffold would have to be erected round the brickwork before I could reach down the pot. I put my arm down the flue and could just feel the bristles of the brush with my finger. Edging closer to the stack I wrapped my left arm affectionately round the pot and stood on tiptoe. The inch or two so gained enabled me to grasp a few bristles and I tugged. After a few moments the brush gave way suddenly and shot up through the top of the pot, scattering soot and dust in my eyes. A shout of triumph from below indicated that Ernie and his wife had witnessed my triumph and I sent the brush head slithering down the tiles into the yard. After sitting on the ridge for a few moments to clean out my eyes and wipe the sweat from my face, I made a leisurely descent amidst the enthusiastic congratulations of Ernie and his wife.

The necessity for constant supervision made it almost impossible for Brierley and myself to take time off for relaxation. We frequently returned to the office in the evenings for routine work, as the pressure of work outside meant that we were seldom available during the day. Only very occasionally was a Saturday afternoon free for us to use as we wished, and for the most part our short excursions to Norwich arose from necessity. There was no shopping centre less than ten miles away, and if I needed new shoes or shaving soap or any of the occasional shopping requirements I was obliged to beg a lift into Norwich at about three o'clock on Saturday afternoon, complete my shopping within an hour, and catch the last train back to Attlebridge at five thirty. Norwich on Saturday was a teeming mass of Americans, British troops, and country folk down for the market. Every footpath was packed solid, and cars were obliged to crawl slowly along the overcrowded narrow streets. A meal at a cafe or restaurant was a matter of queuing for perhaps half an hour, and as the meal at the end hardly repaid the effort spent on fighting for it, I invariably went hungry rather than waste precious time on the meal.

A scarcity of hairdressers resulted in my hair growing long, curling at the neck and refusing to be controlled by applications of cream, and it was not long before I understood why Brierley's hair was always lanky and overgrown. There was one good shop in Norwich, blessed with three assistants, but there were always at least six customers ahead of me when I arrived at four o'clock or later. A haircut expedition was usually an event on its own, and a Saturday afternoon was generally devoted solely to that one purpose when my hair became too disreputable for further delay.

Brierley came to me with great news one day. He had discovered that an old man opened a small hut at Witchingham, two miles away, each Wednesday and Saturday afternoon, and would cut hair for us if we were prepared to walk or cycle over between two and four o'clock on those days. I treated myself to a haircut on the following Saturday, and Brierley slipped out on the following Wednesday. The old man was a widower, a blitz victim from London, and it appeared that he was comfortably well off and opened the shop occasionally only to oblige the local inhabitants and to supplement his income to the extent of a few ounces of tobacco per week. He hardly cared whether he opened up or not, and he certainly did not give a fig whether a customer came or didn't, so long as he could sit in his hut and smoke for the afternoon.

A fortnight later Brierley and I agreed to go over to Witchingham together. We reached the shop at three o'clock, only to find the door locked. A woman who was passing at the time told me the old man hadn't been seen for a week, and nobody knew where he lived. We were intrigued by the mystery and decided to find out the hairdresser wherever he may be, and get him back to work. We walked to the village post office, but nobody there knew of his whereabouts, although he could not live so very far away, as he always walked to his shop. It was obvious that he did not live in Witchingham, so we agreed to make in the direction of a tiny hamlet another two miles away, where we could see a cluster of cottages packed round the base of a square Norfolk flint rubble Church tower. We were probably halfway along the lane when we met Mat, the elderly stores labourer from Attlebridge and speculated on an enquiry as to the dwelling place of the old man. Mat had seen him pottering about one of the cottages, and he pointed out the place. We went away hot on the scent, and reached the hamlet at last. A further enquiry led us to a back door behind a block of cottages, and we rapped loudly to attract attention. A young girl answered the knock, and stared at us as we asked for the old gentleman. Without a word she slipped away into the darkness of the kitchen, and reappeared after a few moments inviting us to follow her.

The kitchen was large and dark, with a low ceiling and a red tiled floor. A huge fire burned in the grate and our quarry sat in a rocking chair, his legs wrapped in a rug. We excused ourselves for the interruption, asked after his health, and asked if he was going to open his shop some time in the future. The old man was grumpy, said he'd had a cold and didn't want to bother going out again, but said he might be in attendance in a week or two.

Brierley and I apologised for troubling him, and left the cottager to his loneliness. It was clear that our hair must grow longer for another week until we could get into Norwich again.

As the summer nights drew in, a new interest came to me at Attlebridge. At dusk we heard the faint sound of aircraft engines and as the noise grew in volume there could be seen the black outline of distant bombers moving steadily, slowly, over the airfield and the farm and striking out to the north. One solitary four-engined bomber would start the parade, to be followed by another, and another, until at last the sky was dotted with small, black shapes moving steadily at wide distances apart with their navigation lights gliding across the sky. Occasionally a signal flare would spurt from one of them and die as quickly as it had sprung to life. For an hour the sky would hum with the quiet drone of the engines and as far as the eye could see the tiny specks of light would be moving, always in the same direction, across the deepening blue of the clear night. One night I watched in wonder as an unusually large force passed over for what seemed to be hours on end and on the following day we heard the news that the R.A.F. had made its first thousand-bomber raid over Europe.

A new flying control officer took over at Attlebridge and he had a novel way of entertaining the personnel on his station. The speech broadcasting system, with its speakers fixed at every aircraft standing and on every site, was tuned in to an ordinary wireless set and when the personnel at Attlebridge heard the News, all the villagers round about were obliged to listen to it also. In the early hours of the morning, the speech broadcasting system was switched on and an announcer informed us of the time. Occasionally music was played for the entertainment of some, and the annnoyance of many and soon the idea became most unpopular. However, I became accustomed to the disturbance and took little notice of it until on one very dark morning in the early hours I was awakened by the sound of engines from an aircraft flying very low over my bedroom. Suddenly above the noise of the engines, the tannoy blared out "Fire Party report to the watch office immediately!" A second later the engines spluttered and backfired and there was silence, then the speakers crashed out again with the excited voice of the announcer, "Will the Medical Officer report to the watch office immediately".

When I went to the office later in the morning, the battered remains of a Lancaster bomber stood on the grass by the side of the watch office. Part of one wing was missing, there were gaping holes in the sides of the fuselage and the tail-gunner's position was burnt out. I learned that the aircraft had made a forced landing with the rear gunner dead and all the crew injured, including the pilot. He had however, made a forced landing on three engines without further casualties. During the day an inspection party of R.A.F. personnel visited the aircraft and a little later a repair party moved in. The Lancaster was at Attlebridge for three months, and during that time was fit up with new wings, new engines and a rear gun turret. Apparently the aircraft was worth the expense and trouble spent on it and at last it took off to return to its base for further operations.

Another new experience came to me during the summer of 1943. It seemed that events had been taking shape for many weeks, but their steady growth in volume and frequency had passed almost unnoticed until at last the crescendo was there, and we sat up and marvelled at the awful splendour of it all. It was like the opening of a great symphony, the faint murmur of the strings hardly loud enough to be heard, then the woodwinds opening softly and growing on the listener's ears until suddenly, with a prickling in the nape of the neck, the wonder and potential power of the mounting crescendo causes an alertness and an awareness of the coming climax which will bring the listener to his feet with the bursting of pent-up energy. For me the small beginnings of the Dutch squadron had been of no great significance until they were followed by the R.A.F. night raids. The crescendo, the beginning of the build-up, came to me in the form of the American Eighth Air Force. Each day we saw a few Flying Fortresses cross in the morning and return in the afternoon. Then there were a few more, and we began to count them. By mid-summer they were passing over fifty at a time, not spaced far apart as the Lancasters had been, but flying in close formation to a set pattern, a score or so in each formation. The long pencil-like profiles with the huge dorsal fins rumbled steadily along a route somewhat to the south of our airfield, and as the summer grew older the number of squadrons increased steadily until we realised that Europe was soon to have no peace by day or night, and Goering had never put into the skies the number of bombers which we were going to show him before long. I noticed a difference, too, in the appearances of the Fortresses. One by one I could pick out the new arrivals - they were unpainted, and their slim silver bodies showed up clearly against the varied drab colours of the older aircraft. It was said that the omission of paint gave an increased speed to the Fortresses, besides saving time in manufacture. Whatever was the reason, the Eighth Air Force apparently decided that the days of camouflage were over, and more and more aircraft were seen shining in the silver morning light as the growing numbers set out on their daily missions.

Losses to the Eighth Air Force were heavy in the days of the growing offensive. No fighter cover had been employed, and Germany's fighter force was still very powerful. After a time we saw escort squadrons of fighters weaving and circling over the Fortresses as they made their way out to Europe and back home in the afternoons. Sometimes a crippled aircraft would come over long after the others had passed. Frequently we saw a Fortress with only three of its four engines in action, and overhead a single fighter would weave and dive about its charge as though to cheer the Fortress crew and assure them of its support.

My wife joined me for a weekend, and on the Sunday we walked from the farmstead along the northern boundary of the airfield, past Ernie's field of sugar beet, and up the hill to Attlebridge. We returned an hour or so later, to find an unwelcome intruder occupying a large area on the edge of the beet crop. One huge wing was raised high in the air, and the large tail-fin stood high above the bramble hedge only just clear of the lane. Two deep furrows gashed the banks on each side of the narrow way, and earth had been spread by the bomber's wheels in two wide carpets across the carriage way. It appeared that the Fortress had attempted to make a forced landing on the airfield, but had been unable to brake in time to avoid over-running the concrete.

Attlebridge developed in use as an emergency landing ground and was able to help out many aircraft in distress during the early days of the growing offensive. Almost every type of British and American fighter and bomber seemed to have landed for various reasons during our extension work. The number of R.A.F. personnel on the station had again been reduced to a mere handful, and little help could have been given in the event of a fire. This fact impressed me one Saturday afternoon, when a Mosquito with one engine alight circled the field and prepared to land. The loudspeakers blared out, "Crash crew report to the watch office immediately!", and the small fire tender started to life as the aircraft touched down. The Mosquito bumped hard on the main runway, and ran only a few yards before it swerved suddenly, ran off the edge of the concrete, and jolted to a standstill as one of its wheels sank in the soft ground. Liquid fire poured out of one wing as the petrol came from the tanks and disappeared down the nearby grate of the French drain which ran down the edge of the runway. A spectacular column of flame shot up out of the next grate some forty yards away, and a second spurt of fire gushed upwards from yet another grate further distant. The drain probably saved the Mosquito from total destruction by carrying the leaking patrol away from the fire. As it was, the small R.A.F. crash crew were losing control of the spreading flames, and the loudspeakers roared out "Will all personnel with transport report to the fire with extinguishers." The handful of Air Ministry groundsmen piled all the office fire extinguishers into the A.M.W.D. Utility van, and raced off to the rescue. At last the blazing engine was put out, and the danger of exploding tanks was over. We took pride in the thought that our men had helped turn the scale in the battle with the fire, but I was very anxious about the consequences should a Fortress or Lancaster crash and catch fire with so few on the site to render assistance.

With the obvious increase in the tempo of operations came more urgent demands for completion of the Attlebridge base. Unless more labour could be obtained I estimated that two years would elapse at the present rate of progress before the site was completed. That was an impossible state of affairs, and the Air Ministry must have had a trying time with the R.A.F. Commands hammering at them from one side and the U.S.A.A.F. on the other. Towards the end of the summer I was not surprised to receive word that a second contractor would be coming in to deal with the perimeter track extensions and twenty or so acres of concreting in the new aircraft dispersals. A few weeks passed, but no contractor appeared. Then at last a telephone message came through. The Ministry of War Transport were sending one of their Assistant Engineers and a force of men to carry out the concreting and drainage work under my supervision. Accommodation was to be provided for the men and for the Engineer, and work would start within a fortnight.

A few days later a tall, lively young man presented himself at my office. He was Shingler, the Ministry's Engineer, who was to complete the job for me. The plans were ready for him, and sunny weather gave him a good start in setting out. His earth-moving equipment, concrete mixers and tools arrived, and the first of his labour force came a few days later. He had not finished setting out when the cement and ballast he had ordered began to arrive. I gave him half of the first hangar for storage, and cement was soon stacking up inside the huge doors. This was my first experience of the Ministry of War Transport in action as an Agency Service, working as a contractor, and I was surprised to learn that they had carried out work in this way before the War, though on a reduced scale. I watched their work take shape and the quiet efficiency with which Shingler put his organisation into action was impressive. He had only a small nucleus of picked men, regular Ministry employees, and he had to rely on men from the Ministry of Labour to swell his labour force. He had ample mechanical plant, however, all in good condition, and the use and organisation of plant was the key to the problem. Very soon I was able to point out his progress as an incentive for greater efforts by the main contractor, and I tried to foster a competitive spirit between the two agencies. Still the rate of progress was not enough, and more frequent visits were taken by U.S. Army representatives. The Second Bombardment Division of the U.S. Eighth Air Force established itself in Ketteringham Hall and sent out its officers to check up on the completion of the airfields which it would use. Major Harris, the original Area Engineer, left for another area, and an active young man named Captain Smith, took Attlebridge under his supervision. In addition to the routine completion of Form 90, Captain Smith paid frequent visits to enquire as to the delay in the completion of this and that, and only his good humour and the friendly relationship between us saved us from many vexatious situations. One day Captain Smith came into my office almost apologetically and raid that a junior officer was to be posted to live at Attlebridge and to assist me in whatever way he could to speed up completion of the work.

"I don't want you to take this as a reflection on yourself," explained Captain Smith, "but I want you to use the officer for whatever purpose you wish and tell him your difficulties as they arise." I was naturally not very much pleased that the Americans should consider it necessary to send one of their number to keep me on my toes, but I decided to give the newcomer a chance to prove his value.

A few days later a youth in his early twenties, accompanied by a Corporal a little older than he, presented himself at my office and explained that he was the Progress Engineer posted to Attlebridge. His name was Carl Merbitz, and his podgy, youthful face and enthusiastic manner were typically American. I took a liking to Carl Merbitz from the first day, and he proved very useful to me and to the work in hand before many days had passed. Captain Smith had very astutely handed over the work of the completion of Form 90 to the young lieutenant, and on many nights I spent an hour or more in Merbitz's Nissen hut quarters, preparing this complex document for submission to the higher authorities. Merbitz came to the site with the intention of cutting across red tape and by-passing bottlenecks in transport and the flow of materials. He arranged for American Army lorries to make long journeys for bricks and cement where the Ministry of War Transport refused to allow transport by road. He also obtained the use of lorries to clear the small siding at the railway station, as the contractor had insufficient transport at times to do so. There were some difficulties, however, which Herbitz could not surmount. He could not speed up production of electrical gear in the factories, nor could he supply the labour necessary to increase production on the site. Very soon the young Progress Engineer began to understand that even his efforts could not accelerate completion a great deal, and he began to see and understand the difficulties with which Air Ministry were faced in their colossal programme. Only a short time had passed before he was receiving prods and criticism from his headquarters and we two found ourselves commiserating with each other on the misfortune of having to account for lack of progress to headquarters established many miles away, who could not possibly appreciate the details of our difficulties day by day.

The Area Engineer had in his turn, a senior officer in the US. Army, the District Engineer, whose headquarters were at Newmarket. The District Engineer and the Air Ministry Superintending Engineer, who was also stationed Newmarket, were constantly meeting to worry out their difficulties, and one day I was summoned to a Progress Meeting at Headquarters.

The Superintending, Engineer was in the Chair and the U.S. Army District Engineer sat on his right hand. Satellite officers were ranged on either side of the two chiefs, and all the resident engineers from the area faced the line of senior officers and prepared themselves for cross-questioning. A large chart had been drawn up by the Americans and on it were listed the airfields which they proposed to take over. My Superintending Engineer started the meeting by explaining that the Americans were dissatisfied and it was hoped that at the meeting some programme would be mapped out to ensure the completion of the most urgent stations on a priority basis. He then asked the District Engineer for his priorities. The chart was produced, and numerous officers of the District Engineer's staff began to assess the relative priorities of the different stations. It soon became quite clear that in fact the Americans had as little idea as to how completion could be speeded up as we had ourselves. The situation was plainly one of confusion, as in fact all the stations were wanted immediately and no one base could be placed at a higher priority than another. It was, therefore, decided that each resident engineer should make a statement as to the progress of the major items on his station and to voice his difficulties in supply of materials or labour or equipment. It was found that all the resident engineers wanted the same thing, the principal items being electrical equipment and petrol storage tanks. An officer from Air Ministry was present to explain the difficulties regarding the flow of materials, and in reply to questions, he made it clear that the demand from all the stations at once for the same articles could not be satisfied, and the materials must be awaited. The meeting went on until nine o'clock in the evening and at the end, the American District Engineer, a sadder and wiser man, spoke a few words to express his feelings.

"Well, gentlemen," he said, "we called this meeting to see what could be done; before the meeting we sympathised with your difficulties, but now I think we understand them." I drove sixty miles in the darkness back to Attlebridge, my only thought being one of regret that a day should have been spent to so little effect.

Carl Merbitz did not stay at Attlebridge much longer. It was plain that he had done his best and he knew that we on the station were doing our utmost. There was really nothing for him to stay for.

In spite of the gloomy outlook however, there was no doubt that Attlebridge was getting much nearer a usable condition. The biggest worry was that the perimeter track and the aircraft standings were not progressing as they should. The buildings, however, were rapidly nearing completion. I pointed out to Captain Smith that if only an advance party of the occupying unit would come on the site, the station could be prepared for immediate operation in advance of the arrival of the bombers. This information was apparently conveyed to a higher authority and I was informed that a unit would be arriving in the near future. To my horror I learned that a small unit was due to arrive for a special training course and they would require to use whatever buildings were completed. A few days later the flying school arrived - together with a number of Liberators. They were merely lodgers and were not interested in the completion of the station so long as they could use some of the buildings and the runways. In a few days they had established themselves, using the wrong buildings for their operation and demanding lights and fittings for their immediate use, all of which would need to be removed when the buildings were turned over to the bomb group later.

A situation very near to turmoil was developing, when a Colonel from the Second Bombardment Division came on the site accompanied by an elderly, fresh-faced Lieutenant Colonel who was to take over the station in preparation for the bomb Group proper. Here at last, I thought, was the day I had been hoping for, as I walked round the sites with the two officers, and discovered that my first American Commanding Officer was to be the Lieutenant Colonel, Allan C. House by name.