The end of Germany's war did not mean that the airfields could close down, and for many weeks general air activity was as great as ever. R.A.F. bombers and American aircraft were flying over from dawn until dusk for a considerable tine, but now they carried food and stores and repatriates in place of bombs. Part of the Beccles squadron flew to the Azores, and regular service of sea patrols was carried out between there and England. At Halesworth the Unit cut down their operations, but the Metfield Air Transport Command aircraft were increasing in number and flying became more intensive after the war had ended.   Although I had no guiding instructions from Area Headquarters I gave Fitzpatricks notice to complete the work in hand at Halesworth and Metfield, and after a fortnight we said goodbye to Thomas and his men. The maintenance contractor carried on with repairs on a modified scale, and I was able to apply keener supervision to the concreting. Normal peacetime regulation of mix and consistency had of necessity been relaxed in war, but as the urgency was reduced I tightened the control over quality of ballast and applied field tests of concrete more frequently. Air Ministry had declared no fixed policy as to which stations would be retained for post-war use, but shortly after VE day a list was circulated showing the future of the airfields as far as was known, and in effect almost all stations were to be considered as operational until Japan surrendered.

Beccles had never been fully occupied, as the station was built to accommodate two squadrons, and when Squadron Leader Howard informed me that 1600 Australian flying crew were to be drafted to fill the spare accommodation I felt that for the first time the buildings at least would be put to full use and justify the expense which had gone into their construction. The Australians were to spend their time in leisure pending instructions to go home, and they would require plenty of space and recreational facilities to make it easier for them to pass the time during their enforced idleness.

The R.A.A.F. officers began to arrive on the station in small parties, and I helped many of them up the road from the railway station from time to time with their heavy bags. A very large party arrived in one batch on a hot sunny afternoon, and the R.A.F. had to send a trailer and tractor to collect their luggage. The frequent lifts which I was able to give the Australians gave me opportunities of conversation with them, and I learned that almost every one of them had left Australia a month or two after I had left the country myself in 1942. I derived considerable pleasure from comparing experiences with the fliers, and they all struck me as being particularly friendly and companionable.

Suddenly, with very little notice, the Americans at Halesworth left the station and I was told that no other U.S.A.A.F. Unit would be coming in. An R.A.F. detachment moved in as the Americans left, and the tedious business of transfer was begun. A few American officers stayed behind to complete the handing over, but apart from them the station was uninhabited. Platten drew my attention to the dump of materials which the Americans left in a hollow behind the far hangar, and I was disgusted to see the wanton wastefulness in evidence there. Apart from American equipment there was R.A.F. material which had been loaned to the Unit, and even smashed parts of buildings lay amongst the wreckage. The R.A.F. sergeant who was checking the inventory of equipment would not accept chipped plates or partly rusted kitchen ware, and in a rage the American officer who was handing over ordered his men to smash up every rejected article, even though it might have been of some value to somebody. He was determined that if America had to pay for the damaged goods nobody would be able to make use of then. The smallmindedness of the action was most distasteful to me, and I considered it a matter of regret that any responsible American officer should still regard us in such a narrow light after an alliance of three and a half years.

We had not finished repairing doors and windows of the barrack huts when a party of visitors arrived to view the station. They were officers of the Royal Navy, and they told us that Air Ministry were going to loan the station to the Admiralty for a year. I rang Area Headquarters, but they know nothing, and when a Commander Richardson arrived to take over the station I was obliged to tell him that I had no instructions. The Commander assured me that the Navy would be moving in within a few days, and move in they did, aircraft and all. There was no slapdash about the preparations as far as Commander Richardson was concerned. He supplied me with a draft of suggestions for the regulation of maintenance and new work, and asked me to make my observations on the points so that proper system could be inaugurated from the start. I found myself faced with the unusual task of formulating a list of rules of procedure which would be happy medium between Air Ministry procedure and that of the Admiralty, and it gave me a useful insight into the organisation of the Senior Service.

The staff officers arrived on the station, and last of all came the Captain. With all due respect to the R.A.F. of my acquaintance I must say that the Navy knew how to handle a station. There was a discipline, a precision, a clear-cut policy behind everything they did which I had never met before. As soon as the Flying Control Officer arrived he supplied me with a list of A.M.W.D. duties relative to the airfield, and all I had to do was to supply a copy to Platten for action. The list of duties covered everything I had wanted to do with the Americans, including a regulated method of dealing with repairs and inspections. The Navy were not trying to tie us down; in fact the articles of the list tied down the Flying Control more than ourselves. If Flying Control notified us of a repair requiring attention, we immediately became responsible for an aircraft accident resulting from our failure to do the work. If we notified the Control of a repair which we wished to do, the responsibility for any accident rested with the Flying Control Officer if his refusal to allow us to proceed prevented the repair being carried out. Never before in my experience on airfield construction and maintenance had everything been so well regulated and easy to manage as the Navy's organisation at Halesworth.

The Naval Flying Control Officer had been on the station only a few days when he discovered something which had escaped the notice of all the American units ever since the station was first occupied. The Q.D.M. numerals of the runways were the wrong values. For the benefit of the lay reader it must be explained that airfield runways are described by their direction relative to the Magnetic North, the angle being quoted to the nearest ten degrees and the nought at the end omitted. A runway which is set dead along the line of the Magnetic North lies on the direction 360º - 180º, and the Q.D.M. numerals of such a runway are therefore 36 - 18. An East-West runway is numbered 09 - 27 since its direction is 90º - 270º. Whoever set the values for the Halesworth runways made an error of ten degrees, so that an aircraft making a blind approach would not be able to land true along the line of the runway by following the needle of its instrument. The Flying Control officer asked me if I could check the value for him, but he warned me that the Admiralty would not accept a reading taken by a compass. A theodolite reading must be taken to obtain True North and Magnetic North's value must be added to give the desired accuracy. I agreed to take a reading of the sun or a star if I could be supplied with astronomical tables. An amusing situation developed when it was discovered that the Navy at Halesworth could not find their Nautical Almanack, but at last one was obtained. I decided that a reading on the Pole Star was the easiest method, and late one night the Flying Control Officer, Holgate and myself set up a theodolite on the main runway and read the Pole Star. Whilst we were on the airfield we laid down a base line across an aircraft standing, so that instruments could be checked in the future. On the following day Holgate checked the angles between the three runways whilst I applied corrections to the Stellar reading, and we finally obtained the new Q.D.M. values for the runways. The Flying Control Officer was right - the values had been ten degrees out ever since the runways had first been numbered - and I was impressed with the thoroughness and attention to detail which had led the officer to his discovery.

The Messes were occupied, and the old Hall which had been the Bomb Group Officers' Mess was transformed into a luxurious wardroom, with ship's carpets and polished refectory tables, ship's clocks and good furniture. The Navy lived in style. I was given a written invitation to membership of the Wardroom Mess, and enjoyed all the privileges which the Naval officers assumed as of right. The Captain and his staff did all in their power to make me feel that I was one of them.

Beccles town began to attract its seasonal visitors when summer brought the river into its own. I swam frequently in the riverside bathing pool, and one Sunday my wife and I took a boat and rowed upstream past the houseboats to the quiet upper reaches and backwaters where drowsy fishermen lounged on the banks or in moored dinghies, their lines drooping to the bobbing floats and slender rods curving gracefully towards the water. We walked the lanes in warm sunshine and lazed in deckchairs on the lawn; the urgency had gone, and fortune had placed us in a pleasant spot to enjoy our leisure hours.

One weekend a son of the owner of the property came to tell us that his mother had died and the executors wanted to sell the house and effects. If we would not be inconvenienced he would like us to leave as soon as possible. There was no immediate hurry, but my wife and I realised that we might as well return home before winter, and we gave a month's notice and regretfully made arrangements to leave. Mrs. Hall wrote a friendly letter inviting me to return to her house but Max Holgate was occupying my old room and I did not want to be too big a burden on my friends. My wife returned home, and I moved into the White Lion Hotel. The landlord and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. Feek, apparently could not do enough to make me feel at home, but life was suddenly very drab for me in Beccles. There was no pleasure in the thought of boating on the river alone, and even my trips to the Bathing Pool lost their value. I resolved to spend my weekends with the Halls whenever I could, and I made more frequent visits to Jack Blaza's home.

The Beccles house was sold by auction, and Blaza and I attended the sale of effects. One by one the articles which I had come to know so well went under the hammer at prices which made my bids look foolish, and I came empty-handed away. Mrs. Hall came to the auction and bought a sewing machine, but otherwise most of the goods went to dealers. There is something vulgar about an auction on the premises of household effects, a violation of the dignity which has surrounded the home, and I experienced a feeling of disgust as bargain-hunters crowded from room to room of my former dwelling, poking here and fingering there.

My first weekend with the Hall family went a long way to help me forget my loneliness. Max and I went direct to Bungay after lunch at Halesworth, and the Saturday afternoon was spent in buying and fixing a new strap hinge to one of the large yard gates. In the evening we went to the cinema, and the day closed with the family sitting round the fire listening to the adventures of Leslie, the son of the family who had returned from several years abroad. Leslie, who was a little older than myself, was a true man of the world. He had been abroad altogether for five years, and his travels had covered most of the Empire. He had started writing a book, and if it proves as entertaining as his tales it should be good reading. The tall bronzed lad with jet black wavy hair and merry eyes was the most preposterous story-teller I have ever met. He had a gift of conversation and a style of description which enabled him to get away with the least credible yarns in the most critical company with astonishing success. I am looking forward to reading Leslie's book if or when it is completed, and I only hope for the sake of his readers that he will be able to give it the colour and freshness which characterised the verbal accounts of his adventures.

Sunday was a lazy day. We rose late and had a breakfast-cum-lunch, then sat reading the three papers, with the wireless playing in the background. The fire in the upstairs lounge was lit for the evening, and after a picnic tea we sat listening to the wireless until bedtime. Described in this way it sounds very dull, quite an ordinary way of spending a day at home, but for me it was a complete change, an opportunity for relaxation in a homely atmosphere amongst friends, and the weekends with the Halls began to fill an important part of my life for the ensuing months.

During the long sunny spell of the 1945 summer I was able to enjoy a good deal of swimming, and one evening Mrs. Hall arranged a riverside bathing party. A friend allowed us the use of a weekend hut and Leslie, Max and I went with Mrs. Hall and the two daughters to swim and row in the river. Max was as entertaining in a boat as out of it, and his erratic oarsmanship took us into the side, amongst reeds and into the overhanging bushes with almost uncanny regularity. We visited the hut again one weekend, this time accompanied by a neighbour and her aged father, a remarkably active man of eighty. We ate a picnic tea in relays between swims in the cool stream, and when at last we dressed and returned home our skins were tingling with the effect of the sunshine.

One Sunday morning Mrs. Hall arranged for Jack Leonard to take us to Hemsby in his old car, and three of us changed on the beach and plunged into the sea. The refreshing taste of the salt and the gentle seabreeze which tempered the warm sunshine gave us enormous appetites for our snack lunch, and I regretted that I had not thought of Hemsby when my wife was with me.

One of my weekend visits to Bungay was delayed by an unusual task which claimed my presence at Beccles. On the Saturday morning in question, Jack Blaza rang up to say that a request had come in for fly-proofing in the Airmen's Mess. I went along to the station to investigate the request, which would involve a considerable expense. Blaza told me that the Airmen's Mess was infested with flies, and the conditions had become so intolerable that the Australians using one of the wings had refused to eat there any longer. When I inspected the building an amazing sight confronted me. Flies were so thick in the kitchen that they did not move out of our way as we walked in, but settled in our hair and on our faces. Flies in their thousands crawled the tables and walls, and a stack of cups and saucers in the Australian wing was covered with insects. The airmen's wing was not quite so bad as that used by the Australians, and I noticed that the airmen's tables were covered with american cloth whereas white linen tablecloths were spread over the Australians' tables. Files swarmed over the white cloths, crowding round spilt sugar and stains of soup, and it was clear that the cloths were encouraging the insects, as they could not be sponged clean in the same way as the airmen's tables. As I watched the scene a W.A.A.F. cleared a table, shook the cloth on to the floor and laid the cutlery for the next meal. It was obvious that fly-proofing was pointless whilst the flies were present, as the gauze would keep them inside the building. It was not an A.M.W.D responsibility to kill flies, but according to Blaza the Medical Officer had been unable to obtain insecticide and sprays; I remembered that the Americans at Halesworth had left a number of sprays and pressure bombs of D.D.T., together with a few gallons of D.D.T. in cans, and I rang the station and asked the Station Engineer to find three bombs and a spray. After lunch I returned to Halesworth, picked up the insecticides and Holgate, and arrived back at Beccles at three o'clock. The kitchen staff had been warned to complete washing-up and to leave the setting of tables until we had sprayed the building. We calculates the sizes of the kitchen and wings and closed all doors and windows, then released the caps of the bombs and wallked up and down for measured periods of time with the fine spray sizzling from the jets. I decided to spray the Sergeants' and Officers' Mess buildings whilst we were on the site and we walked across to the two messes vith the bombs. Conditions were not so bad there as at the Airmen's Mess, but we sprayed the rooms and returned to see how our first efforts had taken effect. The result was spectacular. W.A.A.Fs. were busy sweeping the floors and shovelling up flies by the thousand. A very few flies were crawling about the tables and floor, and as we watched they turned over on their backs and lay still. The W.A.A.Fs. were frantic. Flies had dropped in their hair, and the sweeping-up would take hours. As I walked round the kitchen looking at the carpet of dead insects I saw the Mess cook ladling flies out of a dixie filled with broth. I glanced over his shoulder and asked him what was wrong. He said that nothing was amiss, and stirred the broth with obvious embarrassment. I looked into the dixie, and saw hundreds of dead flies dotting the mixture like fruit in a Christmas loaf. Someone had forgotten to put the lid on the dixie. I was disgusted with the situation, and made a close examination of the food stores as I was leaving. What I saw decided me that drastic changes were necessary if the building was to be cleared of the plague, and on the following Monday I visited the building again. Although there were not nearly so many flies as before, it was obvious that the trouble would have to be stopped at source, and after giving the rooms another spraying with Blaza's help I called on the Medical Officer. The Medical Officer told me that as early as February he had warned the Unit that conditions in the Mess required investigation if flies were to be avoided, and he agreed that a joint inspection with the Commanding Officer was necessary. Group-Captain Dawkins was on leave, but Squadron-Leader Howard came with us, and I escorted them o n a systematic tour of the Mess site. The Mess cooks had not been warned of our inspection, so that for probably the first time the Administrative Officer saw the conditions as they normally were to be found. I pointed to tubs of fermenting potato peelings, crawling with flies, to dumps of empty fruit tins, and to the grease recovery trap choked with scum. I was told that one of the mess staff was paid a special allowance to keep the trap cleared of grease, but it was obvious that no grease had been skimmed off for weeks - probably not since the Commanding Officer had made his last routine inspection. The manholes and gulleys were uncovered to show their accumulations of filth, and finally we went inside the kitchen block. Meat lay uncovered in the fly-proofed meat store - and the door was open. In the butter store a cake of margarine weighing fourteen pounds was laid on the floor, on a piece of board, with no covering whatsoever. Sugar was kept in open bowls, and the bread store was littered with crumbs and bread scraps. As the inspection proceeded the Medical Officer found evidence to support my own, and the poor Administrative Officer was speechless against the flood of condemnation which poured over him. The outcome of the tour was that the airman in charge of grease traps was put on a charge, the cook was removed, and the Flight-Sergeant from the Sergeants' Mess was instructed to take over. The Flight-Sergeant gave me a wry grimace when he was told of his new duties, but he was persuaded that only a man of his experience and authority could deal with the serious situation. The M.O. said that he would obtain a film on flies that day, and a schedule was prepared for a series of film shows which sections of the camp would be compelled to attend, starting first of all with the Mess personnel. Blaza laughingly remarked that I had better not go unescorted for a few days, as there would certainly be many Beccles R.A.F. after my blood for some long time.

We were very busy at the Airmen's Mess for days, spreading new clean loam and lime over sour soil around the kitchen buildings, fitting gauze over windows and fixing springs to doors. At the end, with further dosings of D.D.T., the buildings were free of the menace and I gave the Medical Officer a supply of insecticide and a spray for future use. Maxwell Holgate, Jack Blaza and myself considered ourselves experienced authorities on the extermination and prevention of fly nuisance after the Beccles crisis.

The operations at Halesworth commenced with a variety of aircraft, all of the fighter-bomber type. I saw my first Meteor jet-propelled aircraft there when it shot over the field one day, circled and landed. As soon as the jet plane parked on a dispersal near the Watch Office a crowd of ground personnel gathered round and inspected it closely, peering into the engine through the round hole which replaced the usual propeller shaft. The new Superintending Engineer visited the station, explaining that the main reason for his inspection was curiosity. Although he was an established A.M.W.D. official with many years' service he had never before been on a Naval Air Station, and he wanted to see how it worked. He asked me if I thought the Navy were any better fliers than the R.A.F., the sort of question which I suppose one land-lubber would ask another. I had no views on the subject, but I was able to tell him that I had never seen a bumpy landing or a shaky take-off. That was not really surprising, because I learned that all the pilots were very experienced men, and the type of operation in progress was in the nature of a refresher and conversion course.

The station was manned to capacity when one of the main steam boilers in the Airmen's Mess began to leak badly and had to be drained. A firm of heating engineers was called in, and the fitters dismantled the boiler to see what was the cause of the trouble. They discovered that two of the welded sections had been buckled by heat, and the Station Engineer recalled that the American stokers of the previous Unit had allowed the boilers to go short of feed water on an occasion when the electrically-driven feed pumps had failed.

The Station Engineer was debating the problem when I entered his office. The heating engineers would not repair the sections, and as the boiler was a patent design only the makers could effect a repair. The boiler came from Bradford, and it would be necessary to take the sections by lorry to the works if the Mess was to be saved from a serious breakdown. The only A.M.W.D. driver on the station asked to be excused the journey as he was not a young man and had had no experience of long-distance or night driving. The fitter also refused to drive the lorry, owing to his bad eye sight and indifferent health. The Station Engineer had never driven a lorry, and he did not feel equal to the task. Platten looked at me, and I realised that I should have to take the section to Bradford myself. The Station Engineer was relieved when I made the offer, and he suggested that I might take the sections and discuss the repair with the firm, then decide for myself whether to wait and bring back the sections or return immediately and go up again when they were ready. I did not relish the thought of two trips North in one week, and I said that I would ring Halesworth from Bradford when I knew what we could do, and in the meantime the fitters must stay on the station until they received further orders. The day was Thursday, so that I was obliged to leave that afternoon at the latest if I was to got the repair completed before weekend.

The lorry was loaded, and at two-thirty the driver brought it to my office. I checked the petrol, water and batteries, and was assured that tyre pressures were in order. The Bedford 4-ton lorry had run only 5000 miles, so that I anticipated no engine trouble. When I asked about tools, however, I was disturbed to find that there was no jack, although a spare wheel had been found. In view of the urgency I was obliged to leave at once, and as the lorry rumbled past Metfield towards Harleston I wondered what I should do if a front tyre picked up a nail.

Rain fell steadily until nightfall, and the wet screen obscured vision in the darkness. For hours I drove the lorry at a steady pace with my eyes straining to see through the night. The lorry was still fitted with black-out cowls on the lamps, and the narrow roads to Sutton Bridge were totally unlit. At Newark I got out and found a cafe for a hasty snack, then resumed my journey to Chesterfield and the North. It was useless driving to Bradford that night, and I had decided to go home first and drive through to the boiler works on the Friday morning. I reached Colne at four o'clock on Friday morning after three stops - one at a W.D. filling station for petrol, a second at Cranwell R.A.F. station for another fill-up, and the third at Newark for supper. As I had no key and did not wish to disturb my wife I drew the lorry into the roadside, pulled my coat tightly round me and fell asleep in the cab.

My wife was surprised by my appearance without notice at daybreak, as I had not warned her of my visit. When she heared how I had managed to arrive home at that hour she seemed inclined to disbelieve that I had driven a lorry two hundred miles through the night, and only the presence of the lorry as evidence convinced her that my story was true.

I washed and had a meal, then drove to a W.D. Depot in the town and refuelled before going to Bradford. On arrival there I met the manager of the firm and explained the urgency of the repairs as the sections were being unloaded. We completed the necessary vouchers and rang Halesworth to advise them of my safe arrival; the manager could not guarantee a repair at once, but I decided to wait for the weekend, and I promised the Station Engineer that he would know definitely before Saturday noon whether or not I should be returning with the repaired sections. The manager told me to ring up early on Saturday morning, by which time he would have tested the boiler parts and would be able to let me know how big a repair was needed. I returned home and parked the lorry for the night, and the rest of Friday was my own.

Early on Saturday I rang the Bradford works as promised. The manager answered the telephone, and said that the welders had worked overtime and I could pick up the sections immediately. I said a hurried goodbye to my wife, left as unexpectedly as I had arrived, and reached Bradford just in time to have the sections loaded before the works closed for the weekend. Saturday was fine and sunny, and I decided to got on to the Great North road and travel as far as possible before darkness made the journey a strain. The Station Engineer was told to expect me at Halesworth on Sunday,and I left for the long journey south. My first stop was for lunch at Retford at about two o'clock, and I called in at Cranwell farther down the road for petrol. The lorry was averaging more miles to the gallon than I had hoped, and I decided to carry straight on without another stop. The time was about eight o'clock as I approached Bungay, and it occurred to me that I might as well stay there with the Halls and deliver the lorry to Halesworth on Sunday morning, so I drew into the yard of a nearby public house and parked the lorry for the night.

Next morning I drove the vehicle triumphantly to Halesworth, with Holgate following in the car which he had used to get home on the day before. With the repaired sections safely on the station we returned to Bungay to enjoy the little that was left of the weekend. I had driven the lorry 530 miles on the round trip.

Early in the morning of Monday the 6th of August 1945 a Super Fortress flew over Hiroshima and dropped a bomb. As a result of that single bomb almost the whole of a great seaport of 250,000 Japanese was destroyed, and 60,000 dead and nearly twice as many wounded were counted. Halesworth buzzed with the news dramatically announced by the American and British Governments. A few days later a second bomb was dropped, this time over Nagasaki, and the Japanese surrendered. I was at home on the weekend of the surrender, and bonfires and fireworks, singing street crowds and gay impromptu parties enabled us to release the pent-up nervous pressure which had accumulated for six years. I returned to Halesworth without enthusiasm, wondering how Air Ministry's policy would be affected by the final cessation of the World War, and half hoping that I should be allowed to leave East Anglia and find a post nearer my home.

The Superintending Engineer called again to see me, and we had a discussion on my future with Air Ministry. It was clear that he was sounding me as had his predecessor, and I once more stated my views and suggested that Air Ministry should make their offer, if there was to be one, in writing. At the end of our talk my chief said that now active operations were over the emergency organisation of Senior Works Officers to be abandoned, and the Area would be split up into new groups of stations under the peacetime Section system. He had suggested my posting as a Section Officer in another part of the Area, and final instructions would come through in due course.

I made final arrangements for the handing over of the Group to my successor, and paid frequent visits to all my stations to ensure that the works in hand were completed so that the new Section Officer would be able to have a clear start. Whilst I was engaged on these preparations Maxwell Holgate applied for a post with a local authority near his home, and on being successful he tendered his resignation to Air Ministry. The matter had to be taken to an appeal Board of the Ministry of Labour before Holgate secured his release, but eventually he was allowed to leave and I rather regretfully wished him goodbye. I secretly wished that I too might have been able to find an appointment near home so that I could put an end to the switching and restless moving around which seemed to be an essential part of my work with the Air Ministry, but it was not to be for some time to come.

My orders to move came at last, and I learned that my new appointment was to be as Section Officer stationed at Fakenham, some twelve miles from Kings Lynn in North Norfolk. I said goodbye to the stations, and was gratified to receive a friendly letter of goodwill from the Captain at Halesworth; a last weekend was spent with the Hall family, and I drove through Norwich, on past Attlebridge and over to Fakenham on the Monday morning.

Unknown to me, I was beginning the final chapter of my service with the Air Ministry; and, of course, of this book.