Ginger Lacey: Fighter Pilot

by Richard Townsend Bickers

  This was an experience made doubly uneasy for the R.A.F. aboard: sailing past Brest, with its notorious fighter airfields, was asking for trouble; they were lucky not to find it.

  At Casablanca, Squadron Leader Lacey was invited aboard H.M.S. Boreas, one of the escort, by Lieutenant Commander Jones, her captain; a pleasant interlude after confinement aboard a ‘dry’ ship. Then on to Dakar and at last Freetown where, a week later, the convoy caught up with the Aorangi.

  The passage from there to Durban was alarming. The sea was strewn with flotsam: hatch covers, furniture, smashed packing cases, over-turned lifeboats; all the debris from ships sunk in this sea by enemy action. Most of the passengers had real doubts about reaching their destination.

  At Durban Lacey transferred to the S.S. Strathmore, saying goodbye to Sheila who was staying aboard to continue as far as Mombasa.

  Bombay gave him his first sight of India. But it was not the fabled Orient which interested him just then: temples, palaces and the strange variety of dress could be investigated later. For the time being, it was the bar at the world famous Taj Mahal hotel which beckoned. One or two of the younger officers mistook this ornate edifice for the celebrated mausoleum from which it derived its name!

  Lacey lost no time in establishing good relations with the Army. The amused, half-incredulous tolerance bordering on contempt which each Service traditionally expresses for the two others, was given extra scope in India, with its peculiar history of ‘pukkha sahibdom’. Sharing a table in the crowded Harbour Bar with an Indian Army subaltern, Lacey agreeably remarked that he had never before seen chain mail epaulettes worn with khaki drill; he was, albeit, envious of the youth’s immaculate tailor-made uniform, which contrasted vividly with the crushed, travel-stained, store-issue worn by himself and his R.A.F. companions. Indeed, to display his knowledge of Indian military affairs, he added, with the joviality permitted to a squadron leader addressing a junior, that this form of dress reminded him ‘of one of those fairy tale efforts like Probyn’s Horse.’

  The youth with the chain mail epaulettes on his khaki drill leaped to his feet, stood at attention, and announced: ‘Sir. I am Probyn’s Horse.’

  ‘Have a drink,’ said Lacey. ‘And sit down at once.’

  Two American flying men at an adjacent table turned amused faces towards them. One, a burly captain, wore a scowl under his passing grin. ‘Goddam Limeys,’ he opened, invitingly.

  Lacey and his friends pretended not to hear.

  The captain belched and repeated: ‘Lousy British … goddam Limeys … son-of-a-bitching Empire …’

  His companion, a tall, thin major with a crew cut, leaned over to Lacey. ‘Don’t pay any attention, fella. I’m sorry—but the guy’s been hitting the bottle …’

  ‘You surprise me,’ murmured Probyn’s Horse.

  ‘Yeah, he just got a “Dear John” letter from a British girl in London. They were engaged, see, and now this dame gives Chuck the air for some goddam bird colonel.’

  ‘Rugged,’ said Lacey.

  ‘Lousy Limeys,’ said Chuck belligerently, ‘got yourselves in this war and we have to get you out of it. How come you start somethin’ you cain’t finish, huh?’

  ‘He thinks you British are decadent,’ explained the major gratuitously.

  ‘We are,’ Lacey agreed, ‘but not so decadent as the Nazis. Or the Italians. Or the Japs. Or … the Americans …

  This penetrated Chuck’s Neolithic skull about a minute later, and he half-rose, clutching an empty bottle by its neck.

  ‘Sit down,’ ordered Probyn’s Horse.

  ‘Yeah, siddown, Chuck,’ said the major. He turned to Lacey. ‘I’m real sorry about this guy …’

  ‘That’s all right,’ said Lacey, who was getting the germ of an idea, ‘move over a bit closer and have a drink; let’s see if we can’t talk him out of his notion that the British are decadent.’

  ‘Swell,’ agreed the major.

  Chuck, who had heard the word ‘drink’, whipped his chair over to the neighbouring table with astounding alacrity, mumbled ‘double Scotch’ and began to explain how appalling it was that the British would never be able to fight their own wars from now on in.

  Two hours and a bottle of whisky later, the captain fell on his face with his arms spread across the table, breathing stertorously.

  ‘Come on chaps,’ said Lacey, ‘he’s out cold.’ He stood up and put both hands under one of Chuck’s arms.

  ‘Where are we goin’?’ asked the Major.

  ‘You’ll see.’

  They stood on the steps of the Taj Mahal Hotel, while the doorman whistled up a taxi. They crammed into it, waved courteously on their way by Probyn’s Horse, who was swaying very gently like a palm tree in a typhoon.

  ‘We want to go to a tattooist,’ said Lacey.

  The taxi driver, long used to the vagaries of seafarers, was past being astonished by the demands of airmen. He took them. It was in the heart of dockland.

  Eight tattooists, working together, surrounded the unconscious American captain for half an hour. When they stood back, revealing their handiwork, the American major whistled in admiring approval.

  ‘Say ! You guys sure got your own back there.’ Then he began to laugh until he nearly choked.

  Lacey and his friends didn’t think they’d done so badly either.

  Tattooed on the offensive Chuck’s anti-British chest was a blazing Union Jack, which for the rest of his life, whenever he took his shirt off, would be seen from a furlong away.

  But the major, who had a sense of fair play, and having also been stationed in London deplored his countryman’s aggressive Anglophobia, added the finishing touch.

  On the way back to their respective units they passed an American Military Police jeep. The major stopped the taxi. He called to the M.Ps. ‘Hey! Soldier! I got an Air Corps captain here you can have—picked him up drunk …’ which was, after all, true.

  *

  So far, Lacey had been spared most of the petty irritations of wartime service. But now, after a three-day journey from Bombay to Delhi, to report to Air Headquarters, he found himself returning at once over virtually the same route; back almost where he started from, at Kalyan, near Bombay. His task was to convert No. 20 Squadron from Lysanders to Hurricanes.

  Life never seemed to be uneventful when Lacey was around. It was not so much that he precipitated crises, as that events seemed to gravitate towards him. Arrived at the Guard Room at Kalyan, by taxi from the station, he found a crowd of airmen and Indians making a great deal of noise and bustle.

  ‘What’s going on here?’

  ‘They’re killing a snake, sir.’

  Several sweepers with long sticks were prodding and beating a pile of fire wood, while they pranced round it screaming invective. Presently an eight-foot long snake wriggled wickedly into view. The crowd scattered.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said the newly-arrived squadron leader, ‘that’s only a grass snake. It’s quite harmless.’

  It was an impressive arrival. The mob stood staring after him open-mouthed.

  His entry into the Mess coincided with a great event. It was the night when the beer ration (1 bottle per man, per week … perhaps) arrived; four months overdue.

  He retired to his bedroom, very late, to see a small snake dart under his wardrobe. Flushed with confidence after having identified the huge grass snake as harmless, borne on a tide of bottled beer, he reached for the small intruder with a convenient walking stick and set about it with his feet. It thrashed and wriggled ineffectually while he trampled it to death. Picking it up by its tail he returned to the bar.

  The few who had not yet finished their four months’ quota of beer turned in surprise to see him in the doorway with his trophy. An instant later there was nobody to be seen: they had all gone to ground behind the bar counter or the armchairs.

  ‘What kind of snake is this?’

  A voice came from the far side of the counter. ‘Sir … that’s a … a Krait!’


  When he told them that it was dead, they emerged. He still didn’t realize that he had caught the most dangerous snake in the sub-continent.

  His introduction to service in India was further jaundiced next morning.

  On booking into the Mess he had been told that a personal bearer was immediately available: the former servant of an officer who had just gone home. Lacey engaged him, told him what time he wanted to be called in the morning, and thought no more about him. When he went to bed he noticed that the bearer was sleeping on the veranda, and hoped that the fellow was not a snorer.

  The next morning, his early tea did not arrive at the time he had ordered. This, he thought, was a poor performance from a bearer who had been so strongly recommended to him. Disgruntled, he shuffled out onto the veranda to investigate. The bearer still lay on his charpai.

  ‘Hey! What’s your name … get up, you lazy hound. I want my tea. Cha. Get cracking.’

  But the bearer signally failed to get cracking. He just lay.

  His master went a bit closer. ‘Come on. Or do you want me to bring you a cupper?’

  Still there was no reaction.

  He went closer and peered down. Then he jumped back as though he had found another krait, when he saw the hideously swollen empurpled features stiff and lifeless.

  That day, helping the Medical Officer, Squadron Leader Lacey inoculated some five hundred natives against cholera. He was used to wielding a hypodermic: his father had been a diabetic and it was often his task to give him insulin injections.

  ‘What with two snakes and a case of cholera in my first twenty-four hours, I never thought I’d get out of India alive.’

  It only took three weeks to convert 20 Squadron to fighters, and he was posted to St Thomas’s Mount, Madras, to form and command a new unit. It was given a camouflage name of 1572 Gunnery Flight, to conceal the fact that, far from carrying out gunnery training, they were converting six Blenheim bomber squadrons onto Hurricanes.

  ‘Some of the Blenheim pilots were so used to having navigators, that they were lost even before their wheels came up.’

  Life in Madras was sybaritic. The swimming pool of the Gymkhana Club … Sunday cricket … curry tiffins … sitting in deep armchairs on the riverside at the Addiar Club. But he was unable to convince his relations at home that he was not deep in the jungle, fighting off Japanese, under a Union Jack nailed to a palm tree.

  While he was at Madras he received a letter in a hand which had, by now, become familiar. But, instead of an address in Mombasa, it bore one in Colombo. Sheila was now in Ceylon and much nearer to him. From then his trips to Ratmalana, an airfield near Colombo, began and became increasingly frequent. It became a regular weekend visit.

  He was sorry when the task in hand was completed. It was marked by a letter from the Air Officer Commanding No. 225 Group, which said: ‘I wish to congratulate all those concerned in bringing the conversion training to a successful conclusion. This intricate training operation has called for much hard work, skill and patience, and I am more than satisfied with the way in which the job has been tackled … I would like you to convey my thanks to Squadron Leader Lacey and his instructors … who have been largely responsible for the very good results obtained …’

  April saw Lacey’s unit transferred to Yelahanka, near Bangalore.

  Their task now was to convert all the Hurricane squadrons to Thunderbolts. He was not keen on this job. The Thunderbolt was a big, heavy aircraft; the pilots used to say that the only way in which they could take evasive action was to undo their straps and run round the cockpit.

  Ever since arriving in the East he had been trying to get a posting to a squadron, back on operations. He was offered a post at H.Q. No. 225 Group as Wing Commander Training, but declined this, saying that he did not want to be a wing commander until he had commanded a squadron.

  He was feeling despondent at the delay in procuring his return to a battle front. The hedonistic life in Madras had not really pleased him, although he was sensible enough not to spurn it when it was put upon him. Moreover, the training role to which he had been allotted was of utmost importance to future operations.

  However, had he been aware of it, his quality was well known in the Command and it was because of his ability that he had been selected for the training of others; his posting to a squadron was ensured as soon as he could be spared.

  On the 14th June, 1943, immediately on Lacey’s arrival in India, Air Commodore F. J. Vincent, C.B.E., D.F.C., A.O.C., No. 227 Group, had written to Air Commodore A. W. B. McDonald, A.F.C. at Air Headquarters, India:

  ‘I have just seen Squadron Leader Lacey. Quite by accident I saw him wandering round Bombay!! He was one of my Instructors in an O.T.U. at Home. As you probably know, he is one of the outstanding aces of the Battle of Britain. I have forgotten his score, but I think it is round twenty-two or twenty-three aircraft which he has to his credit. He is a very valuable officer in every way. He may not be impressive to look at, but he is a very fearless fighter and he knows most of the tricks in air fighting.

  ‘I was talking to Mellersh yesterday. Although he was not able to disclose plans for the future, I can guess pretty well what is required. In view of these requirements, I suggest that Squadron Leader Lacey would be a most valuable man in the training of those squadrons that are going to be used, so I commend him to you as one of the star turns to be put into any operations which might be planned in the near future. He has had his quota of training in the O.T.U.’s at home and he is desperately keen to take an active part in the war again. As much as I would like to have him in 227 Group as an Instructor, I feel that in all fairness to him he should be given first consideration for an active service job. However, that it up to you but I thought I must give you my views, knowing as I do, quite a lot about this officer.’

  The reference to Ginger Lacey’s comparatively unimpressive exterior was in no way derogatory. He had, since his rest from operations and on the long sea voyage, regained all his youthfulness of aspect.

  This, added to complete lack of pomposity, condescension or conceit, produced a misleading self-deprecatory impression. In a photograph taken at about this time, on No. 19 Air Fighting Instructors’ Course, the twenty-seven-year-old squadron leader with two D.F.Ms. looks years younger and infinitely less experienced than the junior officers around him.

  Having turned down the wing commander post, he was sent in September 1944 to Third Tactical Air Force H.Q. at Komila, for re-posting to a squadron.

  There was no vacancy on a squadron, so he became Squadron Leader Training, sharing an office with Jimmy Nicholson, Wing Commander Training, who, as Flight Lieutenant J. B. Nicholson, had won the first Fighter Command Victoria Cross of the war.

  Nicholson was a pre-war regular, and had gone to No. 72 Squadron as a pilot officer in 1937. In August 1940, he had recently been made a Flight Commander on No. 249 Squadron. One hot summer afternoon at the height of the Battle of Britain, when his wife was expecting their first child, three Ju. 88s appeared about four miles from where the squadron was on patrol.

  Nicholson saw and reported them, whereupon his Squadron Commander ordered him to detach and lead his section into an attack. Before the Hurricanes could catch up with the Junkers, twelve Spitfires intercepted them and shot them down. Nicholson, who had not yet fired at the enemy, was disappointed. Turning back to rejoin the squadron, at 18,000 ft., he suddenly heard four tremendous explosions in his cockpit and looked in his mirror to see a Me. 110 on his tail. One of the shells from its cannons had ripped through his canopy, sending splinters of Perspex into his left eye. His eyelid was almost cut clean through and blood flooded his eye, making it useless. A second shell had burst in his auxiliary petrol tank and started a fire. Another hit his foot and the fourth his right leg.

  He broke violently down and found that his attacker had overshot and was now a couple of hundred yards ahead. He gave it a long burst, while both his hands, one on the throttle and the other on the contro
l column and gun button, were blistering in the flames which surged around him. The instrument panel was melting in the heat. With flames roaring around him and searing heat beating at him, he followed the twisting Messerschmitt down, firing at it. It disappeared from sight, diving steeply and also on fire. Then at last Nicholson tried to bale out; but his head hit the framework—all that the flames had left—of his cockpit canopy. He got out, and as he hung in his parachute straps a Me. 109 zoomed past; he feigned dead. It had taken him several seconds to fumble the rip-cord open, with his hideously scorched and painful hands. He fell for twenty minutes, and as he approached the earth he recognized that he would drop in the sea; with his wounds, his blood-filled eye and his burns, he would have been unable to survive. He struggled with his shroud lines and guided the ’chute inland: towards high tension cables, he saw, suddenly. Some more manoeuvring, and he was down in a field. He was in hospital for over three months.

  Nicholson came from Tadcaster, which is only seven miles from Lacey’s home, Wetherby. His greeting to the latter was: ‘If you don’t write any letters to Tadcaster, I won’t write any to Wetherby!’

  Office work, even when shared with a congenial fellow-Yorkshireman, was unpalatable and Lacey was impatient to be back in a cockpit; he knew the time could not be far off when he would be given an operational squadron, so he asked to be sent on a refresher fighter course.

  On 4th October he began No. 19 Air Fighting Instructors’ Course, at Amarda Road. The Air Fighting Training Unit was commanded by Wing Commander F. R. Carey, D.F.C. (later Group Captain) a far-famed and highly successful fighter pilot. This school of his had earned itself as good a reputation as the Central Gunnery School in England itself. ‘If anyone knew anything about shooting, it was Frank Carey.’