Stanley Martin

The normal day was we went early for breakfast and we were back on the job in the hangar [of 409 (Nighthawk) Squadron, Royal Canadian Air Force, England] about 8:30 or something like that. And then there were all these aircraft waiting to be serviced. And it usually, we were with the Beaufighters [the Bristol Type 156 Beaufighter long-range heavy fighter], twin engine [British] Beaufighters. And we had to check the wheels, the tires and the wheels, the tires and all the cowlings that they had and front and back to make sure that the ailerons were working right and the back tail, was everything okay there too. And all the other thing that we had to be very careful of is the hydraulic unit that they had for the raising of the aircraft, of the undercarriage and making sure that everything is working properly. And I had the thing of looking after the wheels on the Beaufighter. I was working sometimes about 16 hours a day, trying to not only was the wheels but there was also other things that I had to put on the aircraft for the observer because our aircraft was almost the same kind of design as a Dornier 217, that’s the German one [the German bomber Dornier Do 217]. And with that, it was discussed by the air force unit that something had to be done in regards to not to shoot down our aircraft. So they developed a little unit that had to be put on the, I think it was on the left hand side of the Beaufighter, right next to the observer, there was two, like the pilot and the observer was in the middle of the fuselage. And he had to have this thing so he can identify the friendly aircraft. In other words, all the aircraft in the RCAF [Royal Canadian Air Force] and the RAF [Royal Air Force] were equipped with this thing that they could be recognizing the friendly aircraft, so that they wouldn’t be shot down. And we ran out of rivets, we had to go to another station about 40 miles away to get some rivets, we didn’t have any rivets. That’s those blind rivets that you could put into a hole and squeeze it and then it would expand itself in the back and be just about as good as being hammered in. But other than that, that was it. And we enjoyed each other’s company. We were stationed in Nissen Huts, metal Nissen huts [a prefabricated steel structure] and there was only about 12 of us into each hut because it had to be heated by a little furnace, by a little stove that we put wood into them, to heat the unit up, the Quonset Hut [a variant of the Nissen Huts]. And what else? We were in the bush in Colby Grange, a place called Colby Grange, and it was a satellite of Digby and that was a permanent station during the peace time. And it also served for being the mother house for the 409 night fighter squadron [409 (Nighthawk) Squadron] and there must have been somebody else but I was, the only one I was interested in was in the night fighter 409^th, that was my squadron. The Beaufighters at that particular time were only at night, during the night hours. And so they were, the ones that knocked down a [German bomber Dornier Do] 217 into our sheep pen. And we sure had some fun trying to get the German airmen out of that area. So I said to the officer in charge of us, I said: ‘How in the heck do I know which is human and which is a sheep?’ He said to me, he said: ‘Look, you have the breast pocket things off these Germans that you’re going to turn in so that the Red Cross can inform the stations where they were so they can inform the parents that their son was killed and buried in England.’