Airmen who fought for Britain

The Voices format has proved a popular way of publishing oral histories: the individual stories are recorded, transcribed and then thoughtfully grouped in thematic chapters. In a similar style, Heroes All focuses on the exploits of airmen of different nationalities and from both sides of the conflict in the Second World War. The stories run through from enlistment and training to D-Day and VJ-Day, with chapters on bombers, fighters, the Eastern Front, the Med, and the Fleet Air Arm. Although he introduces the accounts and gives some explanations, Bond has not edited the recordings, preferring to let the heroes speak for themselves.

He has benefitted from meticulous official records: the history of air warfare is well documented, as every take-off and landing and all engagements with the enemy were recorded. The personal accounts are astonishing, for the bravery and heroism described as well as for the most matter-of-fact and self-effacing ways of telling. I don’t think that the airmen were being falsely modest — they just told it as it was.

This book is about very young men and women — the average age of Bomber Command crewmen in the War was 22, and the experiences are unforgettably fixed in their memories. These are the stories of the survivors, who by good luck or skill, or more likely a combination of both, got through their tours of duty. As you might expect, they cannot forget the mates who did not make it, so the reminiscences are peppered with mentions of those less fortunate.

One chapter includes a remarkable record of a conversation between Jack Bromfield, a wireless officer on a Halifax bomber, and Heinz Rokker, the pilot of a Junkers Ju88 night fighter, who shot Jack’s plane down during a raid on Hannover in January 1945.

They swop experiences and lore without a trace of resentment or recrimination.

Interestingly, Heinz claims, as do others from both sides elsewhere in the book, that he only wanted to destroy the machine and not the men inside it.

There are touches of humour: one chap describes how, on long bombing trips over Germany, it was sometimes necessary to go to the toilet through a tube arrangement that opened out near the rear gunner. To avoid obscuring the gunner’s view with a splattering of ordure, he had to be warned to rotate his turret at the crucial moment.