Mum's memories of wartime - and some of my recollections - 9 December 2006

Mum called round today and related various memories about Dad.

She said that he went to a private fee-paying school in or off Osborne Road in Wallasey (off Seabank Road). This would accord with the memory I have, that he would go to visit his grandparents Emma and Joseph after school. They lived in Penkett Road, so the geography fits. He may have gone to Wallasey Grammar School as early as the age of 8 (thus, September 1930).

He failed the School Certificate by failing one subject, she said, and returned for another year at Trent to take it again. He had hoped to get a Distinction in Music, and got this on the first attempt, but not on the second, something he found very disappointing. I have the vaguest of memories that he told me his father Horace allowed him another year at Trent, and that he was 18 when he left - that would make it July 1940, presumably. He also said that he volunteered immediately - but if this was when war broke out, he would be just 17.

She said he needed the Higher Certificate to join the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, and they did not want him without. I had been unaware that he was destined for surveying as early as schooldays.

She confirmed the story, that he had been in the Officer Training Corps at Trent, and so could have gone straight into the Army as an officer. He went over to Liverpool to enlist, arriving at Liverpool Central Station. Finding himself in Bold Street, the RAF recruiting office proved to be nearer than the Army, so he signed up there instead. He was not made an officer then, and seemingly worked up from the ranks, but a public schoolboy would make rapid progress.

She said that he was such a small man that he could not reach the pedals on the planes. He did fly bombers at first, but was transferred to reconnaissance planes, taking photographs, apparently on his own. He told me once that he had been on a course taken by a photographer, all about focal lengths etc, and then found that while on the plane, you just pushed a button to take the photographs. He flew over areas to be invaded, and then over the D-Day landings, to inform the guns of their positions. It was dangerous work, and he had to fly much higher than bombers did, and this gave him ulcers. He told her about an incident that he also related to me. He saw a van running along a road and shot it up, and the driver (and perhaps others?) were killed. He told me that he always wondered about the man (or men) he had killed.

She said that he was forced to land his plane on a wood, because he was too short to reach the controls. I am under the impression that he was court-martialled (without penalty) as a result, but Mum did not think so. Whether it was as a result of this, he was invalided out, suffering from ulcers so badly that his weight was reduced to 5 stones, and his Mother walked past his bed in the hospital without recognising him. He much later told me that his father had visited him in hospital and said he was forming a new firm, H.J.Boughey & Son, and would he object to "Son" in the title?

He received a war pension until at least the time they left Stanley Avenue (1964). I know he was demobilised at the air base at RAF West Kirby (apparently closed in 1955-56, and the site reclaimed with the aid of derelict land grants in the mid-late 1980s). Mum had already met him in adolescence, and they formally started courtship in November 1946. He proposed on the day after her 22nd birthday (thus January 26 1947) and married in August.

So much remains to be discovered - what sort of planes did he fly, and when exactly? Mum has a book somewhere in which he was supposd to record his flights, but most of it is blank. The RAF West Kirby was used to train recruits, and I wonder if he went there first.

He certainly spent some time in Canada during the war, and always had a lot of time for Americans. I recall him relating how he and other RAF people were drinking in a bar, and an American (older man, is my impression) bought a round for the entire crew, and left without saying anything. About Canada, he said that he travelled across by train, and there was one day or prairie, one day of forest, and so on. He always had am ambition to drive across the USA from East to West, but never did so.