Page 22 - July 2019

In November 1942, 43 Operational Training Unit was Next, they went to 122 Elementary Flying Training School at
formed at Old Sarum under an RAF group within Marshall's Flying School at Cambridge. As for uniforms,
Army Co-operation Command. The following April, they wore an inner, quilted, flying suit, and a heavy, canvas
two operational AOP squadrons, 658 and 659, with outer one, plus bomber crew-type lined flying boots. "The
Auster 3s, were formed. parachute, you sat on.

It's wonderful to think of this: the thing is supposed to save
your life; you sat on it." Silk gloves fit into beautiful, kid
leather gauntlets. The finishing touch: an eight-foot white
silk scarf. Marshalls' airfield also happened to be home to a
maintenance unit that handled Manchesters,

Each cost 1,000 pounds sterling; given that the pound
was pegged at $4.47 Canadian, "for under $4,500,
you got an aircraft", Ashfield said.

The Canadian Army sent three artillery captains back
from Sicily to train with the Brits, who "were daring
and, technically, they were very good".
Albemarle glider tugs
Alas, they were sent back to their regiments, where
one was killed. A second group of Canadians was
selected for flight training in the summer of 1944;
among them Ashfield, who trained as an artilleryman
in the non-permanent army (militia) in the late 1930s
and later joined the wartime army. "Everybody was
excited and every artillery officer up to colonel would
give both arms to go on this course."
Training began with a two-day medical in London,
where Ashfield and some Canadian colleagues found
themselves listening to the "darndest noise" while
Englishmen dived for cover.

The noise was the sinister pulsing of a V-1 "buzz and Mosquitoes.
bomb", which delivered its one-ton warhead nearby, Wherein a lesson: "We, who thought that we were pretty
shaking the school. big, tough, manly and sharp, would stand there when these

"The next time they came over, guess who was the Mosquitoes swooped in -- and out would step a tiny female
first people on the floor?" asked Ashfield. ferry pilot."