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Ashfield was able to solo in 2:30, well below the 12 Ashfield was given a stripped down Auster and sent to an
hours allowed to rookie pilots. He was lucky; the army supply depot in the Midlands for some heavy cables.
weather over Cambridgeshire was generally poor and
"There is about five or 10 miles an hour between cruising
aborted training flights could be counted against that speed and stalling speed and it's wartime and I'm over
limit.
England," remembered Ashfield. With darkness
"Some of the fellows were sent home unfairly -- and it approaching, he finally noticed a flarepath and quickly
was the fault of the weather, mainly." Another batch plopped onto a runway from which Dakotas dropped
of trainees were later sent back to their units, trainee paratroopers.
sadistically, on the very morning of their "wings"
Anxious airmen pulled the little Auster off the runway.
parade.
"There was a whoosh and there was one of these things
For those who soloed, the next stop was 43 OTU and coming in!" It was RAF Brize Norton and "it was lovely to be
three months of training, split between flying and in an air force mess after our primitive accommodation."
"shooting" -- directing artillery fire from the air. That same night came a reminder of the danger inherent in
training: an Albemarle from the base was tugging a glider
"We had such tasks as sharp turns around a bush for
when it lost power.
an hour.
The glider pilot cut loose the tow-rope and was able to land
You had to learn to be precise in your flying so you
would not slip out." He remembers being dispatched with only injuries --but the Albemarle and its crew were
lost.
to "satellite" airfields in the area, landing and taking
off not on the runway, but on the perimeter track. Soon after, 665 Squadron left for northwest Europe.
Although Ashfield "could feel 109s and 190s coming out of
The key to AOP survival was flying low. One pilot,
every cloud", they landed safely at Brussels' "very, very
flying down a ravine on the Salisbury Plain, failed to
rise and was met by a car. Banking away from it, his busy airport" one flight at a time. The squadron had 16
Austers: three flights of five each, with one attached to
wing hit a tree "and tore off everything outboard of
headquarters. Some members of the three squadrons were
the strut...and he managed to get it back to Andover,"
said Ashfield. "Now that was one aircraft that could sent into the field quickly; others went to specialized
duties. "My job was to go to 10,000 feet with the
fly!"
meteorological instruments for the [First] Canadian Army.
Christmas 1944 saw a confrontation between the
trainees and the school commander, an English And some days, I actually got up to 10,000." More often,
the little Auster could take him no higher than 6,000 feet.
colonel who perceived Dec. 25 as just another flying
day. "Some days, the ice tore the fabric off the wing in little
chunks." He carried VIPs and did photographic duties, using
The Canadians conspired to ground themselves via
a fixed bracket outside the cockpit. This required, of course,
the rule that they could not fly within eight hours of
the Auster to fly near the front lines (always over the Allied
drinking alcohol. The next morning, Christmas Day,
saw the colonel and his adjutant glaring at the trainee side) steadily and at a fixed height; this would allow the
developed photographs to be fitted into a constant-scale
pilots -- and bluntly ordering them to fly. Which they
did. "That was the only time in my life that I ever mosaic that could be used by the army. A grid was
superimposed over the photos, creating a map accurate
landed an aircraft and was sick out the door at the
enough for intelligence work and directing artillery fire.
same time," winced Ashfield. "I didn't care if we went
in tail first, or what."
"You get some very itchy feelings when you're doing this,"
Around this time, the Canadian Army formed three Ashfield said.
Air Observation Post (AOP) Squadrons: 664, 665 and "Anything to do with the airplanes was air force; anything
666. Ashfield was assigned to 665, formed at
to do with the ground was army...cooks, drivers, signallers
Andover, Hants., and dispatched to Oatlands Hill,
were all army.
Wilts. A huge generator was assigned to the unit.
The 'erks' -- fitters and airframe -- were air force.
"But you couldn't flinch, because that would mean Supply was both.
doing it all over again."
