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This story is from Norman Davies who was a navigator with 117 Squadron RAF, and is added to the site with his permission.

I was 17 when the war started and was in the Midland Bank in Cardigan. I volunteered for the airforce in 1941...but they had lots of people signing up at that time and I wasn't called up until 1942. I did my initial training in this country ....in fact I was called up to Lords Cricket Ground, that was the mustering place at that time, and shortly after doing my initial training first of all in Aberystwyth at the Initial Training Wing and then in Carlisle where they decided I wasn't going to make a pilot but would make a good navigator, I wasn't flying these planes very well. So they had me in and told me I was going to be a navigator and was being sent to Canada to train.

So I went out to Canada at the beginning of 1943. It was a place best suited for training, it was big, no enemy action against it, plenty of wide open spaces and it was known as the Empire Flying Training Scheme or something like that. We went across on a ship the Isle de France....we didn't go across in convoy just zig-zagged across the Atlantic. We got into New York and then up to Canada, and after an initial period I was posted out to a little place called Brandon in Manitoba, which wasn't far from Winnipeg. Number one Central Navigation Station in Manitoba where I trained, I qualified five months later as a navigator.

I was then fortunate in being commissioned out there and became a brand new Pilot Officer and instead of being posted back to this country I was posted out to British Columbia for further training, which was absolutely wonderful. British Columbia in the summer. I almost felt guilty that there was a war going on in Europe and here we were living it up. In British Columbia in the summer we used to land in these places and take half an hour off to pick cherries off the trees....it was really lovely.

We did a further three months training out there and then I came back to this country in 1944 — on the P and O ship the Andes and landed inSouthampton. Going out to Canada I was an AC Plonk ...a leading aircraftsman, and we were almost like going out steerage, you were down in the bowels of the ship, sleeping in hammocks and it was very, very unpleasant. Their main object was to get over as quickly as possible, zig-zag across. But of course coming back ...in the meantime I'd been commissioned, so I came back officer class and there was a world of difference. It was just like a cruise coming back, the food was good, and we had space, there were three of us sharing a cabin.

Then when I got back I was immediately posted out to India to participate in the Burmese War which was then at its height really...when the Japs were beseiging Kohima and all those places.

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