The Biggs' Boys, JIM MALONEY

The Biggs' Boys

Biography of Jim Maloney

It was September of 1940. I first heard of Captain Biggs through a friend of mine, Jack Green who had gone to England through Biggs.

I had a pal, Bert Moorehouse, who boarded with my parents. We had been talking about Biggs and the work he was doing with young chaps. One morning Bert came down to breakfast and said, "Lets go to Victoria and see Biggs."

Bert and I had been trying to get in the RCAF and had gone over to Vancouver, but couldn't get anywhere with them. Finally I told a Corporal to stuff it and walked out. I thought on this Biggs guy for a couple of months and one Saturday Bert and I went in to Victoria to see him at the Great Northern Railway ticket office on Government St. Biggs says to us, "Are you boys ready to go?" I said, "Any time in a week or two."

"Okay," he says. So he sent us across the street to a doctor for a medical and told us the result could be picked up at his office in a week. "You go up the street," he says, "and get your pictures taken for passports and bring them back here. We'll ship them off for the passport, and by that time, if you're medically fit, you'll be fine."

Early in October we heard from Biggs saying he would like to see Bert and I. So off we go to his house at the corner of Bay and Quadra in Victoria. He made us a cup of tea, and talked to that ruddy parrot of his, which was a veteran of the Battle of Jutland.

He said, "I'll set you up with the material you need when you go. Any questions?" he asked. Then he said, "Well in case I don't see you again, there are two things you have to remember when you get in the RAF; you don't whistle and you keep your hands out of your pockets." We went back to Port Alberni and waited.

About two or three weeks went by and then we heard from him by mail, telling us to leave Vancouver on such and such a date for Montreal where we would board a ship.

Bert and I sold our cars and we got everything cleared up. We had about five or six hundred dollars apiece in our pockets. We went to Vancouver and bought our tickets and waited for the train. We are just about to embark when an announcement comes over the P.A. system asking for a JIM MALONEY. I find the desk where the message comes from and there is a message from Biggs to say all of our trip plans have been cancelled. Biggs wanted me to phone him in Victoria or to come and see him. We would have to go home and wait. So we did. My mother and father met us.

Time went on and it was past New Years, into 1941 and the First Canadian Division was going over and they were commandeering everything that was afloat including the ship we had originally been scheduled to sail on. So we asked Biggs how long. He said, "Oh I don't know. A month six weeks, I don't know."

Several days later he called me again and said I had better come down and see him, "And bring Moorehouse too." Biggs had all of this paraphernalia. It was our clearance all the way.

Our destination was the Air Ministry, London, England. He said we might have a little bit of a hitch. We'd go by train to Montreal but it will be played by ear from there. "There's a benefactor in all of this." he said, "a fellow by name of Westinghouse." I said, "Westinghouse Airways?"

"Yes," he says, "Westinghouse Airways down in the Gorge." I didn't know any of the Westinghouses. He told us there would now be five of us in the party, not two. Two other chaps, Richard Slee and Roy Cook were joining us, also a Tommy Westinghouse. He must have phoned them because they were in the office when we got there. Cook, or "Cookie" as we got to call him was a real straight up fellow and a nice boy.

Biggs tells me, "You will be looking after the party, Jim as you're the oldest. There will be a message for further instructions when you get to Montreal."

We stayed two days at the Pennsylvania Hotel in Montreal. A group picture of us was taken with a Mr. McCallum, who I think was the head CPR Passenger Agent for both water and land. He arranged our passage to Bermuda. We were told there were berths available on the Lady Rodney sailing to Bermuda leaving the following day

The instructions from McCallum were for us to go to the manager of the Bank of Bermuda who would be notified that our passports were on the Clipper that was due to land there in four or five hours. The Portugese wouldn't visa our passports in Montreal, so they were sent to Washington D.C. Washington were the ones who put the pressure on to visa the passports. Then they were put on the Clipper in New York.

On arrival in Bermuda, Cook didn't have any money, Slee didn't have that much more. Bert and I weren't too flush but we weren't hurting either, so we slept in an army barracks and the following day went down to see the manager of the Bank of Bermuda. He told us to get rooms at the Belmont Manor which at that time was the biggest hotel in Bermuda. "How we going to pay for it?" I asked him.

"You don't need to worry about that. Mr. Westinghouse will supply the money, but it is not for women or liquor," he said. "Use your own money for that."

He said we could play golf if we liked, that was all part and parcel of the package. "How are you fixed for money?" he asked.

"We're not crying, but we're looking after a couple of other fellows," I says.

"Okay," he said, "Here's fifty pounds. You can draw fifty pounds on this account for spending money." So we go over to the Belmont Manor. We danced there every night on a soapstone floor. A maitre de with big thumbs and long fingernails told us we had to wear a tie. He had a big thick card he used to snap down on the table in front of us, and on it was printed, "GENTLEMEN WILL WEAR TIES"...So we would get up immediately, go up to our room and get a tie and back we'd come to have dinner.

There were a bunch of RAF types there who were flying Cansos out of Bermuda. I don't know what happened to Westinghouse, but he got tied up with some of those guys and as far as I know he flew to England on a Canso, because he never travelled with our party at all. I think he flew down to Bermuda too. I don't recall him being on our ship.

We were in Bermuda about two weeks enjoying ourselves when we got a hurry-up call to get down to the Clipper about 5 o'clock for a 6 p.m. take-off. It was called the Dixie Clipper. It had about 20 passengers and about 12 berths. We didn't have berths. We landed in the Azores to refuel. It was rather tremendous, flying all night at about 10,000 feet and then in the morning at daybreak to see the heavy cumulus clouds beneath us.

In the Azores there were Gerry ships, British ships and everything else. We landed to refuel. We were there about an hour and didn't leave the aircraft. Then we took off for Lisbon.

In Lisbon we took one of the hotel buses. I think it was the Avenita. It was like the Hotel Vancouver compared to the Georgia, in Vancouver, B.C.

When I left Bermuda I had a credit for £1,500 sterling done through the bank. I had the signing privilege and then whatever was left I had to turn in to the Barclay's Bank at Bristol or London, and give a fair accounting of where everything (not down to the last shilling) had gone.

Foolishly we brought Bermuda pounds with us. We hadn't converted our money.

We had about six dollars in Canadian and no American, all kinds of British pounds and travellers cheques, and Bermuda money, but no ascudos and they didn't like Canadian money. We got a taxi and went looking for money. We went to the Canadian Consulate and the Canadian Embassy and we couldn't get to first base with those bastards, so we said to hell with this. It suddenly dawned on me to look up a guy named Morrison (something to do with the British Consulate), we had met on the ship when we went to Bermuda and also on the aircraft. So off we go to the British Consulate. We couldn't dismiss the taxi driver because we couldn't pay him. Bert sat in the cab while I headed into the British Consulate. As luck would have it, as I walked in, who should be coming out but Morrison. "Just the man I want to see," I called out to him.

"What's your problem?" he asks, stopping very friendly like. I told him we had all kinds of money, but it wasn't any good in this country. I told him we couldn't get any of it cashed and we had to pay the cab sitting out front with Moorehouse in it. "I'll fix it up for you right away," he said. He walked back in and through what seemed like a private door and was soon back out again. "Okay it's arranged," he said. "How much do you want?" The escudo was worth about five cents so there were about 100 to the pound. We had about 15 or 20 pounds, which I gave to him. Off he went again and came back with a couple of thousand escudo notes. We went back to the hotel, paid the taxi driver, gave him a good tip and everything was gung-ho again.

Bert thought we deserved a drink, so seeing as how we were now so rich we rang room service and had someone bring up some beer. We had never seen beer corked and capped. I was fascinated with the opening of the bottle - the opener. I had my eye on that opener but I couldn't get it off the waiter, no way.

We were in one room and Cookie (Roy James Cook) and Slee (Richard Slee), were in another. They were at a very tender age, Cook and Slee. Slee didn't say very much at the best of times. And I think Cookie used to look at me and his eyeballs used to drop out like a little dough deer you know with those brown eyes figuring well what's going to happen next.

We split the money four ways and told them to take it easy with it, not to go all out. "We have a little in the bank," I says, "It's not ours it belongs to Westinghouse."

Bert and I met Morrison later and went out with him. I don't know what Slee and Cook did. They were going one way and we were going another. Of course being older our interests were a little different to theirs. We were interested in a little night life and one thing and another and these boys were pure and unadulterated and God help us we tried to keep them that way.

We were in Lisbon about ten days and then we got a boarding and departure time from KLM. Who should be on the aircraft but Morrison. We had been keeping company since Montreal, so we got on the Dak, (Dakota aircraft) the KLM line, and took off for England.

There were 24 passengers. There was a bit of a storage room up front, just behind the pilot where they had sandwiches and stuff like that. Nothing elaborate like you get today. There was a big crate of oranges the size of softballs. They had a special name, which I can't remember at the moment. Morrison was sitting farther back and we had to pass these oranges around. They were beautiful things. We ate two each. Morrison happened to say his grandchildren would love to have an orange like that. Later on in the flight I mosied up to the front with a couple of paper bags and put a half dozen oranges in each, and took them back to Morrison. "Got room in that hold-all?"

"Not much," he says.

"Here, see if you can tuck these in there somewhere."

"You've got to be kidding," he says. I tell him they're free. So he stuffs them in his bag. I had talked to him a lot on the way over on the aircraft and as we left he asked if I would like to work in Clydebank. Well I wasn't interested in going to Clydebank. I told him I could have stayed at home and gone to work. So he gave me his card and said any time I can do anything for you when you are in London, drop around and see me. He had an office in St. James' Square. His real address was in Glasgow. Several months later (after I had joined up) I was in London and dropped in to see him. I had about five or six shillings in my pocket. He said he would take me out to his club, but he had to be back in about an hour or so as he was having lunch with the president of the Bank of Yugoslavia. I was worrying how I was going to buy drinks in this club, but I needn't have, as it was all on his tab. Drinks on him. I was curious about him as I had learned he was connected with the RAF. I asked him what his position in the RAF was..."you don't wear a uniform."

"No," he said, "I guess you could say that I'm an outside representative of the RAF. That's all." What he was, what his rank was, I have no idea, but he travelled all over the world. He was on the go all the time. What he was doing I haven't the faintest idea.

We stayed overnight in Bristol. Double daylight saving time had just started. I walked to a little park that had been bombed a few days before, and sat on a bench next to a little old fellow and we had a cigarette together. A bomb had exposed a subterranean stream. I'm gregarious by nature and started up a conversation with him. He was born and raised in Bristol and could remember this now-exposed-stream before it had been covered over. It had been put in four or five foot tile under the present roadway that hadn't existed when he was a youth.

"I can tell from your accent laddy, that you are not from this country," he said.

"No I am Canadian."

"Oh I know Canada well," the old man said.

I immediately figured he had lived and worked in Canada and then retired in England. He was about 75 or so. I said, "Oh, you lived out there once?"

"No but I have a brother in Winnipeg who writes to me about it all the time." He had lived Canada through his brother's experiences.

The next day our party went up to London. I went into the main branch of Barclay's Bank with the papers, an accounting of our expenses. I cashed in about 400 pounds and presented the list of what had been spent. The manager said it looked fine and didn't ask me any questions. That was it. I never did hear anything from Westinghouse after that. I didn't have a clue where he was or where to write to him. He had disappeared as far as I was concerned.

In London we joined up at Euston House. Moorehouse was classified unfit for aircrew due to a slight astigmatism in his right eye and yet he had never worn glasses. He was posted to a Fitters group. Cook and Slee were posted to I.T.W.'s.

If you had been out of school eight years they sent you to what they called a pre-I.T.W. which gave you a few extra weeks of scholastic time to get caught up. I was posted to a pre-I.T.W. at Babbacombe as was Roy Cook, but we weren't in the same flight. Selection was done alphabetically in the RAF, so sometimes you could get separated from a best friend.

I had been told never to volunteer for anything and the first day at Babbacombe they were looking for lifeguards on the beach so I didn't volunteer. I thought I'd just go for a swim with another fellow I had met there. Nobody said anything about not going out too deep. We saw three or four girls out about half a mile. I decided to swim out and see what the attraction was. I swam out and came in about an hour later. I thought the wrath of God had descended upon me. I didn't know their ranks, but there were guys there with one ring and two rings. Anyway I wasn't allowed on the beach for the rest of the time I was in Babbacombe.(apparently out of bounds to O.R's)

Later we had inoculation shots and I got an infection from the vaccination. When my posting came up I was running a temperature of about 102. They got the M.O. down to me. I told him there was a posting out at 8 a.m. the next morning and I wanted to be on it.

"What do I have to do to get my temperature down doc?" I asks him.

"If your temps 100 or under I will put you on the posting."

"How do I get it down to 100?"

"Just drink lots and lots of water."

I followed his advice and I got on the posting, but the trains were so full I had to stand all the way to Edingburgh. I was sick. I was taken off the train at Elgin. They didn't put me in a hospital, but in a hut with about four bed spaces. I remember there was a Squadron Leader who came around, a big stout fellow, who ordered hot fermentations every two hours. I recall the nurse very well, I think she was just a navvy. I still remember that night, that nurse, and a bucket of bloody boiling water. It burnt my arm like hell. The next morning the Squadron Leader comes in again and takes hold of my arm. "You suffering any pain with this?" he asks.

"Yes, yes," I says, "Considerable."

"Who did this?" he asks.

"I don't know exactly," I said. "I think her name was Kathy, and if I ever catch her she won't live very long."

"Don't worry, I'll look after her," he said. I never saw Kathy again. He gave me a shot in the arm to relieve the pain over the next two or three days.

I was excused all duties when I got out of there. They had the audacity to get me to dry dishes and I was wearing that little white peak in my hat that indicated I was training for aircrew. As an aircrew candidate you were a privileged character. You got sheets. Man oh man! When I got to my I.T.W. I didn't have to do anything other than a little bit of marching up and down the main road. We had a little corporal by name of Thomas. Nobody liked Thomas. He was a little Welshman. A mean little bastard. He could only march us three abreast up the road and back. He couldn't get us to go any other way, so he had a little reviewing stand on which he placed himself and screamed out commands. There is only one command in the British manual that you can issue that can have a group marching east and give a command that will turn them around and they will come west. "To the front, salute on the left foot, count on the right foot, one, two, three four on the left foot, lead off on the left and return on the same line in the direction from which you came. There were about 40 of us. The first time he pulled this the back 20 were about to turn, so the guy, a joker, who split us said "Keep on going. Keep on going". The front half of the squad kept going down the road and the other half marched back to the corporal. Well, talk about panic. Man oh man oh man. Thomas didn't know which half to control first. He finally got the ones nearest him stopped and then he tore down the road after the others.

A big Irishman in our group, said, "Keep on going boys. Keep on going." The little Welsh corporal finally gets within earshot and finally gets us stopped. We pulled that trick on him twice. He didn't scream at us as much after that.

I was posted to 29 E.F.T.S. High Wycombe, which is practically Henley-on-Thames; you can nearly walk to the subway there. From there I was offered to go on an instructors' course after about 15 hours of solo and they would give me my wings test at Hatfield. I turned that down. I wanted some action.

I went E.F.T.S. and they had a Canadian Squadron Leader there in the RAF, a short-service commission who went over before the war. He wanted me there. I said I wouldn't accept it and he asked why. I told him I wanted to fly the biggest thing I could fly that was all. I was posted to a holding unit at Swindon. There were about a dozen of us.

They had about five Tiger Moths and a dozen of us were posted there waiting for another posting to an S.F.T.S. Well at that time they had opened up Canada quite a bit (Commonwealth Air training Plan) and they decided then to ship us back to Canada to an SFTS. In the meantime we would get a couple of hours a day flying Tiger Moths. They had two or three instructors around there to let us go solo, so we filled up our solo time.

We were posted to Canada. We came over on an old Polish troopship the Batoray, without an escort. They had all kinds of grub. All the Germans had to have was a snorkel up, and they could have smelled that ship for a thousand miles. I don't know how many thousand of us were on it but we were all English plus about 200 merchant crewmen coming back.

We landed at Halifax entrained there and went to Montreal, changed trains and headed west. I ended up at North Battleford. It was Christmas 1941. I did three months at EFTS at North Battleford, on Oxfords and I graduated with a commission. On my course there were 59, including a few university graduates, and only 10 of us got commissions. You never saw such a bunch of rag-tags who got commissions. A couple of the guys had been kicked out of the RAF training courses in the States. They didn't salute some officer, or lit a cigar or something and they got kicked out and a court-marshal or something like that, so the story went, but anyhow somebody must have had a change of heart. They got to Halifax and were then shipped west again and put on the course I was on and that was that. There were a couple of fellows who had acted on the British stage.

My instructor was Flt. Lt. Bett. He was the one who did the flight test or the wings test. He did mine. One day he said to me, "You had better shine your buttons. You have to go before the C.O."

I went up for my commission before the Group Captain, our C.O. and a Wing Commander, I don't recall his name, but they called him fishface because he didn't crack a smile, or anything. Nothing was ever right for him. The first thing the C.O. asked me was what I was doing in the RAF. Well I didn't want to tell him I didn't want to go in the Army, Navy or the Forestry Corps. He asked the Wing/Co if he had anything to ask me and he said no he didn't. He was one of those school-tie-boy types. You know, if you went to the right school you were real pukka pukka. The C.O. just says, fine, okay you're dismissed. That was all there was to it. I had my commission.

I was posted to an instructors' school which was N0. 1 FOS at Trent. There was no way I could get out of it. When I finished there I was posted to 36 SFTS at Penhold, Alberta. I instructed there for 15 months or so and then I did a category test, one of several I had taken there. A posting came in for me. I was the next in line to go overseas. This was in 1943. Lo and behold I got a number, name, rank, posting. I went to Pringle who was the C.O. and a real good type and asked him what he could do about it. "Leave it with me." he says. He couldn't do anything about it because of the (by selection) name, number and rank, so I got posted to N0. 2 F.I.S. which had just started in the west at Pearce, Alberta, between McLeod and Lethbridge. The wind blows there at an average of 30 miles an hour. It was originally started as an EFTS and they couldn't land Tiger Moths there because the wind was too strong. So they made it a flying service school. They had Oxfords and Harvards. All of my time was on Oxfords. I was teaching teachers to teach.

I reported to the C.O. there, Harvey. The adjutant marches me in to present my credentials. We chewed the fat a little bit and he wanted to know why I had no C in my wings. I told him I was in the RAF. He was a great guy for athletics. If he played basketball he didn't care whether he got the man or the ball. He got one or the other, it didn't make any difference. If he laid somebody low, they just waited for the chance to lay him low. Rank didn't matter. When the ball game was over all was forgotten and it was back to duty. He was a good type.

They were starting a course for a Dakota Transport Squadron at O.T.U. Comox, on Vancouver Island, so I applied for it. In the meantime I was sent to Deseronto outside of Trenton, on a blind-flying course. After a couple of days on the Link Trainer I went across to the crew room one day. The visibility must have been no more than 100 yds it was so foggy. It looked like no-flying-today-weather. In the crew room there was a New Zealander having a cup of coffee. "Are you Maloney?" he said.

"Yes sir."

"Back outside Maloney. We're going flying."

"What? What the hell you talking about? In this stuff?"

"What do you think we're doing out here Maloney? That's why we're here. To fly blind."

We did a couple of circuits and bumps and then he said okay, I'll just touch down the last time and then you've got it. Keep it going. I guess I'd had enough time on the Link. I did about four or five circuits. That same procedure happened three or four days in a row and then I had a certification test. A Squadron Leader took me out. We just did one circuit and bump and he says that's okay -certified. So that was that.

I came back to Pearce, Alberta again and then my posting came through. I think I was course #3 or #4 at Comox. It was a RAF station at that time with a RAF C.O. After we had been on course five or six days on engines and one thing and another, they gave us a couple of days to select a crew. We had a half a day off to circulate around. I just sat in a corner and watched. This young English chap came over, a big guy by name of Platt, a Pilot Officer. He had just graduated.

"Do you have a navigator yet?" he asks me.

"Nope."

"Do you want one?"

"Yep."

"What do you think?"

"Well you look alright."

"Okay. Now we need a wireles air gunner."

"Are you gonna look?"

"No, there'll be somebody around."

The following day an Australian Flying Officer came over and said, "Jeffries is my name. You crewed up?"

"No."

"How many hours you got?" he asked me.

"That's got nothing to do with it." I told him. "I've got a navigator and I'm looking for a wireless operator, you interested?"

"Well I want to know how many hours you've got."

"Lets say I have sufficient. How many hours you got?.

"I've got enough."

"Well did you do any flying?" I asked.

"Yes. In the Middle East on Blenheims and Wimpys," he says. So I says, "Well, I've got enough hours in and this guy here, Platt, tells me he's smart enough so, there's two of us now. We need one more. Are you coming or aren't you?" I said it will make us a cosmopolitan crew; a bloody Aussie, an Englishman and a Canadian. That's a good mix. It's alright with me if its alright with you. So that's the way we crewed up. We did the first part of our O.T.U. on Expediters a hell of a nice aircraft, power and everything, but the instrumentation on it was absolutely terrible. They had jack-o-nines instruments and if you got over a 15 degree bank turn the artificial horizon would go for a Burton (you'd lose it). If you got in rough weather - bango! So all you were doing was flying without a needle and ball and compass. We generally flew on triangular legs about a couple of hundred miles south, then back up the inland channel. One night we were on the first leg in, going out to the west and then we started south. We got about 3/4 of that leg in and we were probably 50 or 60 miles straight out from Victoria, B.C., when control gave us a diversion of course. They said we couldn't get into Comox. It was fogged in and we were to land in Victoria. We altered course for Victoria and when we were within about 10 or 15 miles of Victoria, the course was altered again, because Victoria was socked in. We were diverted to Whidbey Island. So now our Junior navigator is frantically looking around to see where the hell Whidbey Island is. We're flying at about six or seven thousand feet. We locate Whidbey Island and damned if we can't land there because they're socked in. We got a call from base saying Port Hardy was still open if we got there within an hour. So off we go to Hardy. There were 14 of us (aircraft) up and we all got in to Port Hardy, but there was one S.O.S. from one of the pilots, Stew Cumberland, who later became a good friend of mine in Victoria. His S.O.S. was picked up in San Francisco and telephoned to Comox, because they couldn't pick up the S.O.S. at Comox. (Radio communication was so bad on the west coast). Fortunately he got in okay with about 10 gallons to spare. I landed third in the line.

I came in from the East. I didn't come in up channel. There was the odd break in the cloud. We were flying at about 6,000 which would clear us. Jeff was flying lookout in the right hand seat. I kept telling him to keep a lookout if he spotted a light at all down there, because we were getting close to the north end of the channel. It (the light) would be Holberg or something like that. Lucky for us it was Holberg, so we just tail-upped and down we came and flew from Holberg into Port Hardy.

When we landed, at about 2 a.m., they had me taxi down to the end to the turnoff. Somebody there flashed a light at me like a big aldus lamp to turn into the little cul de sac and park the aircraft. I didn't know it but there was a lot of mud there. The airfield was still in the construction stage. I stuck a wheel in the mud. I called the tower and said you better keep those other guys (other aircraft), away from me, I'm stuck here. I've got a wheel in the mud. They replied with, "Oh yeh, well we'll have a couple of mules out there in a couple of minutes." My English navigator looked at me and said, "Mules? Are they still using mules in this country?" No I told him its another name for a tractor.

About the latter part of December, 1944 I was posted to England to 271 Squadron just outside Cirencester. The weather there was bloody awful all the time. I don't know how the bomber boys did it in the early years. We had "rebecca" which is the same as the submarines had (sonar?) only it was equipped to the air. There was a thing at the end of the runway we linked into with the radar in the kite (aircraft), on a 25 mile, a 10 mile, and one mile range. Junior, my navigator, without any problem at all, with a ten foot ceiling and a 100 foot visibility could put us on the ground every time. If you wanted to fly the way he told you to. He was only a kid, about 21 or 22. I'd go any place with him. We were flying C47 Dakotas, a beautiful aircraft to fly. We could take 18 stretchers, 9 down each side and 21 with three down the middle. After the invasion of Europe, our job was to take supplies to northwest Europe and bring back the injured. We were the second kite to land in Copenhagen, Denmark, after the city was liberated.

I had put in a transfer in 1943 to the RCAF because they paid twice the RAF salary I was getting. I was getting $121 a month. RCAF pilots the same rank were getting about $265 to $270 a month. But if I had to do it over again I'd do it the same way.

I couldn't get anywhere with my transfer so I went back up to Air Ministry again to see Wing Commander Showen. I'd seen him two or three times before and he had told me his door was always open. If I got up against the wall he would see what he could do about it. Well by that time it was getting near the end of the war and I wanted to go on a four-engined transport job. I wanted a Skymaster but he couldn't guarantee it and it might be a Halifax or some other four-engined job. Ah hell I thought, I will stay where I am. So that's when I asked about the transfer. I gave him my address and he said fine I'll send a letter down and tell you what happended to your transfer. My transfer came through on the 1st of May, 1945, with a new number C94029 if I recall correctly. They pulled me out of the squadron at the end of June and I was sent to a holding unit in York. There were thousands of Canadians there, all wanting to get home. I didn't have a repatriation number. Of course they couldn't give me a repat. number because I wasn't in the R.C.A.F. when I came to England. About 14 of us were in the same situation. We had quite an argument about it. We said, look, we should be first out of here. We've been in the service over here for years, but we don't have a repat. number. They said a Wing/Co from Air Ministry was coming up to get the thing sorted out.

Transport squadrons 435 and 436 squadrons were returning from Burma about now and were reorganizing. They were looking for Grade 1 transport pilots amongst the guys that were going home.

One day the P.A. system came over loud and clear: "Flight Lieutenant Maloney report to the commanding officer." I was wanted for a nucleus of a flight in 436 Squadron. I didn't think it was my cup of tea. It was also suggested previous to this that I might be interested in staying in the RAF, but unless you have independent means it can be costly keeping up mess dues etc. So I said no, to hell with it. I want to go home.

The upshot of it was I was put on a draft and came back to Canada on the Elcantara, a P & O boat, sailing from Glasgow. It was my third crossing of the Atlantic.

I came back to British Columbia and home to Alberni again, on Vancouver Island where mom and dad lived. I had five days leave. In October, 1945 I went to Jericho Beach in Vancouver for my discharge.

In November, 1945 I got married and went back to work in the sawmills in Port Alberni. It had been five years since that morning when Bert Moorehouse had come down to breakfast and said, "Lets go into Victoria and see Captain Biggs."

That is my story and I'm sticking to it. Have a great day and every day after.

----- James Maloney

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