John Cumming

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Cumming:John Cumming, Royal Air Force, Flight Lieutenant, Serial Number 2433801, born in Glasgow.

Interviewer:    Good, O.K.  Um . . . Let’s just check that, O.K., fine.  Right, John.  Before we get too involved in Korea, I just want a little bit of a background.  Who are you, where are you from, what was life like for you as a single

 

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child in pre, pre-Korean war.

Cumming: Well, I was born in 1930 and I was brought up in the East side of Glasgow, a place called Riddrie. I was an only child.  My parents were both from the Highlands; my father was from Morven, my mother was from Beulieu, and as an only child, I’m afraid I was brought up in the strict

 

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Presbyterian tradition, which didn’t fall well with me.  My father, now that I have experienced a war myself, my father was a veteran of the First World War and he was part of what was then known, in 1917, as ‘Churchill’s lost expedition’.  They went out there with the French and the Greeks, I think, to help their . . .

 

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the idea was that they were to help the White Russians.  They got out there and with so many political decisions, they forgot all about them.  They just didn’t get supplies, and they were left there to really live off the land themselves.  He was there, he was stationed near Murmansk, between Murmansk and Archangel, he was a spotter, he was a Sergeant,

 

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he was spotting for the artillery in a trench, put his head up too far and got a burst of machine gun fire.  The bullet entered his lower jaw, through his tongue and came out the side of his face, having struck a plate which fortunately he had, otherwise it would have gone straight through his head.  He got off his mark as quickly as he could, he was hit in both legs as he got away and was

 

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discovered by a Frenchman, who looked at the state of his face, bent down, picked up a plank of wood and stuck it in his mouth because he’d heard of lockjaw.  And he was there, taken to a clearing point, was operated on that night, in the roof of a barn, and put out into No Man’s Land.  We’re talking about the 7^th of November, and it was freezing.

 

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And he had a pal, Waddy Campbell, who had come, who had been with him, they’d joined up together.  Waddy was 14 and my father was 16.  And Waddy crawled into No Man’s Land all night and poured water into the side of his mouth because he was choking with the amount of blood he was losing.  And that’s what saved his life, because in the morning he was a frozen block of ice [indicates face].  It had stopped the bleeding.

 

Interviewer:    Amazing.

 

Cumming:Yeah.

 

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And there’s another part to the story, is . . .  I mean, it’s me we’re talking about, not . . .

 

Interviewer:    Yes, I was just . . . I mean, I’m more interested in that, but knowing, finding that out, and having a father . . .  How was your father, post-war, as a parent, with all that history?

 

Cumming: Not a good parent. Not his fault.  As I say, I didn’t understand it when I was younger, but he, he had a charmed life after that because he was, as I said,
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operated on in the roof of a barn.  It was 1919 before he got home.  He was taken to, I think, I’m not quite certain, but Queen Margaret’s Hospital in London.  And the consultant was coming round the first morning he was there, got to the end of his bed, lifted it up, looked at him and said “Oh, my God, you made it!”  It was the man who had operated on him in Russia.  He was a Captain in the Medical Corps.

 

Interviewer:    It’s funny how your belief system is Humanist and Buddhist and, you know,

 

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because of the effect of Korea, and yet your father, who had witnessed almost probably worse

things . . .

 

Cumming: Horrors.

 

Interviewer:    turned so far the other way.

 

Cumming: Yeah. Yeah.  I think helped by my mother, because my mother was, had been and was, a fairly religious lady.  Not a dyed-in-the-wool misery, but . . .  She sang in the church choir, she was a lovely singer, she trained as a nurse when state registration was in its infancy, er . . .
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But my father, for the first fourteen years of my life, would come in from his work and lie down on the couch, in great pain because he had a stomach ulcer.   And one ulcer cleared, and another ulcer took its place.  And it wasn’t until 1944 that my father was operated on by, at that time, a man, a surgeon called Beattie, Mr. Beattie, who was somebody

 

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who was trying to help with ulcerated people.  And what he did was he really cut away into his stomach, put a new stomach in, virtually, and stitched him up.  My father was right as rain for the rest of his life, and he died at 95.

 

Interviewer:    Oh, my goodness, that is remarkable, isn’t it?

 

Cumming: Yeah.

 

Interviewer:    And that’s back then.  Wow.  So obviously you had an opportunity to share war experiences with him

 

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Cumming: Never. Never.  Never talked about it.  I never knew anything about it until I went into the Air Force and I think he talked about it then.  But I didn’t know anything about this story.  But because . . . and from his own family, he had five siblings, and my favourite was a sister of his, my aunt, Aunt Annie, who was also the . . .

 

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She also was involved in the sort of services because her husband was a First Officer in the Merchant Service, and she understood, because, you know, I was kept there and, you know, I’d go and see Auntie Annie and the first thing she’d do was “You’re needed in the kitchen, John” so through I’d go and there’d be a glass of whisky.  Because I wasn’t, you know, they had this image, and

 

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an image that my father destroyed, didn’t want anything to do with it.  So, because of this, er, this, I don’t know, set of rules that he lived by himself . . . Auntie Annie told me that he was a tearaway when he was a youngster, but it wasn’t going to happen to me, and I think I suffered from that.  So, I was never allowed, I never played,

 

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with the boys round about, I never went to a football match, my father went and played golf, so I was left with my mother, constantly.  And really, lived a lie all my bloody life, because I just wouldn’t let them know what I was at, you know.  I conned my way through until I left and then, as I say, as I say in my epitaph, because I’ve written it, being a Humanist, I said ‘Conscription saved my life.’

 

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Because I went from “Thou shalt not” to “Whoopee!”  And that was, that was it.  Hence the reason I loved the Services.  I had no restrictions.

 

Interviewer:    When you were, when you were being schooled and the like, did you ever hear or know anything about this place that was going to have such an effect on your life?

 

Cumming: No. I didn’t have a clue where it was.

 

Interviewer:    Had you ever even heard of the word ‘Korea’?

 

Cumming: No, never. And I was, I had to complete

 

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training, I was basically an equipment and M.T. officer, which is the way I’d been trained.  But in those days they, Transport Command, which I was in, were also responsible for freighting, away to the ends of the earth.  And to get, to complete my training, I’d applied to go into the

 

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Movements Officers’ course, I’d finished the Movements Officers’ course and I’d applied to go overseas, which in my vision was Germany at the time, and so I stayed on, supernumary at Lyneham.  I was there maybe about a month, and then came on duty one morning and the sergeant said “The Adjutant wants to see you”.  I walked into the Adjutant’s office and he said “Oh, yes, come here, your posting is through”.  I said, “Where, Sir?”  He said “Iwakune, and I had to look it up as well.”  That was his words.  I said “Where

 

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the hell’s Iwakune?”  He said “About 9,000 miles away in Korea . . . in Japan.”  And that’s where I went.

 

Interviewer:    That must have been so exciting for you, though, you know, the . . .

 

Cumming: Possibly I was bloody terrified! I mean, there I was, just qualified as a, as they thought, as a Movements Officer and that was all I was going to do.  There was nothing ever about casualties or anything else, I was just going out there, probably as the youngest, and

 

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they thought, “Well, we’re going to stick someone . . .”  Typical Services, you know.  “We can put him in there and if he doesn’t do well, we can stick someone else in”.  I mean, that was the mentality.

 

Interviewer:    How old were you at the time?

 

Cumming: Twenty. And I was a Pilot Officer then, then I became a Flying Officer and then a Flight Lieutenant.  But I was fortunate in going out with a Sergeant who had done casualties in the Second World War, in Burma.

 

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Interviewer:    What do you remember of the nine-thousand-mile journey?

 

Cumming: Well, in those days it was in a Hastings, which took off from Lyneham, and staged, so you went from Lyneham, if you want to take this down, to Malta, Habbaniya, which was in Iraq then, Karachi, Ceylon,

 

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Singapore, Hong Kong, Naha then Okinawa, and you can . . .  It was seven days.  It took five days going out to Singapore and they had been, they were trying this as an experiment. They were trying it with staging crews, in other words, they had one, not at Luqa in Malta, but one at Habbaniya.  So, all you did,

 

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you got off the aircraft, went for your night flying breakfast as we used to call it, you know, it was a fried egg and greasy what . . . and got back on the aircraft, and they took off.  So, you had no sort of breathing time.

 

Interviewer:    So, you weren’t taking in the sights of these . . .

 

Cumming: Oh, God, no. You never saw the outside of the airport.

 

Interviewer:    It’s a long journey.

 

Cumming: Oh, it was a hell of a long journey. And as I say, we got to Singapore, and I stayed over, I was in Singapore for a night, and then I went up to

 

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Hong Kong, to Kai Tak, and stayed overnight at Kai Tak, and then from there to Iwakuni, but we had to stage through at Okinawa because it was too far to go for a Hastings . . . for a Dakota.  So, there I was.

 

Interviewer:    Is that possibly one of the reasons why you’re not keen on flying now?

 

Cumming: Not really, not really. It’s another two . . .

 

Interviewer:    O.K., right.  So, what did,

 

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what are your memories of Iwakuni, and when did you arrive in Iwakune?

 

Cumming: I arrived in January of 1951. It had been going for about six months.  And this was the furthest point that they’d ever gone, they’d never had anything further than Kai Tek.

 

Interviewer:    At the time of your flight, you still didn’t know that you were going to deal with casualties, you still assumed you were . . .

 

Cumming: No.

 

Interviewer:    So, what was, what was your memory of Iwakuni as a place, and what, what did you

 

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find there?  Can you remember?

 

Cumming: Well, Iwakuni was a very large place, and was chosen because it was only . . . it was the closest point to Korea, to Pusan. It was only a forty-five minute flight.  And it was a Royal Australian Air Force base, controlled by them, which had sat on its doorsteps was an American B29 squadron.  And all I initially remember was the bloody noise,

 

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trying to get to sleep at night, initially, ‘cos these things were doing it at night.  As far as Iwakuni was concerned, it was a long time before I even got off the base.  You know, it was flat land, we were ten feet below sea level, so you never really went anywhere until you settled down, and then you went down to Iwakuni.  Iwakuni was just a ramshackle . . . the odd building was brick, but the others were just a shanty town, that’s all Iwakuni was.

 

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And it was only there because the, the Tokyo express runs through, it virtually runs through the streets.  But it had gift shops, the people were very nice, as only the Japanese can do, they change their colour just like that, but I didn’t . . . I began . . .  When I went out there, I was in the Royal Australian Air Force mess, but, er . . .

 

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and with Australians, you will find that they take a while to . . . they’ve got to suss you out before you become . . . I suppose it was about a month before I got to really know anybody.  And then the C.E.O., Groupie [Group Captain] Charlton, said “We’ve got all these married families, Patch, and you need an office, why don’t you just take over a house?”  Which was . . . they had beautiful houses there.  So, I took over, took a house, so I had my office

 

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complex under there, and up the stairs was my living quarters, complete with an American bar that they’d put in for me. I’ve always liked to [buy] them and I think this is what saved me, a lot of the time, because I was raw, raw.  I didn’t know. . .  I mean, the best one I can tell you is that the first time I ever saw an aircraft, I’d never flown before, and the first time I saw an aircraft taking off in the morning, one was idling

 

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at the end of the runway and I said “It’s on fire!  It’s on fire!”  It was the bloody residue from the, from idling, that was burning off.  That was how green I was.  And then, fortunately, I had the brightness to say on my arrival in Iwakuni, to the Sergeant, with the door shut, “You and I know that you will know that I know nothing about this.

 

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And your background is casualty evacuation in Burma during the war, so will you please teach me.  You don’t have to, you know, it’s not yes or no, Sir, three bags full.  You’ve got to teach me.  And if you teach me, we’ll get on all right.”  And he did.  And he called me all the stupid bastards under the sun, many’s the time, because I’d stand there, we had aircraft that went out at four in the morning, so you were up at two, and you had to get them all kitted out for going away,

 

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not casualties, this was just ordinary training . .  er, ordinary transport.  And you, the last thing you put on was the in-flight meals, so called, which was just a curled-up sandwich and a pie, but it was in a nice box.  And I would arrive without them.  “What have you forgotten?”  That was the way I was trained.  “I’ve forgotten the sandwiches.”  “Well, fucking well go and get them!” and that was it, you know.  No “Sir” etc.  We’d wiped that out.

 

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If anybody else was there, it was all right.  But between us, he was Stan, and I was Jock, and that was it.

 

Interviewer:    And Stan was an Aussie, did you say, or was he . . .?

 

Cumming: Oh, no, no. He was, he was British.  Sergeant Standing, I think his name was.  And I think he was burst off from his wife or something like that.  He was something of a dour character in a way, he didn’t laugh a lot, and . . .  but he was a good trainer.  I mean, he accepted, I think,

 

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probably thought a lot more of me because I was, I wasn’t going to be jumped-up, saying ‘I knew better than you’.  So, he trained me.

 

Interviewer:    In terms of the movements, you know, getting these planes together and getting stuff out, what type of stuff were you loading on board?  What was being, what was being used for Korea at that . . .

 

Cumming: Oh, well, it wasn’t, it was mostly being used in Japan. It was for either the Australians or ourselves, and it was general merchandise, I mean, it was the

 

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bits, spare parts, if you needed anything you put your list in and it came up in the aircraft.  How I got involved . . . Because there was really nothing else that I had to do, it was just to see that they were loaded, but I . . .  After about a month, I realised that I was meeting Canadians, Australians, Americans, all doing the same job.  But they were doing

 

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casualties as well.  And over a few beers, the nearest boss was three thousand miles away, we thought, ‘Well, perhaps . . . ‘  Casualties don’t come in nice tidy packages.  You’re snowed under, or there’s none.  So, I joined in with them and helped.  And that meant going over to Pusan, going over to Korea, and if they were stuck for a bit of help, I was

 

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over there.  But I was never supposed to have been in Korea. I don’t know if the Air Force ever knew that I’d . . . you know, nobody.  I was always on the [?QV] when somebody, when I knew somebody was coming up, but that was it.  So, I would go over and I would help the Americans, I would help the Aussies or the Canadians.  They were all there at Pusan and they were all doing the same job, airlifting . . .  Most of them that were coming were British casualties, they were airlifted from Pusan to Kure,

 

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which is near Hiroshima.  And that was the British, that was the hospital.

 

Interviewer:    What . . .  Do you remember your first flight into Korea, and what do you remember of seeing . . .  Can you recall your first flight into Korea?

 

Cumming: Yeah, I could remember it, I flew over with a, daft man he was, an Australian Flight Lieutenant, Alf Tafe was his name, and Alf was like most of the Australians, most of the Aussies, a great guy, you know, full of fun.

 

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Great pilots, you know, but they didn’t . . .  discipline was not something that was on top of their . . .  So Alf Tafe’s was the first flight I took over, and when we arrived there, as Adam would tell you, I mean, they had fought their way out of Pusan, ‘cos that’s where he went.  So it was pretty shattered, you know, it was, it was a runway that was occasionally pitted ‘cos something had dropped on it.

 

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But it was only a 45-minute flight, unless in the winter time, when you were stacked, and the . . . when you were stacked, that was possibly the most frightening part of any flight, because they only . . .  The Americans, I’m sorry, are bloody awful at discipline.  They were stacked at five hundred and a thousand feet intervals and all of a sudden, whoosh, something . . .  We were in thick [cloud?] in the wintertime and somebody

 

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was screaming across the top of you, and then the airways would go blue, everybody shouting, ‘What the fuck was that?’ ‘What the hell are you doing?’  Get your bloody . . ‘So that was frightening, because you could have anything like six or seven aircraft going round in circles, waiting to get down.  Apart from that, I mean, I was never off the base at Pusan, because I wasn’t supposed to be there.

 

Interviewer:    Did you have . . .?  Were there Marines on the ground at Pusan, helping you with the casualties?

 

Cumming: I think a few. A few.  Most of them were,

 

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were heavy lifting, etc.  Some of them . . .  we had Japanese over, they were ex-, they were all P.O.W.s.  So it didn’t matter who did it.  But they were . . .  it was very difficult, at those times I wouldn’t have known the difference between a Korean and a Japanese, they looked the same, you know, that’s it.   Like Prince Phillip said, you know, ‘You’ve got slant-eyes’ and that was it.   And because you were over there doing a job, you know,

 

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you didn’t have any time to socialise.  I don’t remember . . .  I socialised more when I was down in Iwakuni, with the Americans, because they had a nice Mess, and I was always welcome.

 

Interviewer:    So you suddenly found that you were not just doing movements, there was an appreciation that actually, at times, there’s a lot going on and your help is valued.

 

Cumming: That’s it.

 

Interviewer:    You’ve gone over to Korea and you’ve recalled your first flight, or your first sort of time there, and

 

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what was that, what was the casualty situation like the first time, you know?    When did you [untelligible]

 

Cumming Well, there were . . . By the time we got them, they’d already had their dressings done at forward places. Some of them were a bit of a mess.  Er . . .  I never, nothing was ever so bad that it turned my stomach or anything, it was just, I would . . .  I suppose I was breaking my heart about them, because, you know, they was fellows my age.

 

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Because they were all . . . National Service was the most I was getting.  And so, er, it never, it never really bothered me.  The only one that bothered me once was . . .  Er, I was well into it, was, I was doing a night flight back and in the winter and Dakotas didn’t even have a lining, you know, it was just the raw steel outside, so you didn’t touch it, you know, you were covered in gloves and things, you never went

 

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near the frame.  But if the casualty was, um, shaking at all, in other words, it was either pain, or nervousness, or sheer fright.  If you had anything like that, the nursing sisters, who were all Australian, who could drink us under the table, they’d been, they’d served their time in Burma, so they were hardened ladies but the salt of the earth, but they would climb on, there’s not

 

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much room in a stretcher, they’d climb on and put half of their body on to add heat to it in the winter.  And I did this one night . . . I did it a lot of times, but I did it this one night, and we landed at Iwakune and they had to cut my jacket off him, because he had died and his blood had congealed and that was it.  That was the only one that really upset me.  And then, years later,

 

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I laughed and said, “The thing was, it was a beautiful American flying jacket”, which it was.  But I just, he was stuck to me, I had to cut into it . . . It was only, as I said, 45 minutes, but there was no sound, he never made a [unintelligible], there wasn’t any sound, there was no . . . I couldn’t see any of his face, there was just all blood and I was cuddling him. And he just had obviously expired while we were in flight.

 

Interviewer:    Was he . . .?  Do you know if he was British, American?

 

Cumming: No idea who he was.

 

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He went away, and . . .

 

Interviewer:    And in terms of the casualties, you know, it was . . .  It was a shit full of scramble, we need help, men on the ground.

 

Cumming: Yeah.

 

Interviewer:    Did you know who the casualties were?  Did you understand if this was from a battle, you know, or something else?

 

Cumming: The only time I ever . . . they were . . . because it was the Glorious Gloucesters, because we were exceedingly busy at that time, and I knew.  But after that, I wouldn’t have . . .  I remember that there was a Turkish division who . . .

 

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I arrived at the railway station in Iwakuni because they were coming down from Tokyo, and I got to the station and all the blinds were down and the doors were locked.  And I banged on the door and an ashen-faced American nurse opened the door and saw it was me.  “Thank Christ you’re here!”  I said, “What’s wrong?”  She said, “They’re going to lynch us.”  The Turks had had a hammering

 

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because the Yanks had pulled out and left them exposed.  And they were murdered, they were in a terrible state.  And all the way down, if an American had gone into the compartments, they’d have cut his throat.  It was that hairy.  And that was the first time.  And I opened the door and there was a shout went up and then somebody who spoke English said “British!  British!”   That was it, it all calmed down.  But that was a fright.  A hell of a big Turk

 

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coming at you.  Blood on his face, you know, bandages all over him.  But by God, they were tough.  One of them  . . . one of them was getting onto a Hastings, there was just a stupid wee ladder, there was nothing else to lift them onto it, you had to get him onto this ladder and help him on.  There was one bloke with no leg, and we were helping him on and he was “You not do it, me Turk, me Turk!”  “Leave him alone”.  He dragged himself onto the bloody aircraft.  But, er . . .  So that was . . .

 

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There weren’t many incidents, really.   You know, it was a fairly steady . . .  because you were handling, you didn’t know who, you didn’t really know whoever they were, they were a casualty and you had to shift them.  End of story.  And then when they were finished, because I wanted to get back to my own bed . . .

 

Interviewer:    Were you ever bringing bodies back?

 

Cumming: No. Never.  No. How it was dealt with, it was all done from Kure, being the hospital.

 

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I think it was all done and then they’d be flown home from there.

 

Interviewer:    You mentioned the stacking, I’m always interested to hear about that because the stacking system was developed on the Berlin Airlift, where . . .

 

Cumming: Yeah.

 

Interviewer:    which I always consider to be the first battle of the Cold War, whereas Korea was the second.

 

Cumming: Yeah.

 

Interviewer:    And it worked, but there were some very near misses there.  You mentioned in the car about a couple of incidents, so just, when did you have a moment in an aircraft that shook you up?

 

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Cumming: One was on a flight down to Hong Kong. We refueled at Dahar, which you had to do, and then you went to Hong Kong.  Now during the winter months, or, the periods from November onwards, to get into, to fly into Kai Tek, you had to be committed to landing, because if you didn’t, you’d pile into

 

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the hills at the far end, because it didn’t have the lovely . . . you know, straight into the water.  And as you flew into Kai Tek, there was a hill, just like that [demonstrates], sloping down.  Why they never blew it up, I’ll never understand, but you had to do that [demonstrates] to get round it.  You could see the runway all right, but there was that sort of obstruction, and they sort of did that.  And I had been on

 

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the flight and we had gone to Clark Field, in Manila, that was where our flight was to go, and then we came back again. But this particular flight, we couldn’t get the green light on in the cockpit for the wheels being down at Clark Field.  So, we flew around and we chucked stuff out, thinking ‘Are we going to make it?  Is this a waste of time?’  And fortunately, we didn’t have any casualties on board, we had a few sitting up

 

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patients.  So, we did this for about 45 minutes, just kept going round and round and round, jettisoning as much as we could.  And then he decided he was going to go in, whether or not the green light was on, and he was a cracking pilot.  A Scot.  He’d been busted that many times, he was a Flight Sergeant by this time, but he was still a great aviator.  So, I don’t know what his name was, ‘Mac’ was his name but I don’t know what

 

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his full name was.  But anyway, Mac had decided to go in.  So, he did, and we landed.  And the Clark Field is an oasis of green, with lawns beautifully manicured by the Philippinos.  And the, the . . . I think there were either two or three runways that you could use, and the one we went for, it wasn’t suitable for Mac, and he put it down on the grass, which pissed the Americans off terribly because of their beautiful lawn.

 

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But that aircraft was a Cat.1 repair.  All that happened was that he bent the props.  He greased it in.  But my memories are all of ‘What the hell am I doing this for?’  That was foremost in my mind!  So that was the scariest one.

 

Interviewer:    And did you ever . . .?  You mentioned there were two incidents.

 

Cumming: The other one was, was . . . I had to go, we had to go round three times

 

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and that was unusual because casualty aircraft got priority when you were coming in.  But we got three red lights to go round again.  But nobody said, “Is there anything wrong?” and eventually we got down, but we got down all very shaken because we’d had, again, half an hour or more trying to get in.  And then there was, we had a load of casualties to assist.

 

00:31:30

 

And, er, that was the other scary one.

 

Interviewer:    And in terms of the Dakota, and the way it was configured, you hinted at it earlier, you know, it was a bare shell.  You know, was the Dakota configured differently for flying in supplies vis a vis for casualties?  What would you describe the inside was like?

 

Cumming: The inside was the shape of the outside of the aircraft and a fitting that went down the side and there

 

00:32:00

 

was two . . .  You could get eighteen casualties, stretcher casualties, onto a Dakota. [demonstrates with hands, one on top of another] And you just put them onto the shelf. There was just clicks, you know, you put the wooden handles, you know, and round the narrow bit, you put that, and that was all it was.  And blankets.  That was all there was.  And keep your hands off the skin, because it would take the skin off you.  But they weren’t, you know, they were basic.

 

00:32:30

 

Basic.

 

Interviewer:    And where did you sit?  Were you up with the pilot, up [at the sharp end]?

 

Cumming: I was usually, usually down the toilet, that was about the only place you could go, you know, at least you’d got a wee smither of a seat then, that’s where you were. And if anybody wanted you, you had to sort of walk up, stagger between bits and pieces and oxygen and all sorts of things and walk down in the midst of them.

 

Interviewer:    Were you wearing a mask?

 

Cumming: No. I would only . . .  I think we used it once,

 

00:33:00

 

And that’s another tale.  A quickie.  A quickie.  I’d been sent up to . . .  When the war started, napalm was the thing.  But we had to buy . . .  the Aussies had to buy the napalm from the Japan… from the Americans.  There was a company in Japan that had perfected the napalm, or made it in the tank.  And they sent me up to make a . . .

 

00:33:30

 

to put together a load that would be standard to put into Dakotas to get these tanks wherever they were to go.  So I went up to Tokyo, stayed one night in the Maranuchi, which was very nice, all 12s.6d. a day full board, in the Ritz of . . . [laughs] and loaded them. Now they came in crates and they were

 

00:34:00

 

thin, and they were on springs, so they were spring loaded and just vibrated all the time.  I think I got, I can’t remember, but I think I got nine in, I think that was the load I was taking.  But I had to have a headset down by the toilet, because the crew went in through the Dakota front.  And set off, and maybe about halfway through the flight, the pilot said, “We’re going to go up, we have to go up a bit, Jock, there’s bad weather ahead”,

 

00:34:30

 

he said.   So, he started to go up, and all of a sudden there was ‘Bang! Bang!’  The whole bloody nine stuck together, from the pressure.  So, we lost all nine of them.  And the skipper is screaming at me, “Jock, what’s happening?  What’s happening?” and I said, “I can’t tell you, they’ve just all gone and stuck together”.  That was it.  That was, that was . . . to see these things before your eyes, and all that was left was like cigar

 

00:35:00

 

shaped things bobbing away.  That was it.  So, the next load, I had to make an entry to the notes “Do not go above …” I think it was twelve thousand feet.

 

Interviewer:    So, the pressure, basically . . .

 

Cumming: It was just the pressure. As soon as it got to whatever it was . . .  They were so thin, wafer thin.

 

Interviewer:    Obviously they were empty?

 

Cumming: Oh, they were empty, aye. But this was the first . . .  So, I managed to write off a whole bloody aircraft full of . . .

 

00:35:30

 

And you remember lots of things.

 

Interviewer:    That must have been terrifying, because, you know . . .

 

Cumming: It was terrifying, you know, in a closed area. There was no, no baffling at all.  As they say, its . . .  After about the third one, you began to twig, but you still thought “Are they going to blow up?”  But no, that was it, they were just sticking together.

 

Interviewer:    Amazing.  Did you ever carry . . .  When you were doing your movements, did you ever carry napalm?

 

Cummings: No, no, no. No.  I don’t know where

 

00:36:00

 

it came from.

 

Interviewer:    Actually, you just made me think, actually, in terms of you in Kure*, there’s the Vehicle Squadron . . .  Were there other R.A.F. squadrons on the base?

 

Cumming: No. There were no R.A.F. at all.  The only R.A.F.  You see, I think I started to tell you, but I didn’t finish.  In 1947, I think, the Government decided, the Government of the day decided that they would not participate in any United Nations wars.  And that stood

 

00:36:30

 

So all the . . .  So there were no R.A.F. units ever in Korea, but what there were pilots who were sent out, I came out with two of them, who were Mosquito pilots, to train R.W.A.F. 77 Squadron to change from Mustangs to Mosquitos.  And that was . . .  And there were about, I think, I’ve looked it up in a register, I think there were 34 R.A.F. pilots who were actually in.  One was . . . I think

 

00:37:00

 

three were killed and one was a P.O.W.  But there was about 30 odd.  But I never saw them, I mean, all the time I was there I never bumped into one of them.

 

Interviewer:    Did you ever see the Sunderlands?

 

Cumming: Oh, aye, the Sunderlands were in, were in Han[g]over Square, as it was known, because I had my house on this side and there were two houses on the far side of this circle that was . . . the crews came up, they changed every month, they flew up from Solita and, er

 

00:37:30

 

never mixed with them much.  They didn’t like me because I got on so well with the Yanks and the Amer . . . the Australians.  And they, you know, they were Pommy bastards as far as the other . . . the, um  . . . as far as the R.A.F were concerned.  They never mixed either.  They were a close little clique and they were there for a week, for a month, and then they went away and another lot came in.  There were two or three squadrons, but they were a toffee-nosed bunch, you know, as far as the Aussies . . .  They were too, really.

 

00:38:00

 

I was a Scot, that was a big difference for them, with the . . .  Because that’s what the C.O, said to me before I left, “Well, Jock, there’s only one thing wrong with you, you’ve got the wrong colour of blue.  [Laughs] This was navy blue.

 

Interviewer:    You touched on it, but just tell me a bit about the clothing you wore, and how you did survive in those conditions?

 

Cumming: Well, in the . . . In the beginning, I actually had a check list that I’d written out of the order in which my clothes went on, to make sure.  So, I had, let me think, it was a string vest first, then a lightweight, lamb’s wool jumper, it was my own and had seen better days, but it was warm.  On top of that was another layer of string vest-type thing, and on top of that was if you were wearing a shirt or you were wearing another pullover

 

00:39:00

 

up to the neck, you know, polo necks.  Thereafter I had a variety of coats, the best one was, not the American flying one that I had lost, but it was a Canadian one.  A big parka.  And the great thing about them was that they had buttons on them about that size [demonstrates large button] and there was lots of them, sleeves and all.  And they were actually combat rations, so you could actually put them in hot water, and you had a bowl of soup.

 

Interviewer:    Wow!

 

Cumming: So that, that was the one I loved.

 

00:39:30

 

You know.  And I could get it . . . You know, the Canadians were a bit . . .  “Yes, certainly you can have one.”  A bottle of whisky and you could have anything.  But that was . . .  And that was it.  And a hat.  Now a balaclava was the only thing that really would keep you warm.  So, you had a balaclava on.  And if you wanted, you know, you could put your beret on.  I had a hat, I didn’t have that beret, it’s an original, but . . .  And that was it.  And the

 

00:40:00

 

the gloves, of course.  You had a couple of layers of gloves on, you just never . . . and they went through the loops so you never lost them.  They were hanging on the end of it, and you just, you had to put them on, and the temptation was to touch something, and you’d forget, you just didn’t do it another time, you know, because you really literally did, you’d stick there and you lost the skin.  Bitter, bitter.

 

Interviewer:    Yeah.

 

Cumming: So . . .

 

Interviewer:    And do you think it affected the aircraft at all?

 

Cumming: No, I don’t . . . No, I never . . . I mean, we flew in it.

 

00:40:30

I don’t think so.  I think the flight was so short, you know, 45 minutes wasn’t really an awful long time and they would be well warmed up before they took off.  But I never heard of any . . . there were probably one or two may have succumbed, but I never had any trouble that way.

 

Interviewer:    OK.  Um . . . What about journalists?  Did you ever meet any journalists?

 

Cumming: No.

 

Interviewer:    OK.  You never moved any journalists,

 

00.41:00

 

never . . .?

 

Cumming: No. No.

 

Interviewer:    OK.  And  . . . All right, let’s look at some other stuff.  Down time.  You know, whisky seems to feature every other sentence,

 

Cumming: Yes, well, . . .

 

Interviewer:    What about E.N.S.A.?  Did you ever get any . . . At Kure*, did you ever have any entertainment?

 

Cumming: No, the only, the only entertainment I ever had, and I accompanied him on the piano, was Larry Adler, with a one hand base, because he was playing sitting beside me. That was the only one I ever met,

 

00:41:30

 

was Larry Adler.   Lovely guy.

 

Interviewer:    And you played piano?

 

Cumming: I could play, but, I mean, it was only a base line I was playing and while he did his [gestures playing a harmonica]. So that was the only one I ever saw.  There were people who did, I think, duh, duh, duh . . .  Mammy had been out before I got there, he was earlier.  But because we were where we were and

 

00:42:00

 

and that’s all we were, just a big unit, we didn’t get . . .  they had them up in Tokyo and they had them, the Americans had them elsewhere, but we never saw anybody, no.

 

Interviewer:    One of the benefits of where you were was that there were Aussie women and there were women around, was . . .

 

Cumming:Well, the only women were the American nurses . . . the Australian nurses.

 

Interviewer:    Yeah, but were they . . . could you be friendly with them? I mean, . . .

 

Cumming: Oh, you could be friendly with them, oh, yes, they were great. But no messing with them.  I mean, they were . . . I was a wee boy

 

00:42:30

 

of twenty.  These were women of forty, forty-five.  You know.  So, you were looked . . . you were looked after by them.  You know.  They were great, mothering, and they were marvelous with the casualties, they just . . .  And they’d go out in any sort of weather, trample through mud, anything.  They were wonderful women.  And they were all Australian.

 

Interviewer:    What about Tokyo?  Did you ever get to Tokyo [? for downtime]

 

Cumming: Yes.

 

Interviewer:    And what [unintelligible]

 

00:43:00

 

Cumming: It was a three-day drunk. Sorry, you got three days’ R and R, Rest and Recuperation, known locally as Rape and Resuscitation.  [Laughs] And . . . and you went to the Marunouchi Hotel, which was . . . it’s still there, but I mean it was the sort of Ritz of Tokyo, it was a beautiful hotel, with an American bar.  The first time I’d ever been in an American bar, where you had air conditioning.

 

00:43:30

 

I didn’t know what air conditioning was!  But it was 12 [shillings] and 6 [pence] a day, full board.  [Laughs] And it just was a drunk from beginning to end.  You know, you met a, you met a bunch of blokes who were . . . you’d never seen them before, and they became lifelong friends in three days.  And we went around . . . you weren’t allowed to go into any clubs that were owned as Japanese.   We managed to do it, but that’s not to say we were supposed to do it, we were almost breaking the

 

00:44:00

 

law, if you did that.  And, er . . .  The big thing about Tokyo was the P.X. , because it was just something else.  Here I was, a Scot, a Glaswegian, having lived, lived in the land of Teachers’ Highland Cream and I’d never seen a bottle.  And I went to Tokyo, P.L.X., and it was there by the shelf, at 7s. and 6d. a bottle.

 

Interviewer:    Amazing.

 

Cumming: Didn’t make you save your money at all! I used to be a rum drinker in those days and

 

00:44:30

 

it cost me more in Coke than it did in rum, because you could only get bottles of Coke which were ten cents, but I could get a bottle of rum for 7s. 6d. and if I took six, I got them for thirty-five pounds [£35], so it . . .  That was it.  The Medical Officer said, “Jock, if you don’t stop drinking Coke, you’ll come out in a heat rash.”  [Laughs]

 

Interviewer:    How long were you there before you needed to come out?  Were you there to the end of the war?

 

Cumming: No, I was there . . . I came out in September of ’52.

 

00:45:00

 

Sort of 18 months’ stint.  It took two signals from Singapore to get me out, but eventually I had to give in.    ‘Cos I enjoyed it, every minute of it.  For all that it was . . .  it was just something that I’d never known.  As I say, I went away a wee boy of 20 and came back an old man of 23.  I mean, that was how life had opened up to me.

 

Interviewer:    And what was the . . .  What was it like leaving the base?  Was there a party?  Did everyone say “Cheerio,” or did you just go, “See you later”?

 

00:45:30

 

Cumming: “See you later”. I came out on a Friday . . . was it a Friday?  Yes, it was a Friday, and they’d an Officers’ Club, a beautiful one, down on the . . .  You went over the jetty out to the social club, a lovely place.  You know, a lobster sort of that size. [demonstrates] for about two and six [2d.6d.]  And . . . but they had a Crap room, where the Americans, who were paid every week, so they had a Crap night, and Friday night was

 

00:46:00

 

Crap night.  And I’d always gone for the Crap nights, you know, said “Twenty quid’s [£20} my limit” and if I lost it, I just came out .  Most of the times I was coming out.  But this particular night, I was . . . the Medical Officer, who was with us, ah  . . . I can’t remember his name . . . David Hill.  David Hill was a Squad Major but he was a Medical Officer, and he invited me down with his sidekick to the club for the night, because I’d spent all my money, I’d transferred it down to

 

00:46:30

 

Hong Kong, and so, we had a nice meal, and all of a sudden, I’m hearing the . . . [gestures – shaking of dice?] from away in the distance, in the corner, from the Crap room.  And I said to David, “David, lend me a fiver, just to get in there, before I go.”  “Sure, sure, here you are” I said, “You’ll have to wait until I get it back.”  So, I went in. And I came out of there about three o’clock in the morning with one hundred and thirty-four pounds [£134].  I had, I had bet against the dice, I don’t know why, but I bet

 

00:47:00

 

against them all night, and they were borrowing money off each other, trying to break this run.  So, we flew down, we flew down in a Dakota which had nobody else on board but me and a couple of blokes, and we had managed, managed to have a mag drop on the Dakota while we were there.  So we had two whizzo nights at the American base and blew the bloody lot, but there you are.  That was it.  Come easy, easy go.

 

00:47:30

 

Interviewer:    Wow, considering the value of the pound back then . . .

 

Cumming: It was a lot of money.

 

Interviewer:    Cost of a new car.

 

Cumming: Oh, aye, yes. But as I say, that was your life.  You were young, you know, you’d survived what you’d survived, so what the hell?

 

Interviewer:    Yeah.  And, OK, I always ask, but so this . . .  You’ve done your bit, you’ve represented the country, you know, you’ve seen the travails of war . . .

 

Cumming: Yeah. Yes.

 

Interviewer:    And you’ve come back to the United Kingdom to a

 

00:48:00

 

hero’s welcome, or . . .?

 

Cumming: No, no.

 

Interviewer:    What do you remember of coming home?

 

Cumming: Looking for a job. That was it.  Because I’d, I’d come home to a, to a British unit, as Equipment Officer at a ramshackle place called MacMerry outside of Edinburgh, between Edinburgh and Haddington and it was just an old unit, rebuilt in 1943.  And it hadn’t . . . nobody had ever done anything with it.  And it was just . . .  The only thing was

 

00:48:30

 

the three, yes, there were three radar units by this time, one at North Berwick, there was three, and we were the, we were the, what do they call it?  The domestic site for the three.  So we had . . . Crews would change, so we ran the bus company, ran our buses to them.  [‘Drome] was . . .  Anyway, so that’s what I did as Equipment Officer.  And then during that

 

00:49:00

 

time was the awful decision that I had to make, because I was coming out, because this was ’74, ’75 – sorry, ’54, ‘55, and that was it.  So, I didn’t do a hell of a lot.  I ended up doing it at Old Sarum, which was the nicest Mess I’d ever lived in, because it was built in 1938, during the . . .  before the War, when the R.A.F. built four beautiful

 

00:49:31

 

buildings to elevate the R.A.F., because it was always Army, Navy and Air Force [points downwards] , so they decided they were going to give, give the R.A.F. decent quarters, so we had this beautiful, oak-paneled Mess which serviced the School of Land/Air Warfare, where we had senior Officers from all the N.A.T.O. countries on a fortnightly basis.  So, I mean, the menu, we had a menu

 

00:50:00

 

for breakfast.  And there were four Officers lived in, that was us.  So it was, it was a lovely job.  “Anyone want to go to . . .”  “Anyone want to go to Holland this weekend?”  You could fly out because they were doing the mail run, diplomatic mail, and flying out to pick up these blokes and bring them, and take them back to their own . . .  So, you could go anywhere you liked, at the weekend, because every two weeks, there was flights going out.  It got to the stage where I was, “Oh, no, no, I don’t, it’s too much,

 

00:50:30

 

I canna [cannot] be bothered.”

 

Interviewer:    And what about Korea itself, and the recognition of Korea and that, you know, when you came out?

 

Cumming: Nobody knew about it. Nobody knew about it.  It was the forgotten war.  They said to you, “Where were you going, where were you?” “Korea” “Oh, aye, aye, I heard about it in the papers”.  You know.  No concept of what was out there at all.  Except when we got

 

00:51:00

 

Speakman, and that was it.

 

Interviewer:  Oh, yeah, you mentioned Speakman, we were going to . . .  So, what . . .  Tell me about any other interesting moments when you were out . . .

 

Cumming: Well, he was sent down . . . I got a signal at Iwakuni to say that the V.C., Private Speakman, was coming and would I see him onward, onward transport, to the U.K.  So, I sent him on a Dakota, I think it was.  But anyway, he arrived and, I don’t know if you know, but the first thing is, the V.C.s, whoever they are,

 

00:51:30

 

you salute.  It’s one of the . . .  And, you know, they’re looked after rather well.  So, I told the C.O. and the Wing Commander that he was coming, and would they want to come out to meet him.  “Oh, yes.”

 

Interviewer:    [unintelligible comment under]

 

Cumming: And would I, er . . . would they wish to come and meet him. And they said, “Oh, yes, Jock, you arrange it.”  So, they came down, they were standing outside the aircraft,

 

00:52:00

 

I went on and there wasn’t a soul in the aircraft.  There was freight, and then way up, just behind the pilot’s cabin, there was one seat, and Speakman was sitting in it.  And I saluted and said, “I’m here to see you, and the C.E.O, and the Wing Commander are here to meet you.”  “Do I have to see them?”  I said, “Well, they want to meet . . .”  He says, “I’m fed up to my fucking back

 

00:52:30

 

teeth, I’ve had nothing but paraded, shown off all round Japan, all round Tokyo” [? Typical Speakman”] I said, “Well, no, I’ve a good relationship with them, I will tell them that you just don’t want to have the fuss and I’m sure they’ll just go.”  So, I left the aircraft, went out and told Groupie Charlton and Keith [Hinnock] and said [unintelligible] um, I just told them.  “Apologies, but . . .”

 

00:53:00

 

And they understood and away they went.  So we had a hotel, a very rudimentary hotel, at Iwakuni, but oh, he didn’t want to go to the hotel. So I said, “Well, you can come and bunk at my place, it’s all right” I mean, I had three or four rooms.  And I think we killed a bottle of whisky that night, and I poured him on the aircraft, and that was the last I saw of Speakman.  So it wasn’t terribly enlightening, it was a right [?ug-ug].  Nothing, nothing

 

00:53:30

 

heroic about him.  And he said himself, you know, “I was just terrified, I was throwing anything I could get my hands on.” That was it.  He always denied it was bottles.  You can imagine me throwing away a bottle! [Laughs].  I said, “They might have been empty” “No, not much”.  So that was Speakman.

 

Interviewer:    Yeah.  Now, ‘the forgotten war’, representation.  You know, what you’ve done.  Tell me a bit about your involvement in the

 

00:54:00

 

Memorial, and   you feel about the Korean War now.

 

Cumming: A complete and utter waste. But then, that’s of all wars, they’re a waste.  As far as being excited about building the memorial, it took a long part of our lives during those five years that we were trying to get it built.  The, the whole concept of that memorial is thanks to Alan

 

00:54:30

 

Cameron, who’s our President.  A wee man, doesn’t say an awful lot, an Army man through and through because his father was a Medical Officer, so he’s never had a job, he was always an . . .  And he had this vision of that thing and he drove it, continually, and we owe . . .  And I could never, until I saw it being built, never thought it was ever going to be as beautiful as that.

 

00:55:00

 

We had had a wee one beforehand, it was like a telephone box.  But that, er, I was so proud the day it was handed over and dedicated and have talked about it forever.  I just think it’s such a wonderful place, and people come to see it and appreciate it.  The only one thing that I did, was upset about, was it came in like a thief in the night, as I call it, because nobody, there was no great hurrah,

 

00:55:30

 

we had two hundred and fifty people that we’d invited to it and it was a gorgeous, sunny day, so much so that I passed out, the first time I’ve ever passed out on a parade, and I think it was just the sheer tension of it all.  And they’d kept us forty minutes standing in the blazing sun.  Anyway, er . . .  what were we talking about?  Oh, yes, the, the memorial.  That was, it was hard going, but I mean, it was delightful, because we were in these places

 

00:56:00

 

asking and getting donations and was liberally given money. And, and we just, at every meeting, there’s very little we talk about now, but before, it was “What are we going to do about this?” etc., etc.  There was an excitement amongst us all, about . . . some more than others.  But all about getting it to where it is now and getting it built, and that took a great part of our time and discussions.  But as I say, the outcome is just something that

 

00:56:30

 

we’re so proud of.

 

Interviewer:    And how do you feel about the fact that this Korean war and all the sacrifices are forgotten, and it’s just sort of passed us by?

 

Cumming: It’s . . . I mean, I don’t say that it’s . . .  There’s no way it’s ever going to stop them fighting, etc., etc., it’s just that I’m resigned to the fact that human nature is grabby, and we want this bit of water and we want this bit of soil and we want this, and human nature is just to fight each other, you know.

 

00:57:00

 

It’s like a Glasgow crowd.  That’s it.  You know.  It’s, it’s like that, it’s inbred in people.  We wouldn’t have the problems today if they still had conscription.  That would have knocked the shit out of them before they got any further, before they started to think they could use a knife or a gun or something.  If they had conscription, you’d have never got that, because I went to my conscription with another [thirty] of these idiots, who were, you know, just

 

00:57:30

 

fought, you know, if they came from another part of . . .  The Royal Scots, I heard, had a complete [? Barrier] and there were [?four of them], a full Barrier was thirty people, and they were all Scots, and they were not somebody I was particularly proud of at the end.  But, no, wars as such, they’re just a waste, just a waste of humanity, and that’s all.  I can’t, I can’t see anything changing them.

 

00:58:00

 

And unfortunately, with the rate that we are developing more powerful weapons, as I say, it’s my grandchildren, my grandsons I’m concerned about, not me.  As I say, I don’t, nothing happened to me, it’s just bloody lucky I’m still here. But that’s it.  I’ve been lucky.

 

00:58:19

[End of recorded material]