Interviewed by Colin Rees (CR)
Date: 19/09/2008
Transcribed by Jean Riddell (Purkis)
Hertford Oral History Group
Recording no: O2008.9
Interviewee: Terry Cannon (TC)
Date: 19th September 2008
Venue: Essendon
Interviewer: Colin Rees (CR)
Transcriber: Jean Riddell (Purkis)
Typed by: Corin Jones
************** unclear recording
[discussion] untranscribed material
italics editor’s notes
[A difficult transcription – Terry’s frequent drop in tone combined with a rather unclear account at times necessitated summarising what was said to help understanding. Also the recording included a loud hiss]
CR: My name is Colin Rees and it’s seven o’clock on September 19th, 2008 and we’re here to interview Terry Cannon who is an Essendon resident with a very interesting life and career. Terry, thank you very much for coming.
Where were you born?
TC: Born in Essendon, down at the brick ground.
CR: At the bottom of the hill?
TC: The last house along on the left. I was born on January 13th, 1924.
CR: And did you spend your early years there?
TC: Very early years, yes. And then we went to live at the green cottages, I think it was just after they were built.
CR: And you went to Essendon School?
TC: I went to Essendon School until I was 14.
CR: What did your parents do, what was your dad employed as?
TC: My dad was a builder, a carpenter.
CR: And how many brothers and sisters have you got?
TC: I have none left. John/Joan was older than me, Tony was younger than me and Maureen was the youngest.
CR: And did they all go to Essendon School?
TC: John/Joan went to Ponsbourne an RC school. Tony went to Essendon School and so did Maureen.
CR: Right, so three of you at Essendon. So what did you do after that?
TC: I worked for my dad. Actually I’d had to work during school holidays – you’re going to learn a trade, boy! I did, and then I got rather fed up with it, so when I was 15 I toddled off to London to join the RAF.
CR: You were telling me earlier that your academic record at Essendon was rather colourful – is that right?
TC: Well, I was quite a good scholar, I used to come top of the class, generally, but I honestly didn’t like school very much. Poor old Mr [inaudible] I must have been a thorn in his side.
CR: Up to some pranks?
TC: Very much so, yes, and I’m afraid I often played truant. Another lad called Bandy Hedger, Bandy Bodger we used to call him, and like me he didn’t like school very much and we’d nip out and go and enjoy the day. Well down at the brickfields there used to be a pit hole where they dug the clay and quite biggish stretches of water and Bandy and I made a canoe. It was quite good but used to capsize quite regularly.
CR: OK, is there anything else you can remember about Essendon as a child – shops and things?
TC: Oh yes, Bob Preston had what is now Sherwoods (?) Mr [inaudible] had the one opposite the church, Mr Dunkley with the post office, and just up the road from him was Mr Kerry, he had a grocer’s shop and then up near the petrol station Mr Kerry also had a butcher’s shop.
CR: Do you remember anything else, like bus rides with your Mum?
TC: To catch a bus we had to go down the bottom of Essendon hill, that took us to Hertford. Also there was a man in the village called Mr Gilbert and he had a bus, he called it Blue Ride and he used to do weekly runs on Saturday mornings to Hertford for shopping. He used to alternate the runs, one time he’d go on the lower road to Hertford and the next time he’d go through the Greens.
CR: So he’d stop and pick up people on the way?
TC: He would stop and pick them up, yes.
CR: How did you spend your spare time as a child?
TC: Football, when I was able to. When Dad didn’t get me working.
CR: It sounds like you were working quite a lot. What sort of places did you go to work?
TC: [overtalking] School. I actually worked with the bricklayer topping out on the chimneys. I’ve worked on Essendon Church steeple.
CR: What did you do there, that’s great!
TC: Renewing lead with an old man, an old plumber, Cheddy Gray, why it was Cheddy I don’t know.
CR: It looks good to me when I take tower trips up there. When you were at school, were there any particular friends?
TC: Well, Frank Bamford was a very good friend of mine and Bodger, yes well I was friendly with all of them.
CR: OK, that takes us to age 15 then, you joined the Air Force, did you say?
TC: I got up to London, the main office. The sergeant – his first question to me was how old are you son? And I said 17½. When were you born – I hadn’t quite worked that one out!
CR: You should have done that before you got in!
TC: I know! Anyway he said, when you are 17 you come along and we’ll take you. Whilst I’m in London I go down to Leman St which is the Merchant Navy place [he gave an altered birth date and joined the Merchant Navy].
CR: Did your Mum and Dad know what you were up to?
TC: Yes. I was so absolutely restless and wanted to do something different and it was a period in the war when it was very quiet.
CR: What year would we be talking about?
TC: 1939-40. At that time the Royal Navy were short of personnel and they were taking men from the Merchant Navy [then some inaudible information about articles and their acronyms]. So you really joined the MN, but through these articles you got into the RN itself.
With the MV I had gone down to [inaudible] and learned seamanship, four months with a training ship called Troy (?).
CR: Great, so what happened next?
TC: Well, I did two trips with that and I thought this ain’t not flying, is it, so I went to the Captain of the Port, I said I’d like to join the Fleet Air Arm. Oh, he said, you’ve only just joined the bloody Navy! Why do you want to fly? I said, I can fly, I have flown, my uncle, Mother’s brother, was a WW1 pilot.
CR: What planes did you fly?
TC: Gipsy Moth, tiny little thing.
CR: And how many times had you been up?
TC: Oh, many.
CR: Did you get the rudiments of flying from that?
TC: Yes, but also went over to de Havilland and every Wednesday pm the apprentices used to go for lessons. I was so keen to fly that I used to nip in with the big boys.
CR: So what sort of age would you been then?
TC: I’d be 13, yes. Anyway for quite some time I used to nip off from school. I’d go all the way to Hatfield Aerodrome, go under the wire fence and down to where they had their lessons. They had an old house there. I knew one of the lads a chap called Jarm(?) [inaudible passage]. Do you work here, son? (No?). What are you doing here then? Desperately want to learn to fly. So he said, OK, carry on. I could virtually fly without leaving the ground and then my uncle, he used to take me up and let me have a go. I wasn’t tall enough to reach the rudder bar.
CR: So free flying lessons.
TC: No. I didn’t get flying lessons from de Havilland. I had all the information I needed. My uncle put me through the paces. I followed through on controls for/from him.
CR: Gipsy Moth has got two seats hasn’t it. So you’d sit in the back and he’d go in the front, or the other way round?
TC: They made tandem ones.
CR: So you could see what he was doing.
TC: He used to take me up and one day he said do you think you could manage it, of course I could. I reckon he was hovering over the controls.
CR: How many hours do you think you’d done before you applied to join the Fleet Air Arm?
TC: Perhaps only 10. I said to this man, well I can fly sir. Can you? Yes, yes. Oh well, we’ll see what we can do. Sure enough he kept his word and I was drafted down to a little airfield beside the Thames, built over now.
CR: Would you have been about 16 by then, because if you’d done two trips in the MN.
TC: I was flying when I was 17 the chief Petty Officer said, can you fly, boy, yes sir. You don’t call me Sir, I’m a Petty Officer. [Some confusion here about Terry’s age – he says 15 turned 16 at this time].
CR: What kind of aircraft was it.
TC: A Tiger Moth.
CR: That’s a bit more powerful than a Gipsy and that’s still a biplane is it? (Yes). So you jumped in this.
TC: The first flight I had with him he said follow through – hold onto the controls and follow through. Don’t put any pressure on it, then he said put your hands up, you’ve got it. Then he said do a circuit and then he said can you put her down and land her? I said, yes. So I did. Now tomorrow, he said, [something to do with stalls] [then the story continues with Terry taking the plane up and stalling but it’s unclear what happened but he appeared to be successful].
CR: Did you get your wings at this stage?
TC: Yes, I went to Aberdeen, oh before that I had to go and learn a bit about navigation.
CR: OK, so you’re in the Fleet Air Arm now.
TC: From Aberdeen we used to fly Swordfish, torpedo.
CR: And what sort of sorties were you doing?
TC: Germans were running convoys down the coast into Norway and we used to fly across from Aberdeen across the North Sea to go after the convoys coming down. My observer was a [inaudible] and I was a Petty Officer. He was there to make sure I knew what I was doing. The second time we went across to Holland there was a convoy coming down and this old commander said there’s a big one, boy, go for that one. And we did. And he said get on it, get on it, get on it. The torpedo hit the biggest ship in the convoy around the midships.
CR: OK, how long were you at Aberdeen, then.
TC: About 12 months.
CR: Where did you go after that?
TC: Because I’d been in the Merchant Navy for some reason they thought I ought to fly with merchant ships, which I didn’t mind in the least. First of all I came back for a course on Hurricanes [the next passage was too unclear even for a summary – something about a gantry and ditching a plane].
CR: Sounds like an expensive flight.
TC: The Germans could scan the ocean and what they did was to come round, fly about, see a convoy and radio back to [base?]. And you were supposed to chase it off [the German plane?] or shoot it down.
CR: So, whereabouts would you be operating? A merchant ship could be anywhere.
TC: You’d travel with the ship.
CR: So when they briefed you, where were you supposed to land, were you supposed to get back to England.
TC: You could land on friendly soil, or you ditched and you tried to ditch perhaps alongside a corvette.
CR: So how many sorties like that did you do?
TC: Well, I only had to ditch twice.
CR: Personally, that’s plenty for me!
TC: The first time we lost the aeroplane and I was floundering about in the water for a little while. The second time they picked the aeroplane up [?]
After that they had what they called MAC ships [merchant aircraft carrier], you were catapulted off a deck [a deck added to grain carriers or oil tankers enabled it to become an aircraft carrier] and you could get back onto the deck. And that was much better.
CR: How many of these sorties did you do?
TC: Used to do a lot. You could buzz round and see U-boats, on a clear day you could see them in the water, and they’d pop up with a periscope.
CR: What were you armed with?
TC: You did carry a couple of bombs.
CR: So was the idea to bomb the U-boats.
TC: They weren’t actual bombs they were flares.
CR: I see, and somebody else would go in and sort them out. So are we up to about 1940?
TC: ‘41/’42.
CR: So you’d be two years on, nearly 19. Right, what was the next assignment?
TC: Well, this carried on until we were getting the better of the U-boats, so they put me and others on different services. I went Tempsford [No 138 & 161 Spec Duty Sqn]. By then I was flying a [Lysander?], we used to take radio operators across to France and we had to land because the radio equipment was fragile in those days and they couldn’t stand a parachute landing, so we had to land, say cheerio, and come back.
CR: So were these people going to be working with the Resistance?
TC: The Resistance would meet them. You had a code which you flashed when [before?] you landed and they’d see you come over and they had the same letter that I had, A or C or what. If I flashed A and they flashed C [he didn’t land. If they flashed A, he did land. They had paraffin lamps with which they outlined a landing area for the plane to land].
CR: So presumably this happened quite a lot at night?
TC: Oh, yes, at night, a moonlight night.
CR: And could you see trees and things because obviously you’d be in a country area.
TC: Yes, but they would choose the field.
CR: Oh, so you were totally reliant on them.
TC: Absolutely.
CR: Did you ever have any close shaves there?
TC: I think I cut the top off two trees!
CR: You couldn’t remember the aeroplane – was it one engine or two?
TC: Single engine – Lysander. And you could land them on a sixpence. And you had just you and the radio operator, but you didn’t talk to the radio operator, in fact they were sitting in the little compartment, locked in. And the reason for that was [inaudible]…
CR: Can you remember how long you did that for?
TC: Yes. Couple of years, I suppose, no 18 months. [Recording stops abruptly, no more on side one. Resumes on side two – it seems that the interviewer is unaware he’s lost several minutes of recording]
CR: And this was a British ship. This was presumably a specific operation to take out this Jap carrier.
TC: That was after the European [victory?]
CR: How did it go?
TC: Well we got the cruiser and one of their escorts and they said you’re good boys, you can all go home now.
CR: Did you have any trouble landing back on the carrier?
TC: No.
CR: So did you go home then? (yes). And was that effectively the end of the war for you? (yes). So how did you hear that you weren’t having to go and fight again?
TC: Well, it was about the end of the Japanese war.
CR: So you were just released, were you?
TC: Well, no, I hung about, doing nothing and ‘til I suppose they got fed up with the sight of us.
CR: Right, so you went home, all in one piece. Did any of your brothers and sisters partake in the war?
TC: Yes, brother John.
CR: What was he in?
TC: He was in the Navy; he was a gunner.
CR: Was he OK?
TC: He got wounded.
CR: But he was alright? (Mmm). So Mum and Dad were obviously glad to have you back in one piece.
TC: Well, I think so, yes.
CR: So after that long time being an airman did you know what you wanted to do?
TC: Yes and no. My family were civil engineers. My great grandfather was a civil engineer. My grandfather was a civil engineer, my dad, too, was a civil engineer, although he worked as a carpenter and he said well, I think you ought to be a civil engineer, and I went to Tottenham Tech and I became a civil engineer.
CR: You obviously had a very exciting time during your war service, I can tell that you loved flying, how did the idea of being a civil engineer cross your mind?
TC: Well, it was a new thing, it was a challenge to me, and I always enjoy a challenge and I took to it quite well, and I remained a civil engineer until my father died [this is what he said – see later] and then I took over the family business.
CR: So you were self-employed then.
TC: Yes.
CR: And how long did you do that for?
TC: What?
CR: Your civil engineering work – ‘til your retirement?
TC: No, no, no. I used to do civil engineering when I ran the building business but I retired when I was 68. [see above – slightly unclear]
CR: Right. You haven’t told me about the motorbike, when did that happen?
TC: When I came out of the services I had this BSA motorbike. Ted Barker was the policeman.
CR: The village policeman in Essendon.
TC: And I know he took me to court three times. I’d got no road fund licence, second time he said my motorbike was making too much smoke which I’m not surprised – I was running it on half paraffin, half petrol. The third time I’d got no lights on and he took me to court and Geoff Church was the magistrate and he said I’ll put a stop to this young man and he increased the fine each time, doubled it. Mind you it was only a matter of shillings, 10/-, £1, £2. Then I got a better motor-bike – I had a Black Shadow.
CR: Close to the top of the range, isn’t it?
TC: And I got pinched for speeding on that.
CR: Was Mr Barker after you on the Black Shadow?
TC: Oh no, he couldn’t catch me! The motorbike police, they couldn’t catch me, coming down the A10, the Cambridge by-pass.
CR: How long did you have the bike for?
TC: Oh I kept that one for about two years.
CR: So you never actually lost your licence?
TC: No. I was lucky, wasn’t I?
CR: Yes, you were. Let’s just try and figure this out, how old you would have been.
TC: I was 21 when I had these.
CR: OK, let’s take you back to the civil engineering. You did that until you were 68. I know you parachute – when did you actually start?
TC: I started parachuting the day I left the services. I’d had two descents during the war – they were obligatory. One was over land and the other over water.
CR: So you’re ditching again.
TC: Yes, they were both at night. And I thought when this is all over I’ll have a go at this parachuting. And I’ve done it ever since.
CR: Tell me how you got into that – immediately after you came out of the services was it?
TC: Yes, I went to Kidlington in Oxfordshire, there was a club going there and I said can I join? Yes, you can join.
CR: Did you have to go through any sort of a course.
TC: Not in those days you didn’t. There’d be an instructor and he’d say well, he’d put you on, as they do now, on a static line for half a dozen times and if you’re good enough he’d say right next one’s a live.
CR: How high is that, when you’re on a static line?
TC: About 2,000 ft, you’re not very high.
CR: When you say static line, you’re just attached to the instructor?
TC: Yes, it’s a line attached to the aircraft. When the Army are jumping from an aircraft you see that cord thing – that’s the static line. [then a little confusion over describing what happened].
TC: And this is where you learn how to land properly. I instruct skydiving. Diving is not free-fall it’s moving across the sky.
CR: You were 21 when you started to do parachuting and you’re still parachuting at 84. I know you’re an instructor now. How long have you been an instructor?
TC: 20 years ago.
CR: And do you still go to Kidlington?
TC: No, no. At the moment I haven’t got a club, they’ve gone broke (?). I was up at March in Cambridgeshire and I used to belong to a club in Peterborough, and I was around in Essex. They never get enough money and eventually they fold up. I now go to Fluteborough (?) in Cumberland and jump from there.
CR: So when did you last jump?
TC: Not long ago.
CR: This gentleman is 84 years old and he jumped two weeks ago. I think that’s absolutely superb. OK, let’s just finish off. After you retired did you have any particular interests or hobbies?
TC: I used to like football, playing football, I don’t much like watching it. I like sports I can participate in, not going to watch them.
CR: Is there anything at this time of your life that you’d like to do that you haven’t done yet?
TC: Yes, I want to go to New Zealand and jump – I’ve done a couple of bungee jumps but I want to go and do the proper one, the expensive one, the bungee jump and that’s in NZ.
CR: Is that off a bridge.
TC: Yes, I want to do that.
CR: You’ve already done two, have you?
TC: I’ve done three from the Pyrenees.
CR: Recently?
TC: No, many years ago.
CR: This obviously gives you some kind of a buzz. I couldn’t even go near the bridge let alone jump off it.
TC: Yes, it’s like stepping off a bus, isn’t it? After that, if I ever had enough money to do it I’d like to jump in the Grand Canyon from a helicopter.
CR: I imagine they have trips doing that, don’t they?
TC: Well, they do, but apparently it’s extremely expensive, you don’t just do one fly through they insist that you do it three or four times just to make money for them. And I hate to think how much it costs.
CR: Looking back over what’s been a long, eventful, and very rewarding life, what do you really see as the best time of it?
TC: Well, I can’t say I liked the war years, but I found that if you took the rough with the smooth it wasn’t too bad.
CR: Is it because of the excitement – you’re obviously a very adventurous type of person. Did you have lots of friend – do you keep in touch with them?
TC: Unfortunately most of my friends have keeled over, in fact I’m due to go to a funeral this week.
CR: OK. Is there anything I might have missed from your early days in Essendon.
TC: I remember pinching Jack Hulbert’s apples!
CR: Jack Hulbert – that’s the actor, of course.
TC: West End Farm. And also Lord [inaudible]. From the cricket field, over the wall, there used to be peach houses on the side of the wall and the head gardener, Burgess, well, we did it once too often you see, and he was waiting for us. He nipped round and locked the doors and we couldn’t get out. How we got in was through the fanlights, and out through the door, with the peaches [Burgess was gardener at Essendon Place].
Colin [Thanks Terry for the recording and for his service during the war].
TC: I only did what thousands of others did.
CR: People still appreciate it.
Recording ends