22872 Trevor Meadows 428 Sqd. I was sixteen years old at the outbreak of war, at eighteen I volunteered for aircrew duties with the RAF, all aircrew were volunteers. After passing the medicals and a two day selection board I was accepted. I was called to commence training early in 1942 I qualified as a Flight Engineer on heavy bombers and was posted to a heavy conversion unit in Yorkshire early in 1944 to fly Halifax four engine bombers. There
I joined the six other members who were to make up my crew, they were all Canadians and we were to serve in 6 Group the RCAF bomber group. We completed the course, became a bomber crew and were posted to Middleton St George (now
Teeside International Airport) to join No 428 — the Ghost squadron. Initially we flew
old Halifaxes but then received Canadian built Lancaster X’s which we converted to on the squadron. In October 1944 we completed 32 operations over Germany and the occupied countries. The crew then split up, most of the Canadians returning to Canada.
I then went through the reselection process, my first choice was to continue flying and I volunteered for Tiger Force in the Far East. However I was selected to take a course at the RAF School of Administration and Accountancy, all of the members of this particular course were tour expired aircrew officers. I completed the course successfully and was promoted to Flight Lieutenant, I was then twenty two years old.
A few weeks before the end of the war I was posted to Germany together with eleven other tour expired aircrew officers. We were to be part of the RAF team that was to disarm and disband the Luftwaffe. Travelling by road through many towns and cities in Germany, including Hamburg, I was able to see at first hand the devastating effects of our bombing. Shortly after the end of the war I ended up at my destination, 8302 Air Disarmament Wing at Eggebek, a Luftwaffe airfield about twenty miles south of the Danish border. Several other airfields in the area with very large numbers of Luftwaffe personnel were also the responsibility of this unit to disarm and disband. My duties were with the German Air Force Administration section dealing
daily with the Luftwaffe personnel. There was mutual respect between the two services and we were able to work well together.
Not all of the Luftwaffe personnel were disbanded however, some were kept on to work for the RAF, they were called Dienstgruppen (Service Units). These were several hundred strong formed on military lines under Luftwaffe officers and NCO’s and with their own transport. These were called clutches and were commanded by a Flight Lieutenant. Later all of these personnel were discharged from the Luftwaffe but remained in the units and became known as the German Civil Labour Organisation. I believe this was because the Russians thought we had an ulterior motive in keeping some of the Luftwaffe on.
After a few months I left Eggebek and became GCLO Clutch Commander at Husum
a former Luftwaffe airfield on the North Sea coast. The German unit was to provide labour for rebuilding and extending the airfield in readiness for airborne troops.
I was the senior officer at Husum, there were two airfield construction officer and an engineering officer who was a certain Flying Officer Cliff Michelmore who later became a well known TV personality. After working for more than a year on the airfield it turned out that it would no longer be required as the number of airborne troops expected had been reduced. I believe that the work on the runways and perimeter track that had been done was later blown up.
I was then posted to Schleswig airfield a few miles to the south which was also being prepared for the airborne troops where I became the GCLO Clutch Commander. The Station Commander here was a Group Captain. However the GCLO was a separate little empire. I had my own offices away from the main block and was responsible
to the officer in overall command of the GCLO at 83 Group HQ, a Wing Commander
WW1 pilot.
I spent three and a half years in this area of Germany and made friends with quite a number of ex Luftwaffe personnel and found that we had much in common once we got to know each other. Several have remained friends for a number of years, in particular an ex fighter pilot who later rejoined the Luftwaffe when it was reformed.
We are friends to this day, we have visited each other many times and he has even been with his wife to our squadron reunion where everyone was very pleased to see them.
To finish my story I come to the most important part. Late in 1945 I met the girl who was to become my wife, her name was Edith. That was in the town of Flensburg on
the Danish border. She was then a teenager, a refugee from near Stettin in East Germany. Her mother and sister had been evacuated when the Russians were advancing, first to Denmark from where they managed escape from to Germany after the war. They were living in terrible conditions and I was able to help them.
We were married in England at the end of 1948, we celebrated or Golden Wedding Anniversary in the ballroom of the mansion in Bletchley Park in 1998.
This is my story which I think is unusual and it proves that some good things can come out of war.
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