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  This same year, Sir Henry Gullett, Federal Minister for Information and a former journalist of note, created the Department of Information, intended to be the agency which controlled war information reaching the Australian public. To run the department, Gullett recruited George Brickhill’s former colleague, Sir Keith Murdoch, and put together a list of top journalists to work under Murdoch. One of the pressmen chosen by Gullett was Lionel Wigmore, a former Sun journalist and aviation writer who would become one of the department’s senior men. Sun prodigy Paul Brickhill was the youngest of the journalists on Gullett’s list.

  The Sun refused to release Brickhill, valuing his skill and potential too much. Bill Hudson, his colleague at the Sun, rated him ‘an exceptional journalist’.46 To placate the disappointed young man, his superiors promoted him to subeditor with the Sunday Sun. His place as a military reporter with the Sun was taken by another young journalist of promise, who, like Brickhill, had come through the ranks from copyboy. This was John Ulm, son of Charles Ulm, the famous pre-war aviator. Like Brickhill, young Ulm had a passion for flying, in his case with a very obvious motivation. In a series of coincidences, Ulm would continue to follow in Brickhill’s footsteps over the next few years.

  Despite the additional pay, the subeditor’s job locked Brickhill in the office and kept him away from the sources of the news. To the peripatetic Brickhill, who enjoyed being out and about, this was a restriction he didn’t enjoy. The Department of Information, meanwhile, was going through a rocky beginning. First, Gullett was killed in a plane crash in August 1940. By year’s end, Murdoch would resign his director’s post after federal cabinet refused to give him the censorial powers over the media he’d demanded.

  As the Nazis overran western Europe and the Battle of Britain began in British skies, Paul’s younger brother Lloyd surprised everyone by joining the Royal Australian Air Force in Brisbane. He would train to become a pilot, and be commissioned an officer. This may have spurred Paul’s decision, in June, to resign from the Militia and join the RAAF Reserve. At least that way, if he was to put hours into military training, he would be learning about flying, his real love. Brickhill’s parents returned to Sydney from Newcastle at year’s end, with George now Sydney correspondent for the Newcastle Sun. For the time being, George and Dot moved in with Paul at his Manly flat.

  With Britain pounded by the Luftwaffe’s aerial ‘Blitz’ and German U-boats taking a heavy toll on shipping in the North Atlantic, in Asia the invading Japanese Army was fighting nationalist and communist armies in China. At that time there was no hint of 1941’s dramatic Japanese drive into South Asia and the Pacific. There appeared no threat to Australia, whose national focus was on the war in Europe, a war in which Paul Brickhill had expressed no interest in participating.

  5.

  Flying Officer Brickhill

  ON MONDAY, 6 January 1941, twenty-four-year-old Paul Chester Jerome Brickhill fronted up at the RAAF’s Number 2 Recruiting Centre at Sydney’s Point Piper. The shambolic withdrawal of the British Expeditionary Force from France at Dunkirk in May and June of the previous year had profoundly shocked young Brickhill. He was to say that news of this reverse brought home to him that the war was a serious business; a war that was not going to be over by Christmas as some suggested.47 When Christmas did arrive, a Nazi invasion of Britain seemed on the cards, although Brickhill’s primary interest was still the defence of Australia. Bored stiff in his subeditor’s job, he saw no future for himself in the newspaper game. He also probably envied younger brother Lloyd’s tales of training to be a pilot. Patriotism, boredom and pilot envy combined to send him to Point Piper that Monday morning following the Christmas holidays.

  In signing up, he was going against his pacifist parents’ wishes. George hadn’t served during the First World War, and had no desire to see his sons serve in this one either. It was bad enough that his eldest boy, Russell, had ended up on active service for Britain via his membership of the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve in England, and then Lloyd had joined the RAAF. So, when Paul was required to write down his next of kin, he named his favourite uncle, Fred Amos.

  Brickhill was interested in flying, not fighting, and it seemed a pretty good deal if the RAAF would teach him to fly, and pay him to do it. To bolster his application, Paul included his three years’ service in the Australian Militia. Recording his employment with the Sunday Sun, he wrote that he’d spent two years as defence and aviation writer with the Sun. In case the Department of Information heard that he was free of the grasp of the Sun and again tried to snaffle him, he failed to mention the department’s earlier interest in his services.

  With the paperwork out of the way, Brickhill was given a medical by an Air Force doctor, a flight lieutenant who passed him as fit for service and noted his vital statistics. Stripped down, the recruit was five feet six inches (167 centimetres) tall, weighed 148 pounds (66.6 kilograms), and his chest measured 33½ inches (84 centimetres). The doctor also recorded an appendectomy scar, small scars on his arms and a scar on his right leg. Brickhill was now accepted for service in the RAAF. That same day, he happily signed his life away, enlisting for the requisite period – the duration of the war plus a further twelve months following war’s cessation.

  With the rank of aircraftsman second class, lowest of the low in the Air Force, Brickhill went through two months’ basic recruit training at Number 2 Initial Training School at Lindfield, with much marching and early morning rises. Because of his six months in the Air Force Reserve and three years in the Militia, he had a head start on many other recruits. Next, he was sent for flight training, which began on 6 March at Number 8 Elementary Flying Training School at Narrandera in southern New South Wales. He arrived with an induction of trainees which included sporting celebrity Stanley Sismey, wicketkeeper with the New South Wales state cricket team. Narrandera’s local paper noted the arrival of Sismey at No. 8 EFTS, along with ‘Paul Brickhill, late of the Sydney Sun’s editorial staff’.48

  Initial RAAF pilot training was in the De Havilland DH 82 Tiger Moth. First introduced as a basic trainer in 1932, this slow, forgiving biplane had open tandem cockpits for trainee and instructor. Many who flew the Tiger Moth would fall in love with the graceful old bird, and Brickhill was one of them. He was not as fond of his time in the classroom. After spending fifty-four hours in Tiger Moths over twenty-four days, Brickhill completed basic flight training at Narrandera on 30 April with ‘excellent passes’, achieving promotion to Leading Aircraftsman, the equivalent of a corporal in the army.49

  On 5 May, he arrived back in Sydney, marching into the RAAF’s Number 2 Embarkation Depot in Bradfield Park on Milsons Point. Sitting beside the Sydney Harbour Bridge’s northern pylon, the depot had a grandstand view of the harbour and of the city centre across the water. Australia’s flying schools could not keep up with the demand for aircrew, and since 1940 a percentage of Australian trainees had been sent to Canada to complete their training under the Empire Flying Training Scheme (EFTS), after which they would be allocated to squadrons in Britain.

  Fate decided that Paul Brickhill would be among those sent to Canada. That decision would set the course for the remainder of his life. It would mean he would end up fighting the Nazis in the Northern Hemisphere, not defending his homeland in the Pacific as he had originally intended. But now that he was in the military he had no say in the matter. No leave was granted the cadets. Fifteen days after arriving at No. 2 ED, Brickhill and other trainees sailed from Sydney aboard a troopship bound for Vancouver, to undertake the next stage of their training. In Brickhill’s case it would be a ten-week advanced flying course provided by the Royal Canadian Air Force as part of the EFTS. The day he sailed, Brickhill was made a temporary sergeant.

  Disembarking in Vancouver on 13 June, the trainees spread out to training schools across Canada. Brickhill was in a group that travelled by train to the Canadian capital, Ottawa, then on to the nearby Royal Canadian Air Force base at Uplands, Ontario, home to Number 2 Service Flyin
g Training School. With paved runways, massive rectangular brick hangars and administration buildings, and more than one hundred aircraft, Uplands was a major training establishment. Ever since the EFTS had commenced the previous year, several staggered courses were run at any one time at Uplands. Brickhill and his Australian contingent joined Course 31, which commenced on 17 June.

  The aircraft used by trainees here was the North American Harvard II. In Australia, it was built under licence as the Wirraway. A two-seat monoplane with an enclosed cockpit, the Harvard had a top speed of 318 kph and the characteristics of a fighter plane. Brickhill would spend eighty-six hours in canary-yellow Harvards, initially with an instructor, later flying solo. In addition to spending time in the air, the budding pilots had to put in long, hot hours in lectures, taking copious notes on everything from the theory of flight to cloud formations. In the main, their instructors were Canadians and Americans. Warned that Ontario’s summer was baking hot, the Aussies came equipped with shorts and slouch hats.

  Brickhill lived for the hours in the air, and when he was supposed to be studying the theory of meteorology he had his head in the clouds, daydreaming about flying. The night before the meteorology test he ‘crammed’, reading the textbook from cover to cover. As he’d demonstrated while working for the Sun, he had a fine memory for detail, and he passed the test next day with flying colours. Then, midway through Course 31, a surprise written test was sprung on cadets about the reflector gunsight. Brickhill hadn’t been paying attention when the armaments instructor explained the details, and all he knew was that the gunsight worked with mirrors. Paul would later say that he decided to apply the BBB principle – bullshit baffles brains. He wrote a turgid paper, full of pseudo-scientific jargon. ‘I just hoped I’d get away with it,’ he said.50

  Two days passed. Into another lecture strode the armaments instructor. Interrupting proceedings, he announced that he had the results of the reflector gunsight test, before looking around the classroom.

  ‘Brickhill, where are you?’ he demanded. ‘Stand up, Brickhill.’

  Fearing that he was in for a rollicking, Brickhill slowly came to his feet. The instructor asked him if he’d ever been a writer, and Paul confessed to having been a journalist before enlisting.

  ‘Well, you might like to know that your paper on the reflector gunsight has been forwarded to Air Force headquarters – with a recommendation that it becomes the standard training manual.’

  Brickhill would feel guilty for years over this. But at least he passed the test.51

  There were numerous distractions for the Uplands trainees. Occasional leave passes saw the Australians flood into Ottawa, looking for local bars and local girls. Back at base, there was great excitement when King George VI’s younger brother, Prince George the Duke of Kent, paid a visit in July. Two Australians on Course 31, Rex Marre and Bill Williams, found themselves chatting with the duke. Within several years, all three would be dead, the Australians killed in action and the duke killed in Scotland when the Sunderland flying boat he was aboard mysteriously crashed on a secret 1942 mission to Iceland.

  There was even greater excitement when Hollywood came to Uplands. Warner Brothers were filming a movie, Captains of the Clouds, at several RCAF bases. Starring Jimmy Cagney, the film was being produced by his brother George. At this stage America was still neutral, but, by the time Captains of the Clouds was released in 1942, the United States would be at war with Japan and Germany. While Australians on Course 32 would be roped in as extras for several scenes, Course 31 members saw the activity from the sidelines when eighty members of the film crew descended on Uplands.

  Learning to fly a military aircraft was a dangerous business. Several trainees and instructors had been killed during previous courses, and on 15 August, just two weeks before Brickhill’s training ended, Course 31 was marred when cadet pilot Harry Long from Balgowlah in Sydney’s northern suburbs ploughed his Harvard into the ground on a solo flight, and was killed.

  By 31 August, Course 31 was over, and the chief examiner’s results were posted. Paul Brickhill, who had dreamed of being a flyer since childhood, turned out to be a born pilot. He was dux of the class, passing Course 31 with special distinctions. He learned that he was to be posted to Britain for advanced fighter training, on attachment to the RAF. Some of the course’s less talented pilots would be sent to train in bombers or transport aircraft, which would make them, in the eyes of fighter pilots, little more than bus drivers. But Brickhill was destined to learn to fly the famous Spitfire fighter, the sports car of the sky; a sports car designed to kill.

  That evening, the thirty-nine Course 31 graduates went into Ottawa for a celebratory dinner at Chateau Laurier. Standing next to Parliament House, this massive limestone hotel with turrets and masonry mimicking a French chateau was a centre of Ottawa social life. Brickhill, even though he had topped the class, shied away from the limelight, and from public speaking. He’d gone a long way towards mastering his stutter, but it would re-emerge when he was nervous. So it was that another Aussie graduate, Flight Sergeant Harry Dimmock, gave the speech on behalf of the students of Course 31 that night, and proposed a toast to their hosts, the RCAF.

  The next afternoon, 1 September, the graduates, in dress uniform, fell in for their Wings Parade. A large crowd of instructors, trainees and civilians from Ottawa, including attractive young ladies who’d formed friendships with some of the Australians, gathered to watch as the graduates lined up in front of the RCAF’s Wing Commander Joseph de Niverville, Officer Commanding, Uplands Training School. A French-Canadian from Montreal and a World War One flyer, De Niverville would present each man with the treasured golden wings emblem that he would wear with pride to show he was a qualified Air Force pilot.

  ‘You have set yourselves two objectives,’ De Niverville told Brickhill and his colleagues. ‘The first is to qualify as pilots. The second is to do your part in the greatest struggle the world has ever seen. You have obtained the first of these objectives. These wings will be the symbol that you have done so.’52

  Brickhill was first to be called forward to receive his wings. With an exchange of crisp salutes, the presentation was made. Once all graduates had their wings, Brickhill led the parade in a march-past, with Wing Commander De Niverville taking the salute. And then it was all over. The cadets were officially pilots. That same day, Brickhill received a commission from the RAAF as a pilot officer, equivalent of a second lieutenant in the army.

  Friends crowded around to congratulate the graduates, and reporters from the Ottawa Citizen and the Ottawa Journal threw questions at them. The reporters were particularly intrigued to find two young Tasmanian flight sergeants among the graduates, William Waddell from Hobart and Fred Wilmot from Launceston. The Tasmanians were frequently the butt of jokes from their mainland colleagues, who told the reporters that Tasmania was ‘the pimple on the pumpkin’ as far as Australians were concerned. Kidded by the Australians into believing that Tasmania was a separate country Down Under, the journalists singled the Tasmanians out. Brickhill was in the bunch of mainlanders who clustered around the Tasmanians as they were interviewed.

  ‘We’re proud to represent the pimple,’ said a grinning Wilmot to the press. ‘But we could do with a few more from the island. We need ’em among all these Aussies.’

  This brought laughter from the bunch, and slaps on the back for Wilmot and Waddell.

  ‘Don’t worry, they’ll be in there before this show’s over, old chaps,’ a mature mainlander assured them.53

  Brickhill joined in the fun, but self-consciously failed to volunteer that his parents and grandparents were Tasmanians. His Tasmanian connections were not overlooked on the pimple, however. The Launceston Examiner, reporting the 1 September graduation at Uplands, would note that top-of-the-class Paul Brickhill was ‘a nephew of Miss D Brickhill of Launceston’ and ‘a descendant of two generations of newspapermen’.54

  The fledgling pilots now left their Uplands nest and travelled east to th
e port of Halifax, Nova Scotia, where a convoy was assembling to cross the North Atlantic to England. The Australian pilots spent five days at an RCAF depot in Halifax, and what a dry city it turned out to be. Nowhere could the Aussies find an open bar. In desperation, on 8 September, Brickhill and several mates scoured the city looking for a cooling glass of the amber liquid. By late afternoon, unsuccessful, they decided to settle for a cup of tea, and trooped disconsolately into a cafe crowded with noisy military personnel.

  After they’d sat down, Brickhill noticed a Royal Navy lieutenant at another table, two metres away, who eyed him with a quizzical expression. It occurred to Brickhill that the fellow looked a bit like big brother Russell, who he hadn’t seen in three years. When he first landed in Canada, Brickhill had written to Russ in Bermuda, where he’d been stationed with the Royal Navy since 1939. Receiving no reply, he’d subsequently heard from home that Russ had probably left Bermuda in July, England-bound. Deciding that this fellow opposite was a bit too plump to be his brother, Brickhill looked away. But something made him look back. His eyes dropped to the lieutenant’s hands. Russ, in his youth, had lost half a thumb in an accident with a chaffcutter. Sure enough, this lieutenant was minus half a thumb. Lifting his eyes, Brickhill saw a smile spreading across the naval officer’s face.

  ‘Gosh!’ Brickhill exclaimed. ‘It is Russ!’55

  As if spring-loaded, both came to their feet. Taking a step forward, they firmly shook hands, grinning like idiots. After the initial shock of their reunion subsided they became locked in a conversation which, in Brickhill’s words, ‘bubbled with explosive pops of surprise like porridge on the boil’.56 It turned out that Russ’ departure from Bermuda had been delayed, and he was only now going on to England to a new posting at the vast Royal Navy base at Scapa Flow in Scotland. The auxiliary merchant cruiser he was allocated to was sitting in Halifax’s harbour, and would sail in the same convoy that his little brother was joining.