Remembering Warrant Officer Howard Scott

My late father, Howard Scott, was 19 years old when he joined the RAF in 1941. He was brought up in Bentley, Doncaster, attended Doncaster Grammar School for boys and was a Deputy Headmaster at the local primary school (which he had attended as a boy) for over 20 years. Originally training in a Gypsy Moth, he flew more than 20 different kinds of aircraft during his career; however, as a pilot in 99 Squadron, he flew Wellington Bombers and Dakota transport and reconnaissance planes in DC3 Unit.

He was a modest and retiring man, reluctant to talk of his wartime service, and we have pieced together his story from half told reminiscences and the accounts that his comrades have given us. We think that he felt guilty that he survived the conflict when so many perished during the war and he refused to accept his medals on discharge. My mother sent away for them and having had them framed, she hung them up on the wall, without telling him. Later he took them down and buried them in the back garden where they probably remain today.

He flew out of various airfields in Lincolnshire and both Finningley and Lindholme, near Doncaster. At first, he was involved in bombing raids over Germany, flying over occupied Holland enroute. On one fateful occasion as his squadron returned, they were attacked and decimated. My father saw other pilots bailing out and being shot in the skies, killed before they landed. His plane was damaged; only flying one engine, he decided not to bail out and to try to get his crew safely home. As the pilot, he was the only member of the crew to be issued with a parachute and a service revolver. On return to East Anglia (at this time he was based at Moreton-in -the Marsh), the plane crash landed and burst into flames. Badly injured with a broken back, only my dad and the navigator his best friend, Paddy Benson, survived.

Following recuperation, Paddy Benson and my father were posted to ACSEA and stationed in Chaklala Rawalpindi, India for the remainder of the war. He was once mistaken for a contemporary celebrity, King Edward VIII, when travelling by train in India. The trains fascinated him, they were very overcrowded with people hanging on to the sides and riding on top. A woman with 3 children entered his compartment and placed a child on each of her knees, as she reached over to place the baby on his lap, much to his surprise, an official from the Indian embassy sidled up: "Are you travelling incognito, Your Royal Highness?" he enquired. To which my father replied, quick as a flash, "Yes, kindly remove this infant from my person and escort me to First Class!" The Official responded somewhat ruefully, "Actually Sir, this is First Class!"

There were brushes with real celebrities. My father flew Lady Mountbatten, various generals, and the writer Freya Stark around India via Dakota. He attended tiger shoots, met Rajas, rode elephants and camels during his time there. One day, a woman came out of the tea plantation and lay down under the wing of the aircraft where it was cool. There she gave birth unattended, picked up her newborn child and placed him in her tea picking basket. She then returned to the field to continue working!

Having seen terrible atrocities committed by the Japanese in the jungles of Burma, he was later posted to Germany and witnessed the liberation of Belson Concentration Camp.

Many of the remains of pilots and aircraft of 99 Squadron were submerged in the marsh land around Amsterdam. They were preserved due to the composition of the soil there and have been reclaimed by Stichting Aircraft Recovery Group, who have a small museum at Laandsmeer. The reclamation group have forged links with the current RAF 99 Squadron. Following my father's death, my mother donated his RAF uniform and sheepskin flying boots (he used to garden in the latter!) to the museum at Laandsmeer and they can be seen there today. There are other displays and in one which relates to the Dutch Resistance there is an example of the fold-up wooden bicycles which were also dropped by my father's squadron, as not only bombs were dropped by Wellington Squadrons flying over Europe. There is a monument on the marshes at Landsmeer to those who died in raids returning from Germany and remembrance parades and services are conducted on this site. This is a fitting place for my father's uniform to situated as it is where many of his comrades died. Furthermore, his ashes are interred in Finningley Churchyard very near to the RAF graves placed there from the conflict of 1940-1945.