My father tried to give the impression that during the war he was a pilot in the RAF. It wasn’t unique, a lot of men of a certain age tried to convince people that they’d been one of the Brylcream Boys. Even as a child I’d found this less than convincing. He was fat for a start, but as anyone knows, that can happen. More damning, he had fairly rubbish eyesight which I inherited, and although that changes with age, it doesn’t change from pilot standard to ‘needs glasses for anything close’ in 20 years. Not starting from 20 years old, anyway.
They could also have found out that far from his entire family being conveniently dead, (‘the war, you see, the war, I never talk about it…..’ and other assorted assumed bollocks) and him having no brothers and sisters, he’d had five brothers and sisters. His mother Kate was definitely alive until 1962. Thomas, Alfred, Hilda, Phyllis and Dora, two of whom lived more than 10 years longer than he did and at least three of them alive when he married my mother in 1957. I can understand it may have been slightly inconvenient inviting them to the wedding the other side of the country before the M2, M25 and M4 were built. Not least as all of them were alive when he married whoever he married before that, the woman it looks as if he somehow forgot to get divorced from.
One of the things that’s always puzzled me about John Bennett’s catalogue of lies was how and why nobody ever saw through it. Without the Internet, it was obviously more difficult to find things out, but it wasn’t impossible. I proved that the origin story of being born in Australia was nonsense just by walking into Somerset House, long before the internet was even a twinkle in Tim Berners-Lee’s eye. It took less than half an hour to get a copy of his birth certificate. Anyone could have done it, at any time. Apparently, it hadn’t crossed anybody’s mind.
Called-up to Uxbridge on the first of November 1940, it took precisely one day for the RAF to note “not selected for aircrew,” which rather discounts the pilot fantasy. As any real pilot will tell you, without ground crew, pilots would still be sitting there on the tarmac 80 years later, but that’s hardly the point. You don’t get to wear the wings when you’re an Aircraftman Second Class, nor after the first of May 1941 when you’ve been posted to RAF Colerne as an Aircraftman First Class, nor even when you’ve risen to the dizzying heights of Leading Aircraftman after the 16th September 1941. All this before a posting to Cardington on the 18th January 1944 before the last posting to West Malling in December 1944. The real life active RAF career came to an end on 19th August 1946 with demobilistation. I hadn’t known any of this, nor that LAC 1293736 was only discharged as Class G Reserve on 30th June 1959, just three months before I was born.
Redacted
Last week I applied for John Richard Bennett’s wartime service record. I got an automatic reply to say it would take months. Then two days later I get the record. It doesn’t exactly read like something W.E. Johns would have thought to put in a Biggles story.
What I hadn’t suspected until the Imperial War Museum sent me the .pdf of the original form was the redactions, which tell their own tale. There’s a thick black line through Wife’s Maiden Name. This means that at 20, he had a wife. Otherwise, there would be nothing to redact. There’s no black line through sections of the record where there was nothing to add. It’s a bit of a black line through any real attempt to check who was who though, which you might consider doing when you marry someone. Or maybe that’s just me.
There are some odd leads in other records I’ve found. In 1949, 1950, 1951 and 1952 a Jean Bennett appears on the electoral roll at the same address as John Bennett, at 4 Orchard Close, St Mary Cray, Kent. In the 1960s a John Bennett lives at the same address as a Catherine Bennett at another address in St Mary Cray. Neither Jean nor Catherine show up as having married, died or even been born, so far as I’ve found so far. But it’s a slow business. They’ll turn up sooner or later.
