Enlistment in the Royal Air Force

We went to Inverness and, to the recruiting office and checked in different ones. I went, I was going for the navy by the way. I didn’t get far when they saw the operation on my nose. It wasn’t still better you know. I mean it was alright, but he was, he didn’t let me take it anyway. Turned me down and told me to come back. So some of the other boys were still there and they said, “Well, why don’t you come with us?” So I got over in the RAF line. That’s how I got in that. I was taken there, so we went from there to a training camp in, near Liverpool, England and we did all basics and all the rest there. I guess about two months or something like that and then you got posted to a school. I went to a, well a technical school for my trade actually. That was at Wheaton, near Blackpool.

Mr. Austin describes being turned down by the Royal Navy because of his sinus surgery, and joining the Royal Air Force instead.

Stephen Austin

Stephen Austin, Sr. was born in Holyrood, Newfoundland on December 16, 1916. He was the second of four children and was raised on a family farm. His father was also a fisherman. In 1936 he started working as a truck driver. Mr. Austin went to England at the outbreak of war and worked in lumber crews. He enlisted in the Royal Air Force where he trained for a heavy engine mechanic. Mr. Austin served first in England, where he maintained the equipment which raised anti-bombardment balloons. After re-certification, his tour of duty took him to post D-Day Europe where he maintained military vehicles during the Allied advance on Germany. Mr. Austin married a Belgium national, and returned to Newfoundland where he worked as a mechanic. He later returned to France, working several years at the war memorial in Beaumont-Hamel.