Hamilton Rotary enjoy fraternal talk about heroes

Jul 24 2008 by Margaret Shaw, Hamilton Advertiser

HAMILTON Rotary welcomed past president of the club, Charlie McBain, as guest speaker at their recent meeting.

Charlie took as the title for his talk an old headline ‘Express joins stars in battle for justice’ which referred to the proposal that medals be struck for the servicemen who served with Bomber Command in World War II.

This led Charlie to talk about his heroes. He developed this theme further to refer to heroes in his own family, his brothers Jack and Douglas.

Charlie’s first hero was Jack, his older brother, who was in the Territorial Army before the war and joined the Royal Engineers two weeks before the start of hostilities. Jack was immediately sent to France where it took the force two weeks to reach its destination and less than a week to flee to Cherbourg pursued by the German army.

On return to ‘Blighty’, army personnel were given the opportunity to join the Royal Air Force. After manning the guns at the fortified island of Inchcolm in the Forth, Jack sought a transfer to the RAF and became a Pathfinder Navigator in Bomber Command.

He and his fellow crew were involved in many bombing raids over enemy territory and were called on to drop spies into the occupied countries. Jack often wondered what became of the brave young people the bombers parachuted in.

As the tide turned in favour of the allies, Jack’s bomber crew were involved in towing in the gliders at Arnhem and at D-Day. Almost 75 per cent of the commandos involved in these raids were lost.

Towards the end of the war Jack had a more relaxed time in Norway, a highlight of which was driving with some of his mates about Oslo in the car of the Norwegian traitor, Vadkun Quizling.

Charlie’s other brother, Douglas, had a different and less demanding time in the services. After surviving a crash landing in Barra, Douglas was sent to India where the RAF discovered he was a talented footballer.

Captain Tommy Walker (of Hearts FC fame) formed a football team of all-stars. The team travelled about India, playing exhibition matches to entertain the troops.

The down part of his stay in India was all the killing that arose as a result of the build-up to partition. There was serious unrest that led to serious skirmishes among the various religions in India and Pakistan.

On demob, Douglas played for Queen’s Park FC and became Charlie’s football hero when he was selected for the last British football team to play in the Olympics. He was the only Scot to play in all the games.

In his vote of thanks, past president Bob Hamilton praised Charlie for his presentation.