As the war went on my friend William Fraser and I both signed up. I joined the RAF and went off to train on Tiger Moth aeroplanes in the United States.

Our training didn’t last long and I was soon part of the team on a Lancaster Bomber.

I was the radio operator and it was my job to listen for information about enemy aircraft and instructions on where we had to drop our bombs. We used Morse Code to send messages between planes and the airbases on the ground updating information about sorties constantly.

On board were also a bombardier who was in charge of the bombs and bullets. (We could fire a thousand bullets a minute from each of the four guns.) The pilot who flew the plane. Navigator who kept us flying in the right direction and the engineer who kept an eye on our fuel and made sure the engines were running well.

From time to time we had leave and were able to return home to visit our friends and family. In 1943 I visited the old swimming-pool in Glebe Street where I was a member of the swimming team. I went with my friend William Fraser who was also on leave. During our swimming session we stopped for a rest and were talking about the war. William said that he had a feeling that this would be the last time he would ever swim in the pool, as he did not think he would ever return again from the war. I told him not to be so pessimistic and that of course we would swim together again. We never did. William never came home.

In his memory and in memory of other members of Inverness swimming team who did not come back, I placed a plaque in the Aquadome.

At the end of the war instead of dropping bombs we spent much of our time collecting British prisoners of war from Germany and returning them home to Britain.