Here we are all together dressed in our special uniforms and ready to fly. The picture is taken in Cape Town before or after a flight.
In Cape Town we mainly had practice on air navigation, which was very interesting. On the plane. The English had everything so organized, they were great. Of course, we didn't have many real English.
Most of them were Welsh and Scotch. The Scotch were the best. What I liked most was their discipline. For example they would teach the machine gun of an airplane and how to dismantle it and turn it into screws and nuts, and mantle it anew so it can be used again.
Our trainer on armaments was a Flight Sergeant. In the class, we had students that were Flight Lieutenants and even of higher ranks.
Because they were people that had fought and now wanted to join the air force and because they were very good, they were sending them too. You should see when the Flight Sergeant was giving the lesson, how the Flight Lieutenants sat in front of him.
Even though they were allies, the English and the South African really disliked each other. Especially in Pretoria, where there were many Boers, there would be battles. At the bars and wherever else. The Greeks avoided trouble, they didn't mix.
Something that made an impression on me when I went to South Africa, was that I found there Greeks from the Sailing Club.
They had left from here as refugees and went to Johannesburg, opened a Tea Room and made a lot of money. Their Tea Room was open all night. There we were told that most of the Tea Rooms were owned by Greek.
At the end of 1944 we finished. But we weren't fit to fight yet. One had to do the OTU, which was the Operational Training Unit. They trained you on the aeroplane that you were going to fly with.
However, we didn't do the OTU. We didn't do our OTU, because by that time Greece was free and they sent us back
