It's Garner, sir. Garner. Welcome to our second We Have Ways To Make You Talk.

I'd rather say Chester Eyes, I'd rather say Dam's Raid, because Dam Busters you get sucked into the movie, the mythologisation of the story, the black and white epic.

I'm a big fan of the special effects though, because when the big splash comes, you can see that they've cut a hole in the film and put some water, the visual effects are very exciting.

James, what are you looking at there? Well, we've got a replica of the upkeep, which is obviously the bomb that they're dropping, the depth charge, the mine, whatever you want to call it.

And actually it's been plastered with lots of photographs. I'm looking at this picture of Guy Gibson in his office, but here's Joe McCarthy, crew, there's Big Joe, he's the only American to serve.

He was a coast guard in New York State, I think he was, decided to come and join the RAF, went up to Canada, joined, when he had the opportunity to join the USAAF, once they'd entered the war, he turned that down, he stayed.

There's Johnny Johnson on the left, his ball-mamer, the only Dam Buster still alive. That's it. Guy Gibson in his crew, and I think this particular is a small one, but you can get the original of this at the Imperial War Museum.

And he really, really does look his years there, which is 24. I mean, he's pretending to read that book as well.

He's pretending to read it, but let's be honest, he's not actually reading it until he's just sitting in a, in a, in a, in a field, looking wimpsum in a, in a field of poppies.

But I mean, I, Gibson's a sort of tricky character. He was obviously, you know, he was a little bit of a martinette, he tended to kind of, you know, the accusation was the only talk to officers and not too much turns here.

That's really true. I think if you're kind of a winkamander of a squadron this size, you know, it's just not that much opportunity to, you know, you still had, you had different messes and all that stuff.

Well, in the, in the, in the, in the previous part of this podcast series, you, you did make clear how busy was, how much pressure he was under.

Yeah. How little time they had, how quickly it's all been thrown together.

Yeah. So it must have just this, you know, the 16th of May, I've just come up in an absolutely rough.

But I think the interesting thing about, about Gibson is, you know, when I was doing my, my book on, on the dams raid, I kind of thought it really looked into him.

And the thing that struck me was just, he was in no shape to do this at all. I mean, you know, he's clearly suffering from combat fatigue in January 1943, let alone in March when his tenorship of 106 squadron comes over.

And there's this very, very famous broadcast by Richard Dimbleby, father of Johnson and David.

Who goes on this, he goes on a, on a Lancaster over to Berlin, a raid on Berlin. And he describes it all, you know, the twinkling of lights and the flack and the kind of, you know, the shaking around and the distant lights of, of Berlin as they come over the sound of it.

I mean, it's incredibly vivid broadcast. And you can still hear it, but you can actually read it as well. It's an amazing piece.

Anyway, the pilot on that was Gibson. Yeah. And the very next day Gibson goes over to Cysten where he's got this platonic friendship, this very intense platonic friendship with a nurse, it called Maggie North.

And he goes into the hospital and says, can I see nurse North, please, corporal, or whatever she was then. And they say, yeah, we'll just get it. And he goes back out into the car.

And the kind of, you know, the sister calls up Maggie North and says that someone to see you outside, I think you better go, go, go talk to him. And she goes out to the car and there he is in the car. And he's just staring straight ahead.

...