Kristen Alexander - Author: June 2015

One of the things a history writer has to face is that no matter what she digs up by way of research, not all of it will find its way into the published book. Such was the case with much of Pat Hughes' background. Much of that, sadly, was consigned to the literary equivalent of the cutting room floor. But rather than sweep it all up and toss it out, I saved it. Pat has struck a cord with many aviation enthusiasts and some readers of Australia's Few and the Battle of Britain have asked for a little bit more of his childhood and formative years. And so, here is an Australia's Few outtake which I hope sheds a little more light on the man Pat Hughes grew into.

Paterson Clarence Hughes Junior could trace his family back to the First Fleet. John Nichols was convicted at London’s Old Bailey for stealing and was transported to Australia in Scarborough, arriving in January 1788. He completed his sentence in 1791 and accepted a land grant at Prospect Hill. His fortunes waxed over the years; his land holdings increased; he became known as a successful farmer and he advanced from constable to Chief Constable of Prospect Hill. He started living with Ann, also a convict, in 1802 and later married her. John’s fortunes continued to improve and by 1814 he had ceased to receive any assistance from government stores and was solely responsible for maintaining his family, convict labourers and employees. In 1814 he sold his original land grant but during the following five years his luck waned and he found himself employed as a labourer. But luck smiled again. In 1820 he was granted land in the County of Cumberland and by 1822, the year of his death, he had a holding of 80 acres. John and Ann had eleven children. Their seventh child, Amelia, had been born in 1811. In July 1827 she married Charles Hughes, who, like her father was also convict but had received his ticket of leave two months before the wedding. They had ten children, the foundation of a large extended and thoroughly Australian family.

In 1851, the first alluvial gold had been discovered at Cowra Creek in the Monaro, an area of pastoral and mining riches at the foot of NSW’s Snowy Mountains. By 1888 mining of payable rock deposits had commenced and many miners and their families came to the area. By 1896, there were about fifty miners at the Cowra Creek mine, with a supporting infrastructure of general store, hotel, butcher and blacksmith. There were also enough children to warrant two school teachers in the one room-and-veranda school at Upper Cowra Creek.

At some point, John Nichols’ great grandson, born Percival Clarence Hughes but recorded on his marriage registration as Paterson C, came to the Monaro. It is now a mystery as to why he changed his name from Percival to Paterson (and the adopted name meant so much that he gave it to his youngest son, who was known as Paterson Clarence Hughes Junior), although he was known as Percy all his life. Born in 1874 at Belford in NSW’s Hunter region, he had trained as a teacher and had accepted a post at the Upper Cowra Creek school, which was located close to the mine. In 1895, he married Caroline Vennell whose own Australian roots were well established. Her father had emmigrated to Australia in 1841 and her mother in 1853, both settling in the Cooma area. Born in 1878, Caroline had lived all her life in the Monaro.

Percy and Caroline’s first child, Murial (known as Midge) was born in 1896. Their youngest son was born on 19 September 1917 at, or near, Numeralla, near Cooma. Paterson Clarence Hughes Junior, known as Pat, was the eleventh of twelve children—Elizabeth, the youngest, died while still an infant—and he appeared to take after his mother.

In an area where ‘every soul about the place is someone else’s cousin’, Percy quickly established his own roots. He and Caroline moved to Peak View soon after their marriage. Over the years, he held a number of teaching posts in local schools. In July 1903 he was head teacher at Jerangle school. It was a far from prestigious posting. Jerangle was a one-roomed, weatherboard school which had about 20 pupils and only operated a few hours each day. Percy resigned in October 1904 and soon after moved on to the Peak View School, another weatherboard one-room-and-veranda school which, until 1906, also operated on a part-time basis. He was one of its earliest teachers and he taught there for many years and his own growing brood was schooled there during that time.

Percy was tall, of slim build, moustachioed, and with piercing grey-blue eyes. His dark hair turned to silver and later, as he aged, to a shock of white. He had a great sense of humour and was very intelligent. He soon gained a reputation in the Monaro and even further afield as a literary talent. He wrote poetry and stories of the Monaro people and events, which were published in the local papers and The Bulletin. Most are lost, but the family still holds copies of some of his works, including one, ‘Little Plain, Jerangle or Jeringle’ which lent its name to one of the area’s local histories. Percy was also renowned as a great reader and was often so engrossed in his books he didn’t arrive at school until after starting time. Percy passed on his great love of reading to his youngest son, who was only too happy to settle down with a good book when he had the opportunity.

It was a happy life of close family and neighbour connections. There were visits to and from Caroline’s family and there were many communal entertainments including picnics, dances, cricket and every year on Empire Day their connections to England (whether as free or convict settlers) were remembered. The day’s celebration finished off with dazzling fireworks which delighted adults and youngsters alike, and lived in the memories of many.

Despite the twenty-one years difference between the ages of the eldest and youngest, Pat and his six sisters and four brothers were close and he considered his family the ‘best...in the world’. Later, he would admit to being homesick when away from them for the first time, and count the days until his return. And when he contemplated the commencement of what would become his final separation, he mused that ‘I would like to go [to Blighty] very much, travel and all that but being away from home for so long appears to be the worse part.’ Naturally enough, Pat was closest to those of about his own age, and one of his few publically-held letters to his sister Marjorie, known as Marj, shows their shared sense of humour and a clear fondness for each other. It also reveals Pat’s protective streak—he exhorted Marj to ‘see you are still a single girl’ until he returns home.

With a new addition to the family appearing regularly—four within the first five years of her marriage—Caroline quickly settled into motherhood. She proved a loving mother and, later, an indulgent, welcoming and doting grandmother but as the family expanded even more, she needed help. As the eldest, Midge was like a second mother to her younger siblings. She was the first to leave the family home, marrying in Annandale, Sydney, in 1916. She and her husband Tom eventually moved to Kiama and always welcomed her large family when they visited. These holidays at her seaside home were always much-anticipated and long-treasured times. Years later, the thought of his sister Marj sunning herself in Kiama while Pat was enduring England’s bleak 1938–39 winter ‘almost gives me apoplexy’. Somehow he managed to ‘gather my fleeing sanity together by thinking hard of things far removed from beaches, sun brown and sun’ by sucking on bits of sleet as they settled on his tongue.

Soon after Pat’s birth, Percy took on the running of the Peak View post office. Sometime after that, Percy accepted an appointment at Cooma Public School. By now he was well known in the area as a poet and greatly respected—the school library would be named after him. Young Pat attended Cooma Public School. He had inherited his father’s sense of humour but his took a more mischievous bent: he was remembered by an old school friend as ‘a bright spark and a practical joker’.

Percy continued teaching for only a few years. The 1921 electoral rolls indicate that in 1921 he was employed as a labourer at Tarsus, Cooma. He worked there for a number of years, but by the 1928 roll he was labouring at Bulong, on Cooma’s Mittagang Road. The family moved to Bulong as well. Pat retained fond memories of the property and years later would compare the ‘quite brown and flat’ countryside around Albury to it. Later that year, Percy, Caroline and those who were still living at home, moved to Sydney (at least Marj, Connie and Pat—the others were long married or, like Fred, had left as soon as they were old enough to get a job). Although they kept in contact with some of the locals after they left the area, Pat and his family’s ties with the Monaro were severed: they had all left, never to permanently return. The Monaro, however, remembers Percy’s youngest son.

Electoral rolls state that they first moved to 18 Knocklayde Street, Ashfield West. They were still there in 1933 but by August 1935 they were living at 5 Gillies Avenue, Haberfield. The rolls also state that Percy continued to be working (or at least identifying) as a labourer. Whether Percy’s permanent retirement from teaching was by choice (he was 56 in 1930) or whether he was a casualty of the Depression is not known but it seems as if the family experienced some financial difficulties. The many moves over the years indicate Percy did not own his own home and, with three school age children when they first arrived, money may have been tight. It appears as if Pat’s brother Bill and sister Valerie paid (or at the very least contributed to) the rent. It is highly likely that, as a labourer, Percy would have only worked sporadically during the Depression years. Whatever the family’s financial circumstances, Caroline stretched her budget to ensure that her family—those at home and visiting children and grandchildren—were well fed. She was a good cook and never lost her habit of keeping the pantry stocked for large family meals.

Pat attended Petersham Public High School from 1931 and attained good results in the Intermediate Certificate. He was remembered as having above average intelligence and indeed, with A passes in English, French, History and Elementary Science and B passes in Maths and Business Principles, he was ranked second of the school’s 106 students who sat for the intermediate. His conduct and attendance while at Petersham were respectable and he was made school prefect in 1932 and vice captain in 1933.

Pat loved sport and during his school years he devoted much of his leisure time to field, court and pool. He was in the premier team of the fourth grade Rugby League competition and played fourth grade tennis in 1931. He moved up to first grade league and also swam for the school in 1932–33. He was in the school life-saving class, held proficiency and first aid certificates, and had attained the bronze medallion.

Pat was also very handy. He had an early fascination with electricity and spent hours constructing crystal radio sets and tuning into programs from all over the world. As an adult he converted his school boy interest in science and radio to some experience in wireless telegraphy and telephony.

After Petersham, Pat attended Fort Street Boys’ High School for eight months, where he obtained satisfactory passes in all subjects before leaving to take up employment as a junior stock clerk with Saunders’ jewellers. It is not known why he did not continue at school but with the Depression still in full swing perhaps he felt the need to join the work force and contribute to the family income. Perhaps too, he had already decided on a career in the air force and he would need to save a considerable nest egg so he could afford the full range of accoutrements of an officer and gentleman in the Royal Australian Air Force. Certainly it was all hands on deck to help outfit him. His sister-in-law Ruby—who married to his brother Fred in 1927—had been a theatre costume designer and seamstress. She could sew anything at all from overcoats to pyjamas and she soon found herself responsible for part of Pat’s RAAF wardrobe, including a dressing gown.

It is not known exactly when Pat first decided that he wanted to be a pilot. It seemed as if Pat had always loved flying and was constantly making balsa wood model aeroplanes while he was at Cooma Public School and later, when he moved to Haberfield. He had read about the premier Great War pilots of both sides of the conflict, including Boelke and Mannock, who he considered ‘the best of all the British pilots in the war.’ Whatever that first spark, in an era of great aerial exploits and general airmindedness, Pat’s fascination for the models soon translated to something more substantial and he had taken a couple of flips with enough time in the air to qualify as flying experience. He later stated that he wanted to join the air force because it ‘will be the thing in [a] couple of years’. As far as he was concerned, his acceptance was a given—when he started his Point Cook diary, he headed it ‘The Chronicles of Hughes Junior. Air Cadet in Air Force (naturally)—and indeed he was accepted. On 20 January 1936, Pat was one of 43 young men, all dressed smartly in their best suits and carrying an assortment of sports equipment, kit, suitcases and travelling trunks, who found their way to RAAF headquarters at Victoria Barracks.

It is hard to get a measure of the personality of someone who is 70-odd years dead, but not impossible. Much can be learned of Pat from his 1936 diary and extant letters as well as from those who remember him, or who have heard the larger-than-life stories that have evolved. A self-confessed tardy correspondent, Pat admitted writing to his parents and siblings ‘every now and then when George RI can spare my time’ and often in response to some ‘gnattering’ (sic) by his siblings, as relayed by his mother, that he owed someone or other a letter. He may not have inherited his father’s poetic abilities but his letters and diary are well-written (in beautiful handwriting), full of wit and with a sparkling liveliness. They are also heavily laden with sarcasm. Even so, they are a joy to read and very revealing, which is just as well, because, in the photo he sent along with his RAAF application, he seemed to be doing his best to hide his buoyant personality and vibrant zest for living.

This photo, too, reveals that he took some time to grow into his good looks. Five feet 11½ inches tall, with grey eyes, brown hair, and a medium complexion he was, at 17, a bit gormless looking, with acne and a partly opened mouth, uncomfortably attired in his best suit and tie, with handkerchief peeking from his jacket pocket. Despite this unprepossessing image, it was not too long before he grew into a handsome young man who looked well in RAAF uniform (assuming he could keep it neat; he was none too tidy and on at least one occasion his tunic looked ‘as if the dog slept on it for about a week). He had a solid frame to match his height but soon fill out even more. A hearty eater, he grew into a big, well-built young man but not too overweight—although he did admit to being so heavy at Christmas 1938 when he reached thirteen stone nine pounds that he ‘used to get tired carting myself about’.

Despite that early photographic evidence, Pat never lost his boyhood reputation of a practical joker and the childish bright spark translated in the adult to ‘a tremendous joie de vivre’. He was remembered as having ‘more boisterous life in him’ than anyone else. He was personality plus, and his sheer zest for life was often expressed at full voice, despite not being able to carry a single tuneful note. He was often ringleader of great pranks such as the time he and his friends debagged one of their fellow cadets and threw the hapless victim’s trousers over the rafters of the mess anteroom; the time he and some RAF friends were caught erecting a toilet—pedestal, seat, cistern and chain—outside a pub; and the time he won a raw duck in the Christmas sweep, painted a swastika on its chest and then hung it by its neck over the front doors of the mess. It was so cold it stayed there for three days. He finally took it down and generously gave it to his batman as a present. There was no doubt about it, Pat lived life to the full.

Sport appears to have taken a back seat after Pat left school but, when he commenced his Point Cook cadetship, it became all important. Sport was compulsory and Rugby was played constantly. At first Pat did not appreciate having his precious leisure time filled with football and sarcastically recorded that the daily program was ‘all cared for by some far-sighted person who arranges our sport to suit himself. We have such a lot of recreation that if we were allowed our own way frequently we would become rather fat and lazy—or so were are told.’ But by the time the junior course commenced in July he was pleased to note that they were able to muster a good team out of them.

Pat may have been a school prefect and vice captain but it didn’t necessarily follow that he would be a paragon of perfect behaviour at Point Cook. He often felt frustrated at the school syllabus, his progress, the strictures of RAAF rules or just life in general and he would vent his irritation as energetically and rowdily as possible. For instance, ‘one glorious pillow fight and a bucket of water helped liven somebody else’s dreary existence’, followed the next day by spending the ‘entire morning playing practical jokes on friends’ after being bored witless during a session on signals, and ‘a concerted attack on the water supply in the form of a glorious water fight’. He would hide the bedclothes of a course mate for the sheer hell of it and, on occasion, he was so pent up that, feeling like ‘the proverbial ball of muscle’, he would head into the mess ‘to start a fight’. With so much vibrant but disruptive energy, it is no wonder that he was charged with ‘conduct to the prejudice of good order and air force discipline’ because he was caught talking and being generally inattentive during a lecture and, even when he was checked by his instructor, continued to disrupt the class. He was confined to barracks for three days to cool his heels. Pat’s own verdict of the charge? ‘Fat, illiterate little swine [i.e. his instructor] but I suppose I deserved it.’ He may have accepted the charge but was not impressed with the punishment: ‘Can’t read the papers, have to report like a paroled convict’ and he couldn’t appear in the anteroom until meals commenced. However, he facetiously noted that he was able to take advantage of the extra 10 minutes this restriction afforded him to ‘sit down and meditate on my crimes, so to speak.’

Pat had a strong sense of self which ranged from self deprecating—he thought the newest member of his family had better be ‘strong and healthy to stand up to the shock of having an uncle like me’—to the supremely confident—he never had any doubt that he would be accepted into the Royal Australian Air Force. Even so, his self confidence soon took a battering and he realised he would have to ‘try very hard to succeed’. Pat also had an introspective side and a few months after commencing at Point Cook, he displayed a growing maturity.

While many of his fellow trainees were watching, 19 year old Norman Chaplin tried to parachute from a plummeting aircraft. He had been flying solo and practising aerobatics when his port wing crumpled as he came out of a loop. He jumped from the diving aircraft but the parachute did not open fully. It had either entangled in the falling aircraft or there had not been enough height when Chaplin pulled the ripcord. Chaplin was still alive when he landed but was fatally injured and died shortly afterwards. Chaplin, ‘a quiet gentlemanly lad’ was well liked by his class mates. Pat, no doubt in shock himself, recorded Chaplin’s death bluntly: ‘Bloody awful. First death. Boys are taking it pretty badly.’ That night, the officers, who had witnessed many training deaths, ‘put on a show in the mess’ and, although Pat considered that ‘it has taken the sting out of things, the thought of Chaplin’s death still hangs around’. But the sting did not last. There was little time to dwell on the accident because the instructors kept Chaplin’s classmates constantly on the go. The official attitude was to just get on with things and the next morning it was business as usual with flying tests, formation flying, stall turns and—perhaps to ensure they all got back on the horse again, so to speak—loops. Chaplin was buried with full ceremonial honours on 18 April and by Monday 20 April, after a weekend off which saw Pat and his friends acting the goat in the mess playing chariot races with the easy chairs, Pat noted that ‘the effects of Chaplin’s death are wearing off completely. The boys are coming through OK’.

Pat, too, came through and went on to complete his cadetship, coming 28th in his class with 66.3%. It is interesting that Major Edward Corringham ‘Mick Mannock VC, DSO, MC and Bar was his Great War hero, as he proved a particularly apt role model, given the successes and stresses of Pat’s air force career. Mannock may have been the highest-scoring British ace of all time (Pat did not surpass him but proved to be Australia’s highest scoring ace of the Battle of Britain) and Pat was not alone in considering him the greatest fighter pilot of the war. Mannock was an aggressive pilot but later suffered from nervous tension, as did Pat. Among other things, Mannock’s posthumous Victoria Cross citation stated that ‘this highly distinguished officer, during the whole of his career in the Royal Air Force, was an outstanding example of fearless courage, remarkable skill, devotion to duty and self-sacrifice, which has never been surpassed’. Perhaps Pat’s qualities did not surpass Mannock’s but he certainly displayed fearless courage, remarkable skill, devotion to duty and self-sacrifice throughout his Battle of Britain career and until his death, 12 days short of this 23rd birthday.