The new month saw the completion of a fine effort on the part of our ground personnel who got to work with a will on the machines which had been battered and damaged as a result of their last visit to BARDIA and today they were, so to speak, putting on the final licks of paint to a job of work which it had been estimated would have kept them busy for nearly two weeks. In actual fact the work was completed by continuous (and voluntary) efforts for a period of hours. The reward for this effort came later - or at least we were told that it "would come" and in the meantime we were ready for any further tasks that might be set.
To-day we received some additional personnel – six pilots who were posted to us from Middle East Pool pending their transfer to an O.T.U. Course. The object of their posting to this squadron was to provide them with an operational background - to see a squadron at work under active service conditions.
It was not intended that these pilots should be trained in flying Maryland aircraft but merely that they should see at first hand how squadrons of this nature operate in the Western Desert. None of the pilots had before flown Maryland aircraft and most of them took the opportunity of going through "cockpit-drill" in these aircraft.