Interview with Flt Sgt Ken Gilkes RAAF: "The Last of the Guinea Pigs"

An interview by Theo Clark with Flt Sgt Charles Kenneth Gilkes, Royal Australian Air Force - "The last of the Guinea Pigs".

In 2013, RAAF veteran Ken Gilkes approached me one evening at our local and asked if I might be able to record his war story. Ken had seen my Lane Cove Rugby history, and was a lifelong resident of the neighbourhood.

During the War, Ken flew with Bomber Command in England. Among his friends from air training school was the actor  Charles "Bud" Tingwell, who became a Spitfire reconnaissance pilot. 

Ken flew Britain's iconic Wellington bombers, but on 7 September 1943, he was piloting a Short Stirling four engine bomber, when his plane was downed in a hit and run attack by a German JU 88 fighter-bomber, which dropped out of the darkness over head of his friend Freddie Phillips' plan, as they were on final approach to their airfield at night.

Ken crash-landed the aircraft in flames, it broke in half allowing the rear and mid gunners, navigator, wireless operator and flight engineer to escape relatively unscathed. The cockpit was meanwhile engulfed in flames. Ken managed to scramble out and leap into a pool of burning burning petrol, while his screen pilot and bomb-aimer did not survive. Ken was transferred to the RAF hospital at East Grinstead, which had been established to care for burned airmen. Here he undertook saline treatment and surgery under the pioneering oversight of Sir Archie McIndoe and met great friends like Freeman Strickland, who was burned two days after Ken. 

Freddie Phillips recalled that when he and his crew visited Ken at the hospital soon after, "two of my crew fainted when they saw him." Ken is believed to have been the worst burned Australian pilot to have survived the war. 

The air war created an unprecedented surge in severe burns patients and the patients and McIndoe formed a unique bond, founding what became known as the Guinea Pigs Club ("Guinea Pigs", because their treatment was so experimental).

Initially a social and drinking club to assist with rehabilitation, the club's membership endured long after the war, with Prince Phillip becoming their president in 1960. Ken attended their last formal reunion in 2007 and when he passed away in 2014, was believed to be the last of the Australian Guinea Pigs. 

Ken spent two years in hospital before returning to Australia, where his childhood sweetheart Roma Bessel-Brown was waiting for him. "You haven't changed", she told him. "You might look a little different, but you are the same person." The couple were married, had three children, and could still be seen holding hands, walking through Lane Cove shops 70 years later, when this recording was made. 

Ken allowed me to record this audio interview of his story in 2013, and I have more recently added footage and photographs of the era to turn it into a film. 

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View more war memoirs recorded by Theo Clark