LIves in Cricket No 31 - Walter Robins

84 based pilots to be sent for ‘r and r’. When Robbie arrived everything was chaotic, with practically no headquarters staff, no commanding officer and everything in process of being built, so Robbie took over. Group Captain Blake finally arrived as commanding officer to find everything under control and soon Robbie was promoted to Squadron Leader. As soon as Walter arrived in Canada he had cabled Kathleen in Australia and suggested that she fly over to join him for a few weeks. They had not seen each other for nearly a year and she jumped at the chance, finding a boarding school for both children with arrangements for Penelope to stay with Don and Jessie Bradman during the school holidays and Charles to go back to the Ramsays. She returned to San Francisco by boat and then flew to Montreal via New York and then on to New Brunswick, where Robbie was waiting to take her to Charlottetown by R.A.F. plane. Then, on 7 December 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbour and Kathleen recalled: As soon as everyone had recovered from the shock, Walter set about pulling strings to get me a passage to Australia to fetch the children back to Canada. It appeared that Australia was in peril with all their Armies and equipment overseas. Eventually I got a berth on a little Swedish freighter going out with an innocent cargo under a neutral flag. When we left New York we slipped into Newport News and took on our ‘innocent cargo’ which was tanks, guns and ammunition of all sorts for the US troops going to Australia. On our way down we heard by radio of the fall of Malaya and Singapore and were pretty anxious, but when we got to Sydney it was full of Yanks. The War Years Sqn Ldr R.W.V.Robins with colleague Douglas Smith-Bingham in Canada in 1942.