The crew was posted to 156 Squadron on 10 September 1942 and travelled by train to RAF Warboys with an extraordinary accumulation of kit.  Hone and Moller – both notoriously messy – stuffed cake tins, revolvers and whatever else came to hand into a mattress cover, tied the misshapen bundle with string and carried it from truck to train and back again.  Halfway there, Hone discovered that he’d left his Post Office savings book beneath his old mattress and had to go back for it.

Their reputation had reached Warboys ahead of them: Kearns had barely entered the Sergeants’ Mess before a voice called, “Here come the mad New Zealanders.”

Warboys was a wartime station, exposed and dispersed, with Nissen huts that froze in winter and sweltered in summer.  The pot-bellied stove seemed either cold or red-hot, coal left outside was liable to disappear, and the wind found its way through every layer of clothing.  Men cycling around the perimeter to service aircraft in the open took frequent spills.  Buck acknowledged the ground crews’ discomfort, though he also observed that most of them could reasonably expect to survive the war, which was more than the aircrew expected for themselves.

On flying evenings, villagers gathered along the road outside the perimeter wire to watch the take-offs.  Aircraft engines filled their days, and local people sometimes knew station news before the airmen did.  Buck remembered their interest and goodwill, though he and his companions showed less consideration for the farmer whose fences they damaged while cutting a shortcut through the wood.  They reasoned that the farmer would still be there when they were gone.  As Buck wrote, “The casualty rate was so high that we never thought we would make it anyway.”

With the Pathfinders they could be required to lead the bomber stream, marking the target with flares for the main force behind them.  At briefing, each captain declared the height at which the flares would be released, and was expected to hold it because the fuses had to be set accordingly.  When Kearns nominated 8,000 feet while other captains chose heights between 14,000 and 24,000, the room reacted with disbelief.  The New Zealanders knew the risks, but believed that most fighters and heavy fire would be drawn to the aircraft higher above.

Their first recorded Pathfinder operation was Bremen on 13 September, followed by Wilhelmshaven the next night and Essen on the 16th, where they had their worst encounter with flak.  Carrying target indicators, they reached the Ruhr with a strong tailwind, and Hone calculated that they were two minutes early.  Industrial haze obscured the ground, but no searchlight or gun had targeted them until the time came to release the flares.  Once the markers ignited, the defences opened up on them.

For twelve minutes, according to Hone’s log, guns across the defended area fired at the Wellington.  From the rear turret, Buck saw full-bodied flashes forming a ring around them: a partial flash suggested a gun directed elsewhere, but a full one meant its barrel was pointing at them.  Now dozens appeared in every direction, shells bursting at their height as searchlights swung across the sky.  Unable to dive away without abandoning the fixed height required for marking, Buck watched the lights and gunfire and called the moment to turn.  Kearns pushed the aircraft into a shallow U-shaped manoeuvre, drawing the searchlights and guns after them; just as the defences regained their aim, Buck called for the next turn, taking them back through the disturbed sky to the space they had left.  They repeated the turns, crossing and recrossing the shellfire while the main force came in behind them.

Shell fragments passed through the fuselage, and Morrie later described sheltering between the armour-plated doors.  A hot piece of shell roughly four inches long struck Moller at the back of the neck, briefly knocking him unconscious before lodging in the collar of his battledress.  When the crew tested the undercarriage, however, the hydraulics still worked and Kearns was able to land safely.  The ground crew counted 132 holes, or as many as 150 in some accounts, ranging from finger-sized punctures to openings as large as a head.  The aircraft never flew operationally again, remaining on the airfield as a source of spare parts until it was carted away months later.  Visitors came to stare at it, amazed that men had survived inside.

Buck considered it the roughest “doing over” they received.  He had been too busy watching the defences and timing the turns to put on his parachute, believing that a direct hit while they held course would settle the matter before it could help him.  Of the thousands of shells fired at them, none struck squarely, and he could offer no explanation for their escape.

They attacked Saarbrücken on the 19th and Krefeld on 2 October, before flying to Genoa on 7 November at the start of the long Italian operations.  Hours of flying lay between Warboys and northern Italy, with brilliantly lit Switzerland standing out in blacked-out Europe.  Buck watched the Alpine valleys and snow-covered peaks closely, trying to decide which valley might offer an escape if the Wellington could not clear the mountains.  He saw aircraft strike the Matterhorn and disappear.  Once across the Alps, they descended to attack from about 10,000 feet.

Returning from Hamburg on 9 November, they had to make a belly landing when the undercarriage malfunctioned, but Kearns brought the Wellington down with the crew unhurt.

They returned to Italy for raids on Turin on 18 and 20 November, flew to Stuttgart on the 22nd and attacked Turin again on the 28th.  Over Turin, a Lancaster passed so close above the Wellington that Buck instinctively ducked in his turret.  He could see oil stains, missing paint and the details of its underside as it cleared their tall tail by only feet, and believed that no one in the Lancaster ever saw them.  Duisburg followed on 20 December and Munich on the 21st.  During these months of cold and repeated operations, Buck was appointed acting flight sergeant and received the Pathfinder Force badge.

On one return from Italy, Terry asked Hone to take the controls while he went back to the Elsan near the rear turret.  Hone had done a little flying, but on this occasion let one wing remain low for long enough to carry them into the middle of London’s balloon barrage.  By the time Terry took over again, they were among the cables, with the balloons visible well above them.  Buck could hear what he called their “squawkers” coming through the intercom and was acutely conscious of how much distance he wanted between the Wellington and a balloon cable.

Searchlights helped them find a way out.  Separate lights picked out the balloons, while another waved them through a corridor.  Terry followed its directions faithfully until they were clear, much to the crew’s relief.  It was an uncomfortable end to a trip that had already taken them across occupied Europe and the Alps, but once safely away they had plenty to say to Hone.  For some time afterwards, one of them would remember the incident and bring it up with “those bloody balloons.”  Buck trusted Hone’s navigation, but that did not spare him the teasing when he had given the rest of the crew such an opportunity.

The long flights also left the men dangerously tired.  Before take-off, Buck would often rest for a minute or two with his head on his parachute, settling his nerves and cooling down after the effort of dressing and reaching the aircraft.  He associated one narrow escape with the exhaustion of repeated trips to Italy: hearing the engines run up and throttle back, he struggled to his feet, picked up his parachute and started towards the turret, only to find a turning propeller directly in front of him, driving air into his face.  He had not gone far enough around the aircraft and had to draw back and give the blade a wider berth.  In his memory it was a Lancaster’s outer propeller, though the precise flight is uncertain.  He never forgot how tired he had been or how close he had come to it.

Not everything Buck saw in the air was frightening.  On one flight, with the wings in cloud and the fuselage clear, he watched St Elmo’s fire form around the propellers and run along the metal parts of the aircraft.  The light reached the guns and even came off the fingers of his gloves.  He remembered it as pretty, harmless and interesting, worth recording alongside the much more violent lights he saw on operations.  Like the geese over Winnipeg or the snowy owl in Somerset, it caught his attention for its own sake and remained with him long after the flight itself.

The conversion to Lancasters in January 1943 began what proved to be the brief final phase of Buck’s operational flying.  He thought the new aircraft a much better machine, faster and able to carry a greater load, though he retained an affection for the Wellington, whose geodetic structure could absorb extraordinary punishment and bring them home.  The operations records list three Lancaster sorties, all in W4851: Lorient on 26 January 1943, Düsseldorf the following night and Hamburg on 30 January.  The night before the last of these, an Australian friend had gone missing wearing Buck’s only pair of electrically heated slippers.  With little time or inclination to negotiate the stores system for a replacement, Buck decided that extra socks would have to suffice.

The extra socks proved hopelessly inadequate when the crew was instructed to climb to 22,000 feet to pass above cloud over Holland.  Ice hammered against the fuselage, and although other bombers turned back with severe icing, W4851 continued towards Hamburg.  In the rear turret, the cold spread steadily up through Buck’s feet and legs despite his efforts to keep them warm by stamping against the floor.  His nose ran continuously with a cold, and the moisture froze on his oxygen mask or microphone in icicles three or four inches long, which he repeatedly broke away.  Ice also built up on the Brownings until he doubted they would fire.

By Hamburg he had no sensation below his knees and was so miserable with cold that he found himself indifferent when a German fighter approached them over the target.  It did not fire.

Over the North Sea, Kearns sent Morrie back to relieve him, and Buck made his way to the wireless operator’s position, where hot air from an engine-fed duct warmed the seat.  As feeling returned to his feet and legs, the pain became so intense that he rocked backwards and forwards, waiting for the agony to pass.

After landing he stumbled into sick bay and was taken by ambulance to Ely Hospital with blackened toes.  Treatment for frostbite was uncertain, so he lay with his feet protruding from the end of the bed and waited; four doctors later told him he had been fortunate not to lose his toes.  They healed, but a medical board prohibited him from flying above 10,000 feet, ending his operational career.  When the Kearns crew next flew on 16 February, another rear gunner took his place.

By the time Buck returned to Warboys, his crewmates had finished their tours and been posted away.  After months of depending on one another in the air, he found himself without them, moving between his billet, the mess, the gunnery room and the Pelican pub.  Occasionally he was told to clean guns on an aircraft, and often found a way not to do it.

Feeding himself offered another way to fill the days. Mess meals were adequate at best, and Buck was particularly put off liver after seeing large cattle livers delivered on the open back of a lorry.  They bore lesions that reminded him of hydatids he had seen at home.  He could not be sure what they were, but even when the liver looked respectable on a plate he would not eat it, making do with vegetables and buttered bread instead.  He disliked the frequent Brussels sprouts too, although he gladly accepted any spare doughboys left by other men.

For supper he devised something more to his liking.  Most days he bought a quarter loaf of bread, and he supplemented it with eggs from the commanding officer’s ducks.  Collecting them meant taking off his trousers and wading into the pond up to his knees, after which he cooked the eggs in margarine in his dixie over the stove.  With bread and a cup of coffee and milk, they made a meal he could arrange for himself.  There was also a tin of Marmite he had pinched in Iceland, which travelled with him for so long that he only threw it out when he moved to Mepal before leaving England.

Despite their expectations, every man in the original crew survived the war.  Jack Moller went to a training appointment at Moreton-in-Marsh, and Morrie Egerton also came through alive.  After a spell of instructing at operational training units, Terry Kearns and Hone Barclay returned to combat together with 617 Squadron, the Dambusters, and continued flying into the war’s final months.  The partnership formed in training had lasted beyond Buck’s time in the turret, and the men who had joked about never becoming grandfathers all had a future after the war.

In April 1943 Buck learned that he had been awarded the Distinguished Flying Medal, news that seemed to him to come “out of the blue”.  He was deeply pleased, both for himself and for what he knew it would mean to his family.  Among aircrew, the ribbon marked someone who had been “in the rough stuff”.  The squadron record noted the award in April, and it was published in the London Gazette on 20 April 1943. The citation read:

"Flight-Sergt. Price has at all times displayed an excellent knowledge of his duties as air-gunner.  He has taken part with keenness and efficiency in a large number of sorties against heavily-defended enemy targets, and by his alertness and courage has set a worthy example to other members of the squadron."

He was promoted to Pilot Officer on 11 May 1943 and Flying Officer six months later.  For all the satisfaction of his award and promotion, however, he missed the crew and the work he had put so much effort into learning.  He was alive and decorated, but his days no longer revolved around flying.

His interest in rear gunnery lasted long after he stopped flying, as did his concern that other men had not learned the lessons that had helped him survive.  During operations he had described his evasive drills to the gunnery officer and subsequently seen them written up by that officer in an RAF magazine.  He remembered the officer as a man who took an interest in his gunners and encouraged them, although it did not prevent him from punishing Buck for reporting late one morning.  Buck had to report to the watch officer every hour for an evening.

Passing ideas to other gunners was harder.  He had tried to explain the importance of standing where they could see beneath the tail, but thought that only a few had taken notice.  The same reluctance to appear a big head that governed life in the mess restrained him: on 75 Squadron there was always somebody who had flown more operations, and he hesitated to press his views too strongly.  Years later, reading an account of the infamous 1944 Nuremberg raid – where 96 of 779 aircraft were lost on one night – he became so angry at descriptions of gunners failing to see fighters approaching from below that he could read only a little at a time.  In his view, they were still being lost in circumstances he had learned to watch for in 1942 and 1943.  Looking back, he wished he had been more persistent. “I feel now that I could have done more than I did.”