Allan Hunter Hammet was born on 24 July 1921. At the start of the Second World War, he was working as a chemist’s assistant in Red Cliffs, Victoria, Australia. By the end of the war, still only twenty-three, he had flown thirty-three bomber operations from England, had been decorated with the DFM, had then flown a further thirteen supply missions from Italy, had been shot down and wounded, had spent the best part of six months in Poland on the run with partisans, and had then married a Polish girl.
His RAAF career began quietly enough. Following initial training he embarked at Sydney on 27 November 1940 for further training in Canada, where he arrived on 23 December. At No. 2 Wireless School, and at No. 2 Bombing & Gunnery School, he trained as a wireless operator/air gunner. From 6 July to 29 July 1941 he was at sea on the crossing to the UK.
His first posting in England was to No. 2 Signals School, followed by 27 OTU (23 September 1941-11 March 1942), when he was posted to 12 Squadron at Binbrook, Lincolnshire, which was flying operations with the Mark II Wellington.
Whether or not he shared the Australian serviceman’s disdain of authority is not known, but he was absent without leave (AWOL) on 24/25 April 1942, for which he received a ‘Severe Reprimand’ and forfeited one day’s pay. Posted on 16 May to 460 (RAAF) Squadron, at Breighton, Yorkshire, he was AWOL again on 20/22 July 1942. This time he was ‘Admonished’ and lost three days’ pay. On another occasion, he and others of his crew had had a few beers one night in the town of Goole. Not fancying the long eight-mile walk back to Breighton, they ‘borrowed’ some bicycles but, coming upon an unattended steamroller, agreed that that would be a much better mode of transport.
Ditching the bicycles, they ‘climbed aboard, threw some coal into the fire box, and, after some pushing and pulling of levers, the monster began to move. As there was no mutual agreement who would drive, whenever one pulled a lever the other automatically pushed one, consequently a rather erratic course along the road was set. However, a small crowd of bystanders had by this time gathered to watch the spectacle and, with plenty of encouragement being given, they pursued a course for base, travelling at a speed which is not normally expected or required of a steam roller. They drove it for some distance and about a mile short of their destination they took a dive to port, off the road, over a ditch, and through a hedge where the machine stopped and, despite much coaxing, the crew were unable to restart it and reluctantly they abandoned ship.’231
Allan Hammet went on to complete a tour on 460 Squadron, and was commissioned on 18 January 1943. On 12 March 1943, whilst having a ‘rest’ back at 27 OTU, he was awarded the DFM, the citation for which read:
‘One night, in December 1942, Flight Sergeant Hammet was wireless operator of an aircraft detailed to attack Duisburg [20/21 December 1942]. On the return journey, his apparatus was seriously damaged by gunfire, and became unserviceable. In addition the compass failed but Flight Sergeant Hammet was able to improvise communications which gave the navigator valuable assistance which enabled the aircraft to be flown safely back to base. Throughout, this airman has displayed high courage, efficiency and devotion to duty.’
On 15 October 1943, having been promoted flying officer with effect from 18 July 1943, he was posted to HQ Middle East Air Command. Further promotion to acting flight lieutenant came on 18 September. A posting to 1 RAF Base Area in January 1944 was followed by a move on 1 March to HQ Mediterranean Allied Air Forces, where he spent the next four-and-a-half months. It was not until 14 July 1944 that he was again posted to an operational squadron, in this case 178 Squadron based at Amendola (Foggia) in Italy, which was flying the Mark VI Liberator.
Early in August 1944, despite the impending invasion of the south of France, the decision was made that the two Liberator squadrons of 205 Group RAF – 178 (RAF) and 31 (SAAF) – should, along with the Polish 1586 (SD) Flight, drop supplies to the Armia Krajowa (AK) in and around Warsaw. For this, 205 Group aircrew would pay a high price.
Earlier sorties in August had resulted in no losses, but that would change over the four nights of 13/14–16/17 August, when seventeen Polish and sixty-two RAF and SAAF aircraft attempted drops to Warsaw and other parts of Poland. Only fifteen loads reached the AK, at a cost of three Polish, five RAF and seven South African crews. In addition, two RAF and one SAAF aircraft crashed on return, and others came back with wounded aboard.
On 16/17 August 1944, the last night of the four, six aircraft failed to return, three of them SAAF. Morale among the aircrew in Italy was weakened by these losses, and the views of the commander of 1586 Flight, S/L E. Arciuszkiewicz PAF, who had himself made the Warsaw run, are worth noting. The following is from a message sent on 20 August from the Polish base commander at Brindisi to the head of the Polish Sixth Bureau in London:
‘The commander of 1586 Flight informed me today that in the present state of the anti-aircraft defence of Warsaw, as experience has shown, precision drops from a height of 600-800 ft. are impracticable. In his opinion sending aircraft to Warsaw in practice amounts to the loss of aircraft and crews without any guarantee of supplying the troops in the capital.’232
Even though some aircraft were making drops over selected wooded areas (the Kampinos and Kabacki forests especially), losses continued.
F/L Allan Hammet was flying in Liberator KG933 when it was attacked by a night-fighter on 16/17 August 1944. Though hit in the arms and legs during the attack, he baled out. Landing in a field some twenty-five kilometres east of Kraków, and hiding in woods during the day, he walked for the next two nights, until he decided that he needed treatment for his wounds and food. Chancing his luck at an isolated farmhouse, he was taken in by friendly Poles, who treated his wounds, and fed him. In the early hours of 19 August he was moved by horse and cart to a house on a large estate at Kocmyrzów. A doctor was summoned to look at his wounds.
Provided with civilian clothes he was again moved, to Słaboszów, some forty kilometres north east of Kraków, joining a group of some 200 partisans, men and women, armed with weapons dropped by the RAF and with anything else they could capture from the Germans. Hammet began his active service with the partisans by doing simple guard duty. By the middle of September 1944, he was allowed out on patrols and, eventually, on raiding parties, one of which, on about 23 September, was an attack on a sugar factory at Kazimierza: ‘We killed eight German guards and removed all the sugar from the factory This was distributed at a later date to Poles by the manager of the factory.’
On about 30 September Hammet, having decided to try to get to Sweden from the port of Gdynia (Gdansk), was escorted in stages by partisans to a place near Warsaw to try to locate a mysterious Englishwoman, Miss Walker. (Though Miss Walker had not been found by Hammet, she made her way to Lublin after the Russians had finally occupied Warsaw, and was taken by train with Allied ex-POWs to Odessa.) After ten fruitless days near Warsaw, he returned to his partisan group in the forest at Słaboszów on 20 October.
At the end of that month Allan and the partisans shot down, with rifles and machine guns, a German Fieseler Storch, a light, spotter aircraft, killing the pilot. As a result, the Germans sent a force of a hundred or so White Russians (Ukrainians) from Miechów to deal with the partisans. Well-armed and resolute, the partisans and Allan, somewhere east of Swiecice, took on their opponents in a fierce gun battle that saw nineteen Ukrainians and nine partisans killed. According to Allan, two of the nine partisans were ‘Britishers (escaped POWs further details unknown)’ and that they ‘were magnificent fighters. One had accounted for about eighty Germans.’
A few days later information was received that ‘three Ukrainians in the German forces were in a peasant’s hut in Słaboszów. I threw a Mills bomb into the room they were in.’ Allan didn’t wait to find out their fate, but heard later that they had been killed.
Allan Hammet survived his adventures with the partisans, moving to a large house on the outskirts of Swiecice on 6 November. Early in December two escaped British Army privates, Carter, of The Buffs, and John Williams (unit unknown), moved into a house nearby.
On 11 January 1945, the British Military Mission in Moscow advised the Australian Legation there that Hammet was in Warsaw: ‘The mission is taking up with the Soviet General Staff arrangements for the release of this officer with other British prisoners immediately the prison camps concerned fall into the Red Army’s control.’ Once his release had been agreed, Hammet and his two British Army friends walked to Czestochowa, where another British Military Mission ‘placed him in command of Allied prisoners of war released from the German camps’. A month later the Allied ex-POWs were driven to Kraków, and from there sent by train to Odessa.
Reaching England on 26 March 1945, he was put on the strength of 11 PDRC at Brighton, as were all returning Australian aircrew POWs. Finally sailing from the UK aboard the Stirling Castle on 4 October 1945, he disembarked at Sydney one month later.
There was, however, the not inconsiderable matter of Allan Hammet’s marriage. Little is known of this happy event except that it occurred on 25 February 1945, that the name of his wife was Jadwiga Suchodowska, and that she already had a child. Mother and child were allowed to travel with their husband and father but, in so doing, Mrs Hammet left behind in Poland her father, her sister, and a property. They settled in Australia, where the family grew over the forthcoming years.