1 AUGUST 1944. Red Cross parcels issued. Trupp 18 (twenty-three men) arrived. Sixteen of the men – two corporals and fourteen leading aircraftmen – had been captured at Tobruk on 21 June 1942. They were mostly ground gunners, radar operators, and MT drivers of the RAF Regiment (created on 1 February 1942). One of the fourteen LACs was George Badham.
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George Badham enrolled in the RAFVR on 28 March 1940 at RAF Cardington, Bedfordshire. As was the way, he was immediately sent home to await the call, which finally came on 28 June 1940. Anxious to do his bit for king and country he wanted to be a wireless operator/air gunner but, as there was a problem with his left eye, he could only be a wireless operator, and so was sent to No. 1 Wireless School at Yatesbury, Wiltshire, to learn the trade. Having completed the course on Boxing Day 1940, he was sent to the Scottish port of Gourock, on the Clyde, where he boarded the New Zealand Shipping Company’s MV Rangitata for service overseas.
The ship sailed on 5 February 1941. A month later, having endured conditions which George described as ‘frightful’, the Rangitata reached Freetown, Sierra Leone, and eventually Durban, South Africa. After a few days ashore George and his colleagues boarded an old coal-burning Belgian ship, the Elizabethville,103 getting to Suez in Egypt in April.
Here the left and right hands lost contact with each other. George spent a week at a transit camp on the Great Bitter Lake before he was sent to form a so-called Wireless Intelligence Screen (later, George thought, re-named Wireless Observation Unit). But in the middle of the night he and another wireless operator, Bernard Schofield, found themselves ‘on the wrong end of a train, and so we parted company with the unit – never to rejoin it!’ The two strays ended up at Heliopolis, a peacetime RAF station, and were to remain there for nine weeks: ‘Apart from a money shortage’ wrote George, ‘life was quite comfortable in a hut with a crowd of aircrew, mostly ex-Malta being rested after the turmoil there.’
George and Bernard were posted to another unit ‘somewhere in the Sinai desert’. Reporting to Alexandria for instructions the RTO informed them that their unit had moved elsewhere a couple of months earlier, and so they were sent to a radio reserve post at Aboukir on the Mediterranean coast. Finally, on 10 August 1941, after a month spent on the beach, they sailed for Tobruk aboard the Royal Navy destroyer HMS Decoy, the only way in to the besieged garrison at that time being by sea. Accompanying the Decoy was another destroyer, HMS Havock.104
Off Mersa Matruh a squadron of Ju87 Stuka dive-bombers greeted the two warships, their bombs straddling the Havock but not damaging her. At midnight the two ships sailed into Tobruk harbour in the middle of some intensive shelling but, once again, all was well. At last, George and Bernard found their unit, 235 AMES (Air Ministry Experimental Station). Effectively a radar station, their role was to plot enemy aircraft and to report any ‘sightings’ to the Tobruk gun operations room by landline.
Strangely enough, George enjoyed his time in Tobruk because, as he put it, there was ‘never any boredom because of the almost continuous shelling and bombing… Swimming was good until Christmas [1941] and again from mid-February [1942].’
The end for Tobruk came on 21 June 1942, when 235 AMES noted intense Ju87 activity on their radar screens on the south-east perimeter of the Tobruk defences: ‘By midday German tanks were visible at the top of the escarpment and by about 6 pm it was virtually all over.’ George and company destroyed their equipment, but unfortunately for Bernard Schofield he ‘got the sole of his foot torn off by a shell from a tank’. George wasn’t to see him again until after the war.
On the evening of 21 June, with the enemy ever closer, George and about eighty other personnel made their way to the beach in the hope of being picked up by the navy. Instead, in the morning they were rounded up by the enemy. George was put on an Italian truck with about forty others, mostly army, and taken to a POW cage in a wadi at Benghazi. After enduring a fortnight of a very uncomfortable existence in the cage George and the others were put aboard the Italian ship MV Rosolino Pilo (7,530 tons) and battened down in the holds.105 (Tobruk remained in Axis hands until 11 November 1942, when the Allies re-captured it after the Second Battle of El Alamein, and were never to lose it again).
After three days at sea the Rosolino Pilo arrived at Brindisi, Italy. Thereafter, George and his fellow POWs were moved from one camp to another, including Benevento which was, he says, ‘a temporary cage in a ploughed field’. Conditions were appalling, and were not helped when, in a terrific thunderstorm one night, most of the tents were blown down and rainwater filled the furrows.
At the beginning of November 1942 the POWs were moved to a permanent camp, PG 78 (Sulmona), in the Abruzzi mountains, roughly halfway between Rome and Pescara. It was not a bad camp by Italian standards, and for a while the prisoners enjoyed white sheets on their bunk beds. They were eventually removed as a reprisal for Italian POWs in England not having them! Then, after an armistice had been agreed on 3 September 1943, the Italian surrender was announced five days later, and the Germans took over. Though the Allied prisoners at Sulmona were ordered to stay put once the Italian guards had departed, many ignored the ridiculous order and cleared off into the hills.
There was not enough time, though, to get far enough away before the Germans arrived and came after them. George and many others were caught in the mountains and, after a week or two, were packed off by train to Germany. In their ranks were two famous England cricketers, Freddie Brown and Bill Bowes, who had also been captured at Tobruk. It took seven nights and six days for the train to grind its way to Germany, depositing George and his colleagues at Stalag VIIA (Moosburg), Bavaria, where they spent a month living in vast tents – ‘horse lines’ – with as many as 200 men jammed in each. With winter approaching George was happy enough to be moved on, to Stalag XIA (Altengrabow) near Magdeburg – ‘again housed in stables and an awful lack of washing facilities and food’. Then came the cold weather: ‘The barbed wire surrounding the camp became an almost solid sheet of ice, and in other circumstances could have been a fascinating sight – we did not appreciate it!’
On Christmas Eve 1943 George was in a group of around 200 men who were sent by train overnight to Salzgitter, only to find that they were at a work camp. Surprisingly, the RAF men in the group had only vaguely heard that RAF POW camps existed and, more in hope than expectation, put in a request to be transferred to one. George: ‘To my surprise, on 26 July [1944] I was told to get ready to leave for a Stalag Luft, not having the slightest idea where.’ The journey took them, in the comparative luxury of a passenger train, to Berlin then, after changing stations, to Frankfurt-on-Oder. George was asleep on a baggage trolley in the middle of the night when he was woken up by footsteps coming down the platform. There before him was the party from Sulmona, among them W/O Ronald Mead, which had gone to Stalag XIB (Fallingbostel). They all reached Luft 7 on 1 August in Trupp 18.
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In January 1944 12 (SAAF) Squadron changed aircraft from the Douglas Boston to the twin-engined B-26 Martin Marauder II medium bomber. Since June 1944 it had been based at Pescara, on the Adriatic coast of Italy, and mostly flew against transportation targets to the north of that country.
On 13 July 1944 the target was Montevarchi. One aircraft, FB437, blew up on the bombing run, and another Marauder, aircraft ‘B’, was also missing. From a third aircraft, FB518, WO2 D.P. De Kock SAAF (rear gunner) baled out. Taken prisoner, he arrived at Luft 7 in Trupp 21.
On 14 July 1944 the target was the marshalling yards at Prato, a few kilometres to the north west of Florence. On this operation the squadron’s aircraft ‘Z’, FB425, was crewed by Lt C.E. Parsons (1st pilot), Lt D.W. Barnard (2nd pilot), Lt A.F. La Grange (navigator), WO1 J.L.W. Rodgers (top turret gunner), Warrant Officer Martin Zerff (wireless operator/air gunner), and W/O James Lees (rear gunner), all SAAF.
Over the target ‘Z’ was hit by intense, accurate flak. Miraculously no-one was killed, but Barnard was ‘wounded (“shrapnel up the arse” was how he put it – it was a flesh wound high up on the rear of one thigh)’.106 The rear gunner was also hit – blood in his turret – as was the navigator, who La Grange was hit in the leg. As the situation appeared to be desperate Parsons left the bombing formation, ordered bombs to be dropped, and decided it was time to bale out. The top turret gunner, though, Rodgers, said that he was unable to move. ‘Barney’ Barnard was sent to help him, and pulled the injured man out of his turret. It is not clear whether Rodgers was already wearing his parachute or whether Barney put it on for him, but Barney rolled him out of the open bomb-doors pulling the parachute’s rip-cord as he did so: ‘The parachute opened, but they were flying over a German machine-gun emplacement at the time, and the [German] gunner shot the parachute out of the air.’107
The other gunner, James Lees, baled out and is believed to have been taken prisoner, and Martin Zerff was also taken prisoner. From Stalag XIA (Altengrabow) Zerff was moved to Stalag XIB (Fallingbostel), arriving at Luft 7 in Trupp 18 on 1 August 1944.
Marauder ‘Z’, however, was not shot down, and staggered back to base, where a safe landing was made. Barnard recalled that the aircraft was peppered with more than 400 holes from shell bursts, and that it was consequently deemed a write off.
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By the time he got to Luft 7 with Trupp 18 Peter Simpson had been a POW for three months short of three years, having been shot down in November 1941. When, in May 1941, six squadrons were posted to the Middle East it was decided that two pilots from each squadron would go to Takoradi on the Gold Coast of West Africa and fly an aircraft across to the Middle East, while the rest of the squadrons’ personnel would continue by ship to Egypt. Chosen from 46 Squadron, one of the six, to fly from Takoradi were Peter Simpson and Charles Alpe. They were dropped off at Takoradi by the Highland Princess (see also page 277), while the rest of the squadron continued aboard the SS Almanzora (16,034 grt). In the event, 46 Squadron, which had become non-operational on 1 May 1941, would effectively cease to exist for the next year as its pilots were drafted from Egypt to Malta as reinforcements, and posted to whichever squadron needed them at the time.
Having made his way across Africa, Peter spent several weeks there before flying as second pilot, on 24 August 1941, on Sunderland N9029,108 230 Squadron, from Abu Qir (Aboukir), Egypt to Kalafrana, Malta. Once there he was posted to 126 Squadron.
On 12 November 1941 Peter flew what would prove to be his last operational sortie, against Gela airfield on Sicily. In company with ten others he took off at 6.45 am in Hurricane Mk.II Z3158, laden with 250lb bombs under the wings. Having dropped his bombs Peter then engaged in some ground strafing:
‘Several [Italian] aircraft appeared to have been set on fire, and I foolishly lingered too long to assess the damage and was intercepted by three Macchi 202s. I engaged them and then found I had used up all my ammo in ground attack, so made off. The Macchis were much faster and easily caught me up before I could disappear into cloud. My aircraft was set on fire and I baled out... I was much closer to the water than I thought. The ’chute had barely opened when I was in the sea at 0740 (when my watch stopped). I had a dinghy, inflated it and climbed in. I was about ten miles from the Sicilian coast.’
Italian aircraft noted his position, and after four or five hours a steam pinnace arrived and picked him up. The Italians, he noted, ‘were extremely correct and looked after me well’. Once ashore, when he met the vehicle carrying his body, he was able to pay his respects to Wing Commander M.H. ‘Hilly’ Brown DFC and Bar, CdeG, Czech MC (37904), who had been shot down on an earlier mission.109
Peter was then taken to a hotel in Messina ‘where I met some Fleet Air Arm chaps’, Petty Officer (A) Arthur Jopling (pilot) and Lieutenant J.S. Manning RN (observer), 800X Squadron. They had been shot down by flak on the night of 7/8 October over Sicily in Blackburn Skua N4004.
From Messina they were taken to the Italian mainland, and then by train to Centocelle airfield (today, Rome-Centocelle Airport). They were put in comfortable quarters, but separated, and incompetently interrogated ‘by a large Italian who claimed to be a Red Cross representative’. After a few days they were sent to a permanent POW camp, PG 78 (Sulmona). There Peter stayed until 8 October 1943. Unlike Arthur Jopling, who had disregarded the order to stay put following the Italian armistice, Peter was one of the many who were unable to get away from their camps before German troops arrived to take them over, in Sulmona’s case on 14 September.110
By the end of the month the Germans were removing the ‘British’ POWs in batches to camps in Germany. The fourth batch went off on 3 October. Peter was due to have gone with them, but hid in the roof of his hut with a few others, in the hope that they would be abandoned by their guards and found by the Allies as they advanced northwards. Their hopes were shattered five days later when they were discovered, possibly after a tip-off, and sent by rail in cattle trucks to Stalag VIIA (Moosburg), where they arrived on 12 October.
On 4 November 1943 Peter was one of several to be purged to Stalag XIA (Altengrabow), where there were already a number of Free French and Vichy French POWs. Peter took the opportunity of spending time with them to improve his French, as did Sergeant Jimmy Cosgrove of the Middlesex Yeomanry (Royal Corps of Signals). Eventually, in July 1944, leaving his army colleagues behind, Peter and eight other RAF POWs were told that they had to go to a Luftwaffe camp, and set off on the long journey to Luft 7.
Two of the eight others, Warrant Officers G.H. ‘Pee Wee’ Cluley and F.R. Conner DFM, had been prisoners for almost four years. Cluley had had the misfortune to be on a delivery flight from England to Malta when, on 26 August 1940, Blenheim T2058 ran out of fuel near the Italian island of Pantellaria. Fred Conner suffered a similar fate a month later, in Blenheim T2176, but this time his pilot force-landed out of fuel in a field on the Italian island of Lampedusa.
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2 AUGUST 1944. Heavy rain. As one man could not be accounted for at Appell the POWs had to stand in the pouring rain for over an hour until he was found. (Phil Rose recalls two Appell-related incidents. One when a hole was dug prior to one Appell, and it was filled with water. It was aimed at a particular Unterfeldwebel ‘who always looked at faces when counting. In consequence he fell face down’. The second incident involved the ‘placing of an extra pair of boots for a corporal who always counted feet – consequence, we were on parade for over two hours...’).
3 AUGUST 1944. The bad weather continued.
4 AUGUST 1944. Red Cross parcel issue.
Trupp 20 arrived (twelve men) in a purge from Stalag Luft III (Sagan). Six of the new boys were Polish NCO airmen transferred from Stalag Luft III (Sagan). Having already been POWs for two or three years they had somehow been left behind at Sagan when the rest of their fellow NCOs had been moved to Stalag Luft VI (Heydekrug) in June 1943. Their stay at Luft 7, however, was not to be long, and they were moved on to Stalag Luft IV (Gross Tychow) after a few weeks.
Also arriving was Acting Leading Airman H.C.G. Griffin of the Royal Navy’s Fleet Air Arm. He was on board one of the six Fairey Albacores that were lost by 827 Squadron flying from the aircraft-carrier HMS Victorious on the ill-fated attack on Kirkenes harbour, Norway, on 30 July 1941. Of the eighteen crew lost, four only were killed, the rest being taken prisoner. 827’s fellow Victorious squadron, 828, lost five Albacores (seven killed, five POW). Griffin was wounded by a bullet in the left foot, and spent some time in hospital as a result.
Another purged from Luft 3 was W/O Eric Jones, 32 Squadron. It is not clear when exactly he arrived at Bankau, but in his post-war questionnaire he says that he arrived in August 1944. This was over four years since he had been shot down, on 11 June 1940, whilst on patrol in his Hurricane over Le Tréport, France. Somehow he must have made his way to Jersey in the Channel Islands, no doubt in the hope of getting back to England, but was caught there on 1 July 1940. Sent to Germany he escaped from a train in Czechoslovakia in September 1940, before spending the next sixteen months at Stalag Luft I (Barth). He was one of the NCOs to transfer to the newly-opened Stalag Luft III (Sagan) in March 1942, where he remained until the end of July 1944. He was sent to the hospital at Stalag 344 (Lamsdorf) in October 1944 suffering with ‘sacro-iliac arthritis from an ice-hockey fall’ sustained three years earlier.
One of the others purged from Luft 3 was Warrant Officer Ross Breheny RAAF, 145 Squadron, who had been captured at Gabes, North Africa, on 27 March 1943. He had been pursuing a Ju88 over enemy territory when the engine of Spitfire ER199 failed.
A fellow Aussie from Luft 3 in the same purge, and also captured in North Africa, was W/O W.N. Fethers RAAF, pilot of Wellington DV562, 148 Squadron, lost on an anti-shipping raid to Tobruk harbour on 5 October 1942. All the crew survived as POWs but, knowing that officers received better treatment, Fethers told his captors that he was an officer though at the time he was only an NCO. He went to PG 75 (Torre Tresca) and PG 78 (Sulmona), Italy, before being sent to Oflag VA (Weinsberg) and Luft 3, where his POW number was 2733.
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5 AUGUST 1944. Trupp 21 arrived (seventy-three men).
Rumours went round the camp that the Russians were quite close, in the Krakow area, ‘which was only about sixty or seventy miles from us, and also that they were north and south of Warsaw’.
The Luftwaffe’s airfield at Fels am Wagram in Austria was a regular target for Allied bombers based in Italy. On the night of 6/7 July 1944 205 Group RAF despatched sixty-one aircraft to bomb the place. Though ‘there was a fair concentration [of bombs] on the airfield’ losses were heavy, with thirteen aircraft (twenty-one per cent) failing to return. ‘Enemy fighters were very active, and many aircraft were seen going down in flames.’111 German night-fighters were visible in the brilliant moonlight, and it is believed that they were responsible for the loss of the thirteen bombers – eleven Wellingtons and two Liberators. On the other hand, a large number of enemy fighters were destroyed or damaged on the ground, which helped a USAAF daylight raid from being intercepted later.
One of the Wellingtons that failed to return was MF241, 37 Squadron. It had taken off from Tortorella airfield at 2151 hours on 6 July with F/O C.W. Keighley at the controls. On board was the squadron bombing leader, F/L C.J. Burnell DFC, who had already completed a tour on 10 Squadron (on which squadron he had won his DFC, gazetted 9 November 1943). MF241 crashed in the Unterradlberg area near St Pölten, Austria at 0120 hours, 7 July. Sgt James A. Mitchell survived the crash with serious burns to his arms, but the rest of the crew – Keighley, Burnell, Lt T.V. Vlok SAAF, and Sgt L.J. Guest – were killed, and were buried at the Klagenfurt War Cemetery. Barely four weeks later, James Mitchell was at Luft 7 with Trupp 21.
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The population of Canada according to the 1941 Canadian Census was only 111⁄2 million. Such was the number of aircrew volunteers, however, that in late 1943 6 (RCAF) Group was formed within RAF Bomber Command. By the end of the war over 8,000 Canadians had lost their lives flying on operations from England, and almost one in every three RAF Bomber Command POWs was Canadian.
On the morning of 18 July 1944 some of 6 Group’s Canadian squadrons were briefed for an attack on the stubborn German defences in and around the French city of Caen. As the planned Allied breakout from the Normandy beachhead was in danger of stalling, Operation Goodwood was set in motion. 667 Lancasters, 260 Halifaxes and fifteen Mosquitos of the RAF were called upon to break the enemy’s resistance. It was a massive attack on five German strongpoints in the Caen area. German resistance was unquestionably loosened by it, but at a cost of one Lancaster and five Halifaxes.
One of the latter was NP706, 432 (Leaside) Squadron, based at RCAF East Moor in North Yorkshire. Its crew were F/L John H. Cooper DFC, RCAF (pilot); Sgt Dawson Wright RCAF (second dickey pilot); Sgt Harry Oakeby (flight engineer); F/O Bob Dryden RCAF (navigator); WO2 Al Zacharuk RCAF (bomb aimer); T/Sgt Leo Butkewitz USAAF (wireless operator); F/S R.E. Burton RCAF (mid-upper gunner); and WO1 Ken Elliott RCAF (rear gunner).
They were an experienced crew, as Dawson Wright recalled: ‘This was the last trip of two tours and we were going to have a party after that. The crew were to be posted out as instructors. This flight was to be thirty-seven seconds over enemy territory. We made the first thirty OK, but the last seven took a few months.’112
NP706 arrived over its target at around 7 am and at a height of 9,000 feet. With bombs gone John Cooper turned for home, but not before accurate light flak had caught the Halifax in the mid section, killing the mid-upper gunner, Bob Burton. John Cooper: ‘Fire broke out and the control cables from the pilot’s control column to the rudders and elevators were severed. As the fire was beyond control and as I had no control of the aircraft I ordered the crew to jump. I was the last out after our engineer, Harry Oakeby.’
Harry Oakeby and Al Zacharuk evaded capture. Harry was liberated after a month in hiding, but it is not known how Al was liberated. He was, however, Mentioned in Despatches in the 1946 New Year’s Honours. The other five were soon captured, and sent to a temporary ‘cage’ at Alençon. Dawson Wright was lucky to get that far for, while descending by parachute, he realised that someone was shooting at him: ‘They can’t do that to me, so I turned the ’chute around to see who was doing this. (Wasn’t anything I could do about it anyway, but it seemed the thing to do at that time).’ He was captured when he decided to shelter for the night in a clump of bushes. He was crawling on his stomach ‘through the bushes when OH! OH! – it was a German field HQ. They were surprised to see me. I offered to leave but they had other ideas.’
The two officers, Cooper and Dryden, went to Luft 3 and Luft 1 respectively, while Wright and Elliott went to Luft 7 (Trupp 21). Leo Butkewitz eventually followed Wright and Elliott but, having been wounded in his right foot and leg by splinters (for which he was awarded the US Purple Heart), he went for treatment to a Lazarett before continuing to Luft 7.113
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Bomb aimer F/S Keith Campbell RAAF was, as usual, leaning on his parachute ‘and moving around to see the target more clearly, when the left clip of my harness clipped onto the hook in my ’chute.’ The target for Keith and the rest of the crew of Halifax LV833 ‘P-Peter’, 466 (RAAF) Squadron, on the night of 24/25 July 1944, was Stuttgart. Bombs gone, and the pilot had just turned for home when splinters from nearby flak bursts started rattling against the bomb-bay. Keith was just about to unclip his parachute ‘when there was what seemed to be a heavy dull explosion behind me and someone saying “Bloody hell --”. The next thing I knew I was in midair, floating down on one strap of my harness! The explosion, a stray flak shell which scored a direct hit on “Peter” blew me straight out through the nose and just blew the kite to hell.’ Keith suffered only a few bruises and scratches. None of the seven others stood a chance.
Estimating his position as thirty miles south of Stuttgart, Keith set off for Switzerland, but was still close enough to the city to see it being attacked again on the next night. Walking along a road on the third day of his travels, a gas-powered lorry stopped, and the driver and his mate offered him a lift. Keith tried to pass himself off as French, but the driver’s mate knew more French than Keith, and so the game was up. Also in the vehicle was a young girl, to whom Keith proffered his chocolate ration. This went down well with the two men, and when they stopped on the outskirts of Tübingen one of them ‘went into a beer garden and came out with three bottles of beer... It was excellent beer, ice cold and tasted A1.’ After the lovely beer Keith was handed over to a policeman.
At Dulag Luft he was informed by the English-speaking Luftwaffe interrogation officer, who of course knew everything about Keith and his squadron, that another aircraft from 466 Squadron had been found a few miles away, adding: ‘You are damned lucky – the only one out of both of them.’ (The seven crew of the other Halifax, HX243, were indeed killed.)
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The Hamburg raid on 28/29 July 1944 was to prove a bad night for the Canadians, when thirteen of their squadrons between them lost twenty-four bombers – 143 aircrew were killed (among them over twenty RAF and one American), and twenty-nine taken prisoner.
Halifax III MZ816, 433 (Porcupine) Squadron, having bombing the target, was hit by flak near Kiel and set on fire. With the pilot possibly wounded or already dead, MZ816 went into a steep dive. F/O W.A. Martineau RCAF (navigator), F/O R.W. James RCAF (bomb aimer), and WO1 J.A. Robertson RCAF (wireless operator) were struggling to open the escape hatch when the Halifax exploded. They were the only ones of the seven crew to survive.
Alex Robertson’s parachute opened just before he hit the ground, and he suffered a bruised back, later discovering that he had broken a bone in it. He and Martineau had landed near each other, and managed to hide in a field while the Germans searched the area but, as Martineau had lost both of his flying boots, they decided on the following night to steal a pair from a nearby house. They were caught by a French worker but, realising who they were, he did not report them. The next night the two hungry Canadians returned to the house to get some food, unaware that they had also been spotted the previous night by the woman of the house, a German, who had reported them to the authorities. It was, therefore, a considerable shock to the two airmen when guns appeared from every door and window as they approached the house for the second time.
While Martineau went to Luft 3 (Sagan), Alex Robertson went to Luft 7. Surviving an air-raid on or near Wetzlar Alex and several others were put on a train, six to a compartment, and spent the best part of three days getting to Bankau, on 5 August. Ralph James, the only other survivor, went to Luft I (Barth).
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Another Canadian airman to arrive at Bankau with Trupp 21 was Sgt William ‘Bill’ Mackenzie Niven RCAF. Events were to prove that he, too, was very fortunate to have got that far. There is a saying in the forces that one should never volunteer, but sometimes a request is put in such a way that it becomes an order, as was the case with Bill Niven.
He was a ‘spare’ gunner on 431 Squadron when, late on the evening of 28 July 1944, the wing commander telephoned him. Explaining that a mid-upper gunner had been taken ill with appendicitis, he asked if Bill would take his place on ops that very night? Bill could not, of course, refuse: ‘I had a feeling that something was going to happen, so I told one of my room mates how I felt. He had just come back off leave, so he didn’t have to go on this op. I had a kit bag with a camera and chocolate, [and] 950 cigarettes in it. I told him if I did not come back he could have it.’
With take-off imminent, Bill climbed into his flying suit and rushed off to join his new crew: ‘I had no idea what target we were going to, as I did not have a chance to go to a briefing.’ The crew, all RCAF apart from the RAF flight engineer, were: F/O Robert Gray Holden (pilot); Sgt C.C. Newton (flight engineer); F/O A.L. Cameron (navigator); F/O George Johnstone (bomb aimer); F/O E. Dawson (wireless operator); Bill Niven (mid-upper gunner); and F/Sgt Francis James Clay (rear gunner). Airborne around 10.30 pm in Halifax B.III NA550, SE-U, it was not until they had crossed the English coast that Bill asked the skipper where they were going. Hamburg.
In what seemed to be no time at all to Bill they had crossed the enemy coast and were on their bombing run when suddenly a Ju88 night-fighter attacked. Bill:
‘There was a big flash of light behind my turret. The plane went into a dive and I heard the pilot give the order to bale out. Somehow I managed to release my seat. I got out of the turret and left my helmet dangling by the oxygen tube and intercom wire. I got my parachute from the rack, hooked it on, then I went to the entrance hatch. The metal by the door had been hit by flak and it was bent over the door, but after giving the door a good pull, I got it open.’
F/O Holden ordered the bombs to be dropped, and gave the order to jump. George Johnstone and Bill Niven wasted no time in leaving. The navigator, F/O Cameron, had already taken off his helmet, with its earphones, and so never heard the pilot cancel the order to abandon the aircraft.
Bill Niven was in a cold sweat as he faced the prospect of jumping out. Eventually:
‘I sat down on the step and pushed my feet out into the open. As soon as the slipstream came in contact with my boots, it pulled them off. I pushed myself off the step, and the next thing I knew I was floating down to mother earth. The cloud base was right down to the deck that night and I could see the searchlights shining through the clouds. It was quite an experience being the first time I had ever jumped. We had practised quite a bit at OTU and conversion unit, but never in the air. It was a queer feeling to look up and see the big pocket of silk above my head. When I finally got down, pretty close to the earth, there was a burst of sparks directly below me. At first I thought it was flak then, to my surprise, my head went under the water. When I had collected my senses, it was a mad rush to release my parachute and inflate my Mae West. My wristwatch stopped at 1.20 am.’
He was lucky that his flying boots had come off, for the extra weight of sea water inside them might have posed a problem. But there he was floating around in the ice-cold water of the North Sea, watching the searchlights come on every time another wave of bombers passed overhead. Worryingly, though, the tide was taking him further out to sea. Waiting for the noise of the bombers to pass he blew as loudly as he could on the whistle attached to the collar of his battledress:
‘After hours of floating around it started to become light. It was a misty grey morning as I looked around the water. Right at the mouth of the bay, I saw what I thought were three buoys in the water and I seemed to be floating towards them. As they got nearer I could see little red and green lights on them. When one of them came within a few yards of me, I could see it was a freighter. I sounded the whistle, then I yelled for help. The boat slowed down, then it turned around and pulled up alongside of me. By this time, another destroyer and gun boat pulled up a few yards from the freighter. They started flashing messages to each other. Then the destroyer sent out a small motor launch to pick me up.’
Taken to the destroyer, Bill was given a hot shower:
‘The doctor was there and kept taking my pulse. He spoke perfect English. I asked him what time it was and he told me it was about 8.40 which meant that I was approximately seven hours in the water. After the shower they gave me a towel and blanket to put round me and then took me back to the room again. The captain asked me a few questions which I would not answer. He gave me five Bucharest cigarettes and a few moments later, a little boy aged about fourteen brought me a cup of black coffee and some slices of bread and jam, which I appreciated as I was so hungry. When I had finished they brought me in some more. The boy came back into the room again, carrying my clothes over his arm, which were warm when I put them on, so I thought that they must have dried them in the boiler room. Then they brought my personal belongings and my wrist watch, which was completely ruined.
‘The next thing I knew, two Luftwaffe officers were being ushered into my room. They told me that I would have to go with them. Before leaving the boat, I thanked the captain for all he had done for me, as they were really good to me. I told the air force officers that I had no shoes, but they said that was all right. They said they had a car waiting by the harbour. I asked the officer which city we were in; he said “Wilhelmshaven”. Boy, what a mess it was in! Our air force had really hit it!’114
Treading gingerly over broken glass, bricks and rubble, Bill made it to the car, which took him to the nearby Luftwaffe HQ. Six days later he was at Luft 7.
As for Bill’s Halifax, after losing some 10,000 feet of height following the night-fighter’s attack, and with no immediate prospect of the bomber falling out of the sky, F/O Holden carried out a check on his crew. Receiving no reply from the gunners, Sgt Newton was sent to find out what had happened to them. He reported back that the mid-upper had baled out but that the rear gunner was wounded and dazed. Setting course for home NA550 landed at Strubby, Lincolnshire, at 0335 hours on 29 July. These few words fail to tell of the drama that took place aboard the Halifax as it clawed its way back to England, and for their actions this night the pilot and rear gunner were awarded the DFC and DFM respectively. The citation in the London Gazette stated:
‘Sergeant Clay crawled to the nose of the aircraft where he remained during the return flight helping Flying Officer Holden to navigate his aircraft through a most heavily-defended area of Germany. Only when the aircraft was being landed in England did Sergeant Clay indicate that he was injured by requesting Flying Officer Holden to have an ambulance to meet the bomber on the airfield. Flying Officer Holden and Sergeant Clay displayed unswerving devotion to duty and set an example of the highest standard.’115
*
There were seventy-three POWs in Trupp 21, but probably none had evaded capture for as long as Sgt W.A. Poulton, known as Allan to his family but as Bill to others. Shot down on 21/22 June 1943 (Krefeld), it was a good thirteen months before he fell into enemy hands.
Allan Poulton had flown on only one other operation before he was shot down, and that could so easily have been his last. It would seem that Allan’s skipper, Sgt Fred Heathfield, through no fault of his own, was an unlucky pilot. He had had three crews, ‘some of whom were killed, but none I am happy to say while flying with me’. He lost his second Whitley crew when he was injured and off ops, and selected his third, who had lost their pilot, after he had come out of hospital. He and his new, third, crew were posted to 51 Squadron at Snaith, Yorkshire.
But problems continued when the bomb aimer, F/O Harry Arthur ‘Nick’ Nock, broke a finger falling off a bicycle. Nick was back in action on the night of 3/4 July 1943 (Cologne) with Sgt Garnham and crew, but their aircraft, Halifax JD262, was shot down. Nick was the only one of the two survivors to evade capture. For his subsequent adventures with the Belgian Resistance he was awarded the MC on 12 June 1945.
A spare bomb aimer was allocated to Fred’s crew, but this man refused to fly with any pilot other than his own. Even though warned that by refusing to fly he could be court-martialled, he failed to join Fred’s crew for an operation one night. This was when Allan Poulton, on his first operation, joined the Heathfield crew as a replacement bomb aimer.
It was a quiet trip, so quiet that Fred decided to call the crew roll. When Allan failed to respond Fred guessed that he was probably suffering a lack of oxygen, and took the Halifax down to the thicker air. The navigator discovered that Allan’s ‘oxygen tube had frozen up with the moisture from his breath (even on a June night the temperature is below freezing at 18 or 20,000 feet) and he was unconscious.’ He was soon revived, and was well enough to fly on the next, fateful operation.
The crew of Halifax JD244, MH-K, was Sgt F.J.H. Heathfield (pilot); Sgt D.G. Keane (flight engineer); P/O H.J. Dothie (navigator); Sgt W.A. Poulton (bomb aimer); Sgt W.C. Beresford (wireless operator); Sgt R.H. Masters RCAF (mid-upper gunner); and Sgt R. Cooper (rear gunner). They took off from Snaith a few minutes after midnight on 21/22 June 1943, and had just bombed the target and turned for home when flak hit the port wing, stopping both engines. The Halifax was flipped onto its starboard wing by the blast and, with the starboard outer engine also ablaze, lost a good 5,000 feet in seconds. With little or no hope of reaching England, Fred gave the order to bale out.
Thinking that everyone else had jumped Fred suddenly heard Bob Cooper saying that he was unable to get out of his turret. As Fred was unable to leave the controls to go and help him, as they were the only two left in the aircraft, Bob was spurred on to greater efforts, and managed to bale out. What he had not told Fred, though, was that he had been seriously wounded in his left arm.
Fred gave what he thought was enough time for Bob to bale out before turning to the small matter of his own survival. The Halifax was practically unflyable, and almost out of control: ‘When I got it back under control I found I was flying just above the tree tops; in fact I was soon clipping the tops. I was lucky to put it down in a small clearing, and I was knocked unconscious and thrown across the cockpit and down into the nose of the aircraft.’116
Extraordinary that he had not been killed, all he suffered were ‘an injured leg, a broken nose and a deep gash in my scalp’. He was fit enough to make off into Belgium, where the aircraft had crashed, and found help from the Belgian Resistance. Unfortunately, Belgian traitor Prospère Valère Dezitter had managed to infiltrate the escape line that was looking after Fred, who was caught in a Paris hotel room on 7 August. Fred survived the war at Stalag IVB (Mühlberg). Dezitter also survived the war, but was caught, tried, and then executed on 17 September 1948.
All seven crew of JD244 survived to be taken prisoner of war. Dothie, who landed in the courtyard of the Leopoldsburg power station, went to Stalag Luft III, while Beresford (given away to the Germans by excited children), Keane (betrayed by the farmer who had given him shelter in his barn), and Masters (caught at Besançon, France on 23 December 1943 trying to cross into Switzerland) went to Stalag Luft VI (Heydekrug).
By chance Bob Cooper and Allan Poulton met each other soon after landing. Finding a café in a town, they knocked at the door. After the owner had let them in, Allan made running repairs to Bob’s arm. Not wishing to linger they headed for the railway station with the idea of going to Brussels, and there met an ex-Belgian army sergeant. Allan was able to converse with him in French, and was told that, as there were too many Germans about, they should give themselves up. An appeal for Bob to be taken to a doctor brought the response that, if he were, then ‘the gunner would certainly be handed over to the Germans’, as Allan stated in his post-war report. On closer inspection the arm looked so bad to their untrained eyes that they thought that Bob would have to hand himself in if he were to save it. This he did, and so joined his other three crew members at Luft 6.
Belgian helpers took Allan by train to Brussels, and after a week in one of the helpers’ house he ‘was taken to the house of an English woman who was a member of an Underground organisation. For the next six months I remained in Brussels, staying at various addresses in the city, where I was continuously assured that I was just about to leave and would be back in the UK shortly.’ The English woman, who lived at 54 Rue Théodore Roosevelt, Schaerbeek, Brussels, was Madame Edith Hardy,117who had married a Belgian and remained in Brussels during the war. Other safe houses at which Allan briefly stayed were those of Eleuthère Thiryn, at 328 Rue de Noyer, Etterbeek, Brussels, and of Mariette Gorlia at 2 Rue de la Longue Haie, also in Etterbeek.
In February 1944 Allan was moved to Charleroi, where he was once again assured that his return to England would be imminent. These were troubled times for the Belgian Resistance, notably for the brave helpers of the Comet line (with which Allan spent much of his time), which was infiltrated by agents of the German secret police with fatal results. In consequence, Allan made no progress, and was so fed up that on 1 July 1944 he returned to Brussels, where he stayed in the Boulevard de Waterloo, St Gilles, with Madame Irène Radermackers-Balieux, who had sheltered him earlier.
A couple of weeks later he was told that this time he really was on his way home, and was moved to Antwerp. Unfortunately, this was all part of an elaborate deception engineered by Dezitter and his henchwomen, who had penetrated the Resistance to such an extent that they were able to hand over dozens of aircrew, Allan among them. Dezitter also betrayed hundreds of civilian Resistance workers, including the brave Edith Hardy. Sent to Germany, she died of dysentery on or about 15 March 1945 at Mauthausen concentration camp.
After his arrest Allan spent the next two weeks in a civilian jail at Anvers, and was released from Dulag Luft to Luft 7, where he eventually arrived with Trupp 21 on 5 August. In his post-war interrogation report he stated that he was captured on 16 August 1944 but, as he was safely inside the wire at Luft 7 eleven days earlier, this date is impossible, and was possibly, therefore, 16 July.
*
7 AUGUST 1944. As if to support the rumours of two days earlier the camp had its first, and second, air-raid alert around midday. Today was also designated sports day – as it was August Bank Holiday! The alerts delayed the start of the first England v Australia Test Match, which eventually got under way at 2 pm. The match was not completed by ‘curfew’.
‘During the afternoon side-shows were erected – “Knock the cans off”, skittles, hoop-la, “count the raisins”, buried treasure, Crown & Anchor, “Throw your cigarettes on the squares to win”, dice throwing etc. It was good fun.’ (Tom Glenn.)
There was also a boxing match in the evening with seven bouts. During the Needlematch between the Two Clowns (F/S F.A. Sturgess and Sgt W.H. Lynch), who of course knocked each other out, a bucket of water was thrown ‘accidentally’ at the crowd, some of it hitting the Oberfeldwebel chief ferret – who was not amused.
During the ‘sports’ two unknown prisoners escaped, but were recaptured at Bankau station, and put in the cooler.
8 AUGUST 1944. Another Red Cross parcel issue. The Test Match ended in victory for the English, who scored 65 and 111 in their two innings to the Australians’ 68 and 56. (England won the next Test, but the Aussies fought back to level the series after the fourth game. It never proved possible to fit in a fifth ‘decider’.)
Date unconfirmed but possibly the day on which three GPR men arrived as Trupp 22.
9 AUGUST 1944. The prisoners noted that there were now two guards in every box, whereas previously there had been only one.
11 AUGUST 1944. One unknown prisoner took a chance when he jumped over the safety-fence. Ducking under the inner barbed-wire fence he turned round to see a guard pointing his rifle at him, and flung himself to the ground just as the guard opened fire – and missed. He was only trying to retrieve the cricket ball!
Trupp 23 (forty men) was processed.
*
‘It was snowing hard. I could not stand as my right leg was broken and folded back behind the knee of my left leg and hurt intensely. In a very short time I was covered over by snow.’ For twenty-year-old Sgt Peter Wilmshurst the immediate future did not look too promising, but at least he was alive.
A short while before, in Halifax LK795, 76 Squadron, he had been on his way with his crew to Nuremberg on the night of 30/31 March 1944, on his thirteenth operation. His skipper, F/L H.D. ‘Roger’ Coverley, was on his fortieth, the tenth of his second tour, the first having been on 78 Squadron. A Ju88 night-fighter was the first to attack LK795, and Peter had just returned to his seat when they were attacked by Unteroffizier Otto Kutzner, 5./NJG3, in his Bf110 (he was to claim three victories on this long night). The ‘6,000lb load of incendiary bombs exploded causing a massive fire’. Listening out for a group broadcast on his wireless set Peter failed to hear the order to bale out, and realised all was not well when he saw the flight engineer, Sgt George Motts, heading for the nose escape hatch with his parachute clipped on, closely followed by the pilot.
When the Halifax went into a steep dive, Peter had great difficulty trying to reach his parachute in its stowage and clip it on. Having succeeded in this he found that he was then unable to leave his seat: ‘For some unknown reason the dive became more shallow. This allowed me to get out of my seat and make my way forward to the escape hatch.’ There he found F/S W.A. ‘Archie’ Blake (bomb aimer) who had also been unable to jump because of the g forces. But Archie got out, and Peter took his place. As soon as he too had jumped, realising that he must have been low to the ground by this time, he pulled the ripcord. After two or three swings under his parachute he hit the ground with an almighty thump, breaking his leg.
The only fatality was the twenty-year-old flight engineer, George Motts, whose body ‘was found three days later suspended in a tree, the burnt remains of his parachute canopy draped around him’. The rear gunner, Sgt Dave Bauldie, was to be tragically killed, with many others, by ‘friendly’ Typhoon fire when they shot-up a column of kriegies at Gresse, North Germany, on 19 April 1945.
Peter, meanwhile, discovered that he was in the middle of nowhere: ‘Despite my shouts no one seemed very interested and I had visions of not being found and dying of exposure.’ A while later the snow stopped, and he could just make out the outlines of a house not too far away. Further shouting proved fruitless, until Peter remembered the whistle attached to his battledress collar: ‘After several blows I heard a window open and a voice call out something quite unintelligible to me.’ Soon, a man appeared, ran off, and about fifteen minutes later reappeared with two soldiers, ‘one of whom advanced towards me with a fixed bayonet. He was quite elderly and I think more scared than I was.’
Taken inside, Peter was made as comfortable as possible. The lady of the house made some coffee, while explaining that an ambulance would not be able to get to them until daylight. When it arrived Peter:
‘was most surprised to find my bomb aimer [F/S W.A. Blake] on a stretcher next to me. He had spent several hours dangling on his parachute which had become entangled in a tall pine tree. Unable to reach the trunk of the tree and starting to suffer from frostbite he had turned the quick-release buckle on his parachute harness and fallen about thirty feet to the ground. Consequently he was suffering from a fractured pelvis.’
The injured pair were taken to the hospital at Wissen, on the River Sieg, run mainly by Roman Catholic Sisters, but with German doctors and medical orderlies, and Red Cross nurses.
They shared the hospital with many German wounded, mostly from the Eastern Front, but regardless of their status the RAF pair were treated equally with the soldiers: ‘The medical attention was first class. The army doctor who attended to us always gave a Nazi salute whenever he entered the room, until one morning he came, saluted, gave a broad smile and said “To hell with it!”, and never saluted again.’ On the day that Peter and Archie left they were given meat sandwiches for their journey, and most of the nurses and Sisters came to say ‘Auf Wiedersehn’.
Some nineteen weeks after they had been shot down Peter and Archie arrived at Luft 7 in Trupp 23.
*
It was through the vagaries of war that Maurice Simpson, a young, injured Canadian airman from Creighton Mine, Ontario, would be operated on in a north German hospital by a French surgeon, Pierre Michaud, from Lyon. Maurice ‘will always be grateful to him for saving my life, as I was in extremely bad shape’. He was not exaggerating.
Flying as mid-upper gunner of Lancaster ND522, 207 Squadron, on an operation to lay mines in Kiel Bay on the night of 21/22 May 1944, the bomber was attacked by a night-fighter flown by Hauptmann Franz Buschmann, Stab IV./NJG3. The Lancaster, on its way back to base, blew up and crashed into the sea near Mandø Island, just off the Danish coast south of Esbjerg. Only two of the seven-man crew survived – F/O Paul Walshe RNZAF, and Sgt Maurice Simpson RCAF. Despite having a broken shoulder and five machine-gun bullets in his back – one of the bullets ‘tore a hole as large as a teacup through my bladder’ – Maurice was able to take to his parachute. After four hours he struggled ashore, and was picked up by German soldiers. Three days later he was in a hospital in Schleswig, Germany, where Pierre Michaud was able to perform life-saving surgery.
After five weeks in Schleswig and Wetzlar hospitals, Maurice was on his way in Trupp 23 to Luft 7. Paul Walshe went to Stalag Luft III (Sagan), and when he and Maurice met up again in the camp at Luckenwalde, to which both had been evacuated in 1945, Maurice discovered that Paul had also been wounded, in the legs.
Remarkably, despite the hammering his body had taken, Maurice helped to dig a number of tunnels at Luft 7 but, as he says, ‘these were usually discovered’. In fact, there was to be no break-out from the camp via a tunnel.
*
Somewhere over the town of Zombor, in northern Yugoslavia, Halifax JP179 FS-P, 148 Squadron, was attacked by an unseen night-fighter118 whilst returning from an SOE supply drop, Operation 101A, to southern Poland on the night of 3/4 July 1944. The first burst hit both starboard engines, setting them on fire, and severing the controls. The intercom was also damaged, which made it difficult for the pilot, W/O L.J. Blattmann RAAF, who had also been hit by splinters in his crutch, to give the order to all the crew to bale out. Whether four of the crew heard the order or not will never be known, for they did not survive. F/S L.W. Davey RAAF, however, heard later from the only other survivors – Blattmann and the navigator, F/S W.F. Wicks – that they suspected that the flight engineer, Sgt T.W.H. Tomlinson, had been ‘killed by civilians when baled out but cannot confirm as no cannon injuries seen’. Davey was able to confirm, though, having seen him in the aircraft, that the wireless operator ‘was badly mutilated with cannon fire and parachute badly holed’.
Having landed awkwardly, spraining both ankles and knocking his spine, Leonard Davey was heading south-west to cross the River Danube ‘into Partisan area of Yugoslavia’ when he was picked up in a wheat field by the Hungarian equivalent of the British Home Guard, and taken to military barracks at Zagred [sic – possibly Szeged], where he spent the next five days and also met up with Walter Wicks.
He was then moved to the Budapest state prison, where he was to languish for the next three weeks. It was probably here – Davey’s report is unclear at this point – that a number of minor atrocities were committed against him and Walter Wicks, and possibly against another two 148 Squadron crew – F/S J.E. Taylor and F/O N.C. MacPherson RCAF, who had been captured when Halifax JP247 was shot down on the same night as JP179 and in roughly the same area. They eventually went on to Stalag Luft III (Sagan).
Leonard Davey:
‘Confined to dark cell for thirteen days on little food. Taken out for interrogation several times. Refused to give information so beaten up by gaol guards on return to cell. Beatings with rifle-butts, fists, boots, under stressed condition. Confined to chains for several days.....
‘Taken from cell on seventh day with others. Interrogation. No information. In blacked out cell during which time interrogated about four times. Still refused to give information during each interrogation so returned to cell where I was beaten up by gaol warden under instructions of German interrogation officer after each interview. Water changed twice, no bed or blankets, slept on floor, latrine bucket in cell. No light whatsoever. Bowl of soup a day (when it suited them).’
The nightmare ended on 31 July when Davey and Wicks were sent to Dulag Luft. It took three days to get there and, after five days at the Luftwaffe’s interrogation centre and transit camp, another five days to get to Bankau. W/O Blattmann joined them on 22 August in Trupp 27.
*
Lancaster LL846, PO-V ‘Victor’, 467 Squadron, was on its way back from Stuttgart on the night of 28/29 July 1944, when the navigator reported to the pilot, F/O S. Johns DFC, RAAF, that they were dead on track and would be over the French coast, near Cabourg, in half a minute. Barely had he spoken than V-Victor was hit by a burst of flak. The port outer engine was set alight, but the crew could do nothing to prevent the fire from spreading to the rest of the wing. Johns had no option but to order the crew to their ditching positions but, before they could get there, he had put down on the waters of the Baie de la Seine. The nineteen-year-old flight engineer, Sgt D.K.J. Phillips, suffered a severe head injury in the ditching and was unable to get into the dinghy. Despite Johns’ valiant efforts to pull him aboard, he drowned.
The rest of the crew, cast adrift in their rubber boat, lost the struggle against wind and tide to gain the shores of England, and were picked up by the enemy on 1 July after two days afloat. Three of the crew went to Luft 7 – F/S M.J. O’Leary RAAF in Trupp 23, and F/Sgt B.P. Molloy RAAF and Sgt B.R.J. Pring in Trupp 27 – while the three others of the crew, all officers, went to Stalag Luft III (Sagan). Most of them were on their twenty-ninth operation. So near, yet so far...
*
Another Lancaster on the Stuttgart raid on 28/29 July 1944, NE164, 550 Squadron, was lost on the way out near Strasbourg in eastern France, shot down for his sixth victory by Oberleutnant Gottfried Hanneck, 5./NJG1. Though later wounded when shot down himself, Hanneck would survive the war, unlike NE164’s pilot, F/O Harry Jones, one of those gallant airmen who gave his life to save his crew. Perishing with him was the mid-upper gunner, who died ‘when the cord of his intercom tangled with his parachute cords and he was strangled’.
Also lost was the bomb aimer, Sgt F.H. Habgood. Having parachuted safely to earth, he was captured near the village of Niederhaslach, Alsace, and taken first to Schirmeck security camp then to Struthof-Natzweiler extermination camp, and executed. Two of those responsible for his death, brought to justice after the war, were hanged on 11 October 1946.
The navigator, F/O W. Dinney RCAF, after help from Ste Odile convent and the French Resistance, got back to England, but the rest of NE164’s crew were captured, and arrived at Luft 7 in Trupp 23 – Sgts J.R. Drury (flight engineer), Don Hunter (wireless operator), and R.B. Cumberlidge (rear gunner).
*
12 AUGUST 1944. Very hot day. It was noted that the guards now had machine guns in their sentry boxes.
This was possibly the day on which just one man, Sgt Harry Hoyle, arrived from the Polish/ Balkan conflict. Trupp 24?
14 and 15 AUGUST 1944. Truppen 25 and 26 possibly arrived on these days, but names of new arrivals not known.
15 AUGUST 1944. Gramophone record recital (mostly classical) in the evening.
16 AUGUST 1944. The POWs had to remain on the parade ground after morning Appell while the Germans searched all the huts for unopened tins of food. Those that they found were punctured to avoid the contents being used for escape purposes.
17 AUGUST 1944. Prisoners confined to their huts while the Germans checked up on identity cards and photos.
18 AUGUST 1944. Red Cross parcel issue.
21 AUGUST 1944. Whilst on parade one of the prisoners made a dash for a football which was between the huts. When a guard aimed his rifle at him the rest shouted to watch out. He just made it behind a hut in time.
22 AUGUST 1944. Trupp 27 (109 men) arrived.
*
Lack of nourishment was a constant worry for prisoners and, even though the International Red Cross moved mountains to provide the hundreds of thousands of Germany’s captives with food parcels, there was never enough. F/S Norman Oates noted on his arrival on 22 August 1944 that his food ‘was a daily bowl of boiled “grass” and a small ration of boiled potatoes. I heard that the “grass” was shredded sugar-beet tops. At first I could not eat it, but after a few days I was so hungry I managed.’
*
F/S William Ernest Egri RCAF, though born in Borsod, Hungary, on 23 December 1919, was working on a farm in Canada when war came. Having enlisted in January 1941, his first brush with death came on the night of 11/12 August 1942 when Stirling N3756, 15 Squadron, having been shot up by two Ju88 night-fighters on its return from Mainz, crashed into a pond at Potash Farm, Brettenham, Suffolk and burst into flames. It was only the brave and immediate action of three local men – Jim, John and Stan Arbons – that saved Bill Egri’s life when they cut their way into the rear turret and dragged him out.
For his actions on this night Bill was awarded the DFM in the London Gazette on 15 December 1942. This was the original draft for the citation:
‘Flight Sergeant Egri was a rear gunner in a Stirling aircraft which was attacked by two Junkers 88s. Our aircraft sustained extremely heavy damage and the mid-upper gunner was mortally wounded. Flight Sergeant Egri maintained his fire in the face of heavy cannon opposition, probably destroying one of the enemy aircraft and causing the other to break off the engagement.
‘It now became apparent that our aircraft was on fire and Flight Sergeant Egri left his turret and with his gloved hands and a fire extinguisher, assisted by other members of the crew, extinguished the fire. His hands sustained serious burns. Flight Sergeant Egri then returned to his turret which, together with the mid-upper, was unserviceable. He rotated it by hand, however, keeping watch for further enemy aircraft. The aircraft returned safely to friendly territory where the captain gave the crew the option of baling out as they had been unable to release their bombs owing to the damage sustained. The crew stayed with the captain, but the aircraft crashed in flames whilst attempting to land, probably owing to damage the captain had been unable to assess.’
Almost two years later, on 3 August 1944, WO1 Bill Egri was flying as rear gunner aboard Lancaster LL716, 514 Squadron, when it was lost on a daylight raid to the V1 storage site at Bois de Cassan in northern France. Flying at 15,000 feet the Lancaster was hit and damaged by ‘friendly’ bombs, leaving the pilot, F/O J.B. Topham, no choice but to put LL716 down on French soil. Two of the eight-man crew, including the pilot, managed to evade capture (it was not until 8 October that he set foot once again on English soil), but the remaining six were taken prisoner. Egri and two others – F/S Harold Gilmore and Sgt James Scully – would eventually join the other 106 men of Trupp 27 at Luft 7.
*
Navigator Sgt John Watkins had the distinction of being captured by White Russians and of being liberated by Red Russians. He was shot down on the ill-fated two-pronged attack on the Blainville and Metz railway yards in north-eastern France on the night of 28/29 June 1944, when eighteen Halifaxes of the 202 despatched by 4 and 6 Groups were lost. Eleven of the Blainville Halifaxes were shot down by rampaging night-fighters, and five of those were from 102 Squadron.
It was one of those nights when the Nachtjagd controller got it right, and was able to put his night-fighters in the right place at the right time. The first contact with the bomber stream was made when it was east of Rouen. Half an hour after midnight, still on its way to the target, MZ646, 102 Squadron, with John Watkins on board, was hit from behind and below in the classic Schräge Musik attack, by the upward-slanting guns of a night-fighter. With the Halifax soon ablaze, Sgt F. John Higman baled out of his rear turret, while John Watkins simply dropped out through the hatch below his seat.
MZ646 was shot down in the Compiègne area, with the loss of five of the seven crew, one of whom died of his injuries within hours of being admitted to a hospital in Beauvais.
John Watkins and the rear gunner, Sgt F.J. Higman, were taken prisoner, and went to Luft 7. John Higman was soon captured, but John Watkins, having made contact with the French Resistance, was hidden for about three weeks in a wood some forty kilometres north east of Paris with six other evaders – F/S C.W. Schwilk RAAF; F/O P.G. Agur RCAF; and 2/Lt John E. Hurley USAAF (co-pilot), Sgt Leo Williams USAAF, S/Sgt Harry G. Pace Jnr USAAF, and 2/Lt Peter D. MacVean (pilot) USAAF, four of the crew of B-24H 42-50344 Red Sox (448 BG, 714 BS) shot down on 27 June 1944.
The French Resistance had, at this time, been issued with instructions that any aircrew evaders who were in hiding close to the front line in northern France should, if possible, be taken to a ‘holding camp’ behind enemy lines in Fréteval forest, south of Châteaudun and south west of Paris. In accordance with these instructions, therefore, these seven evaders were moved to Paris en route to the camp. On their way there, however, John Watkins became separated from the other six in Paris,119 and was caught on 10 August with five other evaders (one RAF, one RCAF, three USAAF), when White Russian soldiers fighting for the Germans attacked the Maquis group who were looking after them, and handed them over to the SD at Chartres. They were doubly fortunate as, having been captured without any French people being present, it was accepted that they were just a bunch of aircrew evaders, and word reached the Luftwaffe that the SD were holding prisoners who were rightfully theirs.
After the usual stops at Oberursel and Wetzlar, John Watkins reached Luft 7 in Trupp 27.
*
24 AUGUST 1944. The camp was awoken early by the sound of two rifle shots. Fred Stead and Jim Goode recall that it was 7 am on 24 August when an Australian crossed the trip-wire, and one thing George Pringle RAAF remembered clearly of his time at Luft 7 was rescuing a fellow countryman who had lost his reason:
‘Not sure of name. W/O Davis, I think. Came to L7 after some months in Gestapo hands and was out of his mind. I helped to bring him back from over the warning wire [at] 5.30 am when a German guard was shouting at him. He was taken from our camp that day and sent to hospital according to Germans.’
The poor chap in question was W/O Bruce Hamilton Davis RAAF. A bomb aimer shot down on 21 May 1944 at Hasselterdijk, near Zwolle in The Netherlands, he spent the first seven weeks with the Dutch Underground. He had been struck in the right eye by a flak splinter when the Lancaster was hit but, despite treatment from a doctor in the Resistance, he never regained the sight in it. Initially hidden in the bell tower of the Catholic church in the town of Oldenzaal with his navigator, WO2 E.S. ‘Ted’ Moran RCAF, they were moved a few kilometres away to a safe house in the village of Lutterzandweg while arrangements were made for their return to England. But plans to help them get away were thwarted one day when a truckload of German soldiers suddenly appeared. Bruce and Ted, clearly having been betrayed, were captured in civilian clothes.
Shortly afterwards they were parted, but Ted must have been processed quite quickly, for he arrived at Luft 7 on 10 July with Trupp 11. Bruce, on the other hand, was to suffer extensive questioning by the German Secret Police (probably the SD) who, to get him to talk about his Dutch helpers, pulled out his toe nails. Then, playing with his mind, they tormented him with a photo of his wife, Dorothy, that they had found in his pockets, saying what they would do to her when they got hold of her. Bruce then ‘spent a lot of time in solitary confinement, and after one interview with the Gestapo [sic] was placed in a cell where he looked out of a small window onto an exercise yard’. The yard was also a place of execution and, as intended, Bruce witnessed several shootings. All of this continued to play on his mind.
Having been moved to several other places – he never knew their names – he arrived at Luft 7 on 22 August with Trupp 27. His state of mind on this day is unclear but, in view of his walking into the forbidden area beyond the warning wire only two days after his arrival, he must already have been close to a breakdown. Removed to the hospital at Loben (Lubliniec, forty kilometres south east of Luft 7), and then on to Stalag 344 (Lamsdorf), he was eventually repatriated to Australia in the POW exchanges in February 1945.
Once back in his native country, weighing just over 7 stones, he remained in hospital in Adelaide for three years. The doctors told his wife, Dorothy, ‘that they considered him to be a hopeless case, and his future looked very grim’. Three years later, though, a brain surgeon from the UK, who was visiting Adelaide, was referred to Bruce’s case.120 He decided to try an operation that ‘was the first of its type done in South Australia. It all made news in the medical journals.’ For Dorothy there was ‘a lot of heartache but we finally made it’, and after ten years of marriage they started a family (two boys and a girl), which proved a great joy to both of them. In 1977-78 Bruce returned to Oldenzaal, with Dorothy, to thank those who had helped him: ‘They made us very welcome and it was a wonderful experience for both of us.’ After a long illness, Bruce died on 6 February 1987.
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A representative of the IRCC, Dr M. Rossel, visited the camp on 24 August for a routine inspection. Resident at this time were 1,028 POWs: 738 British; 172 Canadians; six Rhodesians; twelve South Africans; five Americans; nineteen New Zealanders; sixty-nine Australians; three Dutch; four Free French. His report did not portray the camp in a good light, discovering that the men ‘sleep on the ground on sacks of straw insufficiently filled. There are not enough blankets.’ Additionally, there were no lights in the ‘chicken huts’ and, he reported: ‘Sanitary arrangements are primitive, there is not sufficient water only four taps being available. The pump in the middle of the camp is out of order... This deplorable state of affairs as regards the huts will be improved when the prisoners are able to move into the new part of the camp...’
Cooking facilities for food from Red Cross parcels were non-existent:
‘Cooking is done in old tins on makeshift fires, the only fuel often available being straw or paper. Reserves of food, stored nearby, were found to consist of 4,042 British Red Cross parcels and 569 diet parcels; 182 USA parcels and seventy-five diet parcels; fifteen medical parcels; and sixty British tobacco parcels. The percentage of theft remains very small and such thefts are nearly always of cigarettes.’
Rossel also noted that three men, who had been sentenced to ten days’ detention, were serving it in one of the small huts. ‘They receive bread and water for three days and on the fourth day the usual camp rations.’
Rossel noted, too, that there had not yet been any attempts to escape. His conclusion was: ‘In spite of poor conditions, the camp was adequate in summer and the prisoners were satisfied. Small huts which necessitate grouping six or seven men together suit British tastes.’ 121
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Probably around 24 or 25 August, mid-upper gunner Sergeant Raymond Davies Hughes arrived at Luft 7. He was on his twenty-first operation when shot down on 17/18 August 1943 (Peenemünde) in Lancaster ED764, 467 Squadron. Captured, and interrogated at Dulag Luft, he offered his services to a grateful Luftwaffe, who thereafter employed him with some success. Usually calling himself Herr Becker, he persuaded many new aircrew arrivals to complete the bogus Red Cross form. On 16 October 1943, however, he was moved from Dulag Luft to the civilian prison at Frankurt, and put in a cell on his own, apparently because the Germans believed that he was warning prisoners not to talk.
On the last day of October 1943 he was sent to Berlin where, until it was bombed, he was to live comfortably in the Auto Hotel, Charlottenburg, using the alias this time of John Charles Baker. For a time he worked at the Radio Metropole Broadcasting Station at Wannsee using yet another alias, Raymond Sharples. Berlin at this time was being heavily and regularly bombed by the RAF, and he claimed that he took advantage of the air raids to commit various acts of sabotage throughout Berlin. Seemingly a ‘bolshie’ character he was arrested by plain-clothes police, and sent to Zehlendorf-West camp on 9 August 1944. On 22 August he was taken by two guards to Luft 7, where he was questioned by Peter Thomson and by W/O George B. Edwards SAAF, who spoke German. Neither, according to Hughes, seemed particularly interested in his previous activities but, as he had become a fluent German speaker, he was given the job of advanced German instructor, and also did some interpreting for the Germans. He was, however, regarded as a collaborator from the outset, particularly because on arrival ‘at Luft 7 his uniform was immaculate and a German carried his luggage’.122 This sort of behaviour simply never happened to POWs.
At his General Court-Martial at RAF Station Uxbridge on 23 August 1945 Hughes was charged under section 4(5) of the Air Force Act with voluntarily aiding the enemy, and with accepting a salary from the enemy, whilst a prisoner of war. He was found guilty, reduced to the ranks, and ‘Discharged from the RAF with Ignominy’. He was also given five years’ penal servitude. His case was later reviewed, and on 7 June 1948 the Secretary of State for Air recommended to King George VI that he exercise clemency. A month later it was announced that ‘His Majesty the King has now been pleased to command that the unexpired portion of the penal servitude remaining to be completed be remitted’. As Hughes had lost twenty-six days remission for insolence and misconduct the earliest date for release from Dartmoor was 20 January 1949.
The postscript to Hughes’s story is that after the war he apparently married the daughter of a wealthy director of Plymouth Argyle FC, and did well for himself. Later, when former Luft 7 kriegie Frank Sturgess applied for a job with a certain company, he found himself facing a panel of directors, one of whom was Hughes, who failed to recognise him. Frank was left in no doubt that, despite his court-martial and discharge from the RAF, Hughes’s career did not appear to have been blighted by his past record. (For a fuller account of Hughes’s activities see Footprints on the Sands of Time, pages 187-90.)
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27 AUGUST 1944. Another air raid in the morning. Flak could be seen to the south.
29 AUGUST 1944. Trupp 28 (forty men) arrived.
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F/Sgt A.J. ‘Dick’ Holden, was caught attempting to cross the Pyrenees (see also Phil Brown, page 39). In Dick’s case, the pill must have been all the harder to swallow as he had been shot down over Holland just over seven months before, on 27/28 September 1943 (Brunswick). Taken to Belgium by Karst Smit, he arrived in Brussels on 27 October, and was placed in the hands of the organisation EVA, together with American airman Sgt Robert D. de Ghetto, rear gunner of B-17G 42-37737, 91BG/401BS, shot down on 10 October 1943 (Münster).
After the two had been separated, de Ghetto was captured at Beaumetz-lès-Loges (near Arras) on the night of 8/9 April 1944. Holden, meanwhile, having been passed on to the Felix escape line, slowly made his way to the Pyrenees hoping to cross into neutral Spain. His luck, and that of six others, ran out when they were caught on 8 May by a German patrol near the Pyrenees.
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At 5 pm on the afternoon of 1 August 1944 a bomb exploded at Gestapo headquarters in Warsaw. It was to signal the start of the Warsaw Rising: ‘The news arrived in London on the following day and immediately the Poles started to urge the Allies, and above all the British, to send the capital the utmost possible help.’123 This was easier said than done, for Warsaw lies 1,500 kilometres/950 miles from London, and it would have been suicidal for aircraft laden with weapons and ammunition to fly there and back safely in the short summer nights. Permission was, therefore, sought from Stalin to allow the supply aircraft to fly to Warsaw, drop the supplies, and continue on to Russia before returning to England. But Stalin refused, the only reason given being that ‘the Soviet government did not wish to encourage “adventuristic actions” which might later be turned against the Soviet Union’. So, it was clear that Stalin would offer the Poles, whom he basically regarded as enemies, no help whatsoever.
The only other possibility, therefore, was to use the recently-captured airfields at Foggia, some 240 kilometres/150 miles north of Brindisi. Warsaw was now that much closer for the big, four-engined aircraft. What followed – the aerial supply of the Polish Resistance in Warsaw from the Foggia airfields – proved to be, pro rata, one of the RAF’s costliest campaigns of the Second World War.124
As the supply drops had to be precise enough to ensure that the precious supplies did not fall into enemy hands, aircraft had to fly very, very low and slow, thus becoming easy targets for German light flak – of which there was plenty. Research by author Jozef Garlinski reveals that between 3 August and 21 September 1944 PAF, RAF and SAAF aircraft flew 196 supply sorties on behalf of SOE from Italy to Warsaw and the surrounding area, of which only eighty-five were completed (forty-three per cent). The cost, though, was huge, with thirty-nine aircraft lost at a rate of almost twenty per cent.
Two of the squadrons involved were No. 148 flying Halifaxes from Brindisi, and No. 178 with Liberators at Amendola, also in Italy. 148 Squadron lost Halifaxes EB147 and JN926 – six of the survivors ending up in Luft 7 – while 178 Squadron lost Liberator KG933, two survivors also going to Luft 7.
In the small hours of 17 August 1944 the citizens of the Kazimierz district of Kraków, Poland, were awoken by a violent explosion. An RAF Liberator had crashed into the women’s barracks at Oskar Schindler’s Emalia factory at 4, Lipowa Street, Kraków, today the Telepod electronics factory.
A plaque on one of its walls commemorates the loss of the three crew who died in the aircraft – F/L W.D. Wright (pilot); A/S/L J.P. Liversidge RAAF (navigator); and F/Sgt A.D. Clarke (air gunner), who are buried in the Kraków Rakowicki Cemetery. Their Liberator, KG933, had taken off from its base at Foggia, Italy, at 1925 hours on 16 August 1944 on Operation Nida 504 to drop supplies on the DZ near Piotrków, some 120 kilometres north of Kraków. On its way home, KG933 was shot down by, it is believed, Oberfeldwebel Helmut Dahms, 1./NJG100, who claimed a ‘Lancaster’ in the approximate area at 0157 hours on 17 August. Three survived, F/L A.H. ‘Digger’ Hammet DFM, RAAF (see Appendix IV), Sgt Leslie J. Blunt (flight engineer) and Sgt F. Walter Helme (air gunner). By 29 August, the two sergeants had arrived with Trupp 28 at Luft 7, some 150 kilometres north west of Kraków.
Another captured airman on 178 Squadron to arrive at Luft 7 was Sgt D.C. ‘Des’ Matthews, the sole survivor from Liberator KG938, which was lost on 20/21 August 1944 on an attack on the Reichswerke Aktiengesellschafte für Erzbergbau und Eisenhütten Hermann Göring at St Valentin and on the nearby Nibelungenwerk tank factory, near Linz, Austria. The raid was a failure. The factories suffered only slight damage – most of the bombs falling on woods two miles to the north – and four of the sixty-seven Wellingtons and two of the twenty Liberators despatched were lost.125
Des baled out through the manually-operated bomb-doors after KG938 had been coned by six searchlights and then hit by predicted flak. Three hours later he found himself hanging in a tree, with two broken ribs and a dislocated shoulder. Deciding, despite the pain from his injuries and one missing flying boot, to walk to Switzerland he was arrested by two Germans on their motorcycle combination. After a painful ride, he was thrown into the local prison, and was amazed, a while later, to be handed his missing boot. On the following day, after he had been patched up by a local doctor, he was escorted by a one-armed Luftwaffe officer to Frankfurt for interrogation and, after almost four weeks, was released to Luft 7, arriving with Trupp 34 on 25 September.
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At 0326 hours on the morning of 25 July 1944 F/O C.M. Corbet RCAF landed a badly-damaged Lancaster, KB740, 428 (Ghost) Squadron, at RAF Woodbridge, Suffolk, an emergency airfield for crippled aircraft. Though the aircraft was a write-off, all the crew survived. The rear gunner, however, was missing. The rest of his crew feared that he must have somehow fallen to his death, for in the wreckage of the Lancaster were seven parachutes, one for each of them including the missing gunner. It was over a year later that they learnt of his fate.
Having taken off just after 9 pm on 24 July bound for Stuttgart with a load of 1,000lb bombs, Corbet and crew were flying at well over 20,000 feet en route to the target when they collided with another aircraft. KB740’s bomb-doors were torn off, the starboard inner engine caught fire, all the propellers were bent, and the landing gear jammed. After bombs were dropped, the flight engineer, Sgt R.G. Enfield, calculated that there was sufficient fuel remaining to reach England provided that there were no leaks.
With flames streaming past his turret from the starboard wing rear gunner Sgt John Sandulak RCAF, hearing talk that a bale out was in order, needed no second bidding. Grabbing a parachute from its stowage in the fuselage, he clipped it on and jumped – too soon to hear Cecil Corbet say that there was a chance that the fire would go out, and that the order to jump was cancelled. Sandulak floated to safety and into the hands of an escape line, and was eventually taken to the special holding camp for evaders in Fréteval forest.
Back on the squadron, after leave, the Corbet crew acquired a replacement rear gunner, P/O R.E. Good RCAF. On 18/19 August, a month after the controlled crash at Woodbridge, the Corbet crew were on their way in Lancaster KB743 to bomb Bremen when the aircraft was hit, some of the crew believing by bombs from above, but it would appear that the Lancaster received a direct hit from heavy flak, and was set alight. Corbet this time had no hesitation in ordering the crew to bale out. All succeeded in taking to their parachutes, except for the rear gunner, whose turret had been blown off.126
Corbet and the two other surviving officers were taken prisoner and went to Stalag Luft III. Dick ‘Shorty’ Enfield and the other two NCOs – wireless operator Allan MacNaught RCAF and mid-upper gunner Tom Davidson RCAF – went to Luft 7 in Trupp 28.