Frank Colwyn Jones was born in Auckland on 21 April 1908, the second of three children of Frank and Emma Jones, who had both endured the four-month trip from London to New Zealand by sailing ship, she in 1874, he in 1898. The children grew up on Northcote Point, linked to Auckland city only by ferries until the Auckland Harbour Bridge was built alongside it in the late 1950s. Col and his two sisters, Florence and Gwen, spent a childhood roaming the expanse of two wide, tidal bays on the Waitemata Harbour and playing among the pohutukawa trees clinging to the Northcote cliffs. The young Frank – Colwyn or Col to his family and friends – did well at Northcote Primary School and then at Auckland Grammar School in the mid-1920s. Active in many sports, he played wing for the First XV team that won the Auckland schoolboys rugby championship in 1926.
His mother, the fifth of 11 children, was an avid reader, but had been forced to end her formal education at 12, when her parents took her out of school to help look after her six younger siblings. She was determined her children would have the chance she was denied of a good education. Col fulfilled those hopes by earning a Diploma of Journalism in 1930, graduating Bachelor of Arts in 1932, then in 1935 completing a Master of Arts degree part-time while working as a journalist.
By the mid-1930s Col’s father, Frank Jones senior, had lost his job as a publishing company executive in a boardroom struggle and left his family to move to Taranaki, breaking off contact. With money tight, Col and his elder sister, Florence (‘Lass’) supported their mother, Col living with her in Mission Bay and Remuera and paying the bills from his reporter’s wages, which rose from £7 to £32 a month during the 11 years he worked his way up the ladder at the Auckland Star. From Auckland Grammar and university sprang a close circle of friends, several of whom also died in the war. Among the others, some rose to the top of their professions, including a later headmaster of Auckland Grammar, Henry Cooper, and Martin Sullivan, who became Dean of St Paul’s, London, in the 1960s.
Since overseas travel from New Zealand was then both much more expensive and more difficult than it is today, Col thought he might as well be paid for the privilege. In the early 1930s he covered the Governor-General, Viscount Bledisloe’s, Pacific tour for the New Zealand Press Association, an experience that encouraged him to apply for the Colonial Service. He missed out. But then came war. He was already a territorial (reserve soldier) in the intelligence section of the army’s 1st Battalion, Auckland Regiment when he applied for the Royal New Zealand Air Force (RNZAF) in December 1939. Then 31, he was already a good 10 years older than most of the RAF crew he later flew with. By September 1940 he had begun basic training at Levin, north of Wellington. He had resigned as financial editor of the Auckland Star to enlist, knowing he might not return, but judging the risk worth it for the cause: the survival of the land from which his parents had emigrated the century before. As was so typical of New Zealanders of his generation, he was fiercely loyal to the Crown and wanted to prove himself worthy of the empire to which the Dominion of New Zealand belonged.
Col left Canada to cross the Atlantic for Britain in May 1941. Six months earlier he had spent three weeks aboard Awatea crossing the Pacific via Suva and Pearl Harbor to reach Vancouver in November 1940. He then made his way by train over the frozen Rockies and spent five bitterly cold winter months completing training as a navigator and bomb aimer at Ontario and Manitoba. Here the vastness of the Canadian landscape – ‘miles of flat dam’ all’ – was mirrored by expansive night skies washed with the magical play of the Aurora Borealis, the Northern Lights. Some close friendships with other New Zealanders began here and ended only with their death in war. Col also wrote of the Anzac spirit they shared with the many Australians training alongside them – a bond tested during fiercely contested ‘friendly’ rugby games played between the runways, first in Canada, later in England.
Soon after his ship’s convoy sailed from Halifax in May 1941, Col got his first taste of war. The German U-boat menace was then at its peak. The mighty battleship Bismarck was roaming the Atlantic and had just sunk the Royal Navy’s biggest battleship, Hood. Elsewhere, too, the British Empire was being overwhelmed by the German onslaught. London had weathered the storm of the Blitz, but Col embarked for Britain knowing Anzac and British troops had been driven out of Greece and were making a desperate stand against German paratroopers on the island of Crete. Against this bleak backdrop he began a letter home on 24 May 1941 describing his crossing:
We left Halifax a little over a week ago – I had better not mention any dates – and after a little time on board sailed. Other ships in the convoy had started earlier to go down the harbour, but we picked them up, and began the long journey. We go as slowly as the slowest ship, and believe me that is slow, because some of the ships are as aged as the ark and look something like it. Looking back, I remember that I have written letters from queer places, but none queerer than this. Here we are, in the middle of a convoy, with ships on either side of us and behind us and ahead, and all we can see is precisely – nothing. Ever since we left Halifax we have had little but fog. Visibility is about 50 yards, and we can’t see the nearest boat. All we can see is grey, swirling swathes of mist, clammy and heavy, so heavy it is almost rain. As I write I can hear the hoarse, anxious cry of the ship’s sirens, answered by other calls from other ships. The boat, indeed the whole convoy, has the strictest blackout regulations. If you go on deck when it is dark, it is impossible to see your hand before your face, and if you go far from the door out of which you came it is dam’ hard to find it again.
We have learned a lot about fog. Almost as soon as we left we ran into the beginnings of fog, and until yesterday CENSORED we were never quite free of it. For a considerable time – some days in fact – we could not see anything at all. All we heard for hours and hours on end was the hoarse bellow of ships’ sirens. That must have been how they kept contact. We must have been somewhere near the CENSORED to have had fog. Everything was wet, including our spirits. Then yesterday we got up to find that the weather had cleared. What a thrill! We could see the ships which had been only noisy ghosts for the past few days. We examined them closely, as though they had been new-found friends. We have speculated what cargo they are carrying. We don’t know, though in a few cases the deck cargo is discernible. They are all low in the water, though, as though there was no empty space on board.
We heard with interest last night of the battle off Greenland. Wasn’t it a terrible thing to lose the Hood, the largest battleship afloat? Then we remembered that Greenland is not a deuce of a long way from where we were at the time. We have followed with added interest the attempts to catch and destroy the Bismarck and her escort. We have heard nothing definite yet; but we don’t expect they will come our way. We hope not. The Atlantic looks too cold to go messing about in a boat for hours. I’m comfortable where I am, thanks very much. We have since heard that the Bismarck was sunk – dam’ good job too.
Thursday 29th May. Whenever the news is broadcast, there is always a large group round the wireless, seamen and airmen alike. Everyone is vitally interested. We are having a struggle for Crete, aren’t we, and Crete seems to be very important for our position in the eastern Mediterranean. The Captain told us this morning that we would be going straight to England. He also told us that our course since hearing of the naval battle near Greenland was like a dog’s hind leg – that we had cruised all over the place out of the way of that locality. You ought to have heard the cheers that went up when it was learned that we had sunk the Bismarck. It seemed an eye for an eye after losing the Hood. Still, our losses in the Mediterranean since then have been heavy. I hope we can fix the Nazis in Crete.
A few days later. We are in the danger zone proper now, and our escort seems to have an added caution. We are said to be within the range of the German Stuka dive bombers, while we have been within range of submarines for some considerable time. To look over the side, however, I find it hard to realise that there can possibly be any danger. The sea is as calm as a mill
pond – has been all the way, in fact.
A day or two ago we had an obstacle race on board. We had to tear all over the place, through lifebelts, up ropes, down ropes, under little, narrow hurdles, along a spar, up planks made greasy with soap – in fact into all sorts of queer places. There were 16 teams of four members entered, and our team won. It was a gruelling race; but we won, so that was a good thing. There was a lot of excitement during which everyone crowded round the course and cheered. I was an entrant, and I shall never enter another one. I was stiff and sore for days – still am, in fact. Our team won a prize of £1, which we divided, thus adding the princely sum of 5/- to the exchequer. We have a picture tonight – ‘ Wells Fargo’ – which I shall attend. Anything for a break, you know. Honestly, there is nothing more to say, so I shall end this letter and write to you as soon as we have landed. Give my love to everyone, and tell them that we have endured the Battle of the Atlantic with complete success.
On arriving in Britain, Col was posted to Lossiemouth, on Scotland’s Firth of Moray, to an operational training unit for final instruction as aircrew. During these four months he spent each leave in London, where he explored a city battered but not beaten. Amid the Blitz damage, he encountered a fighting spirit that primed his own determination to strike back at Germany. He described his feelings in a letter written on 12 June 1941 to his mother, who had lived there as a small child.
I have stood and watched the life of London flow past. I felt that I had come home. I felt that I belonged here. This was part of me. It must be part of all those who are proud to realise that they are British. They are a wonderful people, Mother, a wonderful people. I have seen them mending the roads, I have seen the people skirt the gaping holes in the road. I have seen the quaint signs in the windows: ‘Our windows are smashed; but that’s nothing to the smash in our prices.’ I have seen afternoon teas served on the pavement because the interior of the tea-shop was hardly presentable. I have seen the stained and blackened ruins of many buildings. I have seen the twisted iron girders, the rubble that once was walls. I have seen one side of a wall shorn away, disclosing a bed and a table, and a towel over the chair. All this I have seen – but I never heard a word of complaint, never a word of bitterness, never more than a passing, light reference to the bomb damage. They are a wonderful people.
I have seen the people sleeping in the tube stations and it is scarcely credible, hundreds of them, lying side by side like sardines in a tin; men, women and children. Some of them had air-inflated full length cushions; but others simply put down a piece of paper over the hard concrete. You had to step over rows of sleeping bodies to get to the train. Apparently the rights of property are coming to be enforced there. Each person has his or her place, and if anyone happens to bag it, there is the devil to pay. We passed two old buffers who were sitting on the stairs. The same two were there on three nights. They were smoking foul-looking pipes, and despite the fact that hundreds of people passed between them as they sat on either side of the stairs, their conversation was in no way interrupted. As they sat, all they could see from their level was an unending passage of trousered and skirted legs, like a forest of human trees. They just talked on through the tree-trunk legs.
There were three of us, all Aucklanders. Gordon Harrowby, Percy Stewart and me, and between us we remembered enough of the famous places to fill in about two hours. It is not permissible to say much about the bomb damage; suffice it to say that though it is apparent and bad in parts, it is not bad when the size and unconcerned life of London is measured against it. But it made everyone who saw it fiercely eager someday – and not long now, perhaps – to repay it sevenfold. If the people had moaned about their loss it might not have been so bad. But they didn’t. They hardly mentioned it. It seemed such a shocking, needless and brutal thing. Still, we have done the same to Germany, and as time goes on we will do more and more.
We went to the Abbey and to the Houses of Parliament. It is not possible to see much of the Abbey because a bomb struck part of it. But we saw the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier – ‘They buried him among the Kings because he had done good towards God and towards His House.’ It is impossible to speak coherently of one’s feelings at being there. They were so chaotic, so overwhelming. But I knew a deep pride that I was British, and before I left I went towards the altar in the same hall as the Unknown Soldier lies and I prayed. I am not given to praying, as you know. Nor am I religious in the accepted sense; but there was something that needed expression. I did not ask that we should win the war, but simply that this place, which of all others is the greatness of England, might be spared. We all felt the same. None of us had much to say when he came out. We went past St. Margaret’s Church and there opposite, or nearly opposite, was Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. As I left I said to myself that I had been inside the Mother of Parliaments. We gave the world a parliament, you know; and if Britain fell tomorrow the fact that she has done even that much would make her the greatest of nations.
When Col wrote this letter Britain was at the low point of its war – alone and being pushed back on every front. Crete fell to the German paratrooper assault in late May 1941. Then on Sunday 22 June, less than two weeks after Col sent off this letter, Germany made a crucial mistake: it attacked the Soviet Union, providing Britain with vital breathing space and thrusting into its arms a huge ally in the fight for survival against the Third Reich. By the end of 1941 the United States, too, was pulled into the conflict on Britain’s side when, after Japan’s surprise attack on the American naval base at Pearl Harbor on 7 December, Germany quickly joined its Axis partner and declared war on the United States. Thus within six months Germany had decisively tipped the military balance against itself. Although the Japanese military tsunami had yet to break on Pacific shores by the time Col next wrote to his mother, in late July 1941, he saw new hope for Britain:
I have been to London again. We got a week’s unexpected leave and three of us made the most of it. The Luftwaffe has been leaving England alone since the Russian affair began, so I have not seen an air raid. I don’t want to see one either. It is a good thing that London has had a respite. By Jove, haven’t the Russians been putting up a good show. Nearly everyone here has been surprised; and the better the show they put up, the better for us, for we are striking hard every day and night at Germany in the air, and doing tremendous damage.
What interests me at the minute, though, is what Japan is going to do. If her fleet moves down towards the Dutch East Indies, there will be war, and the USA will come in. I am convinced of that; and I think America is preparing for that contingency. We can deal with Japan all right. Russia seems to be holding Hitler up. Good. We are giving Germany hell with the lid off every night and have been doing so for the past month. Good again. We are getting some of our own back. In October 1941, nearly a year after leaving Auckland, Col completed training as an observer – a combination of navigator and bomb aimer. From Lossiemouth he was posted to Mildenhall, northeast of Cambridge, to begin operations with 149 Squadron. Already, however, the risks he was about to face had been brought home to him by the loss of a friend he had trained with since boot camp in New Zealand, and with whom he had spent his early leaves in London. He wrote about this to his mother on 25 November 1941.
I learned today that a great friend of mine, one of the lads who trained at Levin and in Canada with me, has gone. He went missing [en route to] Berlin and nothing has been heard of him since. There is a chance that he may be a prisoner, but it is a slender chance. His name was Gordon Harrowby. We were together nearly all the time in Canada and all the time at Lossiemouth and we used to spend our leaves together. Gordon was a hell of a fine chap – quiet, sincere, steady and determined as well as being a first class navigator. I know that because I used to fly with him in Canada. I used to call him the ‘fat boy’ because he was always eating and always hungry. He always had money because he was careful with it, and when I ran short at the end of leave, Gordon would always have some and would
always hand it over. He was generous to a fault. I rather miss him. When I tell you that Gordon has gone, don’t think that I’m in any danger of going. I’m not. I have a feeling about this war. If I was going to be killed in any accident, I have had plenty of chances, as you know. Remember the time I fell from the tree in Birkenhead?
Of the three Aucklanders who explored London together on those early leaves only one, Percy Stewart, survived the war.
At Mildenhall, Col became firm friends with Barry Martin, another observer he had known since they were mustered together in Levin. This friendship carried them through many of the highs and lows of 1942, and seems also to have influenced Col to return to operations after he completed his first tour and was transferred to non-combat duties. How this camaraderie between two young New Zealanders took root in English soil, so far from the land of their birth, is a story of both discovery and shared action. My journey to understand theirs brought me through the gauzy gloom of an autumn day in 2007 to the gates of the first two airbases that had launched them into the darkness to bomb Germany.
CHAPTER 4
HOME BASES
The heart of Britain’s bomber fightback against Germany was once a bog – but a bog with a proud history of resistance to invaders. After the Norman Conquest in 1066, a band of Anglo-Saxon rebels led by Hereward the Wake waged a guerrilla war against the invaders from a base in the surrounding marshlands. This tidal, partly swampy terrain gave him plenty of room to range freely. It once stretched from the Wash, above the elephant’s ear of the Norfolk coast, to west of Cambridge, but the fens had been drained between the 17th and 19th centuries to increase the area of land for cultivation.
Under a Bomber's Moon: The true story of two airmen at war over Germany Page 4