Was a pallbearer at Eric Wynn’s funeral which was held at 11.30am at St John’s Church, Mildenhall. Don’t like funerals – burial service at open grave – coffin draped with Union Jack and vivid with flowers – earth drab by comparison. Burial service solemn but lovely – same impression as Handel’s Funeral March. Guard of Honour fired a salute over the yawning grave. Then the Wing/Co. stepped forward and saluted and each in his turn, we followed him. It was the last tribute.
This was death, the death of an officer and a gentleman, and all about the day was vividly alive with sunlight and flowers. And so he joins the growing company of plain little white crosses. Good old Barry [Martin] was there, cut up and his funny red face all solemn for once. Thank God that Barry has finished. We are on ops tonight – if the skipper can get his crew together in the kite.
Wynn had been Col’s friend and Barry’s pilot on many ops, and the Canadian was among the very few friends they had seen buried in English soil. Most Bomber Command airmen either came down and were buried in German-held territory or were lost without trace.
How did the airmen cope with the loss of friends and comrades, and on such a stunning scale? A few years after the war the Auckland Star, Col’s old paper, reported some key findings of a study published in the British Journal of Mental Science, written by a doctor who had served for four years as medical officer on a wartime bomber station.[1] In ‘Morale and Flying Experience’, Dr D. Stafford-Clark wrote of the pent-up stresses of flying at night, enduring many hours of danger, noise and discomfort, knowing the chances of surviving 30 ops were less than even and to do so unscathed were about one in five:
There was no single moment of security from take-off to touch-down, but often the sight of other aircraft hit by flak and exploding in the air, or plummeting down blazing to strike the ground an incandescent wreck....Their attitude to losses and death of friends was particularly striking. It was one of supreme realism, of matter of fact acceptance of what everyone knew perfectly well was inevitable. They did not plunge into outspoken expression of their feelings, nor did they display any compromise with conventional reticence about the fact of violent death. They said ‘too bad ... sorry about old so-and-so ... rotten luck.’ Their regret was deep and sincere, but not much displayed or long endured. They were apt and able to talk of dead and missing friends, before mentioning their fate, just as they talked of anyone else or of themselves.It took the loss of particular friends or leaders, flight commanders or squadron commanders, to produce a marked reaction among a squadron. Then they might feel collectively distressed, have a few drinks because of that, go on a party and feel better. But they made no effort to escape the reality of the situation, nor was there any of the drinking to forget, referred to in accounts of flying in the last war. They were young; they were resilient; they lived until they died.Col’s earlier letters reflect a keen awareness of the effect his own death might have on his mother, to whom he downplayed the dangers while urging his sisters to shield her from some of the more alarming experiences. But not even the more candid comments in his letters and diary reveal how he truly felt about losing his friends. His close brushes with death are related more as adventures. There are, however, glimpses of the camaraderie he enjoyed with his fellow aircrew – an indication of how big a blow their deaths must have been to him. On 15 September 1942, two weeks after Eric Wynn’s funeral and after Col had already completed his tour of 30 operations, he took off with his regular crew, skippered by his Canadian friend, ‘Al’ Greenslade. His diary records how he felt flying with this crew for the last time – and then of learning what happened to them two weeks later.
Last trip to the mouth of the Gironde mine-laying 6hrs 50mins long and an uneventful stooge, during which the whole crew combined to pull my leg. Every five minutes someone asked me where we were; what the [signal] colours of the day were; whether the course was right; what the ETA base was; what was the nearest big town; what the lights were on the starboard; what the ETA French coast was; I said we had 11mins to run and the skipper said it was coming up there and then. It was a bloody cloud, which he knew full well. Finally hit the coast about 4 miles to port – good pin point and came home thereafter like a bird. Up the Channel, the skipper persisted in seeing land ahead where no land was; and then laughed like hell when I told him he was nuts. Banged my head and scratched my hand ripping up to see his damn land, which did not improve things. Finally, got browned off and that made them laugh even more. Everyone but me had an uproariously funny trip. So ended my last op. Glad and sorry to finish – leaves an emptiness as well as a relief. Absolutely first class crew and skipper – would go anywhere with them. Well, what next?
Friday 2 October 1942
Leave 18/9/42 – 2/10/42 – London – Devon Kelly House, Clifton – London. Had a wonderful shikker [night on the town] with Jack Ekelund, Barry and Mac McGieger in London. Came home about 9 pm on 2nd to find that my crew had gone to Krefeld. Never saw them again because they did not come back. Al Greenslade, Bill Hughes, Bill Orange, Les Moore, Smithy, Goldsmith – missing, the only Stirling not to return. Worst thing in the war to me. They were grand chaps and all day 3rd I could hear their voices. Hated it all. Report that a crew was seen baling out over the target. Also that a Stirling was seen fairly low being fired at, but with no answering fire. I wonder.... Fine chaps.
None of the crew survived. Col had flown his first op with Al Greenslade to Hamburg in July 1942, when they had been ‘coned’ by searchlights and had shot their way along the Elbe estuary to the coast at rooftop level. For the last third of Col’s tour Greenslade replaced Jock Watt as his regular skipper and their crew flew 10 ops together. Some of that crew appear in Col’s photo album, fooling around together on and off their base. Wireless operator Sergeant Bill Hughes, a 21-year-old Londoner; another Briton, air gunner Flight Sergeant Bill Orange; Sergeant Les Moore, a 20-year-old air gunner from Leicester; and Sergeant Marshal Smith, a 21-year-old flight engineer from Cambridge. Another Canadian, Flight Sergeant Robert McIntyre from Vancouver, joined Greenslade on the fatal trip that night, filling Col’s job as observer. The last member of the crew, Flight Sergeant Benjamin Goldsmith, a 22-year-old air gunner from Lancashire, had shared Col’s luck the night in early June when they had both been shot down returning from Essen and Col had ditched in the Channel. Goldsmith was one of only two crew to make it clear of their 149 Squadron Stirling, landing by parachute in a German flak battery in Belgium. Although wounded, he had ‘jumped the wire’ and evaded capture, making his way back to Britain with help from the Comete Line escape route.
Col’s sense of loss at their deaths comes through in his most revealing letter to his mother, later that month.
I am now back at the squadron [from leave in London], messing about doing odd jobs here, before being posted to my next job, which will probably be some sort of ground work. I expect to spend some weeks on this squadron, however, doing one or two jobs which the Wing Commander here has in mind.
I had my fair share of narrow escapes while I was doing my operations, so I think that perhaps your prayers for me may have had something to do with getting me through safely. Still, I suppose mothers pray for sons who don’t come back, so where are we?
The personnel on the station has changed very greatly since I came here. I scarcely know a soul, where once I knew nearly everyone – that is, among the flying crews. A good many have gone missing; more have finished their operations and have been posted away elsewhere, new crews coming to take their places. I am the very last of the flying crowd who were here when I came. Now I have finished, and in a little while I shall be going. You know, it seems queer for me to be watching others preparing to fly, and telling them what to do, while I stay on the ground. For 11 months I was flying; and now I am not. It seems as though one part of my life has suddenly come to a full stop. It will take some little time to adjust myself.
Rather a sad thing happened. When I came back from leave, I asked where my skipper was, that is the captain
of my old crew. I was told that he was flying that night, so I thought that it did not matter much as I would see him in the morning. Do you know, I never saw him, for he never came back. He and his crew – my old crew – just went missing. It is possible they are safe, of course, but only time will show that. He was a Squadron Leader, A. Greenslade AFC, DFC, a Canadian and a very fine chap. His crew thought the world of him. I was with him on the trip for which he got his DFC. It was over Hamburg. We came out on three engines over the outskirts of Hamburg at 50 feet, and we flew over Germany to the coast at that height. It was an exciting trip. The skipper’s handling of the machine was masterly. He brought us back. The two gunners were great friends of mine, dam’ good chaps. It is hard to realise they are not here. For several days afterwards, I kept on hearing their voice. Still, that’s the way things go. I met the skipper’s wife in London. She is a nice girl. I had lunch with them, and we had a great yarn. It is so hard on her.
Tomorrow will be exactly a year since I came to this squadron. It has been an eventful year, but a very happy one for me. I have seen a good many chaps go missing. I have seen a good many finish their ops, as I have done. I have seen three married and been best man for two of them. You know, one forms friends when one flies with men; and some of the chaps I have met here I shall not forget. I have flown with two Wing Commanders (both of them now dead), a Flight Lieutenant (also dead) and two Squadron Leaders (one missing). Each of them we called ‘Skip,’ short for skipper, and no-one cared a damn. I think that the crew of an aeroplane is the best example of democracy one could find. You get to know each other so well when you fly together. You learn what a man is like when things are sticky. That is when you appreciate his worth. We had a grand crew, simply grand. We would have gone anywhere with our skipper. Now it is that skipper, that great chap, and those gunners, who are missing. I do take that to heart.
One Wing Commander was named Knocker. Both he and his wife were New Zealanders [In fact, only the wife was]. He was a fine man, one of the most popular officers on the squadron. Everyone liked him; and he was grand to fly with. I did two trips with him, but was not in his regular crew. He was posted to another squadron – and went missing. So did the Flight Lieutenant, whose name was Turtle. I flew with him while his usual navigator was ill. He went on his 54th trip.
I have just heard the boys take off on another trip. They won’t be back for some time. I always wish them good hunting to myself. A kite always looks so lonely, as it nips smart off in the darkness; but the kite and the crew don’t feel lonely. They have the warmest sense of companionship. Often when we are well away from danger and out to sea coming home, we have a good chat and laugh over the inter-com. We all sling off at each other, tell yarns and hand round the thermos flask of tea. Everyone curses the navigator because he tells them they will have to wait a long time before getting to base; but it’s then that the sense of companionship is greatest. At the same time, if I ever have to look back through the astrodome, I see the mid-upper gunner ceaselessly turning his turret from one side to the other, while the rear gunner is doing the same. They never relax their vigilance against fighters.
Finally someone says ‘coast coming up’ and everyone takes a new lease of life. Base is not far away now. The navigator nips up beside the pilot to have a look-see what part of the coast it is, and then later we see the aerodrome ahead of us. That’s a thrill. I begin to pack up all my gear and put away my maps and get ready to get out of the kite as soon as it has landed and taxis back to where it stays when not flying – its ‘dispersal point,’ as it is called. Out comes a lorry or wagon of some sort to meet us, we all pile in and the first thing after taking off our flying clothes is a cup of tea. Boy! How we have longed for that. But as soon as we land, and get out of the kite, out come the cigarettes. No matter if I haven’t any, I still get one. No matter if some other chap hasn’t one. We all smoke someone’s. Another trip over. Though there were times when I thought that base was far too far away, I have had a good time.
I went to NZ House when I was in London last to enquire about some of the boys in the army. Ken Turtill is a prisoner of war, at present in Italy. That means he will be all right, at any rate. Cam is all right, and as far as I could find out so are Jock Cairns and Jack Walton. They were chaps I knew at ‘Varsity. The casualty lists have been pretty staggering, though, I am afraid.
On 17 March 1943 he wrote to his mother about the loss of Barry Martin.
Perhaps you may have heard me speak of Barry Martin, with whom I roomed from the day I joined the squadron until he was posted after having finished his first tour. He managed to get back to another squadron to start his second tour. I rang him up to ask him to come to Buckingham Palace with me. They told me that he was missing. Then just the other day the adjutant at that squadron rang to say that news had been received that he and four other members of the crew had been killed. It was a bitter blow; we had been together so long. I knew him better than anyone else in the RAF. I have seen so many go. The tragedy of it was that two days later his award of the DFC was announced. He never knew that he had won it. His father was killed in the last war when he was a baby. His mother married again after some years, and then some few months ago Barry’s half-brother was killed in a flying accident in NZ. God, what a load his mother has to bear.
After Barry’s death Col wrote to his friend’s mother, Guin Heaps of Christchurch. She replied:
Dear Colwyn
Your air mail letter took three months to come out. Oh lad thank you; you don’t know what it meant to me to get a lovely letter like that from one who loved my Barry and understood him so. From a once rather delicate boy he has always been stubborn, moody, unselfish, thoughtful and straight as a die. He often wrote of going off on leave with Colwyn and especially the time you went to Clifton College and the four or five nights in London after which you had stayed up and retired in the early hours. How thankful I am for his little sprees and that he’d always tell me, his mother, knowing I’d understand and [knowing] my love for him: He knew I’d understand his enlisting in that dangerous RAF but at the time of his death I did not even know of his [return to] flying. Did he tell you I lost his step-brother, Brian Heaps, 21, in March last year on his last hour of flying [training]?
Don’t agitate too much to get back to flying Colwyn, you are helping there anyway and have done so much. And have you a mother or sweetheart? You’ll think I’m an old fool but I want to save others as much as I can.
When a bomber went down, it usually meant the deaths of seven or eight men. On the German side, the chances of surviving a shooting down were greater but often ended in the death of the two, sometimes three, airmen. The Luftwaffe losses continued to mount, accounting for one in three who flew night fighter operations during the war. The pilot who shot down Barry Martin’s Stirling, Oberleutnant Hans-Dieter Frank, was himself killed in combat in September that year, with 55 ‘kills’ to his credit, among them also Al Greenslade’s Stirling. The German losses, though fewer than Bomber Command’s, had a similar psychological effect. Luftwaffe airmen regarded death with the same, almost perfunctory, realism as the RAF crews: it was part of the job and the death of a comrade in arms was a sad, but unavoidable, consequence of war.
‘If we had spent too much time thinking about the comrades who died, we wouldn’t have been able to do our job,’ Professor Fries told me. But at his first operational base, St Trond, a cemetery for fallen RAF airmen grew steadily along the airfield perimeter, as did the rows of German crosses in the Luftwaffe cemetery in the grounds of the nearby palace. The casualty rate among Luftwaffe crews was lower than for the RAF mainly because they were not ranging as far from home base and because they did not routinely fly over the sea, so that if they had to bale out they generally did so over territory under German control.
In our discussions about the loss of his comrades, Otto Fries maintained a quiet reserve for nine months. It was only one night, after a discussion about the devastating costs of the war to Ge
rmany, and to so many of his family, friends and former colleagues, that he wavered for a moment. There were two close friends in particular, both former room mates, whose deaths shook him. Both had a bemused inability to take seriously any form of authority and, because they flouted it with such good humour, they got away with it. ‘Nachtjagd Tony’ Flegel, 19, shared a room and many a laugh with his fellow Leutnant, ‘Otakar’ Fries. Tony died in June 1944, when he lost control of his plane while attempting to land on a runway blocked by a crashed fighter. He and Otto had once been shot down on the same night. Otto made it back to his barracks after Tony, whom he found regarding himself with concern in the full-length mirror. Asked why, Tony, a real ladies’ man, complained that the impact of his heavy landing by parachute had lessened his sex appeal by making his legs even bandier.
But it was the death of Oberleutnant Paul Stieghorst that hit Otto hardest. When he learned that Paul had been shot down and killed by German flak near Bremen, the news shook him deeply. ‘With Paul I had a special relationship,’ Professor Fries began. ‘He was so happy and so clever.’ It is a humbling experience when a distinguished 90-year-old former professor breaks down in tears over events more than 60 years in the past. His face glistening, Fries explained how he volunteered to travel from his base to deliver the news of his good friend’s death to Paul’s family in Westfalia, in Germany’s north-west. This was customary among officers, to spare the family the impersonal blow of a telegram. Otto was greeted by Paul’s father, a Protestant minister, whose face betrayed no emotion as Otto imparted the news and then broke down ‘howling’. Pastor Stieghorst was completely still for a moment, withdrawn deep into himself, then he said quietly: ‘Gott will, dass ich auch in dieser Hinsicht meine Gemeinde vorangehe – It is God’s will that, in this regard too, I serve as an example to my parish.’ He offered neither words nor gestures of comfort and Otto left feeling desolate and rather embarrassed.
Under a Bomber's Moon: The true story of two airmen at war over Germany Page 15