Dear Little Mother,
Pay no heed to the printed address at the head of this page. It is just Air Force paper which I happen to be using for this purpose.
Well it is half past six on one of the coldest days we have had this winter. We actually had snow, and there was a bitterly cold wind blowing. It still is, in fact. The winter has not been particularly cold, but today has made up for a lot. To make matters worse, the fire is sulky, and I am tired of poking it – remember at home how I always poked the fire? – in case it gives up the ghost altogether.
I found myself mentioned in dispatches the other day.[4] That is a minor sort of an honour, not very important. It is not a medal, but a sort of a minor pat on the back. I don’t know why it happened. It just did. It was not worth sending you a cable about, and it is not worth making a song about at all, so please don’t mention it to anyone, or anyone who knew anything about the RAF would smile. I just tell you because I know you will be pleased.
I received a parcel from you the other day. Thanks ever so much. The contents arrived in good order and condition, and we have the odd late supper in my billet. I also got a letter from Lass the day before yesterday, giving me all the news. I do hope, dear, that you are keeping well and fit, and that you are happy. Do look after yourself, little lady. I think about you a lot, and wonder if you are well and not too lonely. The war is progressing favourably. It may not be long now.
CHAPTER 14
DEATH ACROSS DISTANCE
The Telegram, when it came, was completely unexpected:
Regret to inform you that your son Acting Flight Lieutenant Frank Colwyn Jones DFC has been reported missing on air operations on the night of 15/16 February 1944. The Prime Minister desires me to convey to you on behalf of the Government his deep sympathy with you in your great anxiety. Letter following.The telegram carried the signature of another Frank Jones, Minister of Defence. My great-grandmother received the news in her one-room flat in Parnell, Auckland, not from an anonymous telegram courier, but from her two daughters, Florence ‘Lass’ Exton and Gwen Restall. Col himself had seen to that, putting Lass’s name as next of kin in place of his mother’s, and writing to his sister in August 1942:
If bad news should come concerning me, it would be a terrible shock to Mother to open an envelope and read a bald, cabled statement. I thought that if you received the news, you could break it to her more gently. Tell her I have done so. Another thing – and this is most important. Should you ever receive a cable saying that I am missing, don’t tell her anything for 24 hours, because in that time some good news concerning me may be heard. I have known that to happen. By this time I suppose you will have received my letter telling how we went down in the North Sea off the Dutch coast. Well, when we got back to England, I just managed to get a cable stopped then. What a frightful shock it would have been to little Mother especially, and all so needlessly. Mind you, I don’t anticipate that anything bad is going to happen to me. All this seems to me to be making a mountain out of a molehill rather, but it is better to be prepared.
Lass took her nine-year-old daughter, Judy, with her that day in February 1944. Judy recalls how devastated her grandmother was by the news. But they hung onto the hope Col had been captured or was making his way back to Britain with help from the Resistance. Then, in November 1944, the Air Department notified Col’s mother that he was now officially presumed dead. His personal effects arrived from England in June 1945, along with an inventory, touching in its small details, and a request to donate his uniform for use by someone else.
New Zealand, along with so much of the rest of the world, was sifting painfully through the detritus of war. Col was just one of the many New Zealand airmen who would not come home to share in the elixir of victory. Yet the tributes sent to his mother show that his loss, even among millions, deeply touched some of the people he had met while overseas. Nothing in Col’s letters indicates he had a serious romance while he was in Britain, though he had broken off a relationship with a woman in Auckland before leaving for the war. He spent some of his leaves, however, with the sister of an English friend killed early in the war and he met another woman, Mary Whitfield, when he and Barry Martin went on leave together to Bude, on the Cornwall coast. Mary Whitfield wrote to Col’s mother two months after he was lost on operations:
Dear Mrs Jones
You have by now received the official news that Colwyn is missing and I know from how he spoke of you it must be a great blow. I am writing as I felt a more personal letter might be appreciated, knowing how formal and inadequate these notifications seem to be.
Colwyn may or may not have mentioned me but I have known him nearly three years now – in fact since his first leave from operations when he came to Bude and stayed at Clifton College with Barry Martin. I was a secretary there at the time and joined the WAAF [Women’s Auxiliary Air Force] six months later, since when we have met periodically and I came to know him very well.
He changed a good deal in those three years. When they came to Bude they were young and full of optimism. Barry’s death upset him terribly. And then one by one the others with whom he came over were missing or killed until he eventually came to believe he had to go too. It seemed to me to be a wrong ideal to have and I tried to reason with him but as you probably know nothing would change his view once his mind was made up. During the year he was instructing, the C.O. [Commanding Officer] did everything to prevent him from flying. He was an excellent teacher, the best they had had at Waterbeach [Airbase], and I remember meeting with him a crew which he had trained and during the evening every one of them bothered to tell me aside what a wonderful help he had been. He not only did his own job but all the others too and his interest in them was such a personal thing. They owed everything to him. You can imagine I felt very proud to be a friend of his.
I saw him last for a few days in January when he told me he had volunteered for pathfinding as it was the only way they would let him fly. It was a shock to me. I had hoped the ‘powers that be’ would win in the end as they always seem to do over things I’ve wanted since I’ve been in the Service. Though it is the most dangerous job in Bomber Command he was quite set and sure. His whole attitude was much happier and when we did discuss the matter it is obvious he had no illusions about it – the chances were a hundred to one that he would not get through his second tour but he said he had no ties – when he left you he said goodbye and whatever happened you would understand.
His last letter to me was postmarked Feb. 15th in which he had done no flying to date. It was that evening according to his C.O. that they set out for Germany. It must have been his first operational flight and I can imagine with what excitement he must have taken off after so many months of being grounded. He has told me of the nervous strain the men feel when setting out and then the thrill and the horror of being over the target with flak and searchlights surrounding them. And in spite of my feeling what a complete waste of opportunity for someone with such intelligence, understanding and character, I know he would not have had it otherwise.
On re-reading this letter it seems totally inadequate as to what I feel and want to express but maybe it will be some consolation to you to know how everyone from his C.O. to the merest child put their trust in him and were never disappointed. That reminds me of a small incident that happened when he and Barry were staying at Bude. We walked one afternoon intent on taking a photograph of the church and I turned to find Colwyn sitting on a stone bench with half a dozen small children around him. I came to discover it was typical of his interest in everyone with whom he came into contact.
And so I’ll finish hoping yet that he is safe and well somewhere and that we shall hear news soon.
Yours very sincerely
Mary Whitfield
Col’s mother received no letters from her son’s former fellow aircrew, of the type he had written to Barry Martin’s mother. Most of Col’s friends had been killed over the two years since he had flown his first operation. Sever
al mothers of the crew who died with him wrote, with pain, pride and even hope in their words. Millicent Bett, mother of the wireless operator, Raymond, took the initiative nine days after the Lancaster went missing: ‘I am writing to the other boys’ mothers, as I think it will be nice for us all to get in touch with each other just to cheer each other up in the long days of waiting for news. I don’t know if Jonah [Col’s sometime nickname] is your only son, but Raymond is all I have. My husband died 14 years ago and I have seen many dark days trying to hold up for his sake. He is 23 and we were such pals and I am very proud of him. May God give us courage to carry on.’ Raymond Bett’s headstone in the Berlin Commonwealth War Cemetery bears the inscription: ‘God gives us love. Someone to love he lends. His loving mother.’
The mothers of some of the other crew wrote to Col’s mother in the weeks following the loss, but if those in Britain remained in touch with each other, their contact with Emma Jones did not long survive the distance separating them on opposite sides of the world. So many people were mourning. While Col had been alive, he had helped the closest relatives of some of his friends to prevent their death from hardening into the finality of a diminishing past. From Kent, the mother of Peter Paine, one of Col’s earliest room mates in the sergeants’ quarters at Mildenhall, wrote to Emma Jones in April 1944, shortly after Col was reported missing on operations.
Dear Mrs Jones
I expect that Colwyn will have told you about me, and the many times that he has spent his leaves with us. I promised him that should anything happen to him that I would write to you. He was here on his last leave at the end of January and he told me then that he was not going to tell you that he was going back into operations, as he did not want you worrying over him.
I think that the raid on Berlin in which he had been reported missing must have been almost his first trip, as I had heard from him only a few days before that he was about to join his new squadron. I have been to the New Zealand Air Force Headquarters to see if there was any further information, but they told me last week that they would not expect any news for at least another month. I see from the report in The Times of the raid that many men were seen to bale out, so we must hope that Colwyn has landed safely somewhere. I shall be informed if he is a prisoner, and will see that he has letters and parcels and what I know he will most want – books.
Colwyn first came here with my son, they were in the same squadron and became friends, and after I lost my son I begged Colwyn to come just the same. We liked him so much, and I know that he was very happy with us. He just made himself thoroughly at home, in fact he once said to me that he followed me around just like he did his own Mother, and I tried to do for him what I thought you would have done. I feel so very sad for you all those many miles away, it must be so much harder to bear than for we Mothers here in England, who at least have the memories of many happy leave times, but I can assure you that Colwyn was very happy, he loved England, and enjoyed visiting different parts of the country and seeing all the old places.
It was entirely his own wish to go back on operational work, he was doing a very important navigational [training] job, but he told me he could not bear to see the boys going out any longer, and he simply had to go with them again. I think you can be very proud of him, and I do most sincerely trust that he is alive and safe somewhere and you will see him again one day. If I can do anything for you over here please tell me, and believe me that my husband and myself feel very deeply for you in your trouble, we know too well what you must be suffering.
Very sincerely yours
Winifred Paine
Emma Jones also exchanged letters with Winifred Paine’s daughter-in-law, Peter’s widow, Ruth. One of these letters came after the body of Col’s skipper, Flight Lieutenant Barnes, had been positively identified. In a letter written from her home in Shortlands, Kent, in August 1944, Ruth Paine compared the uncertainty about Col’s fate to that of her husband, Peter, killed in March 1942:
I know how hard it must have been for you to get the information about F/Lt Barnes being killed – I have had equally indefinite information about Peter, in that a cap marked ‘Paine’ was found near a destroyed Wellington but the Air Ministry don’t accept these things as proof and I have been told that a very high percentage of missing airmen are probably still alive, although it won’t be known until after the war. I am determined not to give up hope and it may well be that both of them will return.
Colwyn was one of the most cheerful and entertaining people I have ever met. I remember so well what fun he was during the last leave Peter and I had together when he was staying with us in Highgate. Going into town with the two of them was like taking a couple of schoolboys out for the day and I remember how much we teased him about his enthusiasm over everything and his expression ‘I nipped smartly up the road...’ etc! On the last evening of the leave Peter and his parents and I returned from a theatre, all of us, I think, feeling a little depressed at the thought of Peter going back on ‘ops’ the next day – and found that Colwyn had arrived unexpectedly from his visit to Surrey and his very amusing account of his visit and the journey back made us laugh so much that we decided we might have saved the money for the theatre tickets and stayed at home listening to him instead!
I was glad to find that he was just the same when I saw him again nearly two years later. I was particularly glad too that he was able to get down to see our son, Crispin. As I told him, I had intended to ask him to be godfather but as I had no answer to my letter – it was delayed I think while he was being posted to a new squadron – I assumed he must have gone east and I asked someone else.
You must have been terribly proud when he won the DFC. He wrote such a typically modest and understanding letter in answer to my congratulations. His letters gave me so much pleasure as he was the only one of Peter’s RAF friends I really knew well. When Peter’s personal effects were sent home I gave his RAF ties to Colwyn and I think it was typical of his sympathy and understanding that he said he would wear them on ‘ops’ and on the Christmas card he sent he added ‘I wore Peter’s tie to Hamburg, Ruth.’
Crispin and I will be leaving here in September and I shall not be able to return home until the flying bomb menace is finished, as Shortlands has been very badly damaged, but I am giving you that address as I don’t know yet where we shall be for the next few months. I feel the war really can’t go on for very much longer now.
Yours very sincerely
Ruth Paine
Emma Jones continued to receive a steady stream of tributes, in which disbelief was initially mixed with a forced optimism that Col might be posted among the prisoners of war. On 14 February 1945, one day short of a year after Col died, the chief sub-editor at the Auckland Star, Ralph Kenner, wrote:
It was not until I read the official announcement that I could bring myself even to think of Col as no longer with us in the flesh: the lamp of hope still burnt strongly. Now, they tell us he has gone. But you know and I know that Life cannot end, for it is eternal. Therefore, the individual expression of Life that is Col continues on even though undiscerned by the physical senses. There are times when I actually feel his presence – that glowing smile, those friendly thoughts, the tender solicitude for you and all that you hold dear. The real Col changes not; he has merely gone on to new experiences.
Your son was one of those rare friends with whom one could converse on the deepest topics in the most natural and friendly way. On occasion he would come into my room and within two minutes of ‘squatting’ on the edge of the desk he would be launched into the most intimate talk on some deep yet fascinating problem of living. And we both knew that what was being said was sacred to the innermost thoughts of each other. Col was a straight shooter; he hated pretence or humbug. He did not pretend to be any better than he thought he was and yet I thought I discerned in him one of the gentlest, rarest natures it has been my privilege to encounter.
Like so many others of our fine young men, Col saw there was a job to be
done for the Empire – and humanity at large – and he set off deliberately to do that job, knowing that in a human sense the chances were that he would not return. He told me that a few days before his departure. I, of course, expressed the opposite view, but he quietly indicated that he knew what he was doing, that it was well worth while and that he was fully prepared to pay the cost....
We are all proud of his grand record of service, proud to be his friends. And so, when you sometimes feel specially kind thoughts around you it may be that Col’s friends are joining with you in gratefully saluting his splendid memory.
With kindest thoughts to you all whom Col holds dear,
Sincerely
R. Aulben Kenner
My great-grandmother never recovered from the loss of her son; Anzac Day ceremonies were particularly painful for her. She died nine years later, in 1953, just after learning a young New Zealand beekeeper had become the first person to scale the summit of Mount Everest. Her daughter, Gwen – Col’s younger sister and my grandmother – died aged 95 on 10 January 2008, the day before Sir Edmund Hillary passed away.
At the time, I was back in Auckland going through Col’s remaining effects – a life reduced to fit into an old suitcase of documents, letters and photos: primary school reports, job applications and references, degree certificates, yellowed clippings of newspaper articles by him and about him, his photo album sent back from Britain, the unpublished manuscript of the planned book about the building of the centennial Maori waka. These remained of Col – forever a young man whose restless sense of adventure was fit for a young country, but who died answering the distant call of a people to whom he felt a tribal sense of belonging.
CHAPTER 15
GROUND ZERO, YEAR ZERO
By the time Col’s bomber exploded nearby, Penzlin had lost many of its young men on various fronts, and from the early 1940s had taken in a steady influx of refugees, mainly women and children, from the bombed cities to the west, including those of the Ruhr, the Rhineland, and Hamburg. Despite these casualties of the war, it still felt remote to young Kurt Köhn in 1944. His father was at the front, but had not married his mother, so the family unit was unchanged. Even when Penzlin sounded its own air-raid siren, it seemed merely an occasion for the boy to swing into action with his Hitler Youth troop, which acted as pedestrian marshals, ushering people briskly but jauntily into the town’s air-raid shelter. ‘We thought of this as fun – as sport.’
Under a Bomber's Moon: The true story of two airmen at war over Germany Page 19