Please Take Care of Bethany

by PC Brian Wilkinson

“The Bombing of Sofia”

  Of course I’ve read Dad’s private letters to my mum. They are in many ways all I have of my dad and the ability to understand the depth of love he had for my mother. They are both gone to the grave. I hope they really are together again and I don’t think they would mind me, now, reading their letters.

  All of the letters are addressed from North Africa and later on from Italy, from Bomber Command. Before Dad’s final and doomed mission on-board the American-built B-17 heavy bomber the Thompson, he refers affectionately to be flying inside a Vickers Wellington craft. He wrote home in October of 1943:

  Can you believe what I and the boys are watching? I think they are trying to boost our morale. We are all watching a film about the building of a new Vickers bomber at the Broughton factory. It’s a new world record by all accounts, my love. The workers have given up their day off to meet the challenge. To build the new bird, Wellington number LN514 in as quick a time as humanly possible. It takes at least 60 hours to get one of these things complete, but these guys, men and women, have done it in just 23 hours and 50 minutes. Isn’t that incredible? We can now build these new buggers as fast at Adolf can shoot them down. We did it. We beat the Yank’s record of 48 hours, previously set in California. That’ll put a smile on their faces. It’s a newsreel Worker’s Week-end film; they’re going to watch in the States as well. This bird was flying within 25 hours.

  From beginning to flight within 25 hours. Isn’t that incredible?

  You could sense how proud Dad was by his letters. You could sense the real pride he had in the Wellington. In an earlier letter he also noted;

  Barnes Wallis has developed this geodesic construction method. It’s based on his early airship designs, the same designs used on the early Wellesley Bomber. The fuselage is made up of 1650 elements; I know, mad, isn’t it? She’s aluminium alloy, the W-beams are duralumin. Wood is screwed onto the aluminium and covered over with Irish linen. It’s treated with dope and makes her an outer skin. She’s amazingly strong, a metal lattice, her stringers can support the weight, even from all the way up the other end.

  She can still fly even without her skin, just the frame.

  One thing that my father would never write home about was his fear. Never. He would protect mother at all times and just talk day to day pleasantries and military facts and figures. I guess this is a family trait I must have inherited genetically, directly from him. He must have known that this chit-chat of his reassured her. To talk about the war in such a day-to-day matter-of-fact way, as if the war was nothing to worry about at all, and he was just doing an everyday job like everybody else at the time. The only letter I ever read of his that even hinted at a sense of fear or realisation of his own mortality, was within his final letter, that letter found aside his body in the bomber during 1956.

  Most of the letters talked about his friends and his relationships with others. You would come across words that gave you a great sense of time lapse like nigger and dead Hun. You felt a world away from a generation now long gone. With all my training with the force I cringe at the use of these words, but these letters are written back in the mid-1940s. They’re not meant to be offensive I’m sure. I guess it’s just the terminology they all used back then. Other words, RAF jargon, are used frequently and I needed some help from the old chaps down at the military club to explain them to me, I admit, the curious use of the term ‘the two hundred,’ a term that regularly crops up within his letters to Mum back home. From time to time you also read of Dad’s despair at the war, how he questions himself about what he is doing there.

  On the 11th January 1944, Dad wrote the following. It is the only confirmed date of one of his exact-referenced involvements in the raids over Sofia in Bulgaria:

  Yesterday afternoon we joined a squadron of 143 American bombers, we ourselves made up just 44 Wellingtons during the darkness. We have again pounded Sofia into the ground. I imagine this is Liverpool below me and what I would think if the Hun were doing this to us, you there at home, terrified and all alone below a skyline of explosion. What would you be doing now? Is there any sense or reason in this campaign of strategic bombing? Will this make any real difference to the outcome of the war after all is done? We are bombing a city, a city full of citizens who just like everyone else in this God-forsaken war, are just trying to survive. The younger boys, they just like the thrill. They are here to kill Germans but they soon lose that sense of youthfulness from their pale, fresh faces. I watch the bombs fall down, that rain-fall of terror we deliver. They can’t all be bad these people down below. We have no idea who we are really killing. No idea at all.

  Dad had a terrific sense of humour and also he had a great sense of natural justice. I always got the feeling from these letters that were written home that he was not a black and white person at all. That he was a very complex man with great warmth and human conscience, a man of great compassion.

  I am fascinated by wartime stories and of wartime history but I could not have gone through what these men did. I read the story of Sergeant James Allen Ward. His Wellington had caught fire in mid-flight. The fire had broken out and taken hold inside the outer wing of the bomber. Sergeant Ward had climbed out of safety and onto the wing in mid-air to put the fire out. He kicked holes in the doped fabric, holes in which to gain a foothold and for which he used to hang on. James Ward successfully extinguished the fire, an action for which he earned the award of the Victoria Cross, the highest honour of all for any selfless act of bravery within the armed forces.

  Think about it. Just stop for a moment and really think about it, this co-pilot who climbed out of his seat to physically smash holes in the wing of his own aircraft. There, thousands of feet up in the intense cold, hanging on for his life to save his crew, and all at such great personal risk. What kind of man has that courage? I am not that kind of man for sure, but my dad was that kind of man. He knew that on his final mission; knew that he probably wouldn’t come home again, but he still volunteered. He volunteered because of what those Nazis had done to my mother’s family back in Poland. He knew that in writing that final letter to her, she would somehow understand his sacrifice. This, she did. My mother did understand why he had sacrificed his own life. We, all of us here are alive today because of these men. We know nothing of courage: our fast food prepared within an instant and all that mindless gut-rotting mind-numbing television we sit and watch.

  Superheroes, that’s what these men were, all of them, superheroes. Superheroes who thought they were all normal. My dad, the rear gunner Brian ‘Bull’s-Eye’ Wilkinson, a perfectly normal everyday superhero. I can still smell the whiskey on that letter, the last letter that Mum read before she died so very suddenly. Shall I read it for you?

  July, 1944. My Dearest Evelina,

  My two hundred is up again soon and I have leave to return home for 14 days. I shall be on the 16.30 from Piccadilly on the Thursday. Put the kettle on, the tea over here is quite undrinkable, almost like someone has been wringing out their socks in it. I’m a little fatter now. I do apologise. It’s all that canned meat. I think that they, Bomber Command, think we are dogs and that’s all we need. A can of the cheapest meat served several times a day and that’ll keep us all smiling. I hope that after the war Winston Churchill will soon ban the sale of Spam!

  How are you? Did you buy the dress after all? I really want to see you in it. A beautiful new dress for a very special lady. What shall we do? Do you have any plans my love? I know that I should spend some time down south with the family but I’ve decided not to tell them I’m coming home this month. I want to spend the time just with you. Can we go dancing again? Let’s find a dance band and I’ll twirl you around like you are a princess, my very own royal princess, to see you twirl in that new dress of yours.

  The war is nearly over now; rumour is that Bulgaria will soon join up with the Soviets in a unified attack. We are all together forcing the Hun all the way back to Berlin. Is it time to consider having our baby? I’d like
to call her Bethany if you agree? I know it sounds silly but I’ve bought her some new clothes already. A little white christening gown, I bought it in Italy. Pure white silk. I know you will like it when you see it. Funny thing is it’s made from an old parachute, don’t worry, it’s a new one, one taken out of service, but this old Italian lady makes them. They are so beautiful to look at.

  I’ll be home with you soon. I love and adore you so very much, can’t wait to see you again,

  Brian xxxxx

  There you have it: the letter that my mother Evelina was reading, reading again and again for a millionth time. The letter she was reading in that final moment when her heart finally broke and she died. The letter of events in which I guess, later on, led to my birth the following year in March. Mum had always told me that Dad was so convinced that their firstborn would be a girl. It seemed as if all firstborn babies in the Wilkinson family were always girls. I still have that old silk parachute christening gown that I would have worn had I been born a girl. Although just like Mum said, “Brian is so much more special now son, don’t you think?”

  Dad talked about Bomber Command considerably, about his friends, but never about the losses. He hid my mum from the real truth and horror of the war, a truth that I am now only really discovering, and beginning to understand.

  I found out as much as I could about Sergeant James Allen Ward. He was awarded the Victoria Cross for bravery exactly as I described. I also continued to find out much more. In October 1943, workers at the Vickers Broughton factory did in fact give up their weekend to build Wellington number LN514 against the clock, as a propaganda and morale boosting exercise. This story as detailed in Dad’s letter of 1944 is factually correct.

  The Vickers Wellington (Vickers-Armstrongs), a twin-engine and long range medium bomber was designed in the mid-1930s at the British factory in Brooklands, Weybridge, in Surrey. The chief designer was R. K. Pierson.

  During the early years of the out-break of World War II the Wellington was predominantly used as a night time bomber before the Avro-Lancaster, a four-engined heavy became more prevalent within the wartime theatre of operations. The Vickers-Wellington was the only British-built aircraft to be continually produced throughout the entire course of the war, and used later (and particularly) as an anti-submarine aircraft. The aircraft was named after the 1st Duke of Wellington.

  The geodesic structure of the Wellington Bomber gave it a very strong but light structure for its considerable size. The Wellington had a great advantage over other aircraft of its time given its load and range to power-ratio advantage, this without sacrificing its overall robustness, protectiveness and shell armouring.

  Sofia, the capital city of Bulgaria suffered a series of Allied bombing raids during World War II. Bulgaria declared war against the United Kingdom and The United States of America on the 13th December 1941. Sofia was targeted for strategic bombing missions between the periods of late 1943 until early in 1944. Bulgaria and other Axis powers were now within the comfortable bombing range needed by the Allies from bases they now occupied in Southern Italy.

  The raids resulted in the direct deaths of 1,374 people and additional non-fatal injuries accounting for a further 1,743 persons. 12,564 buildings were damaged. 2,670 of these were completely razed to the ground. Allied aircraft losses amounted to a total of 117.

  Note; A ‘two-hundred’ as it appears in the letter, refers to a minimum flying requirement of 200 flying hours flown in active service before a crew-member’s sortie was considered to have been completed.

  Bombing Raids – Sofia

  6 April 1941. 17 aircraft. Industrial section of Sofia. Fatalities; 8. Kyustendil. Fatalities; 58 civilians, military, 2 Bulgarian, 8 German. Injured; 59 civilians, military, 5 Bulgarian, 31 German.

  Additional raid of Petrich and Haskovo. Fatalities; 18. Injured; 28.

  14 November 1943. 91 aircraft. Industrial section of Sofia. Fatalities; 59 mixed civilian and military. Injured; 128.

  24 November 1943. 60 aircraft. Sofia, Central Rail Station. Fatalities; 5 people. Injured; 29.

  10 December 1943. 120 aircraft. Sofia, Hadzhi Dimitar, Industrialen,

  Malashevtsi and Voenna Rampa Quarters, Vrazhdebna Airport. Fatalities; 11.

  20 December 1943. Sofia. Fatalities; 64. Injured 93.

  30 December 1943. Sofia, Central Rail Station. Fatalities; 70. Injured; 96.

  10 January 1944. Sofia. 187 aircraft. Fatalities; 947. Injured; 611. (Referred to in Father’s letter)

  16 March 1944. Sofia. 50 aircraft. Fatalities; 43. Injured; 58.

  24 March 1944. Sofia, 40 aircraft. Fatalities; 0.

  29 March 1944. Sofia. 50 aircraft. Fatalities; 0

  30 March 1944. Sofia. 370 aircraft. Fatalities; 139.

  17 April 1944. Sofia. 350 aircraft. Fatalities; 128. Injured; 69.

  It was not until nearly some seventy years after the end of World War II, that on the 20th June 2012, a £6m memorial to commemorate the deaths of the 55,573 British airmen of Bomber Command was unveiled by the Queen. Air Chief Marshall Sir Stephen Dalton said, “Bomber Command’s service and raw courage had finally been recognised.” The unveiling ceremony took place in London's Green Park. During a fly-past, a Lancaster Bomber was used to drop many thousands of poppies in memory of their service and courage. Large scale criticism of strategic wartime bombing raids had prevented any earlier plans for such a memorial for many years.

  The memorial consists of seven bronzed Lancaster Bomber crew airmen. Veterans from around the world described it as “impressive” and “moving”. The event was organised by the RAF Benevolent Fund which will look after the on-going maintenance of the memorial. Russell Oldmeadow, now 90 years of age and a veteran of the war, from Canberra (Australia) was present. He was a Lancaster pilot during WW2, and one of many Commonwealth airmen present. “My brother was killed - that's one reason why I'm here,” he said. “But it's also a great occasion and I'm privileged. The memorial is absolutely magnificent.”

  Air Chief Marshal Dalton said, “Many of those who gave us our freedom, and to whom this memorial is dedicated, cannot join us physically, but their spirit is certainly here. For their bravery and sacrifice which helped to give us our freedom, we will never forget them.” An extract of the poem ‘For the Fallen’ was read aloud by Doug Radcliffe, the secretary of the Bomber Command Association. The repetition of the final words, “We will remember them,” by all gathered at the ceremony, was followed by a trumpeter playing the “Last Post” while veterans and current service personnel saluted. Pilot Alan Biffen who was present that day, and himself a war veteran of 87 years of age, said, “I am so glad that at long last Bomber Command is being remembered, not only for what it achieved, but also for the lives of the young men who never came back.”

  The memorial features a 9ft-high sculpture of seven Bomber Command aircrew and was designed by Liam O'Connor. It is built in Bronze and Portland stone and has an aluminium covering which was re-claimed from a Handley Page Halifax III bomber shot down over Belgium in May of 1944. The sculptor, Philip Jackson, wanted the dedication to be reflective. “I chose the moment when they get off the aircraft and they've dumped all their heavy kit on to the ground.”

  An inscription written on the face of the memorial reads, “Also commemorates those of all nations who lost their lives in the bombing raids of 1939-1945.” The average age of a bomber crew member was just 22.

  Almost half of the 125,000 men of Bomber Command died in active service. There were no campaign medals awarded to Bomber Command after the war. The irony of this, having read those words in Dad’s letter, “They will never build a monument to remember me, us lot, the bomber crews who kill women and children.” Notably; Bomber Command was never mentioned during the Prime Minister’s (Winston Churchill’s) victory speech at the close of the war. One life of so many now forgotten, my own father, Brian ‘Bull’s-Eye’ Wilkinson.