This is Fred. He was a navigator and observer in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War. In his waxed personal documents he is described…
‘On first entry as aircraftman [as]… Height, 6ft 1½ inches… Chest, 35½ inches… Hair, dark brown… Eyes, grey… Complexion, sallow.’
He was my Grandfather.
Fred joined the Royal Air Force aged twenty-one. He decided to enlist because the Air Force paid well and it was very difficult to find work.
Shortly after he enlisted the Second World War began.
On the evening of Tuesday 21st May 1940, Fred’s crew were flying west of Mönchengladbach, a town by the Rhine in Germany, dropping leaflets.
They flew into an area where high-density beams of light were cast into the sky lighting up enemy planes in the night. The Whitley they were flying lit up like a Roman Candle in a beam.
From the ground, the Germans could measure how high the plane was. A Spotter observed the Whitley via telescope and relayed a signal to a Predictor, who operated a large machine that gauged the range and height of its target.
Once on target, the Predictor signaled the gun operators to fire. The ammunition and shells fired calculated proximity before sending exploding metal fragments into the vicinity of the airborne target.
The fuel in the wings leaked out as burning metal pierced them and the engine. A thousand gallons of fuel swished past Fred’s legs.
One piece of shell lodged itself in his left buttock and he felt hot liquid on his thigh. Thinking it was oil he put his hand on his leg and saw that the ‘oil’ was bright red.
Fred put his parachute on, looked at it, and thought, ‘I’ve got it upside down,’ then, ‘never mind, I’m left-handed anyway,’ and pulled the rip cord which opened the parachute out.
On the ground, Fred and the rest of the crew were met by the men who had shot them down. They waved pitchforks.
The crew surrendered and were taken prisoner.
A few years ago, I was gifted Fred’s Prisoner of War letters.
I transcribed them and then donated them to the Royal Air Force Museum.
I thought that’s what he would have liked (and also I didn’t want them to burn up in a hypothetical housefire).
Over the next three weeks I am interrailing to a couple of places he was taken Prisoner of War, before the 80th anniversary of the Great Escape next year. (You’re welcome, any Telegraph journalists who’ve forgotten to mark your calendars. Spoiler alert, he didn’t take part in the Great Escape which is a good thing, because all but a handful of the men who did where shot, and, another spoiler, I wouldn’t be here if he had been shot.)
To warn anyone who thinks I’ll be writing about vehicles of war and heroes and Churchill. I will not. I am interested in how we heal intergenerational trauma and dismantle the systems that cause it.
I have called this newsletter ‘Cheerio’, as it’s what he signed off all his letters.
The rules laid out in the Geneva Convention, said that once the other side surrendered you could not kill them. Later on in the war these rules were bent and in some cases broken but in 1940 the treatment of the enemy was acceptable for the most part.
The Whitley had a crew of five men aboard. All survived the crash and were taken prisoner, although the pilot developed T.B. and died later. He is buried in the Berlin war cemetery.
Following his capture, Fred was taken to a nearby Catholic hospital, ‘Maria Hilf’ or ‘Mary Help.’ It was run by nuns. ,
“Is there anything I can get for you?” One nun asked on his arrival.
“I’d like some beer,” he said.
“You can’t have beer,” she said. She laughed.
He claimed, when he told this story, that a couple of days later she returned to his bedroom and lifted her skirts. Strapped to her legs were two bottles of beer.
And that was the beginning…