Secret Letters

by John Willis

  September came, and RAF Debden was subjected to another mass bombing when 160 bombs were dropped. This time there were no casualties. Two days later there were more losses for 257 Squadron. Under the command of Hill Harkness, the squadron was in combat with enemy raiders over Chelmsford.

  Pilot Officer Camille Robespierre Bonseigneur, the 22-year-old Canadian, was hit. He had been employed briefly in a car dealership in Canada before working a passage for himself over to England with the aim of joining the RAF. That day, 257 Squadron was scrambled too late to help stop the Luftwaffe bombing North Weald Airfield in Essex – and 257 only met the might of the German Air Force on their way home. Bonseigneur, flying P3578, was killed in an act of either bravery or foolishness. His death hit another young pilot Cardale ‘Carl’ Capon particularly hard.

  He [Capon] said to me, ‘We could do nothing against those planes that kept swooping down on us. They were flashing above the sky above us at 25,000 feet. There must have been hundreds of them. And Bonseigneur, the fool, just climbed up there into them, followed by me alone. Well, it was too damn silly. He was asking for it. Now he’s gone and what’s left of the squadron?’ The strain was too much for him.

  Bonseigneur was remembered kindly by Pilot Officer Charles Frizzell too, ‘I was rather fond of Bonnie. He was in a foreign country, a long way from his home and with no close friends – a French-Canadian in an RAF squadron. I admired his courage to be a loner, and also his ability, in spite of a somewhat rough and rustic exterior, to converse fluently in French. I always had the impression that he thought his days were numbered.’47

  Bonnie had left a note in his kitbag asking that no personal letter of condolence be sent to his mother. Indeed, he was his mother’s only child.

  By 10.40am that morning, Sergeant Pilot Reg Nutter had also been hit in combat and was slightly wounded. In the same raid Pilot Officer Kenneth Gundry, who had been in the squadron for just ten days, had his port tail shot off and his starboard aileron split in two; luckily he landed safely. In a letter to his parents Kenneth Gundry recorded:

  ‘We separated as a flight and found ourselves sitting under about eighty Me 110 fighters milling around in a huge circle. Above them were about fifty or more Me 109s. The next thing I knew was a ruddy great earthquake in my aircraft and my control column was almost solid. On my left another Hurricane was floating about over a complete network of smoke trails left by cannon shells and incendiary.’48

  It was no wonder that so many 257 planes had been lost in the aerial chaos and against such large enemy numbers. There was one consolation for Gundry. ‘One poor Ju 88 was spotted going back from a raid and about seven of us whooped for joy and dived on him from all directions. He finally went down in a complete inferno of red-hot metal and we could see the column of smoke rising from where it crashed.’

  That day Terry Hunt grew worried about her husband as she waited as usual at the gate, so she telephoned RAF Martlesham Heath, hoping that Myers would answer. ‘Perhaps if he had known, Geoff would have come to the phone as I always imagined someone kindly and discreet would do. As it was, when I rang at midday, it was an airman who said “E’s one of the one’s o’ve come down.”

  By degrees, I discovered that David was in hospital in a place that sounded like the Highlands of Scotland.’

  An hour and a half later on the dot, Terry rang back as requested. ‘This time they sent Charles Frizzell to the telephone. He had been at the party. He was someone I knew. He told me that David had been shot down by parachute and burned… I said to Charles; “He’s not going to die or anything?” Charles said “Nothing like that.” ’

  David Hunt had parachuted down and crash-landed at Brook Farm, Margaretting, in Essex.

  On hearing the news about her husband, Terry immediately set off for the hospital at Billericay, with her mother accompanying her for support.

  ‘David was lying on the bed. The newness of his accident was the sensation in the room. He himself was something brand new and very real. I saw him just for a moment, his face and arms purple with fresh dye and swollen. I thought he has no eyes; and I thought they had not told me that but had left me to find out quietly for myself; and, curiously, how wise they were. Behind all this was David. I saw then, as I cannot see now, how we should manage his blindness.’

  Terry kissed her husband and recalled how red her lips were against the purple. David explained how the hood of his Hurricane jammed and trapped him but how, after a long time, he had thought about his wife and forced the hood open. ‘A nurse brought the wings and buttons and the buckle off his tunic… there was a baby crying all the time. The sunlight was white and harsh outside the window. The baby cried and cried. After a time, I got up and closed the window, and made the room my home.’

  In just ten minutes that morning, 257 Squadron had lost one pilot who had been killed; another had been badly burned and a third had been wounded.

  The strain on Myers, of supporting his squadron as they were being decimated, was severe. The greater the carnage in 257 the more he worried about his family in France. It was as if the world was out of control – and the twin anxieties about the tragedies in his unit, and his family’s dangerous isolation, fed off each other.

  In France, Margot Myers, seeing with her own eyes the increased presence of German troops, decided to head south across the demarcation line while she still could. Rumours were intensifying of a final battle not far away on the River Loire. Her plan was to escape to Spain. Her children and some other family members, including her grandmother, piled into two cars – seven of them in one little Renault – leaving only her mother and infirm relatives behind. On the road south to Thiers there were columns of troops everywhere. It was chaos.

  In Thiers, the Myers family slept in their cars. The roads were jammed with vehicles and in the town square scores of people were sleeping on the ground. In the nearby village of Ste Marguerite, an elderly woman saw the two young Myers children and their great-grandmother asleep in the car and offered them a makeshift bed, much to the relief of their mother. The Germans appeared to have taken over and the town was thick with refugees. Margot was worried about how she would find enough petrol to travel further, and there were many rumours of bridges being smashed by German bombs.

  At Thiers Town Hall she was, like everyone else, issued with the general advice to go home. She was offered enough petrol to do so. Margot talked it through with the rest of the family and they decided that without sufficient petrol there was no option but to return to Beaurepaire. On the journey back they almost crashed into a van full of German soldiers.

  Back at home, Margot was both relieved and scared. She was pleased to see her mother again and to feel the security of a solid home around the family, but Lucenay-lès-Aix was now full of Germans. They had started impounding houses and began marching through the village carrying swastikas. How soon before they knew about a half-British family living nearby?

  Margot had been only nineteen, still naïve, when she married. Now she realised she had to learn how to survive, and fast. Rumours and propaganda swirled around and there was a noticeable increase in anti-British feeling. Margot and her mother were both cautious about Pétain and any rumours of an armistice with the Germans.

  Margot lit a big fire and burned photographs and anything that might reveal the British or Jewish side of the family. Other precious photographs and documents were buried by a family member, ‘I never found them again. Neither did he … did he destroy them in a moment of fear? Also, the hunting rifles that we had buried in the garden and could never find again? Fear makes one do such strange things.’49

  It was a relief that the farmer who worked the land attached to the house had disappeared to fight. Margot and her mother worked the land and animals even harder. At least she would be able to feed her children, she thought, and the less she needed to buy food in the local village, now swarming with Nazis, the better. His children in France were also constantly in Geoff’s mind.

  Oh m
y luvvies, if only I could see you for a moment and be reassured! Perhaps I would see Robert, still playing with his little wheelbarrow under the oak tree or chopping wood in the farmyard. Does Anne still trip around with Grandma and pay daily calls on the rabbits? Is the harvest brought in and have you been left enough?

  I looked at your photo yesterday, Ducky, quite calmly, as if I would be seeing you in a fortnight’s time.

  Pilot Officer Charles Frizzell remembered, ‘We were beginning to feel a bit crumpled. We had suffered more losses than inflicted upon the enemy. I think what upset us was what we read in the newspapers, this enormous discrepancy between what we were doing and the other squadrons.’50

  With Bonseigneur dead, and David Hunt in hospital, 257 Squadron was down to the bare bones. Even when the unit did fly, Squadron Leader Harkness was a liability. Flight Lieutenant Hugh Beresford felt the pressure intensely and despaired of Harkness.

  Beresford said, ‘This afternoon, [Harkness] saw all the bombs crashing below us in the oil tanks in the estuary. But do you think it made any difference to him? No, he just went on circling at 18,000 feet. He didn’t seem to hear or see anything. Of course, he’s scared! I know that. And look what’s happening to the squadron.’

  As even his local Royal Air Forces Association in Melton Mowbray put it, ‘Hugh gave the men of his squadron much needed morale at a time when his CO showed the conduct of a coward by flying away from the action. Although Hugh was privately very nervous and vomited under the daily intense suicidal stress of the Battle of Britain, when the pilots were almost always greatly outnumbered – the Luftwaffe sent 1,500 planes at its height – he most bravely went straight into the attack.’51

  In the late afternoon of September 7, just before 5.00pm, 257 Squadron – under the overall command of Harkness – was airborne for the fourth time that day to meet a huge force of more than fifty German fighters and bombers headed for London. Beresford was leading A Flight, flying Hurricane P3049, and Lancelot Mitchell was in charge of B Flight. 257 were exhausted and very low on morale. That afternoon they met the Luftwaffe over the Thames Estuary. The air was smooth, with high cirrus cloud in a blue sky. The squadron was scrambled late and struggled to get into a position they could attack the enemy from. They were outnumbered, and out of the sun the escort of German fighters dived swiftly down to attack the Hurricanes of 257.

  As the RAFA Melton Mowbray recorded, ‘Beresford tried to warn the other pilots of the danger over the radio, issuing a frantic warning to the squadron about the attacking fighters, stating that he could not attack as another Hurricane was in his line of fire. Then there was silence. In his final few moments of life he had used his last breath to save others… none of the squadron saw what happened to him.’

  On the ground, Ashley Reeve was one of a group of men laying a pipeline; he watched the dogfights overhead. ‘We saw one plane in a sort of dive. The engine was cutting, spluttering, then it picked up for the second time, roared to life and then literally disappeared into the ground.’52

  By the end of the afternoon, not only was Beresford dead but the second flight leader, Lancelot Mitchell, too. The Hurricanes of Sergeants Hulbert and Robinson were badly damaged. Geoffrey Myers wrote in his notebook of his roommate.

  I slept alone last night. Mitchell has gone. I can’t believe that he is missing. There were his pyjamas on the bed. His violin on the table. He played to me only two nights ago. As he played, he said, ‘I don’t mind the noise, do you Geoff? Sorry, a string’s missing. I know I’m not much good at it, but somehow…’

  Now Mitchell can’t be a Flight Lieutenant. It was his burning desire. He had been expecting promotion last week. After that he was going to marry his Margery. But our squadron leader had neglected to do the necessary paperwork and Mitchell never got a fair deal.

  Myers remembered, ‘Pilots all disappeared in the same way. In this case it cost us lives. I don’t know how many. You had to be highly organised. You had to have extremely good leadership. These men were killed through no fault of their own.’53

  In his contemporaneous notebooks Myers recalled Lancelot Mitchell’s last night:

  The night before his death he scarcely spoke to anyone. He remained in the anteroom far into the morning, writing to his Margery, to his mother and to his sister.

  He used to talk to me far into the night. He talked about Margery. ‘I don’t think she will let me down. She’s the most wonderful woman in the world. Don’t smile. I know I’ve said that before.’

  There was really something about Mitchell that attracted women and they really intended to get married, I think. They had been telling everyone in the mess that the wedding was for the next month. Now Margery will wait awhile for another man.

  Hugh Beresford had already been recently married to Pat, who was only nineteen. It was almost coming up to their first wedding anniversary. In his secret letters to his family, Geoff Myers observed Pat’s grief.

  Hugh Beresford. Another hero gone. Mrs Beresford rang up last night. She was in tears. The adjutant tries to soothe her over the telephone. He didn’t quite know what he was saying, spoke about boats that might have picked Beresford up at sea. We told her not to give up hope but she knew. She asked if she could fetch his clothes. ‘She sounds sweet,’ the adjutant said. He was almost in tears himself. He had a double whisky after that.

  Beresford was the real leader of the squadron. The strain under which he was living penetrated my system, and I could do nothing for him. It was tough.

  For weeks, Myers had been trying to get Harkness moved. He felt disloyal but he knew it was the right thing to do. 257 squadron had been decimated. The effect on those who remained was transparent. Young Carl Capon was the favourite of Myers. ‘He was my own personal hero. He was so pure. Even if he knew he could be shot down, this was his job and he was going to stick to it. He’d never leave anyone in the lurch.’

  He did not think he was much good and I tried to encourage him by telling him what I thought of his keenness and bravery.

  Geoffrey had real concerns about Carl Capon and the impact another disastrous day in the skies would have on someone who was courageous but lacking in confidence.

  Poor Capon will go crackers if we don’t look out. He’s just twenty and to look at him with his innocent earnest blue eyes, his open face and wide forehead under that light wavy hair, you would think he was not yet eighteen. He would follow his leader anywhere in the sky and never let them down whatever the odds against them.

  Tonight, he couldn’t stop writhing as he sat on the table with his hands. ‘There were too many of them. They sailed down the Thames Estuary in perfect formation. And we did nothing. They just bombed us and went back.’

  Carl Capon was going to buy a second-hand car from Freddie Wallis, the adjutant, and accused Wallis of planning to claim it back quickly because Capon would soon be killed.

  The adjutant had intended nothing of the kind. ‘Don’t be silly old man,’ he said. ‘Silly! What’s silly in that?’ Capon asked. ‘Just count up the squadron now and think for yourself. On August 8 we were twenty-six and now what’s left of us? Nine?’

  The loss of two flight leaders on one day and a missed rendezvous with other squadrons finally pushed 11 Group HQ into moving Squadron Leader Harkness to a training role at RAF Boscombe Down.

  My Ducky, I had a painful day again today. What I had been working for, for weeks, happened and I knew that it would cut me up when the day came. Yesterday evening the Squadron went up and should have met another squadron over London to intercept raiders. They missed each other and the AOC [Air Officer Commanding the Group] was annoyed. He put through an inquiry. It turned out that it was no fault of our squadron. But on previous occasions there had been so many muddles in which Harkness was at fault that this must have been drawn to the attention of the AOC. The opportunity was used to relieve Harkness of his command.

  Harkness came to me saying, ‘They’ve just told me over the phone that I’m to hand over the squadro
n to Stanford Tuck.’ I couldn’t say anything. I couldn’t be hypocritical enough to say I am sorry. Rotten business, because we personally got on well together and he regarded me as his friend.

  In fact, it was Squadron Leader Robert Stanford Tuck who was finally responsible for the downfall of Hill Harkness. He had been posted to 257 along with his very capable colleague, Pete Brothers, to replace the two leaders, Beresford and Mitchell. Brothers recalled what happened when they flew with the squadron, alongside Harkness, to patrol a line above Maidstone at 20,000 feet. The squadron had seen a large formation of bombers with fighter escorts approaching and alerted the squadron leader. ‘He [Harkness] said, “We’ve been told to patrol the Maidstone line and that’s what we’ll do until we are told otherwise.” So we all pissed off and left him and got stuck in.’54

  In his biography, Pete Brothers took a slightly more understanding line about Harkness. ‘Too old for the game. He was probably thirty or thirty-five and he was past it from our point of view – too cautious after the heavy losses – possibly had relied on the tactical abilities of his two flight commanders.’55

  Initially, Brothers worried that he and Tuck had made a misjudgement about Harkness, ‘But then this happened a second time, then a third time and we decided that this chap just wanted to avoid combat at all costs.’ Fortified by a few drinks they rang up Keith Park, who was the Commander of 11 Group and one of the most senior figures in Fighter Command. They asked that Harkness be sacked. Clearly, Park listened because Harkness was then removed and sent back to a training role at Boscombe Down. Other pilots suffering from ‘lack of moral fibre’ were put on more menial duties.56

  In his biography of Pete Brothers, Nick Thomas is kinder to Harkness arguing that despite his senior years as a fighter pilot, Harkness had elected to fly operationally whenever he could. He was right that Harkness was just too old in a sky full of pilots ten or fifteen years younger than him. But the notebooks of Geoffrey Myers are unequivocal when he writes about the shortcomings of Harkness – and these flaws were confirmed by others in 257.