The Squadron That Died Twice

by Gordon Thorburn

  No matter how ingenious they were, the radio inventors could not make an earphone with bibles and pencil lead. The answer was to steal one. Although Bristow always felt guilty about it, the radio was paramount and so, when a certain Austrian security officer he had befriended invited him to his quarters for morning coffee, the chance was too good to miss. The officer was called from the room; Bristow swiftly disassembled the telephone earpiece, removed the essential parts and screwed the cover back on.

  Desperate times call for desperate measures, and Bristow was sure there would be ructions, but no. Nothing was ever said. So, they heat-treated a piece of tin to soften it for a diaphragm, put the pieces together in a toothpowder tin, and there it was. Earphone Mark I, brackets, Barth.

  There was an international system of coded correspondence. Certain prisoners’ letters home would be taken to the Air Ministry and their seemingly innocent contents would be trawled for anything useful. Using this method, one of the prisoners announced the existence of the little wireless that would receive on 40 metres, and the Ministry set up a regular message service.

  Bill Magrath and Oliver James had been at Nevers for three weeks, staying with various different people, including the local chief of police, while paperwork and tickets were arranged for Marseille and contact was made with the Pat O’Leary Line, an escape organisation that had its beginnings in June 1940.

  Not all the soldiers of the British Expeditionary Force had sailed for home at Dunkirk. There were those who had been forced the other way, inland, as they fought rearguard actions in northern France and, when France fell, had no option but to flee southwards. The magnet was the sea port of Marseille but, without money or friends, or money to buy friends, they were stuck.

  A Scottish minister had left his church in Paris and taken over the Seamen’s Mission in Marseille, with permission from the Vichy officials who assumed that it would continue in its traditional role of providing spiritual and homely comforts to merchant sailors and fishermen. The minister, Donald Caskie, a crofter’s son from Islay, added British military refugees to his responsibilities and the Mission soon became a busy safe house and a vital link in the newly created escape routes from France, over the Pyrenees and on through Spain to Gibralter. At first, almost all of the escapers were soldiers caught out by the rapid German advance. Later, they were almost all Allied airmen shot down.

  One of the early helpers was Louis Nouveau. When the Mission was closed by the authorities for suspicious activities, Nouveau’s apartment became a substitute safe house. Here for a while lived a quite remarkable man, a Belgian doctor, Albert-Marie Guerisse, who had gone to England with the BEF from Dunkirk, joined the Special Operations Executive, transformed himself into a French Canadian sailor called Pat O’Leary, first mate on a ‘Q’ ship on the Mediterranean coast, and became active in landing spies and saboteurs while taking evading airmen in exchange. He was arrested, escaped, came to Marseille, joined the organisation and, in October 1941, took over command when the previous leader was betrayed.

  This was the set-up that gradually acquired his name as the Pat O’Leary Line, or just the Pat Line, and despite many betrayals and close shaves, continued in its work right into 1943. Infiltration by a double-dealing British criminal in December 1941, a petty crook called Harold Cole, almost finished it and many of its management, messengers and safe-house keepers were taken by the Gestapo. It was into this period of turmoil that Magrath and James arrived, to stay at Louis Nouveau’s apartment.

  The Germans knew full well that there were escape routes and escape organisations and, even without Gestapo interrogations of arrested members, they knew the jumping-off points for the way evaders had to go, over the Spanish Pyrenees. Perpignan, hardly 20 miles from the Spanish border, in that respect was a town that nowadays would be called a hub, and it was a hub for spies and collaborators as well as people-smugglers and those who made arrangements with them.

  Magrath and James took a train to Perpignan on Christmas Eve, 1941, with a guide who was perhaps wishing that his two charges were not quite so memorable, one with a severe limp and one without an arm. He left them at a small, family-run boarding house that rejoiced in the name of Auberge d’Angleterre. Their hosts tried to give their guests an enjoyable Christmas but there was tension in the air. The recent arrests had made everyone jumpy, and the economics of escape had been somewhat altered by the announcement of a bounty of 8,000 francs for every evader turned in.

  This meant that a smuggling mountain guide could get 16,000 francs for Bill and Oliver without having to go to all the trouble of guiding them through the Pyrenees in the depths of winter.

  Such a sum would buy the guide 800 Reichsmarks, the main currency in many ways, which would have bought 4,000 pounds sterling in occupied Jersey. Quite what that would have meant in terms of bread, cheese and wine in Perpignan in 1941 it is very difficult to say, but it was a substantial amount of cash anyway.

  The price asked by the guide/smuggler when he agreed to the job was 24,000 francs – three men’s bounties, as it were. This was not unreasonable considering he was operating on a no-result, no-fee deal, because the whole of his payment awaited him at the British consulate in Barcelona. There remained the possibility of the three of them being arrested between Perpignan and the border, which would mean the guide being shot and the airmen getting the Gestapo treatment, and even when they got to Spain there were risks. The country was allegedly neutral but at this time, after the German invasion of the USSR, General Franco’s anti-communist views ensured a pro-Germany bias among the authorities. If they were caught, Magrath and James could expect internment in a Spanish jail.

  If they had read the tourist information they would have known that the eastern Pyrenees, where they were going, are particularly wild and naked, a chief feature being the rarity and elevation of the mountain passes. In winter, they were struggling through snow and high winds most of the way up and down. It took them two days to walk over, their guide obviously knowing what he was doing and dressed accordingly, while the airmen had nothing but their workmen clothes.

  They fetched up in a small Gerona village, Vilajuïga, on 29 December, made it to Gerona itself, and were much relieved to be in the warmth and comfort of a railway carriage for the 50 miles or so remaining to Barcelona, where the guide had his reward, and from there to the British Embassy in Madrid.

  John Oates the while was being moved from one unsuitable place to another. In transit with only one German guard, he had an overnight wait at Rostock railway station. The guard told Oates he came from Rostock, so Oates suggested he go and see his family. Guard and prisoner could reunite in the morning for the next train they had to catch, and prisoner could adjourn to the bar. Going outside for a breather in his RAF uniform, Oates was questioned by an Afrikakorps feldwebel (sergeant) who asked if he was Italian.

  I said yes, I was, and was he Afrikakorps. He said yes, so I asked him how they were doing in Africa. ‘Terrible,’ he said, then wanted to know why I was laughing. I’m laughing, I said, because I am an Englander pilot, shot down. So what are you doing here, he naturally enquired, so I said I’d given my guard the night off, which made him laugh. We went back to the bar and had a few beers. War can be ridiculous sometimes.

  APPENDIX

  82 SQUADRON AIRCRAFT AND CREWS AT GEMBLOUX AND ÅLBORG

  List given in order of pilot, observer, WOp/AG. K = killed in action.

  17 May 1940

  L8858 UX/W returned to base

  Sgt T Morrison

  Sgt Carbutt

  AC1 Maison Charles Cleary (later F/Lt, DFM)

  L8830 UX/T

  F/O R J McConnell POW

  Sgt S J Fulbrook evaded

  LAC H Humphreys POW

  P4838 UX/R. Crew commemorated at Runnymede

  K F/O Alexander Moresby Gofton aged 29, son of Harry and Flora Gofton of Lae, New Guinea

  K Sgt Frederick Stanley Miller, 27, husband of Emily May of Ewell, Surrey, son of Edward and Jane Miller


  K Cpl Thomas Henry Cummins, 20, son of Thomas and Clara Cummins of Liverpool

  P4851 UX/B. Two crew commemorated at Runnymede

  F/O D A Fordham evaded

  K Sgt Frank Fearnley, 24, son of Frank and Alice Fearnley of Baildon

  K Cpl Allen Glyndwr Richards DFM, 20, son of Edward and Mary Richards of Caerau, Bridgend

  P4852 UX/O

  Sq/Ldr Miles Villiers Delap DFC evaded

  Sgt R F Wyness DFM evaded

  K P/O Frances Stanley Jackson, 22, husband of Kathleen Robina of Huntingdon, son of William and Elsie Jackson. Pancy-Courtecon cemetery

  P4853 UX/D. Crew commemorated at Runnymede

  K Sgt Reginald Edward Newbatt, 22, son of Henry and Drucilla Newbatt of Betchworth

  K Sgt Joseph Kenneth Crawley, 24, son of Joseph and Elizabeth Crawley of St Helens

  K Sgt Albert Vernon Knowles, 25, son of Albert and Elizabeth Knowles of Liverpool

  P4854 UX/F. Two crew commemorated at Runnymede

  P/O Kenneth S Toft POW

  K Sgt Arthur George Bernard Crouch, husband of Lilian Marguerite of Leicester, son of Arthur and Kathleen Crouch

  K LAC Raymonde Morris, son of Archibald and Ethel Morris of Romford

  P4898 UX/F. Crew commemorated at Runnymede

  K P/O Severin Christensen, 21, son of Otto and Catherine Christensen of Glasgow

  K Sgt Alfred Norman Phillips

  K LAC Peter Raymond Victor Ettershank

  P4903 UX/U

  Sgt L H Wrightson evaded

  Sgt Stanley J Beaumont evaded

  AC1 K A Thomas evaded

  P4904 UX/B

  Sgt T J Watkins evaded

  K Sgt David John Lees, 25, son of Harry and Sarah Lees of Erith. Lappion churchyard

  K LAC Kenneth Gordon Reed, 19, son of Albert and Elizabeth Reed of Penygraig. Merval churchyard

  L9210 UX/O. Crew buried at Festieux Communal cemetery

  K P/O James Joseph Grierson

  K Sgt Joseph Wiliam Paul, 21, son of Thomas and Florence Paul of Waltham

  K AC2 John Hedley Patterson, 20, son of Joseph and Mary Patterson of Hackney

  L9213 UX/M. Crew buried at Presles-et-Thierney churchyard

  K F/Lt George William Campbell Watson, 26, husband of June of Cheltenham, son of Henry and Susan Watson

  K Sgt Francis Charles Wootten, 26, son of William and Annie Wootten of Cardiff

  K LAC Alfred George Sims, 25, husband of May, son of Percy and Ella Sims of Farnborough

  13 August 1940. Those killed in action were buried at Vadum cemetery, about four miles north of Ålborg.

  T1934 UX/R

  K W/C Edward Collis de Virac Lart DSO, 29, son of Charles and Amy Lart of Charmouth

  K P/O Maurice Hardy Gillingham, 22, son of James and Edith Gillingham of Hendon

  K Sgt Augustus Spencer Beeby DFM, 21, son of Oswald and Emily Beeby of Ashbourne

  T1889 UX/L

  Sgt John E Oates POW

  P/O R M M Biden POW

  Sgt Thomas Graham POW

  R3913 UX/M

  K P/O Clive Warrington Wigley, 24, son of Frank and Kate Wigley of St Arvans

  K Sgt Arthur Homer Patchett

  K Sgt Archibald Finlayson Morrison, 31, son of John and Elizabeth Morrison of Glasgow

  T1827 UX/H

  K Sq/Ldr Norman Clifford Jones, 27, son of Joseph and Florence Jones of Holcombe

  K P/O Thomas Johnson Cranidge, 26, son of John and Catherine Cranidge of Crowle

  Sgt John F H Bristow POW

  R3802 UX/A

  F/Lt Ronald A G Ellen POW

  Sgt V John Dance POW

  K Sgt Gordon Davies

  R3904 UX/K

  P/O Benjamin T J Newland POW

  K Sgt George Cyril Ankers, 24, son of George and Ann Ankers of Wombwell

  K Sgt Kenneth Victor Turner

  R3829 UX/S

  Sq/Ldr R N Wardell POW

  K F/Sgt George Percy Moore, 30, husband of Mabel of Llandrindod Wells, son of Harry and Miriam Moore

  K Sgt Thomas Eckford Girvan, 19, son of William and Catherine Girvan of Dagenham

  R3821 UX/N

  K P/O Earl Robert Hale, 25, son of Robert and Maud Hale of North Vancouver

  K Sgt Ralston George Oliver, 23, husband of Joyce Oliver of Exeter, son of Horace Florence Oliver

  K Sgt Alfred Edward Boland, 24, son of Henry and Hilda Boland of Hull

  R3800 UX/Z

  F/Lt T E Syms POW

  Sgt K H Wright POW

  K Sgt Edward Victor Turner, age 20, son of Henry and Margaret Turner

  R2772 UX/T

  Sgt Donald Blair POW

  Sgt William J Q Magrath POW, escaped

  Sgt William Greenwood POW

  T1933 UX/C

  K P/O Douglas Alfred John Parfitt

  K Sgt Leslie Reginald Youngs, age 21, son of George and Bertha Youngs of Diss

  K Sgt Kenneth Walter Neaverson, age 28, son of Harry and Annie Neaverson of Doncaster

  POSTSCRIPT

  Flight Sergeant Leslie Howard Wrightson, husband of Mary, veteran of 17 May, was killed with 82 Squadron, 21 May 1941, flying from Malta, and lost without trace. Commemorated at Runnymede.

  Sergeant Thomas ‘Jock’ Morrison, 27, husband of Mary, of Denny, Falkirk, son of William and Agnes of Stirling, veteran of 17 May, was killed 12 February 1941 in a non-operational crash.

  Once his death was confirmed, Wing Commander Edward Collis de Virac Lart DSO was the subject of an obituary in The Times, in the form of a personal tribute written by his old CO, Group Captain Neville:

  By the death in action of Wing Commander E de V Lart, DSO, the Royal Air Force has lost a most gallant and able officer, a fearless and inspiring leader, and a charming comrade. Edward Lart was a man of rare personality. His slight, rather delicate appearance, and his quiet, unassuming manner were apt to give a deceptive first impression; but it never took new companions long to discover his real quality, his great zest for action and his complete indifference to any physical danger, his exceptional hardihood and powers of concentration, and his extreme modesty about everything that he achieved.

  With these qualities he combined considerable scholarship, an original mind, and a lively and subtle sense of humour. When this war broke out he was serving in the Middle East, but he never rested until he got home to have, as he wrote, ‘a crack at Hitler’. His subsequent outstanding deeds, which led to the award of a posthumous DSO, have added gloriously to the great traditions of the Royal Air Force. Edward Lart’s spirit lives on in those he has inspired by his example; and thus, although we may not see him, he is still with us, and his fine work continues in the Royal Air Force.

  The crew that was replaced just before Ålborg - Wellings, McFarlane and Eames - had mixed fortunes. Squadron Leader Donald Maitland Wellings DFC was killed on 9 October 1944, when his Mosquito of 613 Squadron was shot down over The Netherlands. Flight Sergeant Peter Kershaw Eames DFM came back to Watton from his instructor posting and joined 21 Squadron. Flying with the squadron CO, Wing Commander Bartlett, on 26 April 1941 his Blenheim was shot down by fighters over the North Sea, no bodies recovered. Don McFarlane DFM survived the war.

  Sergeant Norman Baron, the one pilot to survive the Ålborg op, was cleared of cowardice at his court martial and returned to duty. He was posted to another Blenheim unit, 139 Squadron, based at Horsham St Faith, Norwich and, after a brief detachment to Malta, on to Oulton, Norfolk. His award of the Distinguished Flying Medal was published in the London Gazette on 8 July 1941. The citation stated:

  In May 1941, Sergeant (Norman) Baron and Sergeant (Robert Walter) Ullmer, as pilot and wireless operator/ air gunner respectively, took part in an attack against a 6,000 ton enemy merchant vessel. Three direct hits were obtained and it was subsequently learned that the ship had been abandoned. A few days later, following a report that drifters were taking off the cargo, they again bombed the ship obtaining hits which caused smoke to be emitted. In June 1941, Sergeants Baron
and Ullmer participated in an attack on a large and strongly escorted convoy. The particular section attacked consisted of six merchant vessels and six destroyers. Bombs from one of the leading aircraft struck two of the ships, one of which was an ammunition ship which blew up with terrific force and the aircraft in which Sergeant Baron and Sergeant Ullmer were flying was severely damaged by the blast. Despite the wrecking of his turret, Sergeant Ullmer secured excellent photographs of the damage caused to the convoy and Sergeant Baron succeeded in flying the damaged aircraft back to base. Both airmen have consistently displayed great keenness, courage and determination.

  Presumably they had different observers on these flights or there would have been another DFM awarded.

  Twelve days after their awards were published, Norman Baron, still only twenty years of age, and Robert Ullmer, twenty-two, with observer Sergeant Kenneth Hopkinson, also twenty-two, took off from Oulton on an afternoon op against shipping at Le Touquet. They were shot down by flak and all three were killed, 20 July 1941.

  Sergeant Herbert Doughty, who missed flying with Newland to Ålborg through being on leave, and whose replacement Ken Turner was killed, finished his tour of duty with 82 Squadron and was posted as an instructor to 52 Operational Training Unit. On 12 April 1941, he was in the crew of Blenheim L6790 on a local flying exercise when the aircraft, below the height authorised for the exercise, hit high tension cables near Crockey Hill, between York and Selby. All the crew were killed.