by John Nichol
Aided by the same brilliant moon which had been the downfall of so many the previous night, he was able to cover a considerable distance. As the cold seeped into his bones he started to suffer terrible cramp, but he remained determined to preserve his rations, even using melted snow for water. He managed to find and follow a network of dirt tracks through the trees to speed his progress, but was all too aware that hunger and the pervasive cold were starting to sap his strength.
He began to regret slicing the tops off his boots.
At seven o’clock in the evening of Friday 31 March there was a knock at the door of the Bartons’ home in New Malden. A solemn young man stood on the step clutching a telegram. ‘I hope you’ve not brought bad news,’ Mrs Barton said, as she took it from him.
It was addressed to Cy’s father, but, hands trembling, she opened it.
All she saw were the first few lines … ‘regret to inform you’ … and then the word ‘FUNERAL’.
She stood motionless for a few seconds, unable to speak. Finally she managed to murmur a few words to Roy, Cy’s younger brother, who had walked in a few moments earlier. ‘Go and get your Auntie Dot and Uncle Reg.’
Then she burst into tears.
The telegram was brutal in its finality, and could only have added to Mrs Barton’s distress in its staggering bluntness:
DEEPLY REGRET TO INFORM YOU THAT YOUR SON PILOT OFFICER C.J. BARTON WAS KILLED THIS MORNING AS THE RESULT OF AN AIRCRAFT CRASH. DESIRE TO EXPRESS DEEPEST SYMPATHY IN YOUR LOSS. YOUR SON CAN BE BURIED AT THE ROYAL AIR FORCE REGIONAL CEMETERY AT HARROGATE WITH SERVICE HONOURS AND THE COST OF BURIAL WOULD BE BORNE BY THE GOVERNMENT. IF YOU WISH TO ATTEND THE FUNERAL A FREE THIRD CLASS RAILWAY WARRANT FOR TWO PERSONS ONE OF WHOM MUST BE A RELATIVE WOULD BE ISSUED ON PRODUCTION OF THIS TELEGRAM AT THE NEAREST POLICE STATION. IF YOU DESIRE A PRIVATE FUNERAL THE BODY WILL BE SENT HOME AT GOVERNMENT EXPENSE AND THE COST OF THE COFFIN WOULD BE MET FROM GOVERNMENT FUNDS. IN ADDITION YOU WILL BE ALLOWED A GRANT OF FIVE POUNDS TOWARDS FUNERAL EXPENSE BUT NO OTHER EXPENSES WILL BE ALLOWED. PLEASE TELEGRAPH YOUR DECISION AS SOON AS POSSIBLE TO RAF STATION USWORTH. HIS BODY IS AT CHERRY KNOWLE HOSPITAL SUNDERLAND.
Even without reading its abrupt text, Cyril’s sisters Cynthia and Joyce knew all too well what the telegram meant, and why their mother was crying. Joyce put her hand on her mother’s shoulder. ‘It’s all right, Mum,’ she said. ‘He’s only gone to live with Jesus.’
When Cy’s father returned home, she showed him the telegram. He too was devastated. All his most deeply held fears, expressed in his letter of grudging acceptance of his son joining the RAF, had come to pass. Both of them were in tears. Their beloved boy would never fill the house with laughter again.
Cy had been in the nose of the plane, which had come to rest at the top of the ravine beyond the colliery yard. John Douglas, an off-duty Royal Marine, had dragged Cy from the wreckage. A local GP had been next on the scene. Cy had suffered head injuries and lost a great deal of blood. He was still alive but unconscious, and the doctor knew he needed an immediate transfusion if he were to have any chance of survival. The ambulance arrived to take him to Cherry Knowle Hospital, but he was pronounced dead on arrival.
Cy was not the only fatality in Ryhope that morning; George Heads, a miner, had been hit by the wreckage of the plane on his way to work, and died instantly.
CHAPTER 16
The Reckoning
Freddie Brice, Maurice Trousdale and Timber Wood were told the devastating news in the emergency ward of Cherry Knowle hospital, early on the morning of 1 April. Freddie burst into tears. ‘Words cannot explain our feelings at this time, one could not stop the tears that were shed; he had given his life for ours and with only one engine remaining had made a gallant attempt to miss houses over which we were flying. How can words portray a true picture of a man like Cy?’
That same morning, Cy’s sister Joyce was sent to the post office to collect a stack of blank telegram forms so her mum and dad could start writing to other relatives. To Cyril’s younger brother, they wrote simply: ‘Ken, come home, Cyril’s killed.’
Later that morning, a letter of sympathy arrived at the Barton house from Wing Commander Wilkerson, Cy’s Commanding Officer. ‘He was one of my most experienced captains,’ the tribute went, ‘and led one of my finest crews. His loss leaves a gap in our ranks which it will be impossible to fill … He always showed a devotion to duty and a keenness which was an example to us all, and you may be proud of the fact that he died doing a magnificent job of work …’
The evening newspapers of 31 March were the first to carry reports of the raid. ‘2,000 TONS ON NUREMBERG,’ screamed The Star of London from its front page. ‘A raid that seems to have been on the 2,000 to 2,500-ton scale was made on Nuremberg, home of the great Siemens electrical and engineering works, and an important rail centre, during the night …’ it began. It wasn’t until six paragraphs later that it quoted from an official press release announcing the number of missing aircraft. ‘The loss of 96 aircraft is the heaviest the RAF have yet experienced in a single night’s operations,’ the article went on, before trying to reassure its readers with an explanation: ‘And it has been frequently stressed that we must expect our losses to vary according to the weather conditions prevailing at the time, the distance to be flown over hostile territory, or other obstacles that may be encountered.’
The Star did not make any mention of bright moonlight and veering winds, though the next morning’s editions did. The Daily Express headline trumpeted: ‘Why RAF Lost 94 Bombers’ (claiming that initial reports of 96 having been lost were incorrect), before listing why the raid had been so costly. The Germans had mustered their ‘biggest effort’ of the war; the moonlight was uninterrupted by cloud; the Germans were using a new kind of flare. The Yorkshire Post quoted an unnamed Lancaster pilot talking of how the vapour trails had given them away to the enemy, and went on to say, less accurately, that so many bombers hit Nuremberg that the city had been ‘saturated’ with explosives.
The Air Ministry’s internal communications were less bullish. They knew that many had lost their lives for little gain, made no reference to new German flares or the use of ‘Scarecrows’, and admitted that Nuremberg was not successfully bombed. The only similarity the official communiqués shared with the newspaper reports was the need to downplay how disastrous that night had been.
The initial German reaction was understandably ecstatic. The High Command communiqué issued the following morning read: ‘Last night our air defences achieved their greatest success while warding off British terror raids on Nürnberg. They prevented concentrated attacks from being carried out and destroyed 132 4-engined bombers. Damage was caused and the population had losses in the Nürnberg built-up area and in several other German localities.’
On the German bases, there was widespread satisfaction. For the most successful aviators, there would be awards, medals and leave. The ‘Night Ghost of St Trond’ was one of the few who didn’t share in his colleagues’ delight. Heinz-Wolfgang Schnauffer had tried to intercept the main stream as early as possible, as it crossed the coast, but he was too late, and by the time he returned the battle was over. A pilot of his skill, working under a bright moon, would have inflicted even greater destruction on the main stream if he had caught up with them, but he had been too eager.
Despite the failure of their ace, the German top brass were jubilant. Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering sent a telegram of stirring congratulation to the command of 1 Fighter Corps: ‘The enemy suffered its worst defeat by night so far during its criminal attacks on our beloved Homeland and the German people were given their first revenge through the merciless spirit of the night fighters.’75
Jocelyn Norfolk had browsed the account of the Nuremberg raid in her morning newspaper, but never imagined that her friend George might have been involved. She wasn’t to know that he had fallen behind enemy lines and been spotted as he emerged from hiding that morning by a young boy, who raised the alarm. The
police duly arrived and he was marched to the nearest station.
George had been told stories of airmen being beaten and even killed by civilians in their fury at the invaders who had flattened their cities, towns and villages, and killed their women and children. Much to his surprise, he encountered no hostility whatsoever. He was taken from the police station to a nearby Luftwaffe base, where he was invited to share the mess like any other airman. ‘There I was, sitting with these men, sharing their food. Only a few hours before, they were trying to kill me. It struck me as more than a little curious.’
The same morning Dick Starkey and the other captured airmen were taken by train to the Dulag Luft Interrogation Centre at Oberhausel, near Frankfurt. The railway station was a hive of activity, with SS officers mingling with Wehrmacht. There the mood was hostile. One Nazi storm-trooper stared at the group of PoWs with ‘hate and murder in his eyes’. He picked arbitrarily on an Australian, smashing him to the floor with his fist. The Aussie jumped to his feet, as if to retaliate, then stopped, aware that if he did so he risked getting them all shot.
They were herded into cattle trucks, their coaches for the journey, and crammed in like beasts. The only concession to decency, as they travelled through the German countryside, was a few open doors to allow fresh air to get in – and Dick and his companions to see the smoking hulks of burnt-out bombers strewn across the fields and hills around them.
Those, thought Dick, are the funeral pyres of fallen friends and comrades.
When Len Lambert, the navigator who had baled from Cy Barton’s Halifax, woke from a night of broken sleep on 1 April, the mist which had enveloped the valley had cleared. His makeshift bed had been a pile of fir branches in a small cave, but that meagre shelter had not been enough to prevent the chill leeching into his marrow.
From his vantage point he could see, through the morning haze, three small towns joined by a railway. He was nearer an accurate fix of his position. By his calculations he had walked approximately 30 miles, which meant he was somewhere between Bamberg and Schweinfurt, and still had a vast distance to go to the Swiss border.
Despite the penetrating cold, he decided there was no point feeling sorry for himself. Len set off. At midday it started to snow. He grew damper and more downhearted. Maybe he could cope with the temperature if he could find more food? The chocolate and condensed milk had gone, and his milk tablets did not provide enough sustenance for walking 10 miles a day in this weather. He passed a farm and saw a vegetable patch. This was his chance. Checking there was no one in sight, he crept out into the open and started to uproot some vegetables.
But the farmer had spotted him, and there was no point trying to run in his weakened state. He was taken to the farmhouse. A young Panzer trooper was there on leave from France and his English was good. Len was given cider to drink, some bread which he wolfed down, then coffee. Word of his capture spread, and the locals came from miles around to have a look at this mysterious stranger.
Len was then escorted to the nearest police station, a few miles down the valley. They tried to interrogate him, but no one spoke English, and Len was unwilling to divulge more than name, rank and number in two hours of questioning. Later that afternoon he was taken on a civilian train to a larger police station, and eventually to Schweinfurt, where he met other captured airmen at a Luftwaffe base. Among them were the two others who had baled out of Cy Barton’s Halifax: bomb aimer Wally Crate and wireless operator Jack Kay. They enjoyed a brief reunion, tempered by their concern about what might have happened to the rest of their crew. ‘I feared the worst,’ Len said. From there, it was a train ride to Dulag Luft. Their war had come to an end.
For their fellow airmen in England, the end of the war seemed further away than ever. A little more than 24 hours after landing, Sam Harris and his crew were back inside G-George on an affiliation exercise: being ‘attacked’ by fighters from a neighbouring airfield so their pilot could practise his evasive drills. They spent the morning being tossed around their aircraft in a grim parody of their most recent raid.
Back in his billet, Sam reviewed his logs and charts. After debrief he had submitted them to his nit-picking Squadron Navigation Officer, which always felt like handing in his homework. Because of the tribulations of the Nuremberg raid his log was incomplete, so he expected a few critical comments – but not the torrent of disapproval that spilled across each page. Next to Sam’s observation that he had discovered the wrong ETA, the red pencil scrawl read ‘A good job too!!’ When the log stopped abruptly on the second sheet, the criticism became even more caustic: ‘Don’t be lazy. You are supposed to be a navigator, so navigate! Poor effort. You must do better than this.’
At Ludford Magna the atmosphere remained funereal. For those crews still coming to terms with 101 Squadron’s losses, the only small consolation was the news there would be no ops for the next few days. Seven aircraft had been lost over Nuremberg, and there were simply not enough crews available.
Rusty watched as replacements arrived by bus from their training units. Within a few hours, both the officers’ and sergeants’ messes were filled with unfamiliar faces. Soon the faces of those who had died would fade from their memory, even if their deeds would not.
There was better news for Andy Wiseman. When he and his crew arrived by train at Leconfield, after being forced to land at another airfield, they were told they would be going on immediate leave. For the Aussies in his crew, that meant a few nights carousing in London. For Andy it meant a trip to see his beloved Jean.
From the moment he walked through the door, to be met with an enormous hug, until the moment he left a week later, Andy was unable to talk about anything other than his experiences on the Nuremberg operation. In Jean he had someone to counsel him and console him; to hold his hand, comfort him and allow him to unburden himself before his return to base.
Andy was blessed; few others had the opportunity to contemplate and discuss the events of that night in such convivial surroundings.
CHAPTER 17
‘I’m Quite Prepared to Die …’
Roger Coverley’s POW card
Fred Panton immediately recognised the boy who had cycled up the hill towards his family’s cottage at dusk on 3 April. He and Maurice Fenwick, the son of the local postmaster, had shared a desk at school.
‘Is your mother or father in?’ Maurice asked, a serious look on his face.
‘Yes they are, Maurice,’ Fred replied, glancing down at the envelope in his hand. I bet that’s a telegram telling them about Chris, he thought.
It had been four days since news of the disastrous raid on Nuremberg had broken. They had known before the radio broadcasts that it had been a bad one. His dad’s diary of the comings and goings of the crews at the nearby bases, and the disparity between the number of bombers he counted out and those he counted back, had told their own sorry story.
At first they had been worried, but as March became April and they still heard nothing they dared to persuade themselves that no news was good news; that Chris had come through unscathed and life was carrying on as normal at RAF Skipton-on-Swale. But now the telegram in Maurice’s hand told Fred otherwise.
It also told him it would not be a good idea to accompany Maurice to the front door, so he ran across the paddock to the crew yard of the farm where his father worked as gamekeeper. There he sat on a ledge and watched his school friend walk up to the front door of his house and knock. His mother answered. His father had been in bed for the past day or two, suffering from a bout of the flu. He saw her take the envelope and then disappear upstairs.
Fred sat there until nine that night, swinging his legs, watching the sky darken, feeling the air become colder and colder. Shivering in the yard still seemed a whole lot better than going home and finding out what was in that envelope. He knew it was bad news, and the longer he sat there, the longer he could pretend it had not happened. He knew that as soon as he walked back into the house everything would change.
Even
tually tiredness, the cold and a sense of duty made him return. The awful truth was confirmed: Chris was missing. That was all they knew. His father was up and about, pacing the floor like a caged lion. The flu had gone, vanquished by the shock of the news about his son.
A few days after his death, Cy Barton’s personal effects arrived at the family home in New Malden. Among them was the birthday card he had written for Joyce on the day of the Nuremberg raid. Ken also gave his mother the letter Cy had prepared before his first op.
Dear Mum
I hope you never receive this, but I quite expect you will. I’m expecting to do my first operation trip in a few days. I know what ‘Ops’ over Germany means and I have no illusions about it. By my own calculations the average life of a crew is twenty ‘Ops’ and we have thirty to do in our first ‘tour’.
I’m writing this for two reasons. One to tell you how I would like my money spent that I have left behind; two to tell you about how I feel meeting my Maker.
1. I intended, as you know, taking a University Course with my savings. Well, I would like them to be spent on the education of my brothers and sisters. Ken is a bit old to start part time study now and I would like him to have as much of it as he needs for full time study. All of it, if he can use it. Roy is still young and has his teens before him. It’s up to him to help himself. The girls likewise. I’ll leave it to you to decide what to do with my belongings.
2. All I can say about this is that I’m quite prepared to die. It holds no terror for me. I know I shall survive the Judgement because I have trusted in Christ as my own Saviour. I’ve done nothing to merit glory, but because He died for me it’s God’s free gift. At times I’ve wondered whether I’ve been right in believing what I do. Just recently I’ve doubted the veracity of the Bible, but in the little time I’ve had to sort out intellectual problems, I’ve been left with a bias in favour of the Bible.
