Page 33bomber, is today no longer with us.
But the memory of those brave
men, sparked by that letter, has
not died. In fact, it burns brighter
than ever.
On a visit to Barnstaple last
March, I met the town’s British
Military History Group. They had
contacted me earlier in the year to
invite me to a public meeting. As a
local, was I interested in learning
more about the group?
Y
es, I replied. Not only
was I interested: as the
son of a former RAF
Chivenor pilot, I was
deeply intrigued.
That afternoon, a public meeting
was being held in an upstairs room
in Barnstaple Library. Rob Palmer,
a leading light in the group, gave
the audience a progress report.
‘Over 5,500 operational sorties
were flown from RAF Chivenor
during the war,’ he told us, ‘and 73
Wellingtons were lost. That’s about
400 men. The Leigh light [a power-
ful searchlight fitted to RAF patrol
bombers] helped the aircrews
spot the U-boats [which had to
surface at night to recharge their
batteries]. But remember the
U-boats were armed. They could
and did fire back, sometimes with
deadly effect.’
sitting in Barnstaple that
afternoon, only a mile or two from
Chivenor, the sheer scale of the
effort — and the cost of that effort
in lives lost — came home to me.
‘There were 137 U-boat sightings
and eight U-boats confirmed
sunk,’ Rob continued. ‘By 1943,
the U-boats were on the defensive
and, crucially, the cross-Channel
invasion of June 1944 — the D-Day
landings — were not disrupted.’
As I left the meeting, he asked
me to return in August, when, he
said, ‘we are going to hold a special
event at Chivenor to commemorate
your father’s crash’.
Well, that event took place last
saturday, 75th anniversary of the
last flight of Wellington HF 246.
Barnstaple’s British Military
History Group had managed to
find and contact relatives of
almost all the crew of my father’sWellington. It was so good to
meet sylvia and sally March, the
daughters of the second pilot,
Bill Broadley, who lost his arm in
the crash, and other members of
their family.
I had checked the protocol
beforehand. Yes, it was quite in
order for me to wear my father’s
DFC on the right (not left) breast.
And yes, my sister Birdie could
wear his Atlantic star.
The ceremony began at noon on
a bright sunny day in Chivenor
Memorial Gardens.
I knew for a fact — and said so at
the rostrum — how much Boris
had hoped to make it to Chivenor.
I had kept him and other members
of the family closely informed.
For me, the high point of the brief
service was when Carolyn Bacon
read out the Kohima epitaph:
‘When you go home,
Tell them of us and say,
For your tomorrow,
We gave our today.’
After the service and the presen-
tation of wreaths, we were escorted
to the crash site itself, on the road
outside the entrance to the camp.I had brought the old twisted
throttle to Chivenor and took it
with me as we walked to the very
spot where my father had been
forced to crash-land 75 years ago.
We gathered round while Rob
took us through the minutes of
that fatal day.
‘Flying on one engine meant the
Wellington was sinking all the time,
but the depth charges had to be
dropped first over saunton sands.
It was too dangerous to land with
them on board.
‘There was a dance being held at
the base that night, and most of
the buildings were wooden huts
that would have been seriously
damaged by an explosion, with
probably a heavy loss of life.’
Rob explained that my father
tried to line the plane towards the
runway, but since it wasn’t
responding normally because of its
failed engine, he couldn’t turn
tight enough without stalling. so
he decided to aim for open ground
at the entrance to the base.
‘At 23.20 hours, Wellington
HF 246 crashed at RAF Chivenor,’
said Rob. ‘It was coming in at aheight of 20ft or less and hit a
telegraph pole, then slid across
the road to end up against the
wall of the chapel.’
Later that day, we went to the
churchyard of st Augustine at
Heanton Punchardon. It is a
beautiful place with an amazing
view. You can look down at
Chivenor immediately below,
and the Taw estuary beyond.
In my mind’s eye, I could trace
the whole of HF 246’s last flight.
We had come to the churchyard
to pay our respects to ‘Butch’
Butchart, a Canadian who had
served with the RAF during the
war, as so many of his country-
men did. He was the navigator
on that night.
Although none of
Butch’s relatives had
been able to be present
that day, the British
Military History
Group had managed
to track one down
in Toronto.
An Amazon
‘Alexa’ device was
placed on the
gravestone and we
listened to her
disembodied voice
sending greetings,
love and prayers
from across the
Atlantic. This was
capped by a spirited
rendition of the Cana-
dian Anthem.
We said a prayer, too, for
Flight sergeant Wilson, who
died on August 17 and was bur-
ied not in the cemetery at Heanton
Punchardon but in his home town
of Urmston, Greater Manchester.F
INALLY, we remembered
F/sgt J. Milne, also a crew
member on my father’s
plane, who tragically took
his own life in August 1951, several
years after the war had ended.
Our exmoor farmhouse — the
place my parents bought after the
war, where I still live — is several
hundred years old. There is a
steep stone staircase from the
room we call the ‘middle kitchen’
(because that’s where the cook-
ing was done, over an open fire) to
the upper floor. My mother once
told me that my father would
occasionally have to crawl upstairs
to bed on all fours.
‘His war wounds sometimes play
up in this damp valley,’ she said.
she almost lost him on August
17, 1944 and — ever the optimist —
she clung on to him ever after.
Thank goodness she did: I loved
them both.
n AT The author’s request,
the fee for this article has been
donated to the RAF Benevolent
Fund, rafbf.orgDaily Mail, Tuesday, August 27, 2019Picture: JAOBASILONE/GOODFON.COMSTANLEY WITH
WILFRED’S DFC AND THE
BOMBER’S THROTTLE
HIS RAF HERO
FATHER
V1Cool in a crisis:
Wilfred Johnson,
top right. Above,
an RAF Coastal
Command bomber