78 outandaboutlive.co.ukSeptember 2019
A
Lancaster crew had to fly 30 missions
to complete its tour and be retired.
Oliver, who would have been my uncle,
was a Pathfinder pilot on his twenty-ninth
mission when he was shot down and killed
over Heusenstamm in 1944. He was 21.
Photographs show him smiling, with
his ‘wings’ proudly displayed and standing
next to his mother, who looks perhaps less
cheerful, but brave. My mother always said
her older brother was “wonderful”. Several
years ago I took her to Oliver’s war grave
near Munich, but it was only recently that
we learned a plaque had been placed at the
crash site itself, listing Oliver and the others
of the crew who died that August night. We
wanted to find it.So, alongside the classic gothic/romantic
stretches of the Rhine, Neckar and Mosel,
this trip was also to be something ofa
personal pilgrimage.
St Goar am Rhein sits on the banks of
the middle stretch of the ‘Romantic Rhine’.
We dropped down into the gorge viaa
steep, hairpin road to stay at Camping
Loreleyblick. Next morning, we were lucky
enough tomove to a waterside pitch so that
we could watch the river traffic ply its trade.
It was very pleasant in the early autumn
light looking over the Rhine to the sunlit,
steeply sided, wooded canyon with patches
of nigh-on vertical vineyards.
This reach of the Rhineis a World
Heritage Site. The romanticism of the RhineA poignant
pilgramage
A trip to Germany to explore some of its great rivers, castles
and heritage sites is a very poignant one for this writer
WORDS & PHOTOGRAPHY:Paul Knight