Extracts from a wartime log

On 24 February 1942 our parents got engaged. Sixty years later we have records in their own words of the occasion. Helen, our mother wrote a letter that evening; Ted, our father, described the occasion in his reminiscences. These items are just two in a fascinating archive of material that we have gathered that reflects our parents’ experiences during the second world war.
Due mainly to our mother’s efforts many items were preserved from those days, including letters, postcards, diaries and, most precious of all to us, a log book that our father kept whilst a prisoner in a German prisoner-of-war camp. Another source is some unfinished writings our father made in the 1980's, reminiscing about the events that took place 40 years previously.
Extracts from this archive can be seen at
All Ted's reminiscences make fascinating reading. We had never seen them until we began to compile this material. The account of the first operational sortie (see separate section) brought all aspects home to us. When you think that it was written forty years after the events described you realise how indelibly the experiences must have imprinted themselves on Ted's memories of that time.
Ted’s final posting was to 78 squadron, Breighton. He was a Halifax navigator. Helen lodged nearby. 823 bombers (Halifaxes and Lancasters) took off on the night of 19/20 February 1944 for an attack on Leipzig.
From Helen’s diary:
“February 19th
My birthday, said goodbye to you in the morning and goodbye again when you came back for your long pants. (Note: This was their ‘code’ that indicated that an operation was coming up.)
I watched you go ­ after midnight, wished you God speed and went to bed. I heard them come back next morning before 8 o'clock.”
But Ted’s plane wasn’t among those that came back. His plane was one of 78 that did not return. No one had seen what had happened, and for many weeks no one in England knew what had happened to N for Nan and its crew.
The first entry in Helen’s diary is dated February 19th. She wrote it in the form of a letter to Ted. The entries reflect her optimism that he had survived, but there are moments of despair and of anguish for other people affected by the events.
We know now that Ted had managed to get out of the plane just before it crashed at Stendhal. He had parachuted to safety and had been taken prisoner. Within a few days, and after a tortuous train journey he was incarcerated in Stalag Luft 3. His postcard, announcing that he was safe arrived in England on 22 April.
Ted's letters reveal swinging emotions. He had ambitious plans for studying and making full use of the time but he also spent a lot of time longing to be with his family. His letters included details of things he would like sent from home - food, clothing and books for studying all featured in his lists of wants. He was also desperate to hear from home. His birthday in June passed without the best present of all, a letter. At last, at the beginning of August, a letter from home arrived.
Letter from Ted
“I've read your letter about ten times now and I shall continue to read it every day until another comes. Oh darling, you must have had a rotten time for a couple of months. You didn't say how long it was before the Red Cross let you know I was safe. We'll have that second honeymoon next year, and it'll be a carefree one, not oppressed by the knowledge that our times together will be short and fleeting, but for ever and ever.”
The minutiae of camp life were recorded by Ted in the log.
“The kitchen stove operates for about five hours daily and in that time hot meals are prepared for over one hundred men. Each room of six, seven or eight men shares the stove for about half an hour with another room, and the average amount of cooking done by each room is as follows: Potatoes are boiled or fried, meat is heated in the oven and a pudding or cake is baked. Some days there is much more to do, peas or cabbage or other vegetable to cook, and always a great can of water for a brew and subsequent washing up.”
First operational sortie
For our first operational sortie we were given a very elderly aircraft. It could be seen to be elderly by the number of "bombs" painted on the side under the cockpit, each representing one mission, and also by the fact that it was a Mark I Halifax which was beginning obsolescence at that stage of the war. Students of aircraft recognition will remember that the Mark I can be distinguished from later Marks by having in-line engines, a front gun turret and tapered leading edges to the twin tail fins. We had to take this one a long way - to Milan and back, about 10 hours flying. It turned out to be a very educational trip.
Up to this point in our flying career we had been training. All our flying had been over friendly territory and there was always the comfortable feeling, even though not expressed, that a safe landing could be laid on at any moment. This next flight, however, was for real. We did not know what our reactions would be or whether our skills were adequate for the task ahead which was so much greater than any we had tackled before. Looking back now at the twenty operational flights we undertook I can see three distinct phases - the first trip or two in which we were new boys and feeling our way, the period of a few months when we became a little blasé about the whole thing, and finally the last few trips during which period the realisation grew that our continued survival was against all the odds but that we might actually finish our tour and collect our survival gongs. These three phases, however, merged gradually one into the other - the really big step was setting out on that first trip.
The briefing followed the pattern of all briefings. We were told the target and the route. We were told the special arrangements like target markers to look for, and diversions on the way back if we had trouble. Finally the Met Officer gave us the weather and we Navigators worked out courses to follow from the expected winds. Later these courses might be modified if position fixes en route showed that the winds were wrong and that we were not following the correct track over the ground.
The route was due south from Yorkshire, crossing the English Channel somewhere near Beachy Head, and carrying on south to the French-Italian border. There was a brilliant moon. The ground was slightly hazy but rivers gleamed like silver snakes. As we left the Alps on our port side, I doused my light and slid the curtain back from the window in the side of the aircraft which faced me across the chart table. I can confirm that the Alps by moonlight are a breath-taking sight from 18,000 feet. For ten minutes we forgot our mission and became tourists drinking in the sparkling beauty of the scene.
We had no position fix since crossing the French coast because as usual Gee was jammed. So we turned to port at the time appointed with only faith in the lines I had drawn on the chart to justify the move because we could see nothing. There is something a little chilling about turning a corner over enemy territory. It is like closing the door behind you and finding yourself naked with nowhere to hide. This probably explains the haste with which the next decision was made. Brian saw some activity - searchlights, flak, flares - and decided it was our target despite the fact that we were too early and apparently off course. With hindsight and by tracing our route back I believe we bombed Turin that night and not Milan. We knew that there was to be a diversionary raid on Turin. This was laid to confuse and divert the defences, but it had the same effect on us and we joined in.
Training could not, and did not, give us the experience of being under fire. Brian had done one operational sortie as second pilot to an experienced crew, so he was more prepared than the rest of us. During the few minutes run over the target I experienced the mixture of emotions which was repeated on later trips. - fear at being exposed with shells bursting near enough to make the aircraft shudder - excitement at seeing the result of previous bombing on the city beneath - exhilaration at the tremendous firework display going on all around. But the aspect which gave a bizarre character to the situation was the voice of the Master Bomber over the radio. I do not remember that I was expecting this, but I do remember the feeling of awe that there was a character willing to go in early on a raid and hang around directing the efforts of later arrivals by reference to fires and flares, and sound as though he was enjoying it!
Tom behaved as he did over every subsequent target, coolly giving orders, "Left, left","Right", "Steady" with Herby telling him in no uncertain terms to "Drop the effing things so we can get to hell out of here". But as Tom said many times, if we had taken the trouble to come that far we might as well deliver our parcels as effectively as possible. He was in fact doing what we all found we could do, namely follow the instructions drilled into us while training without thinking about it or allowing the environment to distract us.
Brian's voice "What's the course back, Navigator?" brought me back to my job and we turned on to a short leg due west, before turning on to the long leg north-north-west over France.
It was the final leg of the trip where miracles began to happen. We lost an engine somewhere over France - by which I mean it stopped working. It was evident that we would need to land early rather than go all the way back to base. We crossed the English coast not far from where we expected. Ford and Tangmere were Fleet Air Arm bases near Chichester and able to cater for any four-engined bombers that needed to get down in a hurry. We chose Ford and said we most definitely were in a hurry. Bob and I were in the rest position as usual during a landing, so that the loss of a second engine as we turned on to the final approach did not register at the time. We did our sweating later. After Brian had miraculously brought us down in one piece and parked the aircraft in a dispersal, which took time because Ford was a bit crowded that night, we found we were still in for one more piece of excitement. As we walked away from the dispersal there was a sudden noise like fire-crackers from the other side of the airfield. I looked round for the cause. "Get down you fool" yelled Tom. I looked back to see what he was talking about but Tom could not be seen. He had gone to earth as soon as he heard the first burst of machine gun fire from the intruder straffing the airfield. Palestinian experience had given him some useful reactions.
We were unable to leave for a week while - in all - three engines were changed. The week was spent reporting every day to the airfield, then "doing" one of the towns along the South Coast before creeping back into bed.
At one point during the week Bob and I were talking to some Air Cadets who were starting their training as we had been not so long before.
"How many trips have you done?"
"Eight" said Bob and his eyes flickered in my direction.
Well! What the hell! That trip had been worth eight. We now knew that Brian lost neither his cool nor control of the aircraft when under extremes of pressure, that Tom had been shot at before and was not going to see good bombs go to waste, that Herby had a wonderful flow of Canadian epithets, and that Ted could still do arithmetic when he was frightened. We now knew and accepted each others' talents and weakness. We were a crew.

Diary of Sat 27th Jan 1945 (Ted’s last day in Stalag Luft 3, where he had been a prisoner since February 1944)
Bob Coulter and I were playing Double Patience across the table. The room was quiet for once. Then Jessop's voice came down the corridor, "The German's have given orders that everybody must be ready to move off inside an hour," and the flap was on. For a fortnight previously the Russian advance had caused nearly everybody to make preparations for a move, more especially when German sanction had been given for the making of rucksacks. Now at 5 past 9 we had an hour to do everything we had not done before. Luckily the time was put off first for one hour then another and it was past two before we finally moved off in a long column southwards. The time had been spent at first in feverish packing, then finally in making sledges. Beds and chairs had been ripped to pieces. There were colossal creations with eight men pulling, and there were tiny one man affairs made from chairs. There was a foot of snow over the country and every hope that the roads would be in good conditions. Rumours of lightning ruthless advances by the Ruskies made us wonder how far off the end of the war could be. It seemed that the idea was to march 75 kms in 3 days.
That Sunday morning it seemed rather fun. It was a beautiful night with plenty of moon. The novelty of the thing, the hope that the end of the war was close, and natural kriegy optimism made us think it wouldn't be too bad. We made Halbau in the middle of the morning. French workers gave us some news of the war. It sounded good. We made Friewaldau by 3 in the afternoon, and by then were feeling very tired. The whole of the compound had been put in the village square. Discipline went all to pot. Kriegies were fraternising with the civilians despite the objections of the local Wehrmacht. Old ladies, and rosy cheeked little children were wandering around with cans of hot water and coffee. Energetic trading was going on between Englishmen and German with cigarettes and coffee for sledges and anything going.
For the first time the complete lack of organisation for this march became apparent. We were supposed to be billeted on the town but there just wasn't room. About 300 bods out of 2000 were left there and this includes chaps who had been able to make their own arrangements. It's surprising what can be got for a tin of American coffee! The end of the day proved the worst. The bulk of the column moved on trailing over two miles of road. At every village we stopped and a few bods were left in a barn or stable. Those who had collapsed or were sick were picked up by trucks. The country was very open and the wind howled across the fields laden with snow. We were halted for most of the time and only made about a km an hour. I didn't have any frostbite but God it was cold enough. The tail end of the column with me included turned into a big farm courtyard. Hundreds of exhausted kriegies pushed around trying to find any protection at all against the cold and snow. A large party could only get a roof over them and straw under them and piled in a heap. We tugged and shoved a pile of farm machinery out into the snow and 'bunked' on straw. We were warm but little else. I remember that the boy owner of the farm looked as tho' he had stepped straight out of the Middle Ages. Beautifully handsome in classic Greek style and extremely well dressed in a dark green top coat with fur collar and leather jack boots. The column had made a sorry mess of his farm in their desperate effort to get warm in the night. My impression of all the villages we passed thro' during these first two days was one of extreme cleanliness and neatness, but the attractively looking and variously designed cottages stood up boldly by themselves and not snuggly retreating behind their own garden trees as in England.
The next day the cry was "On to Moskau", 28 km away. According to the sign posts the first 8 kms marching took us just 1 km further from Sagan, so roundabout was our route. The roads were not in very good condition for pulling sledges, being too much ridged by horses and carts. There were quite a number of carts on the road loaded with refugees and their furniture. There is very litle to record for the main part of this day. Priebus was the only town of any size en route. No German rations had found their way to us and we went easy on the Red X food we were carrying. We were occasionally able to get hot water from civilians. Most of the way seemed to be uphill. Moskau, far from being the end of the day's journey, proved to be the beginning of the worst 5 kms of the day. We were split into parties of 300 and lodged at a French Kommando Lager, other parties being in barns, the local cinema, etc.
We were able to recuperate during the stay in Moskau. And small supplies of food began to get through. It seems that the aim is to filter the whole of Stalag Luft III which is now spread across a large area all over the countryside, gradually thru the junction at Spremburg 24 km away and take them to lagars prepared elsewhere. Where, we don't know.
When we left Moskau the thaw had set in and pulling sledges had become increasingly difficult. The route was littered with the remains of sledges which had been ditched after the owners had 'packed' the loads. The whole route from Sagan to Spremburg was marked by ditched kit. Equipment and food of what must have been great value to the local inhabitants was just thrown away. Those at the rear of the column (incidentally some 2 miles from the front) were able to remedy any deficiencies in their kit by keeping their eyes open and pillaging the discarded loads. Tobacco, uniforms, blankets, tins of food could be picked up at will. The remainder of the trip was completed in two stages. We were then packed into trucks of the "40 hommes, 8 chevaux" variety and endured two extremely uncomfortable days driving. We were only allowed out of the trucks to perform natural functions and not always then. As a result of the water drunk during the last spell and the hardships of the march nearly everybody had dysentry in some more or less mild form and had lost a deal of weight. The IRC are investigating conditions on the march.
Footnote
Ted remembered a two day journey in cattle trucks as one of the most unpleasant things he had to endure. He had dysentry, and recalled later the kindness of his companions.
Service women were deputed to welcome the released prisoners - Ted recalled his response to the sight of the first female for many months. "I don't think I reacted as intended - all I could think of was to get my beard shaved off and then to get home just as fast as possible."
He arrived home on VE day, 1945.
Postscript by daughter Mary
I'm told that one May morning in 1945 I stood up in my cot, looked at the man in bed with my mother and said 'Who's that?' In fact it was my father who had returned home on VE Day having been a prisoner of war for the past 15 months.
My brothers and I grew up with the awareness that he had been a POW and I can remember being quite disconcerted that he had accepted his fate so submissively. He parachuted to safety when his plane was shot down and he had actually given himself up to the first Germans he saw, and then once he was incarcerated he made no attempt to escape! One comment he made has stuck in my mind - "I was just so glad to be out of it, I just sat tight and waited for the war to be over" With maturity I know exactly what he meant - but that attitude wasn't glamorous enough to a teenager brought up on a diet of daring deeds and films that glamorised every aspect of war.
We did talk about the war, and the family has a fund of stories from that time, but now it's too late to learn any more directly from my parents and I have a host of questions I wish I could ask them. Our parents both died in their seventies, our father in 1993 after suffering from Parkinson's Disease for many years and our mother in 1996 from cancer that tragically manifested itself within nine months of our father's death. We only discovered some of the material after my mother’s death. Working with the material proved very therapeutic and reminded us of the years of promise, of happier days, when our parents were young and healthy, very much in love, never doubting that they would survive the war and looking forward with eager anticipation to many years together.

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