大象传媒

Flt.Lt. Bill Younger, my father, was attached as a navigator to 19 Squadron of the SAAF, flying Beaufighters on strikes into German-occupied territory in Yugoslavia. Many of the sorties were to attack ammunition dumps, railways or supply lines. Other sorties were on shipping and, in at least one instance, to drop carrier pigeons for the partisans to enable them to provide intelligence to the allies.

On 9th February, my father鈥檚 aircraft did not rendezvous with the rest of the squadron after attacking the railway marshalling yards Banova Jaruga, near Zagreb. The aircraft did not return to its base at Biferno in Italy, and both he and the pilot, Flt.Lt. Kruger, were reported as missing. My grandmother was informed and told not to expect him to return.

Three weeks later, their aircraft was spotted on the ground near Kutina by a pilot on another sortie. In fact, my father had survived the crash landing, and had been captured. He had a leg wound from the attack on his aircraft, and was hospitalised. However, a nun who worked in the hospital had witnessed ill-treatment of other prisoners and feared that he would be shot as the enemy retreated. She helped him to escape and he evaded further capture, eventually finding his way to the British Mission in Belgrade by the time of the German surrender in May 1945. He was flown back to Britain for medical treatment, where the bullet was removed from his leg.

After the war, he noticed a pretty girl in a recruitment poster for the ATS. The girl later became my mother, and they lived full and healthy lives together. However, the wound caused him health problems in later life, ultimately contributing to his death in 1989. He never went back to Yugoslavia and never discovered anything more about the brave and kindly nun. He always worried that she may have suffered for helping him.

I have recently found out much of this from research in the public archives, and have made contact with surviving members of the squadron or their families. As an aside, several years ago I bought some photographs from a stall in a local market as they looked similar to one that my father had once shown me. It is only in the past few months that I have discovered that many of them were in fact taken by 19 Squadron, including several on sorties in which my father flew. I have attached one of these photos.

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