- Contributed by听
- onestopshop
- People in story:听
- Bill Pickering
- Location of story:听
- Graveley, Huntingdon
- Background to story:听
- Royal Air Force
- Article ID:听
- A2812042
- Contributed on:听
- 06 July 2004
Title: The Final Hour 鈥 鈥淧athfinder Force鈥 35th Squadron
Name: Bill Pickering
Location: Graveley, Huntingdon
I was a flight bomb armourer during world war two stationed at the RAF base at Grveley for three years from 1943 until the end of the war.
About 15 years ago some of the original members of our squadron started a reunion gathering with a few people at first attending but after a number of years this annual event grew to 60 or so people.
However it was decided to have a final reunion in 2003 and it is about this reunion that I will tell you now.
All our reunions were held at the Offords Clooney and Offords Darcy, just outside Huntingdon. The airfield was at Graveley just outside the villages. On the final reunion day my Wife and I travelled from Sapcoate and arrived at the venue at about 10.30 a.m. On arrival I went into the village shop and saw three elderly ladies and one called up to me 鈥楢re you one of our lads?鈥 On days when there were no operations we went into the village where the people were very friendly towards us. On arrival at the church hall we had tea and coffee and each lady was presented with a white carnation. From there we went to All Stains Church were we saw the new stained glass window donated by our group. It depicted a Lancaster Bomber landing on a runway. Underneath the window was a picture of our commanding officer.
After the service, which was covered by one of the local television stations, we went back to the church hall for our lunch and after this we were asked to go into the car park. As we stood there we heard the distinctive sound of a Lancaster Bomber in the distance about half a mile away. We realised it was making a run over the runway, which is now part of a local farm. After a few minutes were heard the sound of four Rolls Royce Merlin engines and realised the aircraft was in the air coming towards us from behind at a very low altitude of about 100 feet. It disappeared over the Church and then reappeared after a few minutes at an even lower altitude. The final fly over came again over the church but this time it distinctively dipped each wing as a final goodbye farewell salute. There was not a dry eye in the car park.
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