大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Rob Illingworth & Alison Palmer of the Kent Libraries & Archives Team on behalf of Peter Andrews and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions

I was a member of Bomber Command based at Ten Squadron which was in Yorkshire, Melbourne, near York and we were one of the Veteran Crews there. We鈥檇 done over twenty operations over German targets and we were briefed to drop mines off the coast of Denmark.

We took off and we were attacked by the night fighter over the Danish mainland and it set the port wing on fire which was a mass of flames and the aircraft blew up at eighteen thousand feet. By which time the rear gunner and the mid upper gunner and the flight engineer had managed to bale out through the main escape hatch at the back of the aircraft and we were all in the front of the aircraft. That鈥檚 the pilot, the navigator, the bomb aimer and myself, the wireless operator air gunner. We were all clustered together in our positions in the front of the aircraft and it blew up. The pilot was killed, the navigator was killed, I was blown out of a gap in the front when the aircraft separated and the bomb aimer had the same fate.

I came to in a world of silence because my ears had blacked out because you鈥檙e dropping at 120 miles an hour. I looked up and saw my chute was unopened and I reached up and pulled the ripcord and my chute opened; because my harness was slack, it did quite a bit of damage to me. I landed in a field and went to a group of houses and I approached a group of people who were out chatting at their front doors, it was around about nine 鈥極鈥� clock and we were hit at about twenty past eight. They didn鈥檛 want to know because obviously they were frightened that if they helped in any way they would be shot by the Germans but they directed me to a house. I knocked at the window of that house and they took me in and bandaged me up and tended to cuts and bruises. I got my escape kit out and they indicated where we were, which was Holbaeck, near Copenhagen and they sent for an ambulance for the civil hospital, which arrived and I was stretchered into the back. A short distance down the road we stopped again and they wheeled the bomb aimer in. He looked a shocking site, covered in blood, it wasn鈥檛 as bad as it looked but there were superficial penetrations to the face from Perspex and it was bleeding and it looked terrible. We were taken to the hospital and we went into a sort of examination room. There were two beds and they worked on us to dress whatever was wrong with us; mainly surface wounds and in my case it was extreme bruising to the lower part of my body through the delayed drop.

While we were in there we were approached by a Dane in a cloth cap and he spoke to us through one of the doctors who could speak good English. He said that he was a member of the underground or the resistance and if we were able to walk in the morning they鈥檇 get us away. Unfortunately during the night somebody had blown the whistle on us in the hospital and the Gestapo walked in and collared us, took us away by stretcher and interrogated us and shoved us in some dungeon. After about twenty four hours of quite bad treatment the Germans handed us over to the Luftwaffe, who took us to an airfield with a hospital unit [at Vaerlose] and they looked after us really well. I had sunray treatment for my bruising and we were both treated quite well. The bomb aimer had a couple of broken ribs and a lot of superficial damage, the same as I did, his name was Stan Chaderton who at this moment in time is very ill in a hospital in Liverpool.

Stan was with me throughout the rest of the war. We were transported by ship across the Baltic to Lubeck and then we had two guards for the two of us and we travelled through Germany down through Hamburg. We rolled into Hamburg late one evening and we鈥檇 got a reserved compartment but it hadn鈥檛 stayed reserved for very long. The people who were moving around Germany could not see why a couple of RAF blokes with a couple of guards should have a private compartment, so they crowded in. They were trying to push me out the door- indicating 鈥測our colleagues鈥� [ie. active RAF bombers,] because that part of Hamburg we were going through then had been completely flattened but the guards with their guns eventually forced them back. We had one or two incidents like that in our trip down to Dulag Luft which was near Frankfurt, it was the interrogation centre for all allied air crew. They shoved you into solitary confinement and practised the art of sleep depravation by turning radiators on and off through the course of the night 鈥� whipping you out for interrogation with somebody who could speak perfect Oxford English and offered you a cigarette and 鈥渨ould you like a jam sandwich?鈥� and something like that. I suppose it was the old 鈥済ood guy, bad guy鈥� treatment. We spent a few days in that solitary confinement and they eventually came to the conclusion that we knew even less than what they did. They knew that we鈥檇 recently had a new CO on the squadron, they knew as much as we did, if not more and so they knew there was very little they could get out of us. We were released into the larger compound where they kitted us out with some kind of boots that would withstand heavier treatment and then we were set off on the march.

We marched from there on the tail end of the 鈥榙eath march鈥�. We weren鈥檛 on it from Northern Germany, we were on it from Frankfurt right through to Munich, Moosburg. It was the biggest collection of allied prisoners of war in the whole of Germany, there were 110,000 there at the end because they were funnelling in from all over Germany. So we were all piled in an unsavoury area there. We had a lot of incidents on the march where we were attacked by friendly fire: the squadron attacked and killed a number of people on the march thinking we were a German column I suppose. After a lot of weeks on the march we got to Moosburg and we sat it out there till the end of the war, that鈥檚 just the bomb aimer and myself, with very little food. I was suffering from dysentery and I don鈥檛 think I would have survived if it hadn鈥檛 been for my friend the bomb aimer who was two or three years older and he managed to drag me through it. We eventually were liberated by Patton, the head of the American Probe through that part of Germany.

We eventually got to a German airfield. We were flown by Dakota to Rheims in France and Lancasters were coming in there. They were piling prisoners of war into Lancasters and flying them back to England where we were promptly stood in a line and they fired de-lousing guns. We needed it badly then we were bathed, had checks and were fed and then sent on indefinite leave.
It was quite a few years before I saw the bomb aimer again, I think in actual fact you got on with your life. The rest of the crew they鈥檝e got individual stories to tell:

A book called 鈥楾he Crash鈥� by Dan Christensen 鈥� is the story of seven RAF-flyers鈥� escape after the shooting down of a Halifax aircraft in 1945 in Denmark, told by five of them. Published by the Friends of the Danish Resistance Museum Publishing.

Peter Andrews refers to this book:

That鈥檚 me, in this actual picture we were flying Wellingtons, that was before we converted to Halifaxs and we had two other members of the crew. The bomb aimer鈥檚 picture is not there and the flight engineer, Maddock-Lyon is not there. As I say, he was killed, the navigator, Red Berry and the pilot, Johnny Grayshan was killed. That鈥檚 the rear gunner, who鈥檚 alive today and that鈥檚 the mid upper gunner and the wireless op. The flight engineer, he doesn鈥檛 wish to be included, he wants to wipe it all out, he doesn鈥檛 want to know about it. Stan Chaderton, is the bomb aimer who is very ill in hospital, not expecting to live, a great fellow, saved my life. These two plus myself, went out to Denmark on 4th May 2005, which is Danish Liberation day and they invited us over, all expenses paid. They had a big ceremony where they unveiled a stone, where part of the aircraft had come down, with all our names on:

The stone is like a monolith with an image of the Halifax on the top of it and an inscription in Danish:

14th February 1945, Styrtede, nr Holbeck.
Halifax NZ793ZA/X RAF 10th Squadron
John Graysham; Albert James Berry (both of whom died); Stanley Chaderton; Peter Frederick Andrews; Roy Maddock-Lyon; James Petre; Horace Lesley Mills.

That is the original telegram that my father got: Telegram sent to Tonbridge on 15th February, 1945 (the day the plane was shot down)

11:37 On His Majesty鈥檚 Service PRIORITY

For Mr Andrews, 48 Priory Road, Tonbridge, Kent

Deeply regret to inform you that your son, Flight Sergeant Peter Frederick Andrews failed to return last night from night operations 鈥� letter follows 鈥� Please accept my profound sympathy 鈥� further information will be wired you immediately 鈥� pending receipt of written confirmation from Air Ministry. No information should be given to the press 鈥� from the Adjutant 10th Squadron, Melbourne.

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