大象传媒

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My father was 18 when the war started. He grew up in Harrogate and volunteered for the RAF. He trained in New Orleans 鈥� where they had 3 eggs for breakfast! He then became a navigator on a Lancaster bomber.

My parents were both involved in the war and I grew up hearing about it. I remember, as a small girl, asking my father why the little finger on his left hand was crooked. My father said he had broken his little finger when he caught it in his parachute, as he bailed out of his Lancaster bomber, somewhere over Northern Holland in 1943. He was the navigator on an aircraft that was returning from a bombing raid over Germany. The plane had been hit by enemy fire and everyone was ordered to bail out. It was pitch black, raining and very cold. My father said he had not felt 鈥渢oo happy鈥� about jumping out of the plane into the darkness, but had no option. He was 21 years old.

In the event the entire crew made it safely, he said, except for one poor man whose parachute did not open and the pilot, who held the plan steady for the others, but failed to get out himself before the plane crashed.

My father described how he was looking for a place to land and when the moon appeared briefly from behind the clouds, he saw a black smooth surface gleaming below him, so he steered towards what he thought was a road, catching and breaking his finger in the process. Unfortunately for him it was a canal 鈥� though thankfully not a very deep one. He was very wet, cold and hungry and had no idea where he was.

When it began to get light he saw a barn across a field and after hiding his parachute, he made his way to it, glad to have some shelter. The farmer who owned the field fed him and would have hidden him but for his children, who were fearful of him being shot for harbouring the enemy and told the occupying Germans, who captured him. He spent the rest of the war in POW camps in Poland and Eastern Germany.

After my father鈥檚 death, 6 years ago, aged 77, I received a very moving letter from his cousin, Flora Dann, describing my grandparents鈥� distress on hearing that Ian was 鈥渕issing in action鈥�. She went on to describe their relief when the Red Cross contacted them 2 weeks later to say he was safe and well.

My father, Ian Campbell Clunes, who went on to become a successful diplomat whose postings included The Hague and Berlin, always said he felt extraordinarily lucky to be alive. Fifty percent of the RAF bomber crews who went out never came back.

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