- Contributed by听
- David Lang
- People in story:听
- David Lang. Miss Christine Knowles OBE. Sergeant-Pilot Mike Featherstone. Sergeant Brian Booth. Squadron Leader Chris Goss.
- Location of story:听
- Reading, Berkshire
- Background to story:听
- Civilian
- Article ID:听
- A5335049
- Contributed on:听
- 26 August 2005
Although I served in the Royal Air Force in the 1950鈥檚 my connection with the RAF goes back to the dark days of the Second World War during the summer of 鈥42 when I was just seven years old. Evacuated from London to Reading in Berkshire I organized my first Garden Fete there to raise money for the British Prisoners of War Books and Games Fund and Forget-Me-Not League, founded by Miss Christine Knowles OBE. For my 1942 Fete I produced a simple handwritten programme which included such items as:
For one penny 鈥淕UESS number of beens in bottel鈥 (sic) and
For a halfpenny 鈥淪ee my TOOTH鈥.
The Fete was a great success and soon afterwards I received a letter from the Fund dated 9th September 1942 which said:
Dear David
Thank you so very much for the money you have sent for our Prisoners of War. I think it is simply splendid of you to work so hard to get money for them.
I am going to send a special parcel to an airman in your name. It is going to Sergeant-Pilot Featherstone and there will be a card inside the parcel that says it comes from David Lang.
I am going to send you today a certificate from our Daisy Chain League to show how very hard you have worked for all our Prisoners of War.
With love from
Christine Knowles
A few years ago I tried to trace Sergeant-Pilot Mike Featherstone but unfortunately he had died a few months previously. However I found out he had been the second pilot flying a Royal Air Force 102 Squadron Whitley bomber, Serial No T 4297, based at RAF Topcliffe in Yorkshire. They were shot down on the night of 27th/28th June 1941 near Hipstedt, north of their target Bremen, in Germany but luckily all the crew escaped by parachute from their aircraft and were taken prisoner. My research into T4297 was helped by Squadron Leader Chris Goss, a serving RAF officer and aviation author who wrote the book about 102 Squadron entitled 鈥淚t鈥檚 Suicide But It鈥檚 Fun鈥, published by Crecy Books in 1995. In it there is an account of this raid by Sergeant Brian Booth, the Air Gunner, in which he says poor old Mike Featherstone got a bullet in the bum! Maybe that was why he was chosen to receive my parcel in 1942.
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