大象传媒

Eric,
Now sadly my late 'uncle' Eric died late December 2002. He was always reluctant to decribe his war experiences, partly because I believe they made a profound influence on his life, but also due to concern at being percieved in some sort of "Boy's Own" type context , when I was too young to comprehend the terror and consequences of war.
He went to school with my dad Owen, and they both joined up in the second cohort after the Battle Of Britain, they were just leaving school as that whole event raged over their heads. Both became aircrew , and Eric went to the States to learn to be a navigator. He said he had a great time in Florida.
On or around the 23rd Sept 1943, on his third op ( it might have been more). The aircraft( Lancaster I believe )suffered an an engine fire, and the crew ordered to abandon the aircraft near the target area. He took to his 'chute, memorable because as the canopy opened it cut his backside. He was captured and must have had to endure the rougher treatment dealt out to "terror fleiger" POW's. He finished up in Stalag Luft 6.
Toward the end of the war they had to march from their camp westward in front of the Russian advance. They had very little to eat, basically what they could scavenge and get from fields already picked clean by a hungry population .
It was only at his funeral last January, while standing in conversation with a groupof his contemporaries that I learned that he had saved a mans' life. During the course of the reminiscences of his earlier years, someone mentioned that a guest at Eric's wedding (to Kathleen, my mother' sister,) had mentioned that due to an injury which made him unable to walk he had been carried by Eric on that forced march. Eric had carried his fellow POW, on that gruelling march which had left those who fell by the wayside to die.
Eric had never mentioned this and I am not sure if his family knew of this selfless act of endurance and courage, which is why I feel I must mention it now.
I do hope he would not object to this and I hope I have not been too inaccurate, I have little more information to go on.
As I am now watching the passing of his generation, I am fearful that the memory and sacrifice made on our behalf will be lost ,so it is essential to record what is available .
We kept in touch with Eric and Kathleen and his daughters. I saw Eric and Kathleen together the last time in February 2002. He had been a career teacher ( of English) in the post war period and had in more recent years studied Russian , and taken a very academic approach to studying and researching the vexed question of "LMF" amongst his peers in the RAF . I sincerely hope his work on this survives somewhere.
A few weeks before he died, at about this time last year , (he was bedridden by a botched knee operation ) his carer had written a note to me on his behalf. He asked if I had knowledge of any source giving accredited accounts of two people using one parachute, yet making a safe descent. I will never know if this is connected to his last flight in 1943.
I searched but had to reply that I could not find anything out, that was my last correspondence to him, apart from a Christmas card.
I feel bound to honour the memory of this man, and all his comrades in arms in bomber command whose memory has frequently been besmirched when it was fashionable to call their role in the war a crime, indeed, Eric strongly held this point of view himself. He nearly had me convinced at one point, but I do not see it that way now.
The only way to assess the role of bomber command in WW2 is to imagine what might have been without thier efforts. The only question remaining then, is how could it have been more effective with less loss of life ? Not if the strategic bombing effort was moral or not. Nothing done to prevail in war is 'moral', because war itself is immoral. Surely it is moral to try to end hostility as soon as possible, and work to that end with the means at your disposal.
I want to see these men honoured now that most have gone, without the emotive and often inaccurate references to Dresden etc, which are regularly wheeled out by those who like to judge. They, who in the attempt to smooth out history and make former adversaries feel more comfortable, abandon those whose courage brought about thier freedom to do so.

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