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My abiding memories of the Remembrance Sundays of my childhood, are of watching my Mum, Elaine, standing in the kitchen preparing the vegetables for lunch, while listening to the Remembrance Service from the Cenotaph on the radio. I remember there was no sound of weeping, just silent tears falling onto the vegetables.
As I grew older I learned more of her grief, the death of her favourite cousin, Flying Officer Trevor Bladen, aged 22, in 1944.
Many years later, my father, Harold Symmons, told me of that time. ‘In the summer of 1943, when you were only a few months old, we spent a weekend with Trevor as both of us were home on leave from the RAF at the same time. We marked the occasion by taking photographs in Cwmdonkin Park, Swansea.
This was the last time we were all to see each other, as this was destined to be Trevor’s final leave. He was killed when the plane, on which he was the Wireless operator/Air gunner, was shot down over Germany’.

He was very dear to our family, but just one of the 55,000 airmen from RAF Bomber Command, who were killed in World War Two.

His citation reads:-
In Memory of
WILLIAM EGBERT TREVOR BLADEN
Flying Officer
136388
Wireless Operator/Air Gunner
630 Squadron, Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve
who died on
Thursday, 2nd March 1944. Age 22.

Son of William Archibald and Mary Elizabeth Bladen, of Swansea

He is buried at DURNBACH WAR CEMETERY, Bayern, Germany
In joint grave 8. A. 6-7.

In the perpetual care of
the Commonwealth War Graves Commission

The RAF unit in which Trevor served was No. 630 Squadron
Motto: "Nocturna mors" ("Death by night").

No. 630 Squadron was formed on 15th November 1943, at East Kirkby, near Spilsby, Lincolnshire, and remained based there throughout its existence. Equipped with Lancasters, it formed part of No. 5 Group and between 18/19th November 1943 and 25th April 1945, took part in many major raids, including each of the 16 big raids made by Bomber Command on the German capital during what became known as the "Battle of Berlin".

Durnbach is a village 16 kilometres east of Bad Tolz, a town 48 kilometres south of Munich. The site for the cemetery was chosen, shortly after hostilities had ceased, by officers of the British Army and Air Force, in conjunction with officers of the American Occupation Forces in whose zone Durnbach lay.

The great majority of those buried here are airmen shot down over Bavaria, Wurtemberg, Austria, Hessen and Thuringia, brought from their scattered graves by the Army Graves Service.

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