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Rennes Monday 17th June 1940, Chapter 2.

DEDICATION.

This contribution is dedicated to the memory of Leading Aircraftman Thomas Ross (617913) Royal Air Force, of Cabra, Dublin Ireland, who was killed, aged 21, on Sunday 16th June 1940 and is buried in Eastern Communal Cemetery, Rennes, Brittany, France.

Sequel 18th July 2005
In my further research into the Luftwaffe bombing attack on the railway complex in Rennes Monday 17th June 1940, I had come across maps of the Department Ille-et-Villaine and noticed a small town named Guichen located approximately 20kms south of Rennes. By co-incidence Guichen is ‘twinned’ with my home town of Skerries, Fingal, North County Dublin, Ireland. Having contacted the local twinning association and told the story of Serjeant George Fitzpatrick and the bombing attack, which in turn was relayed to their counterparts in France, I was amazed to receive a reply from a local Frenchman, Jean Rocher, now living in Rennes and 11 years old in 1940, whose father was a rail worker in Rennes, witnessed the attack and survived by taking shelter under a bridge. Furthermore the twinning group had organized a visit to Guichen this year and I was invited to participate. A visit to the CWGC section of Rennes cemetery was included in the programme of events for the twinning visit together with a visit to a location overlooking the railway where the bombing took place. My brother and I laid a poppy wreath on Serjeant George’s grave, he played the last post and together with a large group of people, both from Ireland and France, we conducted a small commemorative service and concluded by singing Blue Birds Over the White Cliffs of Dover, which must rank as one of the best hope for peace songs ever.
In my search of CWGC records for Rennes I had discovered only one named serviceman from Ireland, Leading Aircraftman Thomas Ross. To my further amazement one of the people involved in the ‘twinning’ is a work colleague of a nephew of Thomas and the group also included him in our commemorative service on the day.
‘For our todays they gave all of their tommorrows’
After 65 years this was an amazing series of co-incidences, with way leading on to way and culminating at the gravesides in Rennes.

David Grundy,
11th November 2005.

The text of our commemorative service is here reproduced.

Monday 18th July 2005, Rennes Eastern Communal Cemetery
Let us all join together to remember those who have died for the cause of our freedom and lie here in eternal rest. On this day let us particularly remember Serjeant George Fitzpatrick who was killed here in Rennes, with so many of his comrades, on Monday 17th June 1940. Let us also remember Leading Aircraftman Thomas Ross who was killed on Sunday 16th June 1940 and also lies here at rest.

For our todays they gave all of their tomorrows.
They shall grow not old, as we that are here grow old.
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them

Let us be hopeful for the reconciliation that has been established between nations once opposed in war, for the people of all nations and their leaders that those divisions that remain may be healed.
Let us cherish the treasure of peace, let us remember all who now live amid conflict and those who live in fear of violence and oppression.
Let us wish that our remembrance on this day may be for good and practical service and the world be better for our children and our children’s children.
And finally let us all pray together as we have been taught as Christians;

Our Father who art in heaven hallowed be Thy name, Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.
For Thine is the Kingdom, the Power and the Glory forever and ever. Amen.

Conclusion.
Following the return to Ireland of the Skerries twinning group the local newspaper The Fingal Independent, with circulation in North Co. Dublin, Co. Meath and Drogheda, featured a three page, including photographs, article on events in Rennes Monday 17th June 1940 and our more recent commemorative visit on Monday 18th July 2005.
This article was written by the paper’s editor Hubert Murphy and is reproduced with editor’s permission;

In remembrance of Serjeant George Fitzpatrick and Leading Aircraftman Thomas Ross.
Monday June 17th 1940, on a fine summer morning at 10:30a.m. death rained from the sky on stationary trains, packed with refugees and soldiers bottlenecked in the railway complex at Rennes, Brittany in western France. Over 800 people died, men, women and children together with British and French servicemen, when German dive bombers blasted train after train. One of those struck was a munitions trai, its destruction caused fierce explosions, which ripped through the morning air and spiralled bodies and debris in all directions.

Amongst those killed were servicemen left behind after the mass evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk, which had ceased two weeks previously. Contrary to popular myth the BEF was not totally evacuated by that time. There remained a dispersed and straggling army of about 150,000 men, now fleeing westwards in groups of various sizes and in the forlorn hope of making their escape as best they could, the grim alternatives being death or prisoner of war camp. But on this day in Rennes, the hope of escape for one group, would die. One of those killed with this group was Serjeant George Fitzpatrick, a 30-year-old member of the Royal Engineers.

Today, his white gravestone stands proudly with so many others in a little section of a cemetery close to the spot where they all died as comrades exactly 65 years ago. Recently, David Grundy from Red Island in Skerries, visited this grave and stood and shed a silent tear for a man he never knew but deeply respected, a grand-uncle who died in the ultimately successful struggle to free Europe of the Nazi threat.

‘It was strange really, I’d never been to Rennes but from what I’d researched on George I knew exactly where his grave was. It was a special moment’ he states. The recent trip to France was the climax to decades of family stories of past days. David, his brother Alan and sister Susanne always knew about George, he was one of many in the family who served but he was the only one who never returned. ‘George was my maternal grandfather’s youngest brother and was born in Cheshire in England in 1910. My Mum Joan and her brother Leo knew him very well as he often visited Ireland prior to the war. They both spoke highly of him and were the last living link to George. If they were alive today they would be so proud of the recent events to commemorate his memory. We were told growing up that George was killed at Dunkirk in a train blast and as young people we never thought too much about it after that.’ Then more recently one day, an article in the Fingal Independent, caught his attention. There was a report on Fingallians who were killed in the two world wars and it was mentioned that the Commonwealth War Graves Commission had a web site dedicated to the memory of the casualties of both wars. ‘In a moment of idleness, I decided to enter George’s name in the search page and to my astonishment it returned details of only one man, my grand uncle George. But the site disclosed that George had not died at Dunkirk as believed. He had been killed in Rennes, 800 kms away to the west and two weeks after the evacuation. It was then I decided
to find out, as best I could, what had happened to him’, A copy of a commemorative edition of a French newspaper, Ouest France, published in 1960, sourced by my son Douglas’ girl friend Frederique Piedfert, revealed the full horrors of that June day in 1940, when as the invading German army advanced across France, civilian refugees and allied troops fled westwards, the Luftwaffe bombers blitzed the railway at Rennes. So fierce were the fires, they blazed for a full week’. He also discovered that Skerries’ twinned town in France, Guichen, is located just 18km south of Rennes and the Skerries twinning group had planned a trip to the area this summer to celebrate a decade of successful twinning with Guichen. He made contact with Brendan Friel and Marie Stafford of the twinning group and they got in touch with a contact there, Jean Rocher, who immediately knew all about the incident in 1940. His family had fled from the invaders as refugees from Rouen a short while before and had been living with relatives near Rennes. Jean’s father, who worked with the railway, had been there the morning of the attack but managed to hide under a bridge and lived. But it was into the darkness of the following night before he could return to his anxious family to say he had survived. With the support of the Skerries Twinning Association, David, his wife Denise and brother Alan headed to France with the group and met Jean and other locals and in a poignant ceremony laid a poppy wreath at the grave of Serjeant George Fitzpatrick. However their visit not only commemorated George but also another man with a strong association to Fingal and buried in the same cemetery.—Thomas William Ross. Dominic and Geraldine McQuillan, friends of the family, laid a bouquet of flowers on Tom’s grave.
Although a native of Cabra in Dublin, Tom had a Balbriggan link. Harry Reynolds, the famed cyclist, had a son called Frank and he married Tom’s sister Nora. Tom was reportedly killed in a train station but that was on Sunday June 16, the day before the mass bombing. He was 21 and a Leading Aircraftman with the RAF and like his comrades, was making his way to the coast. ‘I’ve met with a nephew of his, Dermot Reynolds, who like me feels these men who died for our freedom should never be forgotten because they gave the ultimate sacrifice for the future generations and our freedom...their lives’.
For our todays they gave all of their tomorrows.
They shall grow not old, as we that are here grow old.
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

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