大象传媒

I was born in Manchester on 2 March 1921, the youngest of three children, and the only boy. I was named after my father: Leonard Charles Bolke. All through my life, my unusual family name has been queried, and now at 69 I am still explaining. My grandfather was born around 1858 in the area of Germany known as West Prussia, which is now part of Poland; the village was Neu-Stettin, now called Szczecinek. At the age of 12-14, he came to London and was apprenticed to a tailor. He met and married a girl from the same region who was in domestic service with a family in London. It must have been quite a common thing for young people to do in those days because they met at a club formed by other German-speaking young people.
My grandfather only once returned home to visit, when he had saved a few pounds, and at 21 was free to do so. His parents were still there, but after a few days he was warned that if he did not leave quickly, he would be conscripted into the army. He left for Hamburg and got on a Dutch boat which landed him in Falmouth, and somehow returned to London. He got married and rarely left London again.
They had eight children: five boys and three girls. During the 1914-18 war, my father and his brother were conscripted into the British Army, but because their parents were "enemy aliens", they were only allowed to serve in non-combatant units.
My father, also a tailor by trade, left London for Manchester in 1911 with his bride to start his own business. My memories of those years, in the 1920s and the 1930s, are of fairly hard times, and shortage of money due to lack of trade. Many families were worse off than us, though.
My sisters and I left school aged 14 years in order to get work to supplement the family income. Not wanting to follow my father in his trade, I got work in the textile trade and apart from my five and a half years in the RAF (1940-1946) most of my working life was in the gradually diminishing textile industry.
I was 18 when the war started in 1939, and, knowing that I would be called up for military service of some sort, I decided to volunteer for the RAF in preference to the Army or Navy. All RAF air crews were volunteers, and I was selected for training as a wireless operator/air gunner. In between training courses, we were used on ground duties; in my case, it was aerodrome defence in 1940, and as a wireless operator on ground control signals after my initial training.
It was the summer of 1942 before I finished my air gunners course and went to an Operational Training Unit. This was where crews were brought together for training. It was thought to be better if the crews got together themselves rather than being directed.
After all the crews made themselves complete, we were all called together one morning and told that there were two men left over from an earlier course, and it was decided that all the pilots' names were to be put into a hat and picked out to decide the crew for these two people.
Our pilot's name was drawn out twice, so we had the two people concerned, whom we had not yet met. This meant that we exchanged a navigator and rear gunner in this manner. This proved to be a lottery with fatal results, as will be seen later in this story.
When on holiday in October 1990, I visited the War History Museum in the German bunker at St Ouen's Bay. There I met Mr & Mrs Ian Cabot. Their interest and enthusiasm, as well as my own, have brought about my attempt to tell the full story behind the report that an RAF bomber came down in the sea early on 11 April 1943.
The members of crew and details are as follows:

Pilot: Sgt W E Bidmead, RAF Bristol, Age 22. Navigator: Sgt A Holden, RAF Accrington, Age 22. Bomb Aimer: Sgt E A Odling, RAF London, Age 22. Wireless Operator: Sgt L C Bolke, RAF Manchester, Age 22. Rear Gunner: Sgt G A Booth, RCAF Ottawa, Canada, Age 30.

We were flying a Wellington Mark X HE213F from 431 Squadron, Royal Canadian Air Force,
No6 Group Bomber Command, based at Burn, near Selby in Yorkshire. The Mark X was the most powerful produced, having two Bristol Hercules 1750 hp engines (more than twice as powerful as the original engines fitted to this type of aircraft). This gave us more height and speed performance, but cut down the range over which we could operate.
To date, we had bombed various targets in the Ruhr, Keil and Hamburg, and mine-laying in the shipping lanes off the Dutch coast. For this last, and, for some of us, fatal mission we were briefed to bomb Frankfurt-on-Maine. As this was beyond our normal range, we had fitted an overload petrol tank in the bomb bag, and a mixture of high explosive and incendiary bombs to complete the load. This reduced our effective bomb load by about half. Because of our limited range, we were routed to return to Tangmere in Sussex instead of our base in Yorkshire.
Records report that we took off at 23.22 hours on 10 April 1943. I remember that we were routed to avoid Amsterdam and the heavily-defended Ruhr. We were to look for white track marker flares to be laid some 20 miles north of track, and from there we were to turn on track for Frankfurt.
The journey outwards was uneventful at first, then we saw someone too close to Amsterdam attracting a lot of flak. The Dutch coats and islands were visible, but further on cloud cover was complete. We did see what we were sure were the track markers and adjusted course for the target area. On arrival, we found heavy oppositionfrom search lights and flak, plus complete cloud cover several thousand feet below our bombing height of 18,000 feet. There were no bombing markers being dropped by the Pathfinder aircraft. Somewhat confused, we circled this heavily defended area for some 20 minutes, but there were still no markers.
It was decided that we could not afford to waste any more fuel, so we made a bombing run through the heaviest flak and bombed that area. We were not aware of being hit up to that point, and the navigator gave the pilot a course to steer for the return leg. This should have taken us on a straight track south of Saorbruchen, across Luxembourg to around Rheims. A dog leg adjustment to our course should have been made to avoid Paris, and then on to the coast north of Dreppe and on to our landing in Sussex. However, with cloud cover still complete, we could see nothing on the ground other than odd bits of flak from time to time.
We seemed to have been flying a long time, and I checked the main fuel tanks which by now were very low. I reported this to the pilot. To bring on the last petrol supply in the two engine nascelles, it was my job to stand with both arms extended sideways, grasping a wire toggle in each hand, and when the engines started to falter, I pulled the toggles and we were now using our last 20 minutes supply of petrol.
The pilot asked me to get a fix by radio, which I questioned as a risk if we were still over enemy territory. The skipper decided to go down and have a look; we entered cloud at 13000 feet and came out at 3000. We saw the coast, and I was transmitting to get the fix when islands were seen. Heavy flak, very accurate, got us immediately and it continued. The skipper gave the order "Prepare to ditch", and I changed my signal to "SOS Ditching". We all ackowledged the order apart from the rear gunner, George Booth. Skipper called to him "Did you get that, we are ditching?" His reply, very brusque, was "I got it; OK God damn it", and we never heard another word from him. I believe he was badly wounded.
When the trailing aerial touched the sea and cut my signal, I told the skipper we were down to 50 feet, and then I switched over to my fixed aerial on top of the aircraft so that a signal would continue until it sank, having clamped my Morse key down (Our SOS was received at 06.08). Now, in my crash position, I waited for the crash landing, which was perfectly done using the technique of lifting the nose at the last moment so that the tail hits the water first and then settles with the next bump or so. I moved after the first bump towards the exit position; we hit the water again and I was thrown around the aircraft like a pea in a bucket. When I picked myself up, I struggles along to the escape hatch (Astro-dome) and with some difficulty climbed out. The fusilage was burning from midship to tail, and belts of ammunition to the tail turret were on fire and exploding. The port engine was burning from when we were first hit.
As I got out, I saw that two men were at the partly-inflated dingy and I dived in to help, but it was hopeless and we had to abandon it when the wrecked aircraft sank. I struggled to get rid of my parachute harness and inflate my life jacket, and started to swim towards the island in view. There were three of us, but I was not sure who was with us besides the pilot.

The second part of this story, 'Ditching at St Ouen's Bay: Cont.' can be found at A4661840

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