大象传媒

He was shot down over Brest in July 1941; he was reported Missing, Believed Killed; he was twenty years old. He had joined the RAFVR after leaving school and had learned to fly; he became an officer and eventually a pilot of a Wellington bomber, and the sheer joy and excitement that flying gave him is expressed in this short, scribbled poem that I still possess:

"If men could fly they would be as the gods"
Said Leonardo, and I wish that he
Were here beside me now to see
His prophecy fulfilled, I AM a god,
Of clouds, and worlds, and infinite spaces,
All motion and all beauty belong to me,
Immensity and eternity.....
For I can fly!

Being reported Missing believed killed leaves a tiny chink of hope for his family - he might have had a miraculous escape - but in 1947 came final confirmation of his death from the Air Ministry: He had come down over the village of Plouzane a few miles from Brest, after a bombing raid on the port that was the second most fortified German naval base in Europe, known to harbour the battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. There was a picture of a small cross on the letter like every other cross on a wartime grave.

It was fifty years before we actually went to visit his grave, I suppose because we feared to rekindle the family's great grief. We were expecting to find a typical war cemetery and his grave among hundreds of others, so when we eventually reached Plouzane we asked a local where to find le cimetiere de la guerre. He scrateched his head: "There is no cemetery near here"; we showed him the picture of the cross. "There is the grave of six English fliers in Plouzane chruchyard" he said.

Entering the churchyard through dark cypress trees, we saw them almost at once: six simple white stones among all the darkly ornate, marble tombs of the parish. And beside them stood a monther and child putting new flowers on the plinth. It was so amazing that we could barely explain what we were doing - SHE simply said that her son Romuald liked to give flowers to the Englishmen because they seemed so lonely.

We went to church for the morning service, sitting right at the back, and the old lady who was taking round the collection plate welcomed us very kindly. After the service we found her and told her our mission. Did anyone know anything about the English fliers who were buried in the churchyard? She knew at once; she (Therese) remembered it all. So did several others there, including Yvonne. The plane had crashed on Yvonne's family farm and her uncle had seen it; her aunt, Madame Lauc, still had the photograph that she had taken when she was fifteen; it was all written up in the various histories of the war in Brest. If we would honour Mme Lauc with our presence that evening and Therese the next day we could be shown everything.

And so we were; Madam Lauc's whole family assembled and they recalled the crash - the terrible noise of the aircraft's explosion, the flames, the fumes, the bodies thrown out, burned beyond recognition except for the tall one (John) who was still alive for a few seconds. It had crashed on the farm, there is still a gap in the hedge where it fell. Then the farm workers and their friends had buried the bodies in a hasty grave. They had thrown flowers on it, to the fury of the German guards who arrived on the scene and who shouted "You are giving flowers to your assassins.".

A brave frenchman is reported to have replied "No, to our saviours." The young girl of fifteen took the photograph of the grave, with its flowers and its cross and the inscription in German "5 Englische Fliegern." In the background is the black plume of smoke still rising from the plane. She had sold this photograph to the Press and it was evidently famous; it was still as good as new, and so was the negative.

The next day we had lunch with Therese and her family and we were given a history of the early part of the war over Brest, which her nephew had typed out especially for us.

We heard that the bodies had been removed to the churchyard as soon as it could be done without retribution from the Germans, and it was after the war that the RAF had erected its usual simple and noble tombstone over the bodies of the six members of the crew. Even after so many years the local people were still putting flowers there in grateful memory, and last Christmas our friends told us they were doing so still.