Memorials

                                This memorial is special to me as our navigator Donald George Hudspeth was a member of our crew until our fifteenth raid on Stettin                                                   where his arm was smashed and broken and he was grounded.                                                    

 Don Hudspeth should have been awarded a decoration for his effort on the Stettin raid.

                                                                                         When he was declared fit for flying again he flew  to finish his tour with other crews.
                               

 * * * * * THERE IS A CORNER OF A FOREIGN FIELD * * * * * 

                                                                                                                   Squadron Leader Carl Richard  Kelaher & Crew

VISIT TO DENMARK 2003, by nephew,Victor R. Kelaher

                        Earlier this summer my wife, Pamela, and myself were invited to visit and stay with Mr and Mrs Ove and Lis Knudsgaard who live in the Danish city of Horsens on the east coast of Jutland.   The invitation was extended to us so that we would have an opportunity to accompany them to a remembrance ceremony and pay homage to the memory of our cousin, Squadron Leader Carl Richard Kelaher, of 460 Squadron, Royal Australian Air Force, on the 60^th anniversary of his Lancaster bomber, EE138, being shot down in the early hours of 4^th September 1943 killing him and the rest of the crew.   These being:-

1)      Flying Officer Sidney Milton Forrester, RAAF, pilot.

2)      Warrant Officer Ewin Garth Carthew, RAAF, navigator.

3)      Warrant Officer Cyril Augustine Walsh, RAAF, bomb aimer.

4)      Sergeant Herbert Freeman Jowett, RAF, engineer.

5)      Sergeant John Cresswell Coombes, RAF, wireless operator/air gunner.

6)      Sergeant Arthur Rolfe, RAF, air gunner.

7)      Sergeant Ernest Albert Cecil Thirkettle, RAF, air gunner.

                        The home base of 460 Squadron was RAF Station Binbrook in the County of Lincolnshire.   At 7.58pm in the evening of the 3^rd September 1943, EE138 took off from the runway at Binbrook, together with a number of other Lancaster bombers of the squadron for a raid on Berlin.   A total of three hundred Lancasters took part in the raid and twenty-two failed to return to their aerodromes.   In addition to EE138 being shot down, 460 Squadron lost two other planes and crews that night.

                        On the return flight to Binbrook Carl’s aircraft flew across the centre of Jutland and just before reaching the North Sea the bomber was intercepted by a German night fighter over the village of Stadil in west Jutland.   The fighter raked the Lancaster with cannon fire and must have caused serious damage to Carl’s plane which, although continuing to fly out over the sea, banked around coming back low over Stadil again as though intending to make a crash landing.   The pilot of the fighter attacked the aircraft again and according to eye-witnesses the Lancaster started to climb again into the sky but it burst into flames then plummeted down to the ground.

                        The area where it crashed was marshy bog land adjacent to a water filled dyke and upon hitting the ground the Lancaster disappeared below the surface of the land to become the coffin of Carl and the other seven members of the crew.   At daybreak the German military attended the scene and recovered pieces of aircraft wreckage from the surrounding area.   Whilst doing this they found a headless, limbless torso of one of the airmen and this, the Germans buried at the site.

                        The field where the Lancaster crashed belonged to a farmer named Ingemann Halkjaer, the father of Mrs Lis Knudsgaard.   He arranged for the local carpenter to make a wooden cross, and once the Germans showed no further interest in the crash site, he laid this on the ground above the buried torso.   At that time the Germans had forbidden the Danish people from showing any sympathy towards allied airmen who had been killed or shot down.   The following year when reeds had grown up around the crash site Ingemann erected the cross over the grave.   In 1947 the torso was exhumed by the War Graves Commission and reburied in Svinoe Cemetery, some fifty kilometres away, and marked with a headstone indicating it to be the grave of an ‘unknown’ airman.

                        In 1949 at the behest of Ingemann Halkjaer, the villagers of Stadil raised sufficient funds for a granite memorial stone, engraved with the names of all the crew, to be placed at the crash site with a small garden in front of it which today has flowers planted in it and is looked after by Lis’s sister Karen.   This memorial stone was officially unveiled on the 5^th May 1950, the fifth anniversary of the liberation of Denmark, and present, representing King Frederick of Denmark, was Colonel Ole Olesen his aide-de-camp, and other dignitaries.  

                        Three weeks ago at 7.30pm on September 4^th, which was a bright sunny evening, Pam and myself, together with Catherine Walsh and her daughter, Amy, relatives of Warrant Officer Walsh, who had travelled over from Australia for the occasion, joined Ove and Lis along with forty-four local residents at the crash site in the farm-field to the west of Stadil on the 60^th anniversary of Carl’s Lancaster being shot down.   We planted two heathers in the small garden of remembrance as did young Amy on behalf of the Walsh family, then Lis asked for a minutes silence which was followed by the Danes singing their wartime resistance song ‘Altid frejdig naar du gaar’ (Always cheerful when you go).

                        Everyone then adjourned to a nearby hall where Lis gave a talk about the events of that night in September 1943.   On display in the hall were hung photographs of seven of the eight crew and one photo frame blank bearing only the name of Sergeant Rolfe.   Lis lit a candle for each airman reading out details of each one in turn.   The evening ended with the singing of the British and Danish National Anthems then everyone present linked arms for the singing of ‘Auld Lang Syne’.   As the meeting broke up one of the Danish gentlemen present came up to me, shook hands and said, “We Danes will never forget what the RAF and their allies did for us during those dark years of occupation”.   It proved to be a very emotional evening.

                        Ingemann has since died but at the time he gave up farming and sold the land he arranged with the local municipal council to have the crash area declared a grave site and as a result the area around it is fenced off and a pathway maintained leading from the farm track so that the public can visit the site.  

                                                                                    The present owner of the land is not allowed to disturb the area or the pathway.

THE AIR FORCES MEMORIAL, RUNNYMEDE, SURREY, ENGLAND

The first rays of the dawning sun
Shall touch its pillars,
And as the day advances
And the light grows stronger,
You shall read the names
Engraved on the stone
Of those who sailed on the angry sky
And saw the harbour no more.
No gravestones in yew-dark churchyard
Shall mark their resting place;
Their bones lie in the forgotten corners
Of earth and sea.

But, that we may not lose their memory
With fading years, their monument stands here,
Here, where the trees troop down to Runnymede
Meadow of Magna Carta, field of freedom
Never saw you so fitting a memorial,
Proof that the principals established here
Are still dear to the hearts of men
Here now they stand, contrasted and alike,
The field of freedom's birth, and the memorial
To freedom's winning.

And as the evening comes,
And mists, like quiet ghosts, rise from the river beds,
And climb the hill to wander through the cloisters,
We shall not forget them. Above the mist
We shall see the memorial still, and over it
The crown and single star. And we shall pray
As the mists rise up and the air grows dark
That we may wear
As brave a heart as they.

- Paul H. Scott

        The Air Force Memorial, situated at Runnymede, lists the names of approximately 60,000 airmen, who lost their lives serving in Bomber Command in     World War 2. Included are the names of 4050 Australians who made the supreme sacrifice and of those there are 1000 who have no known grave. 

Australian Veteran Affairs Minister, The Hon. Danna Vale, MP., 

Leads a Mission Party to Runnymede, November, 2003

Air Force past and present, at Runnymede November, 2003:

(kneeling) LAC Anthony Judd, WGCDR Ernie Walsh, FLTLT Sharne Newman and LAWCW Erica Smith;

(standing) Jack Doyle, Bob Cowper, GPCAPT Tim Owen, Rollo Kingsford-Smith, Dr Graeme Killer, Ern Frost, Ian Speirs, Doug Kemp, Herb Copeman,

AM Angus Houston, Minister for Veterans' Affairs Danna Vale,

Geoff Michael, Clarrie Gardner, Keith Campbell, Des Singe, Alex Kerr, FLTLT Travis Walters and Chaplain PeterO'Keefe.

460 BULLETIN
NOVEMBER 2002
460 SQUADRON (RAAF) ASSOCIATION
6 Valewood Crescent, Marsfield
Accolade from the Chief of Air Force

    Speaking on the 8lst anniversary of the formation of the RAAF earlier this year, the Chief of Air Force, Air Marshall Angus Houston described the operational success and excellence that the Air Force had provided in four major wars and other emergencies, although, sadly, many had paid with their lives.

    He said that a tragic example of this sacrifice were the losses suffered by Australian crews of Bomber Command, who comprised just two percent of the Australians enlisted in WW2, yet accounted for 20 percent of deaths in combat of all Aussies across the three services.

    AEM Houston said that the Royal Australian Air Force's No 460 Squadron alone lost 1,018 crew. 'Against an establishment of about 200, this means the whole unit was wiped out five times over.". He stressed that the service, sacrifice and values demonstrated by these great Australians was an inspiration to the current generation of Air Force personnel.

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War Memorials at Plymouth

    

Beneath this monument are the names of
many Airmen and Women whose relatives
wish their names to remain in perpetuity.
Here also rest the ashes of
Air Vice Mashal D.C.T. Bennett, C.B., C.B.E., D.S.O.
Commander of the Pathfinder Force No. 8 Group. Bomber Command.
Requiescant in Peace.

The following article is from the newspaper "THE AUSTRALIAN", from Thursday April 6, 2000.

A Corner Of A Foreign Park, That is forever Bondi

The London sleet is falling in icy globs as Corporal Dhir Bahadur, of the First Royal Ghurka Rifles, blows into his bagpipes and fills the air with their mournful refrain.

Behind him a slice of Australia, a lump of Bondi sandstone hewn from that sun drenched coast, is lowered gently into place. The inscription reads:”In honour of the undying ANZAC spirit and the shores from which it came."

For Jill, Duchess of Hamilton, this moment has been a long time in the making. As a proud Australian who divides her time between the UK and Queensland, she was appalled when she realised, in the lead-up to the 50th anniversary of VE Day five years ago, that there was no dedicated memorial in London to the 5397 Australian aircrew who lost their lives over Europe and the Middle East during World War II.

She stomped about London to raise money for a monument in Battersea Park, which duly became home for a dawn Anzac service. Still what was Anzac Day without an Anzac memorial? She settled on the idea to bring a Bondi boulder to Britain. “Rocks and stones have an honoured place in all cultures,” she says – there’s Stonehenge, the Black Rock of Mecca, Australia’s Uluru.

And Bondi, that iconic strip of sand formed by sandstone cliffs and brick and tile suburbia, is a shrine of sorts to contemporary Australian society.

“The same spirit which led young Australian men to spend weekends voluntarily rescuing swimmers from the surf, led them to enlist and brave the beaches of Gallipoli,” she explained. Enter Miriam Cosic, a staff writer on THE AUSTRALIAN MAGAZINE. The Duchess had stayed in touch after Cosic interviewed her about her work as an author and conservationist and prevailed on Cosic to scout for a suitable boulder. The Duchess was adamant: it had to come from Bondi, never mind that the beachfront is covered by heritage protection Cosic got a break when she heard about an old cache of quarried sandstone which had been abandoned on a golf course. Perfect! The next challenge was to get the three quarters of a tonne rock to London. She approached News Limited, publisher of this newspaper, and the company agreed to cover it.

Memorial in Binbrook village in memory of the 460 Squadron operating on Binbrook airfield.

‘To All Who Gave So Much,
Paid The Ultimate Price

So We Might Live In Peace,
We Thank You And Remember You

Binbrook Parish Council Epitaph - Nov 10^th 1997.

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Laurie, It has been a pleasure to share our effort with you, and so as to give it a wider audience, please do with it what you see fit.
Any queries from enquirers, do please pass them onto me.
I know that Elie and his colleagues will be delighted that news of our effort has been shared with your Association.
The hunt continues for details of Hobgen's crewmates Grand  Howard  Lowis  MacLeod......
Dave Hatherell
daveandsusan@dhatherell.fsnet.co.uk