A shared moment in wartime

“En 1944, j’avais 7 ans”, explained Lucienne. “I can remember leaping out of bed to the sounds of shouting and people running,” she continued in animated French, “as a crescendo of screaming engines filled the house. I tumbled outside into the darkness behind my mother, just in time to see the flaming aircraft passing low above us.”
Inside that doomed Lancaster bomber above her, I knew that my Grandfather, Maurice, was staring down into the blackness below. He was bracing himself against the slipstream at the open exit door, trying to still his pounding heart, while he waited for the command to leap into the night.
At that same moment, Hauptmann Heinz Roekker looked back at the disappearing flicker of flame in the distance, now faintly illuminating a small village below, before turning to concentrate on his approach to Chateaudun airfield. “Sieben-und-dreissig, also,” he sighed. “Der schaft es sicher nicht mehr zurueck.”
Three people who had never met, and who were destined never to meet, connected by a shared moment of the most intense human drama.
My Grandfather had related the events of that night to me a hundred times. It was clearly the defining moment of his life. But for me it was just a story. A story of a time long ago and a place far away. A legend. Yet here was Lucienne, excitedly reliving that same moment, pointing up at the area of sky my Grandfather had passed through in a flaming aircraft.
It was 1996 and I was visiting Yevres cemetery where the pilot, Noel Stokes, and the rear gunner, Norman Wilding, were buried. But for me, the myth only truly gave way to reality later that day when Lucienne’s husband Andre dragged a large twisted sheet of aluminium out of his back shed to show me.
“What’s that for ?” I asked.
“This was a part of your grandfather’s plane.”
For a long time I couldn’t move. Or speak. I just stared at that piece of blackened metal.
Lancaster AA-W “Howzat” of No. 75 (NZ) Squadron, with Maurice as mid-upper gunner, left Mepal airfield in Cambridgeshire late on July 28th 1944 on the 23rd and final mission of his crew’s tour. After this trip to Stuttgart, they were heading home. Let someone else have their turn to climb up into the cold belly of that flying explosives factory and head off into the heart of Germany.
I had visited Mepal in 1984 while my Grandfather was still alive.
“Now you’ve seen where I died 23 times,” he told me quietly over the phone.
Noel Stokes had to brace his feet on the Lancaster’s control panel so that he could use all his strength to haul on the joystick, in a vain attempt to keep the stricken bomber level. Despite his exertions, the stricken bomber continued to descend ever lower. It was decision time. Soon it would be too late to bale out - the parachutes would not have time to open. Stokes peered into the gloom below for somewhere to crash-land. But he knew it was going to be impossible to land successfully in the dark. And he knew if he let go of the controls the aircraft would immediately plummet.
A small village loomed out of the darkness below them. Beyond the village he could make out fields. It was time. He shouted to the crew; “Go, go, go!” Maurice felt a shove in his back, and then he was tumbling head over heels, buffeted by the slipstream. He struggled to work out which way was up, then stabilized himself and finally pulled his ripcord. He felt the jerk of the parachute snapping open just seconds before hitting the ground. He heard the bones his legs go with a crack. Maurice lay there for a few moments before the pain came, watching the dying Lancaster nearing the ground. “C’mon Stokesy, you can do it,” he thought. But then a wingtip brushed the ground, the plane cartwheeled, and was finally enveloped in a violent fireball.
Before Maurice had time to consider his position, he heard muffled French voices, and was soon being manhandled onto a handcart. The locals wheeled him away to a nearby brickworks, and a doctor was brought to set and splint his broken legs.
While Maurice’s injuries were being dressed, Hauptmann Roekker was being awoken by a crowd of grinning young Luftwaffe pilots. Each was vying to be the first to congratulate him on being awarded the Knights Cross, Germany’s highest decoration. The commander of the 2nd Nightfighter Squadron had flown in Italy, North Africa, Germany, and now in France, and was one of Germany’s top nightfighter aces with 36 victories. No, make that 37. Sieben-und-Dreissig. Roekker didn’t feel like celebrating. He felt tired.
It was 29th July 1944, and this was a deciding moment in the Second World War. The Allies had landed in Normandy 2 months earlier. So far the German defensive ring around the beachhead had held, despite the massive influx of allied men and material, and the absolute daytime supremancy of the allied air forces. But two days earlier, the first crack in the exhausted German defences had appeared near St Lo. A crack which rapidly widened to a gulf as General Patton’s fresh armoured divisions poured through and penetrated deep into the French countryside, soon leading to the complete collapse of the German front. Within a week, American tanks would be welcomed in Yevres by my Grandfather on his crutches, while Hauptmann Roekker and his Luftwaffe unit would be hurriedly abandoning Chateaudun for a homeland defence airfield in Germany.
Lucienne and Andre showed me the crash site, the brickworks where my Grandfather had been patched up, and the airfield at Chateudun. I also learned for the first time of the memorial commemoration of that night’s events that they have diligently organized each year since 1951, inviting local dignatories, military and officials from France and New Zealand. “A memoire les aviateurs”.