A Special Duty (22 page)

The crew of Halifax JP224 never considered themselves heroes, and would have been embarrassed by such a description, and yet there is something about their youthful exuberance and steely determination to do the job they were given knowing that they could perish in the attempt, that is very touching. They obeyed orders and followed the correct procedures, even when things went horribly wrong, and they did not come out of it unscathed. Their experience as evaders took a toll on their long-term health and wellbeing and yet, it is my belief that whatever hardship they endured, nothing affected them more than the loss of Peter Crosland in November 1943. Following the tragedy, they climbed back into their aircraft and continued to carry out their duty, while overwhelmed by loss and sadness and that quiet kind of courage has, at the end of my search, moved me the most. Tom Storey returned from the war, as he had joined it, without a trace of bitterness, and with his gentle nature and integrity intact. What he did lose was his peace of mind, and in telling this story, I feel that I have found the place he retreated to in the flickering flames. It was a place of strong friendship, good people, and a sense of purpose. Words written by John Mulgan shortly before he died in 1944 struck a chord with me when I first read them, and they continue to resonate now:

“In war, when you are working well together, you find the sober pleasure of working in concert with friends and companions and at the same time feel pride in yourself for the part which you can play as an individual. I believe this fact to be one reason why men are happy in wartime. Honest men know that war is to be fought and destroyed for the suffering and pain and crime that go with it. But honest men will also admit that they themselves as individuals have been happy in wartime, and some of them have afterwards tried to find the same thing in peace and always failed.”
i

Tom Storey aged 16 (team player) with Carlisle Grammar School Cricket XI 1936

(Photo courtesy of Trinity School, Carlisle)

The life you love is the life worth living

To love your life is a gift worth giving

If life is not love, the fire has gone out

Return to the spark where love shone out.

(Susan Storey Hayhurst, May 2013)

The ‘fire of friendship’ 2013

“A
nd now, set Europe ablaze”, said Prime Minister Winston Churchill to Hugh Dalton, Minister of Economic Warfare. This quotation has come to be seen as Churchill’s command to found the Special Operations Executive, whose role was “to coordinate all action, by way of subversion and sabotage, against the enemy overseas”. It was July 1940.

In order to facilitate the execution of the War Cabinet plans, anti-German resistance movements had to be equipped with explosives, grenades, land mines, detonators, rockets, ammunition, automatic firearms and radio sets. Without such supplies, destroying German trains, committing acts of subversion and training volunteers to attack the enemy rearguard after the opening of the second front, thus supporting the Allied troop landings, would have been very difficult.

Let us fast forward to 1943. All across Europe, resistance fighters from every occupied nation, looked to British Liberator and Halifax aircraft to deliver them supplies and support; Italian partisans, resistance fighters following orders from the Danish Freedom Council, “Jossings” from the Norwegian Milorg movement and Greek combatants from ELAS
1
. A hopeful look to the sky was also cast by the People’s Liberation Army in Yugoslavia, fighting against German forces in the mountains of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The same feeling of expectation was aroused in Dutch patriots who planned sabotage in the occupied Netherlands as well as their friends from the Belgian National Movement, the French
maquis
and troops of the Home Army in occupied Poland. Tom Storey and his crew were on the front line of this dangerous and important delivery service without really being exposed to the real war on the ground. That is until Sunday 23
^rd
April 1944 when engine failure meant that the crew were propelled into the world of the resistance fighters. They baled out of their plane on Sunday, 23 April 1944 and, having touched down somewhere in Poland, the crew of Halifax JP224 embarked on a whole new experience of “World War II”.

The names of all the Polish people who helped others during the period of German and Soviet occupation have not been written down to this day. It would take a legion of researchers. The only organisation that tracks such figures is the Yad Vashem Institute in Jerusalem, which has been collecting names for years. The institute also awards the title of “Righteous Among the Nations” to those who brought help to the Jews in World War II. Half of the people honoured are Polish. There is no such list of patriots involved in hiding, providing false papers, freeing from prisoner-of-war camps or helping evaders from Great Britain, Canada, the United States of America or Australia but if such a list existed, it would include the two girl scouts killed for providing assistance to British captives. They were: Janina Lechówa, beheaded at the Cytadela in Poznań and Janina Olszewska, shot dead together with her father by a firing squad in her home village in Lipno County. Two other women, Zofia Garlicka, 68 years old, and her daughter Zofia Jasińska were sent to Auschwitz for providing medical treatment to escaped British officers. Olga Kamińska-Prokopowa was beheaded for helping the British, Józef Grabiński and Wiesława Jezierska were executed following an investigation. In April 1942, Ludwik Bayer, who had been hiding a runaway British officer, was hanged from a pear tree in his own garden in the village of Dymarczewo Stare near Poznań. Three Poles: Józef Hanasz, Robert Hatko and Teodor Tom were hanged on 18 November 1941 in Brzozowice-Kamień; they helped hide and showed the way to a captive who had escaped from a camp in Łambinowice. On 28 November 1943 a Home Army patrol transporting a group of runaway British captives was attacked by gendarmes. The airmen were saved but in revenge, the Germans killed 42 residents of Bichniów. Maria Eugenia Jasińska, a pharmacist, was hanged in Lodz on 20 April 1943 for providing aid to British pilots. Her family received “words of appreciation” from the RAF. The Polish government showed their appreciation by awarding the Silver Cross of the Virtuti Militari War Order, Poland’s highest military decoration.

Thomas Storey and four of his crew from Halifax JP 224 were not taken prisoner. Despite having landed in a German training area they evaded capture thanks to the actions of these admirable people. Only two of the crew fell into enemy hands; the other five were saved. Walter Davies, sheltering in Smolarzyny near Rakszawa, lived to see the arrival of Allied Soviet forces. Storey, Keen, Hughes and Stradling, hidden by partisans of the Peasants’ Battalions and the Home Army, were transferred across the San River to the partisan unit led by Franciszek Przysiężniak – “Father Jan”, and were eventually taken to a Polish-Soviet detachment headed by Mikołaj Kunicki – “Mucha”. One night two aircraft arrived from Kiev at a prepared landing ground. The wounded partisans and the four airmen boarded those planes and flew out.

In 1996, when I was writing the “Last Flight of the Halifax” book, together with Jerzy Piekarczyk, we met several soldiers who had been involved in the clandestine rescue; they were simply obeying orders to help the Allies wage war against Hitler. We also came across people who were not involved with the partisan movement, yet they still put their families’ and their own lives at risk because... it was the right thing to do; these airmen had provided our boys with ammunition and equipment. Once the aircrew had joined a partisan group, they could not subsequently decide to give themselves up to the enemy because of the information they held, which could be tortured out of them by the Germans. This was how the German Special Court got their proof and imposed capital punishment on Irena Markiewiczowa, Bronisław Sobkowiak, Maria Klichowska, Bolesław Kierczyński, Bernard Drozd, Witold Wiktor Łaszczyński and Michalina Gorczycowa, who were all beheaded on 15 December 1942. The two young offenders: Klara Dolniak and Zbigniew Klichowski were sent to a concentration camp.

I bow my head in respect of the brave pilots and crews of 334 Special Duty Wing, whilst recognizing that the names of Polish underground and people who just helped them, will never be fully known and cannot be thanked.

Stanisław Maria Jankowski

¹
ELAS (the Greek People’s Liberation Army)

Transcript of message sent 21
^st
June 1944 from British Military Mission Moscow to Mediterranean Allied Air Force Headquarters

To:        H.Q.

M.A.A.F.

From:    30 Mission

AIR.531

21 June 1944

Further my following report Flight Engineer Halifax JP 224. Begins

“At approx. 23.30 B on 23 April whilst on an operational flight and descending from 13,000 feet over the CARPATHIAN MOUNTAINS the oil temperature on the P.I. engine began to rise quickly and the pressure dropped 10 lbs. When the temperature reached 80 degrees the captain feathered the engine. Six minutes later the captain reported the S.I. engine had suddenly cut, just after having changed fuel tanks from 2 & 4 to 1 & 3. The fuel warning light did not show. I immediately changed back to tank No. 2 and efforts were made to re-start the P.I. engine but it refused the start. There was no warning that the engine was about to stop, such as spluttering, swing or fluctuating boost, but it cut dead. My gauges for this engine also gave no indication of an impending stoppage. There were still 1500 gallons of fuel left which could not be jettisoned and the aircraft would not keep height on 2 engines.

(Sgd) J. Keen, Sgt Flight Engineer”.

Letter signed by Flight Lieutenant ….Win………..(unreadable)

Author’s Note:

The accounts of that final flight vary from one crewmember to another and the issue of which engines failed is the most significant. Tom Storey, during debriefing, stated that the port inner engine overheated and was shut down and then the port outer engine stopped dead. Charlie Keen, in his own debrief, stated that the second engine to cut was the starboard inner. Some of the crew also stated that a third engine began to fail. Because of these discrepancies, I have stuck to the account given by the pilot, Tom Storey, who would have been acutely aware of an engine failure because of the handling properties that it imposed on him. A 100% accurate account is probably not possible now.

Letter written by Tom Storey to Alojzego Pajaka 1945

Dear Alojzy,

I got your address from the Polish Red Cross. I am sorry to hear that after I left Poland you were taken into captivity. Still, you should consider yourself lucky that you survived, as you know they used to hang partisans. I obviously just got out with my life as the Germans shot at the Russian plane.

Remember Urech (or George as we used to call him) singing ‘Moja Malgorzato’ and how much he was longing for his wife at that time. I often sing the partisan songs which you guys taught me. I have not forgotten any of them. After I got back, I didn’t rejoin the war against the enemy. As you know, I was fighting for a long time and because of my experience I got a job as a test pilot.

I have met Mr. Mycholichnik (sorry I can’t write his name properly) your Prime Minister of the Polish Government in London – I know he is in Poland now.

Three members of my crew, who were captured by Germans, fortunately made it back here. They were treated very badly by the Germans. A lot of my friends from the Squadron were killed delivering supplies to Warsaw. We did everything possible for your country but unfortunately the obstacles were too great. Whatever you think of politicians, positive or negative, remember one thing Ali, those English boys gave their lives to help their friends. We are also very grateful to you and thousands of other partisans for your fight during these darkest of days.

Please tell all comrades that I would be very happy to hear from them. Could you ask them to send me their photograph because I can’t remember all the names – only the nicknames