A Special Duty (21 page)

A crew reunion took place the year after Dad’s death as a result of a personal notice in the Daily Mirror. The item was placed by Ivan Shevtsov, radio operator on the Pavlov crew, who wanted to meet up with the airmen he had flown to safety in June 1944. The newspaper managed to trace Jim Hughes, Charlie Keen and Patrick Stradling, who were reunited with Shevtsov in March 1965 in London, in the company of Pravda correspondent, Oleg Orestov, and a Daily Mirror reporter. The subsequent article titled: ‘The Great Reunion of the Englishman, the Irishman, the Welshman and the Ukrainian’ made a full-page spread, and mentioned that the pilot, Thomas Storey, had not been traced for the reunion. None of them knew that Tom was dead and, maybe more remarkably, they believed that Walter had been shot by the Germans and had no idea that he had eventually made it home and was alive. Walter read the story of the reunion in the Daily Mirror and immediately made contact with his fellow crew members. Rita also read the article, with some sadness since Tom could never be part of his crew again, and she contacted the Daily Mirror to tell them of his death. Charlie Keen and Jim Hughes very quickly made their way to the home of Walter Davis in Kent for a second reunion, and the news of Tom’s death was given to them by the Daily Mirror reporter. It was the 23
^rd
April, 1965, twenty-one years to the day after baling out. The following day, Walter wrote to Rita. “It seems such a pity now that I have never had the pleasure of meeting you and of seeing my beloved skipper again.”

Over the next couple of years, Mum tried a few ventures to make ends meet, such as turning the house into a convalescent home, a business which was not particularly well regulated in those days. Our first ‘convalescent’, a frail and elderly lady, fell out of bed and broke her hip soon after arriving, which quickly put an end to that idea. Then, at the age of 42, she got a job as a teaching assistant, and discovered her vocation. She went back to college, got a teaching diploma, and embarked on a successful teaching career, giving her a regular income and an occupation that she loved. She was finally in a position to buy her first little cottage, and was kept busy in her spare time stripping beams, ripping out fireplaces, and turning her hand to any work that needed to be done. By this time we were married with families of our own and, as we got older, we began to talk of Dad more often. We found that we had all retained slightly different memories, some of which were anecdotes from his time as a pilot, usually related to us by Mum. The burning of Tito’s coat was a favourite, and we knew that a crew member had fallen from his plane, and that Dad had been with partisans in Poland, but we had no clear idea of the type of work he was doing. Why was he flying from Libya and Italy? We didn’t really know. Then in 2011, my daughter Rachel did some research on the internet and found that journalist Paul Lashmar had taken an interest in the story, with a view to making a television documentary based on the Storey crew’s final flight. When she eventually tracked him down he was living just a few miles away and, with great generosity, he gave us copies of his research material. This was the start. The information was intriguing and, by this time, I had also come across a book by Graham Pitchfork, ‘Shot Down and on the Run’, which contained a chapter on Dad’s crew, and a book by Nina Mierzwinska-Harper, which told the same story but from the viewpoint of the Polish partisans. My interest was growing with every bit of information and I wanted to know more. I decided that the first step was to gather all the threads of information together into one cohesive narrative, and then fill in the gaps, if possible.

Greg Kusiak, Tarnogora 2013

I began my own research, and in the early stages much of this was on the internet. I posted questions on various websites, particularly with regard to the exact crash site of Halifax JP 224, but had little response. And then, out of the blue, I received a message from Greg Kusiak, a young man from the village of Letownia in southern Poland, just a few miles from the area where the Halifax came down. He had always taken a great interest in the historic event, and wrote offering to take a picture of the crash site for me. He did just that, but what I had not expected was that a memorial stone had been erected at the location, between the village of Tarnogora and the hamlet of Poreba, in the district of Nowa Sarzyna. The reason I had not expected it, was that nobody had died in the crash. The little monument, alone in a field on the edge of the village, was to commemorate the actions of brave partisans and villagers who had saved the lives of four British airmen in April 1944. At this point, the summer of 2012, Mum, my sisters and I decided to travel to Poland. Dad had written in his letter to Ali all those years ago: “I would really like to come to Poland and see you all, but unfortunately I am not a rich man, so I doubt if I can ever be able to do it”. There seemed no reason why we couldn’t go to Poland for him. So, on the 19
^th
April, 2013, the four of us, ‘the team’, boarded a flight from Liverpool John Lennon Airport to Krakow, and then took a train to the town of Przeworsk. There we were met by Edward Kak, the man whose dedication and perseverance had seen the erection of the monument, and kept the story alive for the young people of Tarnogora.

Nothing could have prepared us for the welcome we received upon arrival. From the moment we arrived at the railway station we were looked after by Edward, his family, and the villagers of Tarnogora. We were introduced to mayors and schoolchildren alike, and taken on a tour of all the sites relevant to us, in the company of historian Piotr Galdys and ex-partisan Bronislaw Smola. We were invited to eat at the home of Bronislaw Sowa, who as a young man had run to get help for Tom Storey on that first night, and everywhere we went, someone came along to help with translation, transport, or to provide food for us. We were quite overwhelmed by the hospitality and the strong sense of community in Tarnogora. On the anniversary day, the 23
^rd
April, we gathered at the Tarnogora primary school, where the children presented us with flowers and then danced, recited poetry, and sang for us. From the school, we walked to the monument, which was adorned with flags, and Rita unveiled a new plaque dedicated to the seven airmen on that ill-fated flight. Piotr Galdys presented Rita with the airman’s flying helmet, which had been salvaged from the crashed Halifax by Sebastian Lyko almost seventy years earlier, and Edward Kak gave us each a piece of the salvaged wing section. It was a particularly emotional day for us as it was also the anniversary of Dad’s death in 1964, and for all those years following his death we had struggled with the memory of his leaving us, and wanted, above all else to understand why. We needed some peace of mind, and although we did not expect to find it in Tarnogora, that is exactly what happened.

Author with Edward Kak, Tarnogora 2013

We knew that the 23
^rd
April was a significant anniversary for Dad because every year, on that date, he would withdraw completely from everything around him and seek some kind of oblivion. That led us to believe that the place he retreated to was a lonely and fearful place. It was the fire that began to open our minds to the truth – the fire lit by Piotr Galdys and Lukasz Kak in the forest close to Tarnogora. Having collected dry brushwood from the forest floor and got the fire alight, they pulled up clods of damp peat with their hands and brought them to surround the flames and contain them. Fresh twigs were then gathered, and sausages skewered on the end for us to cook on the fire. Bronislaw Smola talked of his days with the partisans, as Edward, Barbara and Joanna Kak carried baskets of food to the woodland camp. A bottle of vodka and a shot glass came out of one of the baskets, and many toasts were drunk. ‘
Na zdrowie
!’ (Cheers!). Fire meant something to Dad far beyond the need to keep warm, and suddenly we knew why – it was the fire of comradeship, purpose and the company of people who know the value of life, and were the best companions a man could have in his lifetime.

Back at our hotel, we sat in the lobby in semi-darkness and talked, and talked. We had all experienced something quite profound, and were very affected by it. We now realised that Tom had been in the company of people who were fighting for their lives and the freedom of their children, yet were able to extend the hand of friendship and care to an outsider, who could offer them nothing, and whose very existence brought the prospect of death to them and their families. We had all experienced a complete reversal of our previous thoughts. He did not look back on this as a scene from a nightmare, but as a brief period in his life when his fate was in the hands of people who not only kept him safe, a complete stranger, but valued his attempt to bring them help when all around them was abandonment and betrayal. He offered to fight alongside them, and the offer was genuine because he felt as though he belonged and was part of the struggle himself. We felt quite stunned by this sudden realisation, which had not come from my detailed research, or even from first-hand crew accounts. It had come from our own communion with the families who, seventy years earlier, had offered a lifeline to Tom and his crew: Kida, Kak, Galdys, Smola, Wolcz, Sowa, and many more. It was these same families and the community of Tarnogora who were extending the hand of unreserved friendship down the generations to us, and we were humbled by it.

I have read many accounts of the hardship and privations endured by the airmen in the forest, and all of it is true. Tom came down on the outskirts of Tarnogora injured, in pain, and in shock. The trauma of that night lived with him in nightmares for many months once he reached the safety of home, but he had been in the care of good people who looked after him, helped his fellow crew members, and provided an escape route where none seemed possible. I now think that when he sought oblivion on that date, it was not to escape his time in the Polish forest, but to escape his life in the present – the vacuous life of a commercial traveller for a soft drinks company, followed by unemployment, and the loss of purpose, direction, and self-esteem. He was a clever, funny, lovely man who, at the age of 24 had experienced an extraordinary level of fear, self-doubt, loyalty, pride, and love, and it changed him. He could never settle back into the life that was pre-ordained for a working-class grammar-school boy. Oddly enough, that gives me peace of mind and a sense of closure, because I know that although he could have lived a longer life, he lived a very full and complete life. I am happy for him that he achieved so much.
Per Adua Ad Astra
– through the clouds to the stars – that is exactly what you did, Dad.x

¹
Missing Research and Enquiry Service.

²
Post war prefabricated house.

³
He was released after four years.

⁴
‘Wierchami Karpat’, which was published in 1964.

L
ooking back to my ‘Introduction’, written more than a year ago, I see that I wrote, with great naivety “I believe the truth is in the facts”, and I am embarrassed by those words with the benefit of hindsight. I will not rewrite them though, because this is a record of my own personal journey and I genuinely believed that statement when I committed it to paper. Of course I now realise that, unless I was a witness myself to the events I have described in this book, the facts are simply a framework on top of which I have built layer upon layer of interpretation – my own interpretation! I started out in the belief that the key to understanding my father lay somewhere within his two tours of duty with 148 Squadron, and his subsequent months spent with partisans, and I expected to find courage, heroism, and sacrifice. In the end, what I found was a quiet integrity. I have been reduced to tears by accounts of young men and women who were faced with the most unimaginable circumstances, and yet retained their humanity and dignity. And it crosses boundaries. The German officers who accompanied Eddie and Hap to Dulag Luft, protecting them from reprisals on the journey, and buying them a beer at some desolate railway station on the way. Stanislaw Belzynski, family man and academic, who committed himself to the resistance and was shot by Germans two weeks after escorting four British men to safety over the River San. Wing Commander James Blackburn, who led his men in the air by example, and then sat up until the early hours of the morning catching up on paperwork. Feliks and Catherine Sitarz, who provided food and human kindness to desperate people waiting to cross the River San. Mr and Mrs Dec, who became a mother and father to Walter Davis, risking the lives of their entire family in their determination to keep him safe. Vladimir Pavlov, pilot of a Soviet Dakota, admired and respected by all who knew him, and yet he regarded himself as no better than any other member of the crew. He risked everything to get his overladen aircraft off the ground rather than leave any of the injured or desperate passengers behind. And lastly, there was Nina, who began her partisan training at the age of eleven, and confidently guided grown men, soldiers, through treacherous terrain, and carried messages between Polish and Russian partisan units.