Her father had also experienced terrifying flashbacks when he was involved in a car crash. The daughter of one of the crew told me of the guilt her father felt late in life, haunted by thoughts of what their bombs had done to women and children on the ground, a feeling I know my dad shared. As a child, I stood beside my mother and nanna at the dawn parade and wondered why they cried so hard.” Describing her memories of attending memorial services as a little girl, after her mum had lost two brothers, she wrote: “ Anzac Day here was always a very emotional time. One of them described the damaging experience of being evacuated in 1939, while the daughter of Mallon’s twin sister recently moved me to tears. I also discovered how he had dealt with the loss of an engine when their aircraft was struck by flak.Īs well as artefacts, the families provided moving testimonies. In it, he describes my dad’s nausea during a “corkscrew” exercise to simulate manoeuvres that would be used to evade an attack by a German fighter. My own motion sickness made sense, too, after reading one of the navigator’s many letters. I learned that my dad had invited the crew to his home in Lincolnshire, ostensibly to celebrate his first wedding anniversary, but also to commiserate with Mallon after the heartbreaking news that he had lost a second brother. All of these sad stories helped me to paint a picture of the devastating impact of the war on a small group of survivors and their families. The pilot my dad flew with before joining Mallon’s crew was killed in a flying accident two weeks before the end of the war. Two of the crew lost parents at a very young age, one as a result of them being gassed during the first world war. I met a woman who was born two days after her father left for the war and never returned. A replacement crew member, another New Zealander, discovered his wife had died a few weeks after he sailed from home for training in Canada it would be three years before he was able to return home to grieve. Mallon lost both his brothers in the war, while the bomb aimer’s younger brother was killed. I was beginning to understand why, in common with thousands of others, my dad had been reluctant to talk about anything more than technicalities and amusing anecdotes. However, the elation I felt was tempered by profound feelings of sadness, as more and more devastating stories emerged. I discovered a photograph of the crew’s aircraft during its final operation, with my dad’s head just visible in the cockpit. I was beginning to piece together the story, not only of my dad, but of the whole Mallon crew.īob Jay on Cleethorpes promenade in 1939.Įach new discovery brought me closer to my dad. I even located the transcript of an interview given by the pilot, Bill Mallon, in 2004. They helped me compile an amazing collection of poems, drawings, letters and photographs. More significantly, and infinitely more rewardingly, I was able to make contact with all of the families of his crew. I also learned the names of the rest of his crew – four of them from New Zealand – and the names of characters they encountered during their brief spell together. Gradually, I was able to discover incredible details of Dad’s training, his postings and the operations in which he took part. My dad had talked me through the takeoff routine 60 years earlier – it all came back to meĪll these years later, and I am still putting in place the final pieces of a huge and tragic jigsaw. I started to record my findings in a blog, Bob Jay’s War, but when I realised his crew had been operational for only the last two months of the war, I thought my research would be completed within weeks. That experience marked the beginning of a remarkable five‑year journey. It is difficult to describe my feelings as that impressive aircraft slowly rolled across what is left of the airfield, but I couldn’t help but think of my dad, doing exactly the same thing all those years ago. On a rainy day in April 2012, I experienced the thrill of a taxi run in Lancaster NX611 at East Kirkby, a former RAF base in my home county of Lincolnshire. It was 38 years later that I realised a long-held dream and boarded a Lancaster bomber. In September 1974, he died from advanced stomach cancer. We never returned to the subject of the war, probably because there were other wars to worry about, as well as the constant threat of nuclear war. The shifts he worked so he could afford to keep three children in further education took its toll when I was in my 20s, his health started to deteriorate. My interest waned as I grew older and I spent less and less time talking to my dad.
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