Colin Stokoe is the nephew of two 102 squadron members, Wilf Bell, a rear gunner who completed a tour with the New Zealand pilot Arthur Carey, and Arthur Brown a mechanic in one of the ground crews.
In 1993 Colin wrote a piece for the Pocklington Post all about this crash, and he has kindly given us permission to reprint it here, MANY thanks to you Colin.
Families of 102 Sqn aircrew killed in Britain had the choice of having the burial here or at their home town. Bill Comrie, Douglas Harper and Myles Squires are buried at Barmby Moor. The funerals of the other four took place in the week following March 29 1943 in their home areas — Birmingham, Brighton, London and Glasgow.
Members of other crews spent little time contemplating the fate of their
comrades who had — in the euphemism of the day — "bought it". with the task they had to face it was no good thinking of such risks.
Also they tended to
stick together as a crew and did not generally get to know members of other
crews very well. One exception to this was Flight Engineer of ‘G-Ge0rge*,
Jock McGrath. Tom Thackray who was serving with 10 Squadron remembers him.
“Jock McGrath was short in stature but full of fun and devilment as was his pal another Flight Engineer Geordie Kent, who was also short in stature and of the same type. ... I don't know which Squadron Geordie was flying with. However I met him in a canteen in York a couple of months after Jock was killed.
He was sitting all alone and looking very depressed and low spirited which was unusual for Geordie. Apparently Jock’s death had affected him greatly. `
Two of the crew were married. Freda, the wife of Bomb Aimer William Jenkins lived in Birmingham. The Pilot, Bill Comrie, had got married a few weeks before the crash. His navigator Douglas Harper had been his best man. He married an English girl, Grace Balshaw, who lived near West Kirby, Cheshire, where Bill had been based at a transit camp. Bill had told Grace that if anything happened to him she should go to his parents in the USA. This she did. She is described by her sister-in-law as a “brilliant girl“ and soon found work in the USA. She later remarried to become Mrs Frank Aston. She had two daughters and has returned on holiday to England two or three times. She is now believed to be living in the Seattle area.
Myles Squiers was engaged but did not get the chance of even a few snatched weeks of married happiness. Had he and his fiancee, Stella Thomas of Ulverston, survived the war they would have gone to South Africa together. Stella has remained single and lives with her sister Monica in Ulverston. John King the Mid Upper Gunner had four brothers, one of them only six years old at the time. Douglas Harper had a younger brother who received the news of his brother's death on the very day that he himself joined the RAF had joined the RAF. He was given a week’s compassionate leave. Frank Dorrington the Wireless Operator had only one sister.
As well as the tragedy of bereavements, the waste of human potential is
also evident in this story. Throughout the war selection tests for aircrew
were most stringent. Those who passed all the tests were an elite.
We have
already seen some of the achievements of Douglas Harper. Mrs Gwen Fairclough of Sheffield had known Douglas very well and kept in touch with his mother until 1950 when she married and moved away from Leicestershire. She received a last letter from him dated 25th March, only four days before the crash. She said "Although he was only 21 years old when he died he had achieved much and I am sure that he would have gone on to be a great leader". Another friend of the family, Philip Austin, had seen him before returning to Pocklington on his last leave a few days before the crash. He wrote "I must say that Douglas was a fine boy and a gentleman and cannot speak too highly of him". Douglas's younger brother Stephen became the Chief Foreign Correspondent of the 'Daily Express', a BBC broadcaster and author of several books. Even he says that he was always trying to match his older brother‘s achievements.
In March 1943 Europe from Norway down to Greece was in the grip of one of the most evil tyrannies the world has known. The loss of ‘G-George' was part of the dreadful price paid for the freedom and comparative peace which we have enjoyed in the 48 years since the end of the war.
102 Sqn lost 140 Halifax’s during the war, and before them 405 Sqn lost 26 Halifax’s and 20 Wellingtons. Hundreds, perhaps over 1000, brave young men went through the main gates of RAF Pocklington on the York Road never to return. We should remember them perhaps so that in the words of Bill Comrie's fellow countrymen Abraham Lincoln 80 years earlier "from these honoured dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion".
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