Exercising Ghosts: John Pearson goes to Woodhall Spa.
Yes, exercising… The 15th to the 17th May of this year found me at Woodhall Spa, in Lincolnshire, to mark the 75th anniversary of the Dambusters’ first and most famous raid, against the dams in the Ruhr Valley in wartime Germany, in 1943. I was there principally to attend a brass band concert (a silver band actually) held in St. Peter’s Church in the 4000 person ‘village’ but also to visit the Mecca for admirers of the aircrew of 617 Squadron and their actions. This last is the Petwood Hotel, some-time wartime Officers’ Mess of the squadron. Petwood House, as it began life, was named after the owner’s favourite local piece of woodland (pet cat, pet dog, get it?).
I went there to breathe life into some of my heroes of the past 45 years and more; to look at pictures and memorabilia and to imagine myself in their presence. I stood again in the bar where they prepared for and later celebrated some of their greatest achievements … and where they must have met to commemorate the lives of lost comrades. The bars and lounges appear now much as they did in the war years and at one point during my visit I found myself standing on the same terrace where the legendary Wing Commander Guy Gibson V.C. was last photographed, just days before his own death on the night of 19th-20th September 1944.
En route, we stopped to look at the new National Memorial to Bomber Command, just outside Lincoln. Here, a steel spire-like monument stands, 100 feet high (the same as the wing span of a Lancaster bomber) on raised ground above the city. Around its base are a set of half-inch thick steel plates each about ten feet wide by six feet high, into which have been cut all the names of the 55,573 members of bomber command lost in WW2, over 40% of those who joined. The displays inside the museum are aimed, it seems, at those with little prior knowledge of the bomber campaigns in the war. Whilst ideal for visiting school parties, they might be disappointing to the more knowledgeable ‘enthusiast’.
Far better can be found at the museum established at the wartime airfield of East Kirby, which sports an actual Lancaster still capable of taxi runs, together with a host of relics of the days when this was an active Station. The overriding theme of the National Museum was reconciliation (all very PC). Pictures of shattered German cities abounded. However, far more disturbing to me was a panel near the exit dedicated to the latest weapon, Drones, capable of delivering targeted death and destruction at the touch of a button in the safety of a Portacabin on a peaceful airfield in the heart of England. Far more ‘sporting’ I feel, were the nightly expeditions of the men of bomber command who were at least risking death to deliver death. Far more call for heroism then than sitting in a Portacabin.
In the former Town Square in Woodhall Spa stands a memorial to all members of 617 Squadron killed in action in the war years, which proudly bears the names of Gibson, Young, Hopgood, Maudslay and Burpee (made famous by the raid) and other less well remembered members of the Squadron who lost their lives on that first mission or on subsequent ones. Relatives of some of the men had laid wreaths especially for this anniversary, and indeed a great niece of one made an appearance at the concert.
Here we were entertained to over two hours of music picked specially to represent the immediate pre-war years and the early 1940s. No such event could be complete of course without the playing of the ‘Dambusters’ March’ by Eric Coates. I noticed that its closing bars faded out, to applause, at exactly 9.39 p.m. or 21.39, the exact time that Guy Gibson is recorded as having taken off in his plane, AJ-G, to lead the raid. As I joined in the applause for him and all the boys who took part in that historic raid, for me at least the ghosts of all of them were very much in evidence amongst us in the hall.
John Pearson is Chair of SOF Trustees.