RIP

Albert Marshall
First World War cavalryman and last survivor of the Battle of the Somme
24 May 2005

Albert Marshall, groom and wartime soldier: born Elmstead Market, Essex 15 March 1897; married 1921 Florence Day (died 1984; one son, and two sons and two daughters deceased); died Ashtead, Surrey 16 May 2005.

Albert Marshall, who has died at the age of 108, was the last survivor of the Battle of the Somme. A dyed-in-the-wool countryman, he epitomised the Great War volunteer. A natural horseman, he was still riding in his early nineties.

Smiler, as he was affectionately known, was born in 1897 in a small village outside Colchester. When he was two his father put him on to a wooden cart drawn by a goat. He later put him on the goat's back - it bucked him off. His father put him back on facing the goat's tail and taught him how to hold on. From there he progressed to a pony and then to his great love, the horse. On Sundays his father would take him to the garrison town of Colchester to see the soldiers parade for church. He was excited by their red coats and that each regiment had their own march. He learned words of many of the marches and over a hundred years later in a robust voice would sing them and the songs he learned in the Great War.

When he was four his mother died. His brothers and sisters looked after him and pulled him to school on an orange box on wheels. He was happy at school and liked to recall that the teaching staff were a bit "fishy" - there was a Miss Herring and a Miss Salmon and the headmaster was Mr Whiting. After school he, along with other boys, would collect manure for the garden. The horse or pony was still the main form of transport - he did not see a motor car in the village until 1908.

A bit of a fighter at school, he recalled Mr Whiting asking him to give a good beating to a boy who was bullying the smaller ones. In those days the whole school took a day's holiday to lift potatoes or pick pears and the reward was sometimes a stick of liquorice, which cost a farthing. Every Boxing Day the villagers assembled with their pets for an unusual race - pigs, goats, ferrets, donkeys, cats, dogs, tame mice and even a cockerel - all wearing collars on a lead. The winning owner then had to climb a greasy pole to reach his prize, a dead duck.

On leaving school he became an apprentice carpenter in a shipyard for a wage of 2s 4d (12p). Trudging home one afternoon he was given a lift by the local milkman, who offered him a job. At the age of 14 he was delivering milk to the entire village.

His life changed when Lord Kitchener, accompanied by the world heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson, came to Colchester to recruit young men on the outbreak of the First World War. He volunteered for the Essex Yeomanry in Christmas week 1914. Asked his name and date of birth, he told the sergeant major he was born in 1897. He replied, "Too young. Go outside and think about it." He returned and when asked when he was born replied 1896. "That's perfect" came the reply. His military training began in the January snow of 1915. Doing physical jerks he bent down and made a quick snowball, which he threw at the man ahead of him. The drill sergeant spotted this and rebuked him, but Albert feigned innocence. "Yes, son, I'm talking to you, Smiler," roared the sergeant. From that moment on he was nicknamed Smiler.

He went to France in November 1915. He worked in a four-man section that would advance, then dig in to await the enemy, while one man looked after the horses. They would attempt to hold their position until the pioneers or engineers came to dig proper trenches. He experienced gas twice and recalled:

You couldn't stop crying - tears were running from my eyes. When we had the first lot, we had a piece of muslin, which we tied round the nose and mouth. But that gas is still with me today. My skin is all dry, it feels like a needle pricking you.

Marshall was to lose many friends during the war but it was the death of his best friend Lennie Passiful that deeply moved him. Passiful had his rifle through the smallest of holes aiming to kill a sniper when he was hit:

I saw him fall. I was in the trench close by him and put my arm out and caught him. His rifle stuck in the hole - but the sniper had got him, right through that tiny little hole. He later died of his wounds.

Marshall deeply resented that £1 was deducted from his final pay for the blanket in which Passiful was buried. Over 80 years later he was to return to France, where he laid a wreath on his grave. He was to recall, "I now know exactly where Lennie is. He was so very young."

On one occasion he witnessed a cavalry attack against a German patrol about 100 strong. They were surprised and quickly scattered but were cut down by sword. He also saw the Bengal Lancers charge:

They didn't hang about, they never bothered with saddles - they just jumped on and galloped off. It was the only time I saw a lance used. They were born horsemen - magnificent.

His worst experience was what he witnessed at the battle of the Somme at Mametz Wood, where the Essex Yeomanry had been held in the rear ready to exploit the advance of the infantry. After a two-day bombardment the Ox and Bucks Light Infantry fresh from England were ordered forward to capture the wood - few returned. That night Marshall and a burial party dug shallow graves into which they rolled the bodies and covered them with a little mud. They then had to walk back over the graves.

Marshall was wounded in the hand in this action and after his recovery the Army considered he would not be able to handle a horse, so he volunteered for the Machine Gun Corps and was posted to the Leicestershire Yeomanry. His 21st birthday was spent in a derelict farmhouse being shelled while his gun crew melted ice for tea. He was there on 21 March 1918 when the Germans launched their "Big Push":

Had that first day of their advance been a success, the war would have been over before - but it wasn't. We were up and down, along the side of the woods - in the woods, out of the woods - on the move all the time. Had a shell burst then you'd have been done for. The pieces that flew off were red-hot when they exploded and they cut your arm or your head off - take your face off, your nose or your ear - anything.

At one point a shell landed close to him and he found himself sinking in thick mud. He managed to attract a search party by singing "Nearer, My God, to Thee".

The night before the Armistice he was in a factory in Lille and recalled how those around him were angry as they felt they had the Germans on the run. However after the Armistice they moved off and had only gone a few hundred yards when the factory, which had been booby-trapped, blew up. As Marshall recalled with a wry grin, "That would have been bloody ironic being blown up on Armistice Day."

With the war over Marshall received £50 for signing on for one year in the army of occupation. But after eight months, because of the increasing trouble in Ireland, he was sent to Dublin.

On leaving the Army he married his sweetheart Florence and both worked together for the Essex and Suffolk Hunt at Great Bromley Hall. This was to be a full-time job either hunting or caring for the horses. In 1926 during the General Strike, as the local policeman had been sent to the North, he worked as a special constable for the village. On the death of his employer he joined the staff of a Captain Mumford and worked again with horses.

In 1939 while he was clipping a mare a hair pierced his eye, complications set in and his eye was removed. During the Second World War he was in the local Home Guard and in 1940 he went to work in Ashtead, Surrey, for the Maples family, who had lost two sons in the First World War. He moved into the cottage that was to be his for the remainder of his life. He worked as a general maintenance man and again with horses. A Victorian at heart, he described his occupation as "Private Servant".

All his life he was involved with horses. He seldom called a vet because he made all his own medicines. In his early life he rarely spoke of the war or of the impact it had upon him, but in his nineties he joined the World War One Veterans' Association and, with its chairman Dennis Goodwin and a party of 16 other veterans, returned to Passchendaele for the 80th anniversary of the battle. In the next year he was presented with the Légion d'honneur by the French government.

In fine voice, in 2000 he sang trench songs at a concert in Rochester Cathedral and received a three-minute standing ovation. A few months ago he appeared in the Channel 4 documentary Britain's Boy Soldiers and was delighted when it won an award for the best factual documentary of 2004.

Max Arthur

Alfred Finnigan
September 18, 1896 - May 11, 2005
First World War veteran who saw action with the field artillery in France and northern Italy



AT HIS death on May 11 at the age of 108, Alfred Benjamin Finnigan was one of only 14 known British survivors of the First World War.
Although he reached the age of 18 within six weeks of the outbreak of war on August 4, 1914, he encountered some difficulty in joining up. He was only 5ft 3in tall and had a slight weakness in one eye. Nevertheless, he persisted and was accepted as a trainee driver in a six-horse gun-towing team by 2nd Battery the 6th (London) Royal Field Artillery Brigade. This was fortunate, because he was already devoted to horses, having gained some experience of them after emigrating as a boy with his family to Australia.



Despite his lack of height, he was wellbuilt and responded readily to military training. By the time he joined the 5th Infantry Division in France in September 1916 he had become the lead driver of a team of six, or occasionally eight, horses pulling an 18-pounder gun and ammunition limber with A Battery, 15 Brigade Royal Field Artillery.

After experiencing the rigours of the Somme offensive of 1916, the 5th Division had by the time he joined it moved north to new positions near Béthune and the La Bassée Canal. Movement of the artillery was frequently made by night to avoid detection by enemy observation aircraft or balloons; on one such occasion only a sudden glint of light on the water prevented Finnigan from leading his gun team into the canal.

The winter of 1916-17 brought exceptionally cold weather, making the acquisition of a pair of Canadian knee-high leather boots the ambition of Finnigan and his fellow gunners. If they were two or three sizes too large for the wearer, straw could be stuffed into the soles below two pairs of army socks and wrapped round the calves to keep out the cold. Straw stowed in the recess of their steel helmets also helped to retain body heat.

German counter-battery measures had proved remarkably effective since the beginning of the war on the Western Front, and British field artillery units had to move from one gun position to another, shortly after firing, so as not to be subjected to an almost immediate retaliatory bombardment.

Finnigan’s battery was caught on a curve of the Arras-Lens road near Neuville-St Vast and suffered serious casualties. Dead and gravely injured men and horses lay in front and behind him, yet his own gun team escaped unscathed, apart from his being struck on the helmet by a clod of earth thrown up by an exploding shell.

Together with the whole of the 5th Division, Finnigan’s battery was withdrawn from the Western Front to go to the assistance of the Italians, who fought on the side of Britain and France in the First World War. The journey by train through southern France and into northern Italy was a delight after the horrors of the mud and blood of Picardy.

The 5th Division’s destination, as with other British and French divisions sent to strengthen the Italian front, was the line of the River Piave running into the Adriatic northeast of Venice. Six German and nine Austrian divisions under General Otto von Below had inflicted a reverse on the Italians at Caporetto, but the front stabilised after the arrival of reinforcements.

In the period of comparative quiet which followed, Finnigan’s battery was ordered from GHQ not to tether their horses near acacia trees, abundant in the region, in the belief that acacia leaves were poisonous to horses. In reminiscences which cover his period of service in France and Italy, Finnigan recalled — seemingly with amusement — a number of orders from higher headquarters in response to complaints from troops at the front. One warned against disappointment on opening tins marked “pork and beans� and finding no pork apparent, “as the pork had been absorbed into the beans�.

The principal enemy action on the Italian front during the 5th Division’s service was by aerial bombardment. Finnigan’s battery was subjected to this on several occasions, but he was unharmed. After a move to Padua in March 1918, news was received of the impending German “spring offensive� in France, which was unleashed on March 21. The 5th Division was sent back to the cold and rain of northern France to play its part in stemming the enemy tide. The British Expeditionary Force, by then comprising five armies, held, but only at the cost of much ground particularly in the 5th Army sector. Finnigan’s battery was hotly engaged in halting the German advance on Hazebrouck northwest of Béthune.

After demobilisation, Finnigan was unable to find civilian employment and decided to return to Australia, but found conditions little better there. After seven years in various forms of short-term employment, he signed on as a deck hand aboard a three-masted sailing ship to work his passage home. While crossing the South Pacific for the Panama Canal, he was swept off the deck during a typhoon but managed to scramble back again by catching one of the lines running the length of the ship. He docked at Ostend on November 27, 1927, having qualified for his seaman’s ticket.

Together with other surviving First World War veterans, he was awarded the French Légion d’Honneur in 1998 and, both before and since then, appeared in a number of local and national TV interviews about his wartime service.

He married after his return from Australia but decided against having any children, declaring: “I am not prepared to produce cannon fodder for the army or for industry.�

His wife, Mary, predeceased him at the age of 97. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...629211,00.html

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...627533,00.html

May 26, 2005

Squadron Leader James Wagland
November 4, 1913 - April 2, 2005
Navigator whose pinpoint accuracy was crucial to landing and retrieving secret agents in Nazi-occupied Europe



AS A navigator involved in the operations of the RAF’s special duties squadrons from November 1942 until the end of the Second World War, James Wagland both planned and took part in dropping agents and supplies to resistance movements in German-occupied Europe. He was also involved in retrieving Resistance fighters and Special Operations Executive officers who were to be brought back to England for training or debriefing.
This type of flying required pinpoint accuracy from the navigators involved. There could be no “near misses� of the type inevitable in bomber operations. For both drops and pick-ups the aircraft had to locate discreet torch signals flashed up from hastily prepared landing sites in fields, by agents or Resistance fighters who had been informed by coded signals from London of the estimated time of arrival.



But even if their aircraft took off on time there were innumerable obstacles which might frustrate the mission: bad weather; enemy fighters; flak; or the inability of enemy agents to shake loose a Gestapo tail and make the rendezvous. In any of these cases the mission would have to be re-planned and rescheduled for another night.

Nevertheless, for three years the assorted aircraft of two squadrons — Nos 138 and 161, based at Tempsford, Bedforshire — rendered invaluable service in supporting the French Maquis’ sabotage and harassment operations, continuing until well after D-Day as the battle for Normandy increased in intensity. Wagland, whose qualities as a navigator had been marked while he was serving on a regular bomber squadron, played a crucial role with 138 and 161 throughout this period. For his services he was awarded two DFCs.

James Leslie William Wagland was born in West Ham in 1913 and went to school in Essex. On leaving school he joined a bank, but in the summer of 1939 he volunteered for the RAF. He completed his navigation training by August 1940 and was posted to a squadron of twin-engined Whitleys, No 78.

Wagland was soon honing his night navigation skills in early raids on Berlin and on a heroic attempt against the Fiat works in Turin. He had been awarded the DFC at the end of his tour of ops with 78 Squadron.

His exceptional capabilities as a bomber navigator had been gratefully remarked by experienced pilots. When two “special duties� squadrons were established at Tempsford, with the aim of furthering Churchill’s injunction to the SOE to “set Europe ablaze�, he was a natural candidate for the planning and navigation staff, which he joined in 1942 after a spell at Bomber Command HQ, soon to become senior navigator.

The squadrons’ aircraft were a mixed bag: Whitleys originally carried out the drops — later to be replaced by the four-engined Halifax. For pickups the single-engined high-wing army co-operation Lysander — short of a role since the defeat of the BEF in France — really came into its own, with its remarkable short take-off and landing performance. (It was later joined by the Hudson.) Since the Lysander’s navigation was done by the pilot, Wagland put a lot of effort into planning the courses to be flown, making the map reading as simple as possible.

He also flew as specialist navigator on numerous sorties, ranging from drops in Halifaxes as far afield as Norway and Poland, to landings in occupied France in Hudsons. There were plenty of nailbiting close shaves, with the ever-present fear of the Hudsons being ambushed by Gestapo or SS, as it waited in a clearing with engines running for its Resistance contacts to make their appearance.

One one occasion Wagland and his pilot were able to retrieve a member of their own squadron who had been a guest of the Maquis for a month after his Lysander had become enmired on landing. Among distinguished Frenchmen whom he brought over to England were two future Presidents of France, Vincent Auriol and François Mitterrand. Wagland was awarded a Bar to his DFC in September 1943.

At the end of the war, by which time he had also been twice mentioned in dispatches, Wagland was awarded the Dutch Flying Cross by the Queen of the Netherlands. He also received the Polish War Cross.

After the war he resumed his career in banking, becoming an assistant manager of Martin’s Bank in London and, after its takeover by Barclays in 1969, a member of the management of the Manufacturers Hanover Bank. He retired in 1974.

His wife Molly, who he married as a WAAF at Tempsford, died in 1919. He is survived by a son and daughter.



Squadron Leader James Wagland, DFC and Bar, wartime special duties navigator, was born on November 4, 1913. He died on April 2, 2005, aged 91.

From the Daily Telegraph of 24th May.

Major Tommy Pitman

Major Tommy Pitman, who has died aged 90, won an MC in Palestine in 1936 while serving with the 11th Hussars.

In September that year, the 11th Hussars were rushed to Palestine to help suppress the First Arab Revolt, and C Squadron was deployed in the northern area along the border with Lebanon. One afternoon, Pitman's troop was called out to support a platoon of the York and Lancashire Regiment that had been ambushed on the Acre-Safad road by an Arab force many times their number.

On arriving at the scene, Pitman found that three members of the platoon were dead, four were wounded and there was a man lying out in the open whom no one had been able to reach because of the intense Arab fire. Pitman ordered his armoured cars to give him maximum covering fire while he and a comrade tried to rescue the man.

The pair ran forward while bullets hummed around them like angry wasps and ricocheted off the boulders. They found the casualty, dressed his wounds and carried him back to safety. Pitman was awarded the MC and received the decoration from King George VI, who was Colonel-in-Chief of his regiment.

Thomas Islay Pitman was born on February 11 1915 in Edinburgh and educated at Eton before joining the 11th Hussars as a supplementary reserve officer. An excellent golfer, in 1934 he won the Southern Command and Army Championships.

After passing out of Sandhurst, Pitman was commissioned into the 11th Hussars and joined his regiment in Egypt. In July 1940, soon after the start of the Desert campaign, he was dropped behind the Italian lines to carry out a hazardous reconnaissance of the Tobruk-Bardia road.

His troop hid up during the day, but they were observed by Italian fighter-bombers and knocked out. Another troop was sent to look for him, but without success, and he was captured by the Italians while trying to walk back to the British lines. Pitman was incarcerated in a succession of PoW camps, the last of which was Fontanellato, near Parma.

In September 1943, after the Italians declared an Armistice, the prisoners were allowed to escape and scattered into the mountains. Pitman hid in a charcoal-burner's hut until the snow melted, but he was then recaptured by the Italian fascists and imprisoned at Perugia. He was in civilian clothes and had no identification. Many of his fellow prisoners were under sentence of death, and the fact that a few were taken out each day and never reappeared was a source of no little anxiety.

In May 1944, Pitman was moved to Camp VIB at Warburg, near Kassel. Despite ill treatment and spells in solitary confinement, he never missed an opportunity to remind his captors that they were losing the war. A fellow prisoner said afterwards that, but for Pitman's humour and fortitude, many of them would have perished in the bitterly cold winter.
Pitman was liberated by the Americans in April the following year and rejoined his regiment in Berlin to take command of C Squadron.

In April 1948 a Russian MiG fighter shot down a BEA plane bringing service families from London. The aircraft fell in the Russian Zone, and there were no survivors. C Squadron was ordered to surround the plane and deny the Russian forces access to it. After a stand-off lasting two days, the Russians retired.

Pitman was posted to RMA Sandhurst as an instructor. He subsequently took over Blenheim Company, which became Sovereign's Company, before he left in 1953 to return to his regiment. He commanded C Squadron in Malaya for a year. The Governor, Sir Henry Gurney, had recently been assassinated, and Pitman had the task of protecting visiting VIPs.

After a spell in Seremban as second-in-command, in 1958 Pitman retired from the Army and set up a malting business in North Yorkshire. He bred cattle and sheep and for many years enjoyed golf and shooting. For 10 years, he was chairman of the Northern Horse Show and raised substantial sums for paraplegic charities and for Stoke Mandeville Hospital.

Tommy Pitman died on March 26. He married, in 1948, Sheilah Westropp, the daughter of Major-General Victor Westropp; she survives him with their four daughters.

http://www.news.mod.uk

Great Boss, brilliant Officer and a pleasure to work for.

RIP Dave.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...644558,00.html

Sydney Hudson
August 1, 1910 - April 7, 2005
Special Operations Executive Agent who worked with the French Resistance and later established de-Nazification programmes



SYDNEY HUDSON’s first mission into wartime France for the Special Operations Executive (SOE) might have been his last, for he was betrayed and then arrested by the Vichy police — the despised Milice — and imprisoned. He escaped and later returned by parachute to France. As the war in Europe was drawing to a close he volunteered for operations of uncertain outcome in Japanese-held Thailand. A man of laconic humour, insatiable curiosity and intense interest in human relations, he turned his talents after the war to business and to politics, becoming involved in establishing the Social Democratic Party in Scotland.
Charles Sydney Hudson was the son of Theodore and Ella Hudson. Brought up near Montreux, Switzerland, where his father was a businessman, Hudson was a member of the British ski team at the 1936 Winter Olympics and took first place at the Swiss Amateur Open Golf Championships in 1939. At the outbreak of war, he came to England to enlist and was commissioned into the Royal Fusiliers.



By then France had fallen and when he found military life more regimental than he had expected in wartime, he answered a discreet invitation to fluent French speakers to undergo training for operations of a hazardous nature. He was parachuted into the Puy-de-Dôme, west of ClermontFerrand, in charge of a three-man team of agents code-named “Headmaster�. His task was to make contact with the local Resistance movement and guide its sabotage work, but he was arrested by the French police only two weeks after arrival.

Counting himself fortunate not to be handed over to the Gestapo, he was sent to a prison camp at Essye, near Toulouse, for dissidents actively opposed to the Vichy regime, where he remained until he and Baron Jean de Vomécourt — of the Resistance — organised a mass escape on January 3, 1944. Largely through the co-operation of one of the warders whom de Vomécourt had been able to compromise, about 50 prisoners got out. After making contact with the SOE circuit operating northeast of the Pyrenees, the party was led, in atrocious weather, into Spain. Once there it was relatively easy to go on to Gibraltar and England.

Hudson returned to France in May 1944 with a mission to re-establish the “Headmaster� circuit around Le Mans. Given the day-to-day expectation of the Allied landings in northern France, he and his 20-year-old colleague Sonya d’Artois were welcomed by the local Resistance and blew up the Le Mans telephone exchange, forcing the German Army to transmit by radio with its inevitable security risks. When the American 3rd Army under General George Patton reached Le Mans in August, the “Headmaster� circuit was on hand with local intelligence.

Recalled to England, Hudson volunteered for service with Force 136, the SOE arm in South-East Asia. In May 1945 he made his third parachute drop into enemy-held territory, this time into northern Thailand.

By then a lieutenant-colonel, he was in charge of a group — including Thais — with instructions to arm and train resistance fighters for operations against the Japanese but hold them in check until the time was right. His team trained selected local volunteers and, with the aid of 1,400 villagers, built a runway to receive Allied troops. But Japan’s surrender after the atom bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki rendered this unnecessary.

He was later involved in a second operation with Force 136 concerned with repatriation of Allied PoWs from Thailand. He thought that South-East Asia Command had been too hesitant about using Thai irregulars against the Japanese. A Foreign Office perception that the Siamese must work their passage — having been forced by the Japanese to side with them, at least ostensibly — was cited by Hudson as inhibiting Force 136 activity in Thailand.

He received the Croix de Guerre for his work in France and was awarded the DSO in 1945. He stayed on in South-East Asia, practically governing a province of Laos, until he was offered a post with the Allied Control Commission in Germany in 1947, where he helped to establish de-Nazification programmes in the mining areas of the Ruhr. This developed his fascination with industrial relations and in 1953 he joined the human resources division of Shell International, subsequently working in Israel, Gabon, Trinidad and the United States.

When faced with a Shell appointment to Vietnam in 1969, he opted instead for a post with the Bank of Scotland’s training and development department. This provided him with all the stimulus he needed up to retirement in 1980 in the East Lothian town of North Berwick. That is until the formation of the Social Democratic Party by the “Gang of Four� the following spring. He immediately threw himself into establishing the SDP in Scotland. As a former representative on the Scottish Council of the CBI and later chairman of CBI Scotland, his clout was considerable.

He was twice married and is survived by his German-born second wife, Ruth, and by a daughter of his first marriage.




Sydney Hudson, DSO, member of the wartime Special Operations Executive and businessman, was born on August 1, 1910. He died on April 7, 2005, aged 94.

Interesting jusposition in today's obi's. The first, an air hero of some renown and the second, an old lady who is a traitor of the highest order. The one who will be morned the most and sorely missed is below:

Flight Lieutenant Ray Holmes
(Filed: 29/06/2005)

Flight Lieutenant Ray Holmes, who died on Monday aged 90, delivered the coup de grace to a German Dornier 17 bomber near Buckingham Palace in one of the most celebrated episodes during the Battle of Britain.
The German bomber had taken off from France at 10am on Sunday September 15 1940, which is now regarded as the climax of the battle. After joining up with a formation at 15,000 ft it headed for central London, its crew avoiding RAF fighters when crossing the coastline near Dungeness; then an engine started to malfunction, and the bomber dropped behind the main force. As it neared its target it came under concentrated attack from fighters near Battersea. It was set on fire by Hurricanes of 310 (Czech) Squadron; and two of the crew baled out.
Holmes, a sergeant at the time, then appeared on the scene to deliver a further attack, causing the Dornier to break up, and forcing the German pilot to bale out. A large piece of the bomber fell in the forecourt of Victoria Station, a scene depicted - with considerable artistic licence - in the film Battle of Britain. The stone façade of the station bore the scars for more than 40 years.
Afterwards, Holmes stated that his aircraft had hit something during the attack, and he was forced to bale out over Chelsea. On landing in Hugh Street, he was told by onlookers that his enemy had crashed at Victoria. He was led to the Orange Brewery 100 yards down Pimlico Road for a swift brandy before being dispatched to Chelsea Barracks. Following a visit to an Army doctor and then the mess for a few more drinks and a bit of warranted line-shooting, a taxi took him back No 504 Squadron at RAF Hendon.
The attack, during which Buckingham Palace was bombed, captured the imagination of the public and subsequent historians.
Last year archaeologists unearthed parts of Holmes's Hurricane for a Channel 5 television documentary, in which Holmes visited the site near Buckingham Palace Road and was shown the fighter's control column or "joy-stick" which he had last held 64 years earlier.
Appropriately, the firing button was still set to "FIRE". The aircraft's engine was recovered, and it is now displayed at the Imperial War Museum.
The son of a journalist, Raymond Towers Holmes was born on August 20 1914 at Wallasey, Cheshire. He attended Calday Grange Grammar School, West Kirby, where he excelled at cricket and rugby, then became a crime reporter. He joined the RAFVR as an airman pilot in 1937 and trained at Prestwick and Barton in Lancashire.
Holmes went to No 504 Squadron at Wick in June 1940. The squadron flew south to Hendon in early September, and it was soon involved in some of the heaviest fighting of the Battle of Britain.
After he was commissioned in June 1941, 'A' Flight of No 504 became No 81 Squadron at Leconfield, East Riding, and the pilots were kitted out for an unknown destination. They flew to Glasgow, and embarked in the aircraft carrier Argus, which carried crated Hurricanes. On September 1, the squadron flew off in groups and landed at Vaenga airfield near Murmansk, northern Russia. Operations were flown until November, when Holmes and his fellow pilots taught Russians to fly the fighters. In December the RAF contingent sailed for England, leaving the Hurricanes and their equipment for the Russian Air Force.
After returning home, Holmes spent the next two years training student pilots before he went back to operations, flying high-altitude Spitfires with No 541 photographic reconnaissance squadron at Benson. During this period he acted as a courier, carrying papers for Winston Churchill when he was preparing for the Potsdam Conference.
Holmes left the RAF in November 1945, having been mentioned in dispatches and given the Air Efficiency Award.
After the war Holmes turned down a suggestion that he become an airline pilot, and returned to journalism in Liverpool, where he established his own agency which specialised in court reporting.
He also took agricultural photographs in colour when the technology was in its infancy, retaining his own laboratories for processing and working closely with Kodak, which was impressed with his innovative ideas. But eventually he could not keep up both journalism and photography, and opted for the former.
Taking notes with a fountain pen in perfect shorthand, Holmes became a father figure at Liverpool crown court, teaching young reporters the proper way to bow before a judge. After retiring at 80, he maintained a keen interest in journalism while devoting time to golf, woodwork and gardening. He wrote an autobiography, Sky Spy (1989).
In 2004 the Wirral Borough Council bestowed the Freedom of the Borough on Holmes, the chief executive stating that he could "think of no one upon whom this honour could have been more fittingly bestowed".
On the day Holmes died, flags flew at half-mast in his honour in the Wirral, and his widow received a message from Buckingham Palace expressing the Queen's sadness on hearing of his death.
Raymond Holmes married Elizabeth Killip in April 1941. After her death he married, in 1966, Anne Holmes, who survives him with two daughters from his first marriage, and a son and daughter from his second.

What a lad!

What a damn shame. There will be a dig on the Aircraft Ray shot down next month , as a follow up to his Hurricane recovery , paid for by Channel 5 again. A pity he won't see it.

RIP Sergeant Holmes.

Ray Holmes
August 20, 1914 - June 27, 2005
Intrepid airman who rammed a German bomber over London to ensure it did not attack Buckingham Palace

IN ONE of the celebrated episodes of the Battle of Britain, sergeant pilot Ray Holmes became something of an overnight hero when he rammed a Dornier bomber over London to prevent it, as he had reason to believe, from dropping its bombs on Buckingham Palace. On the morning of September 15, 1940, Holmes had taken off from Hendon with other Hurricane pilots of 504 Squadron, to intercept a formation of 36 Dornier Do17s which had been reported to be closing in on Central London.

Acting as tail-end Charlie for his squadron, Holmes was keeping a weather eye open for German fighters as the aircraft approached the German bombers. He attacked two Dorniers, seriously damaging the first and causing its crew to bale out. The second sheered off as he fired at it. A third Dornier appeared to Holmes to be making directly for Buckingham Palace, but as he lined up on it — aiming to shoot through its cockpit window in a head-on attack — and pressed his gun button, the hiss from his breechblocks told him that he had run out of ammunition.

Holmes made the split second decision to prevent the enemy reaching its objective by ramming the Dornier, aiming to clip the left hand edge of its twin-rudder tailplane with his left wing. In fact he sliced the whole tailplane off and the Dornier, with its outer wings also ripped off by the violence of the impact, plunged to earth in the forecourt of Victoria station. As Holmes later recalled of the impact: “There was a bit of a bump but nothing much. I thought I had got away with it. But immediately the plane went into a spiral dive and I couldn’t pull out of it.�

Holmes took to his parachute at a desperately low 350ft and came down by the side of a house on Ebury Bridge Road, ending up with his parachute lines snagged on a drainpipe, suspended comically over a dustbin in the back garden. “I undid the parachute and stepped out. There were two girls in the next garden, so I vaulted over the fence and kissed them both,� he recalled.

Meanwhile, his Hurricane had crashed in Buckingham Palace Road at 400mph, burying itself many feet below the surface. The Dornier pilot had managed to bale out but subsequently died in hospital from his injuries. Mercifully, there were no casualties on the ground from either the Dornier or the Hurricane crash.

Holmes was taken by rescuers to the Orange Brewery in Pimlico Road, where he was steadied with a fortifying brandy before being taken to Chelsea Barracks, where he was checked over by an army medical officer. Thereafter, he was returned by taxi to RAF Hendon, where it was “business as usual� .

Raymond T. Holmes (always known as “Arty� because of his initials), was born and raised on the Wirral, where he was educated at Wallasey and Calday Grange grammar schools.

After leaving school he went into journalism, beginning work as a reporter on the Birkenhead Advertiser. He was also one of the early recruits to the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve, joining it in 1936 as its 55th volunteer and completing his aircrew training. By the time the Second World War broke out he was already an experienced pilot, and he joined 504 (City of Nottingham) Squadron, flying Hurricanes.

As it happened, the intense airfighting over London on September 15, 1940, marked the virtual culmination of the Battle of Britain. Thereafter the German bomber offensive continued at night.

When Fighter Command went on to the offensive in the spring of 1941, Holmes flew fighter sweeps over occupied France. Subsequently he was sent to Murmansk to instruct Soviet airmen in the Hurricanes that were being delivered to them via the Arctic convoys, also escorting Soviet bombers on air raids over German occupied territory. On his return from Russia, he qualified as an instructor and spent two years at the Central Flying School.

Later in the war he specialised in photographic reconnaissance, joining 541 Squadron and flying high-altitude Spitfires over Germany to get high resolution pictures of targets. Such missions took him to the Ruhr, Berlin and Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest at Berchtesgaden. Towards the end of the war he was flying dispatches for Winston Churchill as King’s Messenger. He had in the meantime been commissioned, and he ended the war with the rank of flight lieutenant.

Demobilised in October 1945, he resumed his prewar career in journalism, specialising in agricultural photography and developing colour photographs in his own lab. He also had his own news agency which concentrated on covering Liverpool law courts for local and national newspapers.

As it happened, Holmes had not seen the last of his trusty Hurricane. After many years of research to pinpoint the remains of the aircraft, an excavation was carried out in Buckingham Palace Road in May last year, and parts of the Hurricane were recovered, the latter part of the operation being shown live on television. The remnants were given on loan to the Imperial War Museum, but parts of the engine casing that had been shattered beyond effective restoration were used to cast some miniature Hurricane sculptures, one of which was presented to its pilot.

A supremely modest man, Holmes lived life to the full, and was playing tennis well into his eighties. He was granted the freedom of the Wirral last year.

Holmes is survived by his wife, Anne, by their son and daughter, and by two daughters of his first marriage to Elizabeth, who died in 1964.

Ray Holmes, Battle of Britain fighter pilot, was born on August 20, 1914. He died on June 27, 2005, aged 90.

particularly liked the part where he vaulted the garden fence to kiss the girls an old school hero