Frank Mattingley, Gunner, was killed on his first operation, over Duisburg, Germany. According to a report from the Missing, Research and Enquiry Unit forwarded to his mother on 30 July 1947, Frank’s aircraft crashed on 22 May 1944 in a field between Horst and Handerath, approximately 19 miles north of Aachen, Germany. His body and those of five of the crew were recovered from the wreckage by local residents and buried in a communal grave in the Handerath cemetery. The seventh crew members body was discovered a mile from the crash and buried in the village cemetery at Horst. The bodies were later exhumed, identified and re-interred in individual graves in the British Military Cemetery at Rheinberg, cared for by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.
Replying to David’s letter of condolence, Frank’s mother wrote on 12 June 1945, I have felt the blow more and more as the time has lingered on and I had not given up all hopes of him returning. Yes we do feel sad and lonely seeing other boys returning, then get a pang and think of our Frank’s fate.
We have recently made contact with Frank’s nephews.
When he came home, David went to Devonport to visit the parents of Peter Lord, also killed on his first op, and buried in Dusseldorf, Germany. A few months later David was a pall bearer at the funeral of Peter’s father. Recently, we have managed to make contact with Peter’s two married sisters.
David tried to keep in touch with all his crew at least once a year, at Christmas.
Cyril Bailey DFM, Flight Engineer, is now the only other surviving member. After the crew was disbanded, he married Dot before being sent to India with the RAF in 1945. On demobilisation he went back into engineering, finally becoming a senior quality assurance test engineer on Ministry of Defence missile fuse heads. Now retired, he and Dot live in a bungalow with a garden he enjoys tending, in the London suburb of Surbiton. They adopted two children and take great pleasure in their grandchildren. We lost touch after his parents’ death and were unable to trace them in the massive London telephone directories. Since being told of David’s letter in the Isle of Thanet Gazette seeking news of him, he has written a number of times, sent copies of old photos and documents, and dredged up memories to help answer my queries. He also shared the graphic detail that some of the pages in his flight notebook are still stuck together with David’s blood.
Drew Fisher, Bomb Aimer, went back to teaching and was principal in several country primary schools in Queensland. With his beautiful script and lively manner his classes were never dull. David visited him several times before he died in 1976, aged 63. His widow, Thel, is now in a nursing home. Drew’s logbook and the personal diary he had made at David’s suggestion contained accounts of all the operations they had flown together.
Reg Murr (Murga), Navigator, repatriated early in 1945 and discharged because of ill health, returned to his wife, Mary, and her family, the McGoldricks, who ran the Empire Hotel in Toowoomba, Queensland. He and Mary and their baby daughter Rosemary lived with his mother in his old family home, for which he made beautiful furniture. He went back to his job with the Toowoomba Railway Office, and also began studying to become a draftsman, hoping for a career in architecture. But he was hospitalised several times. Soon after the birth of a son, named David after his skipper, in August 1947, Reg was again in hospital when David went to see him. He died a month later, aged 37. David lost contact with his widow, and after many unsuccessful enquiries we have recently succeeded in re-establishing it. Mary, now 94, lives in Brisbane with her daughter Rosemary. David is a Senior Counsel in Sydney. As they did not know their father, Reg’s children have deeply appreciated learning something of him, seeing photos and letters he wrote to David. We learned from them that Reg’s father had emigrated from Germany to Australia in the early 1900s, from the Gemeinde Murr, a region close to Stuttgart. Reg never mentioned this and we wondered what his thoughts must have been while flying ops over Germany, especially to Stuttgart.
Reg Watson (Pop), Wireless Operator, went back to his position in a Sydney accountant’s office, and eventually set up his own business. He never married but was very fond of Mark Beresford’s children, and kept in close touch with Mark’s family. David went to see him in Sydney several times. He died in 1999.
Noel Ferguson (Boz), Mid Upper Gunner, had put his age up to marry Ann, who had seen a whole gun crew blown up on her nineteenth birthday. He returned to his job in spare parts for the automotive industry in Newcastle, NSW, where he and his English bride made their home. Later he set up a successful business of his own. They lost two of their six children as babies, but now have eleven grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren from their surviving four. Ann, who thought ‘the sun, moon and stars shone out of Noel,’ said, ‘Daddy was everything to the children.’ She always took them to see him in the Anzac Day march and never wore her own medals until after he died. When David’s crew was disbanded in December 1944 Noel had some bad experiences in the new one to which he was assigned. This resulted in bouts of depression which became more frequent and severe in later years. David made the trip to Newcastle to see him prior to his death in 2003.
Allan Avery DFM (Birdy), Rear Gunner, rejoined the RAAF as a permanent serving member and with his streak of daring, trained to become a fighter pilot, flying Meteors. In his last letter to David in May 1951 he was expecting to go to Korea. On service there he was mentioned in despatches (MiD) and was killed in a flying accident in a storm over the Sea of Japan on 1 September 1952, aged 27. He is buried on the island of Okinawa. One of his old school friends named his son Allan after him, and he is remembered with great affection by childhood playmates. He did not marry but loved his motorbike. When David visited Newcastle to see him, Allan took him for a burn, literally. There was no pillion, and seated on the luggage rack with his foot against the exhaust, David found the heel of his shoe had melted!
Jackson was not the real name of the Pilot Officer put into David’s care for one night at Kelstern. His fate is not known.
Charles Gardiner DFC, Navigator, who took Reg Murr’s place, was posted to another station soon after David was hospitalised. They lost touch and we have been unable to find any more details.
David has stayed in touch with his English pilot friends on 625 Squadron at Kelstern, Jack Ball, Clem Koder and Sandy Lane and caught up with them on our visits to England. Jack worked and travelled for Shell, and Clem worked for ICI. We stayed with Sandy and his wife Sybil in Wales and they stayed with us on a visit to Australia before Sandy’s death some years ago. Clem designed the Lancaster rose badge for the 625 Squadron Association, the memorial erected at Kelstern where a service is held each May. He died in 2006.
‘Ted’ Bear, Wireless Operator on 625 Squadron, injured in the same raid as David and in the same ward at Rauceby Hospital, returned to his farm in Western Australia. He came to meet us when our ship berthed in Fremantle on our way to the UK in 1954. He kept in touch until his death some years ago.
Des Hadden, Pilot, and David’s school friend, returned to university in Melbourne and later ran an electrical business. He and Sheila retired to Hobart, where we stayed with them several times. When he visited us after her death, we took him to Victor Harbor to see the mansion ‘Mount Breckan’, which was converted in wartime to an Initial Training School, where he did his training.
Ian Vickers was posted to an OTU in Palestine, then to an HCU in Egypt to fly Liberators. He joined 614 Pathfinder Squadron, flying on Biscuit Bomber trips supplying food to advanced ground forces in Northern Italy, and operations over Austria. He returned to Tasmania, studied engineering and rejoined the Hydro-Electric Commission. Serendipitously, his daughter Christine, who met me at a children’s literature conference in 1985, asked me to be her daughter Lyndal’s godmother. Only later did we discover the connection between her father and David.
Gordon Lawson, Pilot, who also trained in the Middle East, was posted to a different squadron and flew bomber operations from Italy. He returned to his prewar job with the ANZ Bank in Launceston and later joined the staff of the Apple and Pear Board. He married and his children live in Launceston. He sponsored his Flight Engineer as a migrant to Tasmania.
Alan Scott, Navigator, and his wife Chloe made us welcome when we first came to live in Adelaide in 1955, but we lost touch when they moved away. After discharge he qualified in mechanical engineering, and worked in many parts of South Australia and interstate, finally with Santos on the Moomba gas fields. We were glad to make contact again a few years ago after he returned to Adelaide, not long before he died in 1999.
Sam Salter, Peter Lord’s instructor, became an Anglican priest. He served as a chaplain at Cheltenham College, a part-time RAF chaplain and a parish priest in Sussex and Lincolnshire. He obtained some photos for David’s book on the Lincolnshire explorers Flinders and Bass. We have stayed with him and his wife Margaret in Chichester, Cheltenham and Grantham, and always looked forward each Christmas to his quirky letter, until his death in 2005.
Mark Beresford, Wireless Operator like his close friend Reg Watson, returned to his sheep and horses on his property in northern New South Wales, where he made David welcome. We later visited him and his wife Gwen, before they retired to Coonabarabran, and also stayed with one of his daughters in Armidale. We still keep in touch.
Phil O’Halloran, Pilot, David’s cousin, joined Qantas and later lATA. He died in 1996, aged 75. He married Shirley, a WRAN in WW2. She had been widowed at 18, three months after her marriage to Keith, aged 20, who was an RAAF Rear Gunner killed on operations.
Max Mattingley, Lieutenant, served in the Royal Australian Navy for four years before returning to teaching in Tasmania, Western Australia and Queensland. He joined the Brotherhood of St Barnabas, and as a Bush Brother was Headmaster of All Souls’ School, Charters Towers, Queensland, where he died at a chapel service, aged 58 in 1971.
Brian Mattingley DFC, Navigator, and David had their DFCs conferred in a unique private ceremony at Government House in Hobart in 1948. He returned to The Armidale School, NSW, where he was a housemaster, organist and at various times acting headmaster. He taught English, Classics and lifesaving and coached successful swimming and rifle teams until his retirement in 1979. He never married but devoted himself through Legacy to assisting war widows and their children. In 1980 he became a non-stipendiary Anglican priest in Tasmania, serving several country parishes. He died at the age of 90 in December 2004.
During David’s time with 625 Squadron he served under three Commanding Officers, all permanent RAF officers. The first was Wing Commander Douglas Haig, DSO, DFC and Bar, at Kelstern for six months. He had unusually rapid promotions at a very young age and was very popular. After the war he worked in Norway, and on returning to England became a guard on British Rail, to supplement his pension.
Wing Commander I. G. Mackay spent only six weeks on the Squadron. He was then promoted to Group Captain and posted elsewhere as Station Commander.
Wing Commander John L. Barker, who then took over, was very helpful to David. Barker eventually became an Air Vice Marshal and head of the Royal Ceylon Air Force.
The dark-haired Barbara married the British Army major with whom David had swapped uniforms at Harewood House.
World History
