Description
Object description
Photostat copy of his memoir 'The Long Journey Home' (76pp ts) recording his Second World War service as a Flight Sergeant (Wireless Operator) in Stirling bombers with 90 Squadron, Bomber Command, based at RAF Tuddenham near Newmarket, Suffolk, being forced to bail out over rural northern France (location unspecified) during a Resistance supply drop in March 1944 and attempting to evade capture with the help of locals and a series of 'safehouses', at one of which he was reunited with other members of his squadron together with other downed airmen, being taken under the wing of a local 'maquis' group before he was made a prisoner of war in June 1944 during a German raid on the location where the POW / maquis group was staying, initial interrogation by the German Field Police at Romorantin (Loir-et-Cher) with further interrogations at other locations in the region, brief but unpleasant stay in 'Frontstalag 133' at Chartres before being transported to Stalag Luft 7 at Bankau (Breslau district), the memoir continuing as a transcription of his journal notes on his POW experiences at Bankau until January 1945 and on the evacuation march / rail journey westwards in severe winter conditions to Stalag IIIA (Luckenwalde) in that month, remaining there until the arrival of Soviet troops in April 1945 and his eventual repatriation via Hildesheim in the following month, concluding with the story of his reunions with surviving former RAF crew members and French evasion helpers after the war [Sound Archive recorded interview with DAF at ref 32394].
Content description
Photostat copy of his memoir 'The Long Journey Home' (76pp ts) recording his Second World War service as a Flight Sergeant (Wireless Operator) in Stirling bombers with 90 Squadron, Bomber Command, based at RAF Tuddenham near Newmarket, Suffolk, being forced to bail out over rural northern France (location unspecified) during a Resistance supply drop in March 1944 and attempting to evade capture with the help of locals and a series of 'safehouses', at one of which he was reunited with other members of his squadron together with other downed airmen, being taken under the wing of a local 'maquis' group before he was made a prisoner of war in June 1944 during a German raid on the location where the POW / maquis group was staying, initial interrogation by the German Field Police at Romorantin (Loir-et-Cher) with further interrogations at other locations in the region, brief but unpleasant stay in 'Frontstalag 133' at Chartres before being transported to Stalag Luft 7 at Bankau (Breslau district), the memoir continuing as a transcription of his journal notes on his POW experiences at Bankau until January 1945 and on the evacuation march / rail journey westwards in severe winter conditions to Stalag IIIA (Luckenwalde) in that month, remaining there until the arrival of Soviet troops in April 1945 and his eventual repatriation via Hildesheim in the following month, concluding with the story of his reunions with surviving former RAF crew members and French evasion helpers after the war [Sound Archive recorded interview with DAF at ref 32394].
History note
Cataloguer SWW