John North: Another fine mess...

MORE from the war correspondent: last week's column told the story of the heroic Cyril Barton VC, remembered again yesterday at a ceremony in Ryhope, Sunderland.

We have since heard from the officers' mess steward at the base from which he flew his final mission. "I had his breakfast ready for him," recalls former RAF Corporal Wyvell Dunn. "Sadly he never came back for it."

Still in apple pie order, Mr Dunn, now 88, lives in Helmington Row, near Crook, his front room hung with air force memorabilia, his scrap books overflowing the cupboards.

Also framed on the wall is his mention in despatches. "Not for bravery, understand, just for doing my job," he insists. It was a fine mess, nonetheless...

Born and raised in Nevilles Cross, Durham, he began work as a page boy at the once-grand Zetland Hotel in Saltburn - "very quiet, mind, except in the summer" - before becoming dining car attendant number 368 on the London and North Eastern Railway.

"Sometimes we got to work the Silver Link, a wonderful train. I got to drive the engine once - unofficially, of course."

He'd joined the RAF in June 1940 - "I wanted to be on the Sunderland flying boats, they said I couldn't pick and choose" - transferred to mess duties in Nottinghamshire and was so swiftly respected that the officers collected £13 ("half a year's wages") for his wedding present.

In 1943 he moved to RAF Burn, near Selby, at first just three or four officers ("the mess was a right shambles") but by March 30, 1944, the night that Cyril Barton and his crew took off for Nuremberg, around 140.

They used chitties in the bar, settling the bill at the end of the month. "Unfortunately we started to lose so many that it was decided they had to pay cash. They weren't there at the end of the month to settle their dues."

There was little time for regrets, he fears, or for the young fliers to be spoiled by the mess staff. "Many of the pilots didn't even know one another. I reckon they were lucky to get four trips in.

"They were allocated rooms in Nissen huts, very poorly furnished. As soon as one went down we had to put clean sheets on the beds, ready for the next one.

"It was a bit like Billy Butlin's, I suppose, one lot out in the morning, the next lot in in the afternoon. It was just a matter of course."

It was against that necessarily down-to-earth background that Cyril Barton and his seven man crew took off 60 years ago this week, Cpl Dunn up early as usual to cook breakfast and to open the welcome home bar.

"I'd started doing that. They were just coming back, having breakfast and going to bed. With the bar open they could have a bit chinwag, unwind a little."

On the morning of March 31, returning without navigator or navigation, the crippled Halifax crashed into the colliery yard at Ryhope, killing the pilot and a miner on his way to work. Wyvell Dunn was among those again on parade yesterday, eleventh hour, to remember them.

"Quiet chap, just got on with it. I remember being certain that he'd got back that morning. I still wish I'd been right."

Stopping the souvenir crew

LAST week's column not only recalled the bombing and strafing of RAF Skipton-on-Swale, near Thirsk, but added that even the parish pump was chained down to stop Canadian air crew taking it home as a souvenir.

Ethel Myers, then a 14-year-old working at a nearby farm, offers corroboration to both accounts.

"I had a new bike in those days, and even if I went to the village shop I had to lock it up. They were lovely people but it would be gone in a moment to get one of the airmen back to camp."

Now in Brompton, Northallerton, she also remembers the German planes - "just over our chimney pots" - the free admission to the camp cinema and to the NAAFI dances, the day that Glenn Miller played at nearby Catton cricket ground and even the camp dog, improbably called Wimpey. "I think it was because Wimpey built the runways," says Ethel, who lost a stepbrother in the dam busters raids.

On another occasion in 1944, a five-year-old boy playing in a village garden was killed when a wounded Halifax bomber crashed just short of the airfield.

"All the village was turned out to see him trying to get home. We thought he was going to land but then a red flare went up. He turned around, tried again and hit a clump of horse chestnuts. The tail ended up in Crooky Smith's bed."

Crooky Smith, happily, was elsewhere at the time.

A memorial service at Skipton-on-Swale last Sunday marked the 60th anniversary of the raid on Nuremberg, The country's sole surviving Spitfire flew overhead. Much more of that in the At Your Service column on Saturday.

The hut where mortal enemies made friends

STILL flying a wartime kite - the kite in question a Blackburn Skua dive bomber - former Fleet Air Arm officer Andrew Linsley has been in touch with yet another remarkable tale from those dark days.

Actions speaking as they do, Andrew, 67, has also gone to amazing lengths to ensure that his story will never be forgotten.

Remember Christmas Day in the trenches when Great Britain played Germany at football? The story of the hut in the Norwegian wood, April 1940, is from the same indelible volume.

Taking off from the aircraft carrier Ark Royal, 140 miles off the Norwegian coast, the Skua intercepted an enemy Heinkel 60 miles south of the Arctic circle but then, 3,000 feet above sea level, had to force land on a frozen lake because of engine trouble.

The two man crew set the plane alight, battled through the blizzard until they found a lonely hut with primus stove and oatmeal, melted snow, made porridge - all good babes in the wood stuff - and were thus somewhat surprised to hear a whistle outside.

It was the three man crew of the plane they'd just shot down, one bleeding profusely from an arm injury. Ever hospitable, the English invited them in.

Having made their guests comfortable, Royal Marine pilot Richard "Birdy" Partridge and his observer found an abandoned hotel nearby, spent the night in the best room - "good Royal Navy tradition," says Andrew - and returned with biscuits and cigarettes for the late arrivals.

That the Germans had revolvers and our lads nothing more than a penknife - sidearms forgetfully having been left on the Ark Royal - may also have been relevant. "They had to be a little bit careful," says Andrew.

An Englishman and a German then set out together, escaped strafing by another Heinkel but the German was shot by a Norwegian ski patrol, the Englishman able to prove his nationality by the King George VI florin in his trouser pocket.

Andrew Linsley, a diver, led in 1974 a six week operation to salvage the Skua from the lake where it rested. It now stands - "a time capsule" - at the Fleet Air Arm museum in Yeovilton, Somerset.

The salvage crew even discovered that the tyre pressure of one of the inner tubes was exactly as it had been 34 years earlier. "We tried to interest Dunlop, they said it was just a typical Dunlop product," says Andrew.

Realising that he only had one half of the story, however, he also located Horst Schopis, the German pilot. "I was brought up in an era when the only good German was a dead 'un but I'd make a huge exception for this bloke," he says.

Schopis had been a Prussian cavalry officer until the Wehrmacht took away his horse, became a pilot, but at 91 still rides out every morning in the English Garden in Munich.

In August this year, he and Andrew Linsley will again renew friendships in Norway to mark the 30th anniversary of the salvage operation.

Andrew lives in Staithes, near Whitby. His family ran the Eaton's furniture stores in Middlesbrough ("half a crown down and sixpence a week") between the wars.

Proud naval flier, he also has the silver cigarette case given to Bruce McEwan, the pilot who on September 23, 1939, shot down the first enemy aircraft, a Dornier flying boat, of the war.

"The RAF was nowhere near," he insists. "If anyone says it's just the Royal Navy trying to get one over on the RAF, I have the proof."

He's also a fund raiser for the Royal Navy Historical Fund and chairman of the Cleveland Aviation Society, in which capacity - and with 240 slides - he retells the story of Operation Skua at Brass Castle Golf Club, Middlesbrough, on April 13.

Playing the fool?

BEFORE the renewed outbreak of memories, the column had reported on letters - superficially charming, theologically challenging - sent to the Bishop of Durham by "David, aged eight and a half".

The Rt Rev Tom Wright thought the chances of deception minimal. The column, more cynical, smelled a rat in the cloisters and promised to investigate further.

Wartime rationing means that the outcome must wait until next week. Suffice that the date on top of the page might not entirely be insignificant.