Luftwaffe aircraft shot down, Lincolnshire, March 1943

[Dave_D_Au]

My uncle was an RAAF (Australia) pilot stationed at RAF Manby, Lincolnshire in 1944/45. The following paragraph is from a letter he wrote home on 20 March 1944. He first described an air raid on the base "the other night", likely to be sometime in the preceding week - his previous letter was dated 14 March 1944, and then went on to describe the funeral for the crew of a downed aircraft:

One of the Jerry kites shot down that night crashed quite near here, and yesterday the German airmen of that plane – three of them – were buried from here with full military honours. They were carried on an R.A.F. tender, covered with the Nazi flag, and six pilots (myself included) were the pall bearers. A rifle party marched in the funeral, and a guard of honour of officers and airmen, along with the station band, made up the procession. Our Padre presided at the grave, and everything was very properly and well done. A military funeral is a really impressive affair, and as we marched I couldn’t help wishing the relatives of those chaps knew they were treated decently, even though they were Germans, and had tried to kills us a couple of nights before. Personally, I can respect any combatant member of any Air Force because, like us, they have to obey orders and face the same dangers as us.

Uncle was 20 years old at the time. He passed away peacefully in 2003, aged 80. The text of some of his letters were published in our local small town newspaper during the war, but I am not sure if any were published elsewhere.

Perhaps, through this website, his wish, that the relatives of the German airmen might know that they were treated decently, can be granted.