Funeral of an Ex Dambuster Girl

[VfrpilotPB/2]

Mrs Marion Annie Hanson B 7th Aug 1921 D 6th Aug 2009

Today I attended the funeral of the mother of one of my old friends, very nice lady totally wrapped up in her family her Grandchildren and memorys of her dear husband who departed this mortal coil 12 months ago, I have known her for many years and was amazed to hear in the rhetoric of thanksgiving for her life that she served in the RAF throughout the 39/45 conflict, she started as a Wraf Driver, and then volunteered to train and become groundcrew at one of the many fighter stations dotted around the south of England, she later again volunteered to be groundcrew for the heavy bombers and finished up at Scampton as ground crew with 617 Sqdn, her husband was involved in Aircraft recovery ops and controlled many teams collecting on Queen Marys downed aircraft of either side for repair or salvage.
This proud Great Grandmother never once told any of her friends about her service action,.... how many more are out there like this, and why are they so different from the Today Generation of instant Hero's?

Peter R-B
Vfr
Edited as red wine and lack of specs when posting caused the loss of the S, many apologys to Marion

[Dan Winterland]

There are lots of stories out there, often never told. When he knew he was dying, my father let on about some of the things he was involved in as he wanted to tell someone. Some of it is still classified so I can't let on but safe to say I was farily impressed.

A story from the other side involved a friend's father. While in the pub with my friend John recently, he told me something of his father's WW2 history. John is a Canadian of Ukrainian descent and his father joined the German army in 1942 aged 17 as did a lot of Ukrainians when Germany occupied the country, as Russia wasn't too popular there. His father spent 3 years on the Eastern Front as an infantryman and by accounts was incredibly lucky to have survived. he was eventually over-run by the Russians in Germany, but had discarded his uniform and persuaded them he was a pressed labourer as being a Ukrainian, he would have been shot on the spot. He then realised his best chance was to be captured by the Allies, so made it to the western front and gave himself up to a Canadian unit. The policy at the time was to return all these guys to the East (which invariably led to their deaths at the hands of the Russians) but he persuaded the Canadians to protect him and eventually made it to Canada.

John hadn't known a lot of this until a recent visit back home to Canada. He obtained a copy of Guy Sajer's book "The Forgotton Soldier" which is a similar story of a half French half German volunteer in the German Army and gave it to his father to read. Johns father said a lot of Sajer's experiences were similar to his own. John realises his father won't be around for long so has persuaded him to put his memoirs down on paper.

[Stationair8]

A few years on a quiet Sunday morning a guy came out to the airfield, and asked a bit about the history and if I knew anyone who could help with some details about the training of WW2 pilots. We got talking and it turned out that his father had done his basic traing here and then went off to Canada, before converting onto Lancasters and spending the rest of the war flying night bombing missions. When the war finished back home to Australia and back on with life. The only time he went near an aircraft was the odd holiday to Queensland. A few weeks before he died, he summonsed the oldest son to the home and told him about flying Lancasters and few other things about his RAAF service.

Certainly a tough breed of people, that got in and got the job done with the minimum of fuss.