Interview with Jacqui Whitehead
Title
Interview with Jacqui Whitehead
Description
Jacqui Whitehead talks of how she has been involved with veterans, remembrance, and the Air Gunners Association over the last thirty years. She discusses stories of reconciliation, and how the Flightpath of Friendship and Reconciliation became a partner in The Community of the Cross of Nails. She talks of the story of an airman who was saved from lynching by a local soldier on leave.
The interview was recorded at the Yorkshire Air Museum.
The interview was recorded at the Yorkshire Air Museum.
Creator
Date
2025-10-29
Spatial Coverage
Language
Type
Format
01:11:00 Audio Recording
Conforms To
Publisher
Rights
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Contributor
Identifier
AWhiteheadJ251029
PWhiteheadJ2501
Transcription
DE: So this is an interview with Jacqui Whitehead. I’m Dan Ellin. We’re at the Yorkshire Air Museum and it is the 29th of October 2025. Jacqui, you’ve been involved in the history and memorialisation and remembrance of Bomber Command for quite a few years. Can you tell me how you got started and start at the very beginning please?
JW: Ok. So the beginning is definitely the best place to start and that goes back to when the nation was celebrating fifty years end of World War Two and at that particular time I was running a country pub. I knew nothing about what was happening. I knew nothing about World War Two but I was being approached by so so many people telling me amazing stories I thought I’ve got to do something here. So we got military vehicles involved. We, we were filling sandbags, we were decking the place up but what was the most special thing was veterans started coming and telling their stories and it was difficult for me to understand who they were. One particular group were Gurkhas and I didn’t know what a Gurkha was. So anyway, we wanted to do our best and we wanted to raise money for the Royal British Legion and SAFA so we cracked on and hoped that we would learn as we went along and what happened during that time changed my life forever. One of the things was I was approached by the Doncaster Air Gunners’ Association and a group of amazing men told me an amazing story that in 1944 a Lancaster bomber took off from Wickenby and it was shot down in Germany. The Lancaster came down in a forest in Katzenelnbogen. The crew were all lost apart from the navigator Arthur Lee. Arthur Lee came down and was extremely badly burned. People from the nearby village had heard the explosion and made their way to the forest and so did a young nineteen year old soldier who was on leave from the Eastern Front. His name was Rudi Balzer. He borrowed his father’s motorcycle and went up to the forest and when he got there Arthur was being lynched to a tree. Quite understandable. They were known as terror fliegers. We don’t want them to come back and do it again so let’s get rid of them now. However, Rudi didn’t see it that way. Rudi was quite a spiritual man, as we found out later Arthur was too and Rudi fired his Luger in the air and said, ‘Cut him down. He’s no longer an enemy and he needs medical attention.’ So Rudi took him to the mayor’s office, sent for his father who was a doctor, wrapped him in his greatcoat and his parachute and found the mayor on the telephone to the SS saying, ‘We’ve got an English airman here. I think you should come and shoot him.’ And they did come and again Rudi said, ‘You shoot him. I shoot you. This man is waiting for medical attention. I am contacting the Luftwaffe and he’s under my jurisdiction now not yours.’ Very very brave. A lot of people in the village held it against Rudi for many many years for what he did. Now, Arthur did spend the rest of his time in a POW camp and forty five years after the war ended Arthur told this story that he wouldn’t be here today had he not met and been saved by Rudi Balzer. He, he made it even more special because he’d visited Coventry Cathedral and being a spiritual gentleman that he was he saw the makeshift cross that had been put together from the burnt beams of the roof and the nails that had been made into crosses, the makeshift altar that had been built with the words, “Father forgive.” And Arthur thought that that was quite amazing and he thought I have forgiven what they did to me and this is, it made a very big impact on him and when he told this story there were certain, the Air Gunners’ Association, the Wickenby Register decided it was possibly time for Arthur to go back and pay respects to his crew. To see what had, the place that he lost his crew and pay his respects and that was arranged. I think in 1989 Arthur walked into the woods for the very first time with the Air Gunners’ Association, with the Wickenby Register, with members of serving Luftwaffe and there were other people stood around Arthur didn’t recognise. But what he saw there was a ten foot high mahogany cross with small crosses on the bottom depicting each member of his lost crew and on the cross it said, “Father forgive” in English and in German and somebody had actually got a nail and put [Buz] which was a bit strange. But Arthur said, ‘Who’s done this?’ And they pointed to a gentleman and said, ‘That’s Rudi Balzer. That’s who saved your life forty five years ago.’ And on that blood soaked ground they shook hands and said, ‘Let’s make sure, or let’s try to build a golden bridge where friends can cross and we can maybe tell people that this was a waste of time. Let’s do it together.’ You’re going to have to stop there.
[recording paused]
DE: Starting again. You missed meetings.
JW: Yes, I missed the opportunity to meet Rudi and to meet Arthur which was something that I really really wanted to do. However, I had correspondence from them but they were both quite ill and I believe that Arthur Lee’s ashes are buried, well I know they are because I’ve been. Arthur Lee’s ashes are on the airfield at Wickenby and I was very fortunate to meet his wife and his son. His son was very very much a clone of his father so seeing him was was wonderful but they were very shy people and they didn’t think that their father did anything special. But it was lovely to meet them a couple of times. However, in Germany I got to meet Rudi’s son, Dieter Balzer and as he walked up to me he said, ‘I know my father wrote to you and said that he wanted to put his hand in yours and he unfortunately wasn’t able to do that so here’s mine.’ Dieter and I are very close, very very close and again Dieter mentioned how it hadn’t been good for his father because of saving Arthur. However, they were very influential in the village and they still are now. They, they, the reason the cross was built so fantastically was Rudi was an undertaker, a cabinet maker and in fact Dieter was wanting on the eightieth anniversary to put up a new cross but he wanted to use the materials from the old one that his father built. So we are waiting for that now. So consequently a friendship was made like no other and the air gunners said, ‘This is the story that started our reunions but we’re getting old now and we’re getting decrepit and we can’t do this and we can’t do that and we are kind of looking for someone who could help us.’ And I said, ‘You’ve got me. I’m your man.’ Because that story touched me beyond belief. So I started travelling with them. I gradually brought in some amazing friends. We created this red jacket. Red for the poppy. We created our own emblem. That is the night fighter emblem, air gunners emblem, clasping hands and the Cross of Nails story will come in a minute.
DE: Yeah.
JW: This night fighter emblem we used after we met Wolfgang Falck. Wolfgang Falck was commissioned by Goering to say, ‘I want to put together a night fighter force and you’re the man to do it.’ Falck didn’t want to. He wanted to fly Battle of Britain but Goering assured him that there was new aircraft on the way with special radar and, ‘This is what I want you to do.’ So Falck introduced me and said, ‘Right, Jacqui. I took the falcon after my name. I put it on a black background because we’re flying at night. The bottom is the world globe but there is lightning striking the UK.’ So I met that man, Dan and I am so proud to have met that guy and I’ve been so so fortunate to meet a lot of people like him. But I heard his story from the German side. I was hearing a lot from the English side but I met them in an environment where they all sat together and shared a whisky and talked tactics. They never blamed each other. They didn’t like the word war. They didn’t like being called heroes. They all wanted to find a way to not let it happen again. It was a waste of time. We all lost so many people. So for a very long time as I travelled with these guys I was listening to story after story after story. Amazing. Absolutely amazing. It took my life in a totally different direction and the people that started to travel with me, it did them too. So we, we never prepared ourselves for losing our mentors and there were so many. They gave us the story of their visits to the Netherlands where the propellers of the Lancaster were found when they were building the town. They named the streets after the crew from that Lanc and they brought back, excuse me three surviving crew and that is that Dronten became the home of the air gunners. Because there was no accommodation there the families took them in and they went back year after year after year after year after year. Now, it was very much an air gunners thing. It was around the liberation of the Netherlands time that they went back. However, the members of the Doncaster Air Gunners’ Association who were my family tried to put forward this story that happened in Germany and it wasn’t well reciprocated. Not by, it wasn’t, it wasn’t taken in by the residents of the new town because a lot of them were, didn’t recognise the World War Two and didn’t, didn’t know much about it. However, to see a thousand people gathered in the Square during those celebrations it did touch them in a way but I think they continued to think about it as being the liberation of Holland. Not what can we do about the future. How can we bring together friendship, reconciliation? How can we put it out there that we don’t want wars? So it was difficult for the but the air gunners had made such an impact in the UK with their visits and in Germany with their friendship reunions. I started hosting the reunions in the UK just after the fifty years commemorations of World War Two because the guys were getting too old to travel and to organise but in their words they didn’t want a treasure to be wasted. They’d made this friendship over the years they didn’t want it to stop and they were hoping that someone would come in and take it over because it shouldn’t be forgotten, this story and what had been accomplished from it. And I think that was when I got started putting in classrooms and taking to places and you know being told various things and believe me Dan I have travelled to some amazing places with some amazing people. But it did start with the German friendship. German and English friendship but the Netherlands I always felt very sorry that they never accomplished what they wanted to. To try and bring this story forward because the Dutch people in Dronten had done so much for the air gunners and some of those people did recognise the story. But I think it was the higher Burgermeisters, council members possibly higher people within Bomber Command, the Air Gunners’ Association that didn’t see it that way.
DE: Yeah, I suppose it’s also it’s a bit different. It’s one thing being young lads in aircraft fighting each other, you know.
JW: Yeah.
DE: At eighteen thousand feet every other night.
JW: Yeah.
DE: That’s one thing but being part of a civilian population who were occupied by an invading force is a different thing.
JW: Absolutely. Well, one of the things that happened to me during this time was I was invited to the Escape Lines Committee Reunion. Have you heard of escape lines? Well, I didn’t know much about them but by gum did I meet some amazing people. I met three French ladies that were in the Resistance. I met a Dutch lady called Joka [unclear] who didn’t wear her medals. She had them in her handbag but when I asked her what they were and where she’d got them from, ‘Oh, that one was given to me by the President of the United States. That one was given to me by Queen Wilhelmina in the Netherlands and that one was given to me by Elizabeth, your Queen.’ Ok. Right. Ok. So it means nothing then. ‘I was seventeen years old. I used to, my father was a policeman but he was part of the Resistance that nobody knew and I asked can I help?’ And she started, you’ve seen the films where they are on the bicycles and their dropping messages. They’re all true. Joka did it. Joka told me some of the things that she did. Amazing. And so I met Joka and through meeting her we had a reunion in the UK. The German veterans were there. There was a German fallschirmspringer, a parachutist who [Ted Winkler] who parachuted into Holland and was on the occupation of Holland. But we’d got Joka [unclear] sitting at the side of him who was a Resistance worker. She was a prisoner of war for years and how she, she said, ‘How I’m not dead I don’t know. I was put in front firing squads three times but then somehow it stopped.’ I’ve read her book. Well, I knew her personally but she came home. She came home and thank God she did because she became a part of my life and we share the same birthday. So we’re friends. We’re friends. So her and the, and the German parachutist sat next to a group of air gunners and several Germans, other German veterans, pilots of Messerschmitt 109s and they all sat around the same table. I want every one of those to record.
JW: Yeah. Of course.
DE: I was just in awe of everything and Joka brought up the fact that what is happening in the Netherlands then. Do they not know about reconciliation and why are some people so against it? And I thought this will be interesting and the air gunners were nodding because they’d been trying to do it for years. But there wasn’t an awful lot said about people going into Dronten and holding a friendship reunion again. Yet again. So that was quite sad. But the stories that came out that night were again absolutely remarkable. From Ted parachuting into the Netherlands to Gunther Bahr who shot down seventeen Lancasters in one night and produced his sheet of proof. His logbook of proof. But nobody [pause] everybody was friends. Everybody. There was no animosity Dan and I couldn’t quite get me head around it. And then just after that I got a phone call from the Netherlands saying did I know that Coventry Cathedral were commemorating seventy years of the bombing? Now, the Coventry bombing was massive. Moonlight Sonata was the raid and it was bad. It was pretty bad. The Cathedral was rebuilt. I don’t know if you’ve ever visited it.
DE: I went to uni at Warwick Uni so yeah I know Cov. Yeah.
JW: Amazing. And the ruins. You go in there and the atmosphere is just unreal. So my friend in the Netherlands said, ‘Look, seventy years on and they’re asking for reconciliation stories and I think you’ve got one of the best ones.’ I said, ‘I don’t know. What would I have to do?’ So along with my best best friend Jim Smith we started to put together some information of how we started, who we’d met, where we’d been and what had happened to us during that time and we sent it to Coventry Cathedral and I immediately got a phone call, ‘Can you come and meet the Dean?’ ‘Ok. So, can I bring my friend from the Netherlands please?’ ‘Of course you can. Of course you can.’ So Jim and I and my friend from the Netherlands went along with one of the remaining air gunners who was fit enough to travel at that time and I was so so proud when the air gunner spoke to the Dean and introduced me as the person that was going to take it forward. Yeah. I’m going to do my best and the Dean was extremely impressed. But I said, ‘It’s their stories that have to be remembered always. Always. But what we want to come from this is that there is out of atrocity friendship can be formed. We can cross that golden bridge.’ We should be able to walk that golden bridge and I know it’s there’s been twenty four wars since World War Two at the time that we were celebrating the fifty years commemoration so, and it’s still happening. But the Dean told me what Coventry Cathedral stood for and I was absolutely amazed. They had been presenting these icons, these Cross of Nails to so many places in Germany. Dresden. I had boys that flew Dresden and at East Kirkby when they were there doing a book signing Jimmy [Goldy], a little tiny Scottish tail gunner was introduced to a lady that said, ‘I understand you flew the Dresden raid.’ And Jimmy said, ‘Yes, I did.’ He said, ‘I’d have never got involved in the first place if the King hadn’t sent me a letter in 1939 saying that they needed my help. So I had to come across here and do it.’ And the lady said, ‘Well, Dresden was bad.’ He said, ‘I know my dear. I know. And if I’d have known there would have been someone as beautiful as you I would have told us all to turn back.’ And he gave her a big kiss and a hug. But what can these guys say? There was always arguments about the fire storms of Dresden and whether it was right or wrong and should it have gone on for so long. Should the bombs continued to have been dropped. I heard those stories but Jimmy, amazing amazing guy flew one hundred and eleven operations as a tail gunner. You don’t hear that very often, Dan. I mean their lifespan was very short. But we could prove it. Jimmy had his logbooks of every, and there were so many stories about Jimmy. They dropped a rice pudding through the bomb doors one evening when they were supposed to be on a training exercise. They stole the rice pudding because they were sick of it. There was no other food available other than this rice pudding. So the rice pudding went through the bomb bay doors one night and Jimmy told that story so many times here at lectures along with many many other wonderful people. But the Dean was quite in awe of what he was hearing but they didn’t just give these icons to anyone and I understood that. There was an awful lot of them in Germany. There was some in South Africa from the conflicts that were going on there.
DE: Yeah.
JW: Worldwide and he couldn’t actually tell me anyone that had one in the UK but we found out that sixty had been awarded most of them in other countries and we were going to get the sixty first. I didn’t know what to say. I was speechless. But I wanted to hand it to the guys that deserved it and they weren’t there anymore. Even my best friend Jim Smith was, who had put everything together to get us this far was dying of cancer.
DE: Yeah.
JW: Wasn’t there when the Cross of Nails was presented to us in church. I took it to him in the hospice and he held it and said, ‘Well, would you look at that? How proud would they be?’ So there has been a lot of heartache but memories that stay in your head and in your heart that you can, well you’re listening to me now. I could just go on and on and on with so many different stories.
DE: Yeah.
JW: But the day that that Cross of Nails, she’s in there for you to take a picture of and that Cross of Nails is so important for their memories. But the Dean said, ‘Don’t forget that it is your guys that are continuing it.’ So, yeah I’m proud. I am so proud of my German family. I’m so proud of the family I’ve got in the, in the UK. Everybody is doing sterling work and we do visit that cross in the woods. But what was very special in 2016 I wrote to the mayor in Dronten and my friend who had been host to, host family to one of the air gunners for over twelve years and she’s still with me to this day she wrote to the mayor and said, ‘I think it’s time now, you know and we’ve got something pretty special to prove that it’s time.’ So, once the mayor did his research on the Coventry Cross of Nails he said, ‘Bring it. Bring it.’ So for the very first time two German veterans and two English veterans who knew each other and the Cross of Nails and all of us went to Dronten and accomplished what they had been trying to do for a lot of years and if that’s not reconciliation I don’t know what is. You know. So we, we managed to do that what they couldn’t do and and on the stage when the Germans gave their speeches we finally brought it home where it should be. We’ve just returned now from our last friendship reunion and it was the Netherlands who hosted it once again but we didn’t go back to Dronten and when they said we weren’t going back to Dronten I got a bit of a gut feeling. Pretty much the same when the York Maze owner said, ‘I’m going to move your monument.’ But the story is bigger than that and there’s always the best reasons for it. In Dronten there were no air gunners left. There was no one that was really recognising. They had an air gunner’s room that they built and no one was taking care of it anymore which was really really sad and something I’m working on, Dan right now because we need that back. This is the only air gunner’s room in the UK and it has a lot of our artifacts here.
DE: Yeah.
JW: Hence our relationship with this wonderful place but I’m working on that in Dronten. I don’t want to lose it. But the reunion they took us on this time far surpassed what I ever imagined. We went to a place called Zeeland. The Battle of the Scheldt. Have you heard of it?
DE: Yeah.
JW: I hadn’t and I was in, well we all were. We were, there were thirty five of us. Our Germany family were there. Our Dutch family were there. The UK family were there. All together as one remembering everything from thirty odd years. How it started. The Cross of Nails was there. It was passed from the UK to the Netherlands and then next year it will be passed from the Netherlands to Germany when we do our reunion there. But the Battle of the Scheldt whoa and to visit some of the sites there and to pay our respects at some of the Memorials there again we felt that we were doing our job. We kind of felt this is what we are here for. To remember. To remember these guys. And there was one thing on that trip, Dan. We visited the monument at Uncle beach where they did the final advance and that is when the village of Flushing was liberated. A lot of people lost their lives. A heck of a lot. But just along the way there there was a Holocaust Memorial. A Jewish Memorial I should say and it was topped with barbed wire and it was cut in half and that depicted people’s lives being torn apart. It was unveiled in 2016 by relatives of the forty Jews that were deported from Flushing in 1942. But what I watched was my Dutch friend, thirty odd years old, my German best friend, I think she’s forty now placing stones together on that Jewish monument. I wanted to run up and hug them but I thought no. This is their time.
DE: Yes.
JW: Together. This is where the Dutch and the Germans need to stand together and as we walked away I just said to Carolin, ‘You’ve just crossed that golden bridge.’ You know. So, how marvellous —
DE: Yeah.
JW: Is that. And that was just one thing that happened on our last friendship reunion. So, I think the point that I’m trying to get across Dan is that we’ve got thirty years of amazing stories from veterans. I can sit here for a week with you and tell you stories of every single one but what I’m telling you is that what is important is that we are keeping that alive. We’re keeping their names alive. Their memories alive. Their stories alive.
DE: Yeah.
JW: And through people like you and the museums that we are associated with, there’s a beautiful museum in Germany that my friend has put together then that means we are doing it for them and still doing it for them. And why should they be forgotten? I don’t think they should ever be forgotten.
DE: Yeah.
JW: To me it’s still recent history. I met the last three Chelsea Pensioners from World War One. Beautiful men. Beautiful beautiful beautiful men. In fact, one of them had such a distinctive voice I can hear him in my head all the time. But World War Two there were many people I met. I went to Monte Cassino with veterans that were on that landed on Salerno beach there. I’ve done amazing things with so many amazing people and it won’t leave me.
DE: No.
JW: It’s some of my Flightpath family have wonderful lives, you know. They go and do this, they go and do that but me I’m afraid I live for this and if I have a spare moment then I’m writing down their stories trying to build up even more what I remember. I’ve got boxes and boxes of things that belonged to them and what they wrote. So, yeah I work on that.
DE: Yeah.
JW: As much as I can and I’ve the most, feel so privileged and honoured to do it.
DE: Why is it called the Flightpath of Friendship?
JW: Now, that’s a good question. When we met the air gunners and they told us that they wanted to go on this next visit to Germany and take us with them to help one of the reasons we created the uniform was so they wouldn’t get lost. They’d recognise the red jackets because they were wanderers and we were a little bit frightened of losing them. At that particular time we were organising the visit and we were trying to organise it and help as much as we could so we created the uniform. But then we needed a name. Now, the flightpath was always mentioned. Whenever people were telling stories it was about this flightpath or that flightpath so I knew we needed to use that kind of word. Friendship was what I’d seen.
DE: Yeah.
JW: Already. The friendship that had been made hence the two hands and reconciliation was what we were trying to do.
DE: Yeah.
JW: We were trying to. They had reconciled but we wanted to take it out further. So that is how the name came about but now we’re so privileged to be able to put CCN next to it because we have our blessed icon.
DE: Yeah.
JW: But yeah I didn’t come up with it entirely myself. I can’t take the credit for it. There was a gentleman that was very passionate about World War Two. In fact, I think he had an incendiary bomb dropped on his farm that he still had [laughs] and he was you know he thought that that was a nice touch to put on the logo as we were creating it. As I said we didn’t create the logo until we met Wolfgang Falck. But then it all came together. Yeah.
[pause]
DE: I’m just looking at my notes. So, what can you tell me about the recent Gisela?
JW: Operation Gisela.
DE: Yeah.
JW: Well, after we were introduced to the cross in the woods at Katzenelnbogen the air gunners and the Wickenby boys told me the story that they wanted to have friendship reunions not just in Germany, in the UK as well. Now, they’d formed this friendship and at that time we had RAF Finningley on the go and in Germany we had the Luftwaffe base [Sobernheim] So fortunately the air gunners were being looked after by the CO at Finningley. David Wilby is the most amazing man that I have the most respect for and he was helping those air gunners all the time to keep their friendship reunion going. But they wanted to do, they needed something so they did some research and found that the very last German bomber crashed here at Elvington into a farmhouse. They went and knocked on the farmhouse door. I was with them standing back and the gentleman that owned the farmhouse said, ‘Come in. Come in. Please, come in.’ ‘Well, the reason we’re here is that there was a German aircraft crashed into this farmhouse in 1945.’ ‘Yes. I know all about it. I was a Spitfire pilot.’ Well, how fantastic and I’ve got the newspaper cutting from 1945 when it happened. So, copious amounts of whisky was drunk that day. I won’t mention who was driving. And they were telling stories backwards and forwards and the gentleman from the farmhouse said, ‘That’s where the plane crashed. You put your monument right there.’ So it kind of twinned with the one in Germany.
DE: Yes.
JW: So when the Germans first came over they visited the monument that was built at that farmhouse and they could see where the plane had crashed and that went on for years and years. And then the new owners of York Maze, a very successful business, Tom approached me and said, ‘How would you feel about moving the Memorial?’ And I said, ‘No. I was there when they said that was where the plane crashed.’ ‘But, but listen to the bigger story, right. It will still be in the vicinity. You can still see the farmhouse but this is a very very successful business and I think the story should be known especially what’s come after it with the reconciliation and the visits. I think it should be known by more people. It’s getting ruined there. The traffic is too heavy.’ Which I had to agree with because we tried, we had several filming people there and we even had a choir and it was useless because the traffic —
DE: Yeah.
JW: It was too busy. How the veterans themselves never got run over I don’t know. We were playing traffic warden because they used to go into the middle of the road taking photographs.
DE: Yeah.
JW: Fifty four seater buses used to come across from Germany at that time. So I said, ‘Well, let me take this back. I’m not for it but let me take it back because it’s not my decision.’ And when I took it back to the wider audience and family people said, ‘It might not be a bad idea Jacqui you know because people more people will see it.’ And there was talk of putting a notice board up.
DE: Yeah.
JW: Combining our Association here with, if it could, it couldn’t get any better but it did get better —
DE: Yeah.
JW: Here at the museum. So plans started. This is where we are going to put it. Now, I was invited down here with my friend Lauren who was producing because she’s very talented, producing the notice board that was going to be placed there after the unveiling. I’m just going to put in brackets here David Wilby came back and we haven’t seen him for over twenty years and he, it was as if he was with us yesterday. So we reconnected with David and that was amazing. He came to the unveiling as did a lot of VIPs. So the day I was due to visit here to talk about the notice board with Ian and Lauren we walked into a place like this and there were film cameras everywhere. ‘Jacqui, you’ll be sat there.’ ‘What do you mean I’ll be sat? This isn’t my meeting. It’s yours with Lauren with the notice board. I’m only here to dot the i’s and cross the t’s.’ ‘No. Theres a gentleman here that wants to meet you and you’re going to be talking about some things with him.’ And I met —
DE: Robert.
JW: Robert. Beautiful, wonderful Robert. I’ve just had two emails from him actually. We’re still in touch and Robert said, ‘I’ve heard a little about your Association, what you are doing up there with the monument but can I tell you about Operation Gisela?’ And again my mouth opened. My chin touched the floor because I was hearing yet again of a wonderful friendship that had been made and the people that were coming over from Canada so I recognised that immediately and was in awe of it. Consequently we all ended up doing our little bit on, on Robert’s documentary that has been very very successful. I’m so pleased for him. So so pleased and we, our next intention is to go to the cemetery where Laffoley is laid to rest. Some of them that live closer have already been but that’s on my to do list and I will keep in touch with Robert and I’d like to think that people like Robert might come to Germany with us and see what happens there you know. That’s what we were always trying to do. We had a lot of people in the Netherlands in August at the Battle of the Scheldt. We met so many important people. Serving [pause] serving Dutch personnel.
DE: Yes.
JW: Amazing. So yeah that’s how we got involved with Gisela.
DE: Right.
JW: Yeah.
DE: Yeah. So the Memorial has moved. It has an interpretation board and everyone is, everyone is happy including yourself now.
JW: I will leave here Dan and I will head straight up there and I will still make sure I can see that farmhouse.
DE: Yeah.
JW: Because that is vitally important to to my heart.
DE: Sure.
JW: It is. And I know it is there. I can see it and what was even more special that we didn’t know about was we had an unveiling of the monument itself on the anniversary but then the notice board unveiling was later and it coincided with the Gisela story.
DE: Yeah. Yeah.
JW: So it made our day so much more special and meet so many wonderful people like you. So that made the day so so special but I will be leaving here and going up there and we always try to go there on the 11th of the 11th because we have other responsibilities on actual Remembrance Sunday. But the 11th of the 11th we do try to be there and the Moll family came to the unveiling of the notice board which we’d been trying to get in touch with for years. I used to say to the air gunners, ‘There’s got to be relatives. There’s got to be.’ But you see in those days there were no Facebook or —
DE: No.
JW: Not much connection by internet and we found them.
DE: Yeah.
JW: But I didn’t actually know they were turning up on that day and that, that made my day and I did introduce them and people were quite flabbergasted that they were actually there and they can point out here photographs of their relatives. The chap that came out from the farmhouse that survived was their grandfather. Well —
DE: Yeah.
JW: The little boy that he was carrying was her dad. It gets better and better and you know, you know Dan there has been a lot of times after the air gunners have left us and gone to the great runways in the sky that I’ve thought will our people still be interested. I promised them that I would keep doing it and that’s something that’s in my head. I made that promise but is it just going to be the few or is it worth carrying on? And you know over the years certain things have happened most unexpectedly. Like learning that the propellers from the Lancaster in Dronten flew, that aircraft flew from the same airfield, Wickenby.
DE: Yeah.
JW: From the same squadron as the Lancaster that crashed in the woods in Germany. Now, hang on. Seven and a half Lancs, ten thousand Lancasters I believe were built to fly in World War Two. Seven thousand were lost. How come we’ve got a connection with two from the same airfield? From the same squadron? How weird is that?
DE: Yeah.
JW: And you know, I believe, I like to believe and I’ve got a lot of vicar friends now and I’ve told them this story. How did that happen when I was on the verge of saying let’s give it up? You know. How did we manage to sit around a table with Joka [unclear] and all those people when there weren’t many people left? How did we get presented with the Cross of Nails when, when we thought perhaps it’s not worth carrying on anymore and then that happened.
DE: Yeah.
JW: And then the monument being nice and new now and back to its original state. A beautiful notice board there. Getting involved with Gisela. The stories keep coming and we’re part of it. So it’s not time.
DE: No. No.
JW: It’s not time to forget it yet.
DE: There are so many more stories to tell and there are so many more people who are really interested.
JW: Yes.
DE: Yeah.
JW: I’d like to think so, Dan. I mean I can tell that you and I are certainly singing from the same hymnbook. We have the same passion. But I don’t know how many more people are out there that, you know. I’d like to think —
DE: Yeah. I mean it’s tricky trying to tell. Yeah. I am living it but I do know that there are hundreds of thousands of people —
JW: Well, that’s and I mean its —
DE: And every family who was involved —
JW: Yes.
DE: They’ve got a potential to be interested if they’re not already.
JW: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely.
DE: You’ve spoken a lot about Memorials. Were you, were you involved in the one in London, in Green Park at all?
JW: The Bomber Command Memorial. There wasn’t many of my boys left. When I say my boys [laughs] —
DE: The Doncaster Air Gunners. Yeah.
JW: I class that as the Doncaster Air Gunners because that’s where I started. I mean I’ve met lots and lots of veterans since and as I said the Gurkhas are very close to my heart as well now. But at that time that it was being built, no. My boys weren’t able to travel if there was any of them left at all. I don’t seem to recall now. But the other ones that I talk to from Bomber Command, a gentleman called Len Manning. God bless him he flew one op. He was shot down over Belgium. He was taken in by the Resistance. He was kept in the cellar of a café where the Germans were constantly using the café. He was later taken by, I’ll stop there. What does this remind you of?
DE: It's, “Allo Allo,” isn’t it? [laughs]
JW: Exactly. That is Len. That is where they got the story from. Len Manning. Len Manning’s story became, “Allo Allo.” I didn’t believe him when he told me. I said, ‘Nah, you’re making it up.’ And you know there was never animosity or nastiness amongst my boys but I do remember saying, ‘Have you heard Len’s story?’ To somebody. I think it possibly was [Goldy], a hundred and eleven ops and [Goldy] had two sayings. When I said about Len. ‘He only flew one op.’ ‘Ok, Jimmy you did a hundred and eleven but that one op was very important.’ Dambusters. ‘Flew one operation. Got the damn medal.’ That was Jimmy. That was Jimmy all over with his story about getting the letter from the King.
DE: Yes.
JW: And dropping the rice pudding bomb. But Len Manning was, he [pause] when did he pass away? Two or three years ago and I mentioned it to him about the Bomber Command Memorial. What year was it?
DE: It was either ’12 or ’13.
JW: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and he said, ‘Too little too late.’ And I said, ‘I don’t see it like that because it’s going to be there forever to remember you guys so you’ve got to go.’ But some of them did think like that which I didn’t totally agree with but I’ve listened to every word that they’ve ever said. I, London is not a place that I’ve visited on a regular basis and I have to ashamedly say that I haven’t visited because this place, IBCC, Eden Camp were very very involved with these places and the monuments that we visit in Germany, Netherlands. I’ll go. I’ll go. And I do think it’s something beautiful and it is. When you look at it you’ve got to remember Bomber Command. You can’t not.
DE: No.
JW: So why did Len say, ‘Too little too late.’ But you know I met a lot of Japanese prisoners of war, Dan and at one particular point I’ve always been involved with the Royal British Legion. I don’t suppose that surprises you. But they were trying to get compensation for these POWs. I mean Japanese. You know, don’t even let’s talk about the treatment, you know. Not nice at all and the compensation that they did get I think most of them that I knew just gave it away. You know. It’s, sadly they felt that it was too late for them. But you know in that respect for that particular thing I know we’re not talking about this but for that particular thing maybe it was something that they didn’t want to remember and I can easily understand that. Same as I can understand how the Bomber Command boys, the air gunners, the Wickenby boys made friends with the German Night Fighter Pilots Association. I totally get that.
DE: Yeah.
JW: And then took it later here there and everywhere. Yeah. But no I must see that. It’s [laughs] you’ve made me feel guilty now.
DE: Well, my other question. We were talking before we started recording about your visit to the IBCC .
JW: Yes.
DE: Can you, can you sort of say that again for the recording?
JW: Well, yes. The very first time that I went I think I started to tell you that I’d had a lot of history with the people themselves and I can always say to people I love watching a particular war film now and I get so much from it. But being with the people themselves and travelling with them to the places that they were —Salerno beaches, France, the trenches, various places and hearing it first hand from those people I think that’s how it got to me the most. So the one thing that I never would allow myself to believe is that one day they wouldn’t be here. And they did used to bring it up quite often. ‘You have to do this when we’re not here.’ ‘Just remember this when we’re not here anymore.’ ‘What are you going to do when we’re not here anymore?’ And I said, ‘Start another war maybe because then I’ll have more veterans.’ That is the way that I feel is the road to go down. Yeah. Ok. So I think my first visit to IBCC was maybe not long after we’d had the funeral of possibly one of the last ones and we’d lost so many in Germany. We only had one guy left and I wrote the forward for his book and he wrote the forward and stood up in front of three thousand people and said, ‘Now, it’s Jacqui’s turn.’ So no pressure. I’ve got a forward from a German veteran. Eventually I need to put these words down. So all these memories that are in your head and your heart and they’re not there anymore but you have to remember. Then to walk into a room at IBCC and look at photographs and think I’m sure that’s [pause] I’m sure [pause] it is. And I was recognising photographs but then the thing that got me the most was I picked up a telephone and as I started to press buttons I was listening to voices of people that I’d travelled with and whose stories I’d heard and I think I dropped the damned phone. Didn’t even put it back on the hook and said to my friend, ‘You’ve got to come in here. You have got to come in here and listen to this. You’re not going to believe this.’ And that room just took us all back to how it all started. So whoever did that, whoever did that deserves the highest of recognition because it brought back everything for us and I’m sure the families that have heard it but for us it was remarkable. Remarkable. And it’s very difficult to come out of that room and I’ve yet to see a lot more at IBCC because I won’t come out that room. I just want to hear their voices once again.
DE: Well, you can listen to a lot of them just at home in your own comfort of your own home on the internet because they are all available on the internet.
JW: Well, you see this is something. Without my friend Jim Smith who was very computer literate and I was very lazy I’m still kind of learning.
DE: Right.
JW: How to access certain things.
DE: I’ll have to show you.
JW: Yes, you will. But yeah that is the most amazing place and that brought back so many memories for all of us. She was, ‘Are you sure that’s him?’ I said, ‘I would recognise that voice anywhere.’ And then obviously as we looked and took it all in, the writings and the photographs yeah. Amazing place. So you can understand that I like to be there very often. I like to be here very often because here is where the memories are.
DE: Yeah.
JW: I mean I can remember standing in the Air Gunners’ Room here with half a dozen of them and they’d been given a dagger by a very high ranking, I’m not sure if it weren’t Falck who these German names are in history books you know. Wolfgang Falck, Gunther Bahr, so so many and they had given the air gunners this dagger because we’d told them that the Air Gunners’ Room was opening and yeah so I like to go in there.
DE: Yeah.
JW: Because the boys are still there. The pictures are there and everything.
DE: Yeah. The memories are there.
JW: Yeah.
DE: Yeah.
JW: Absolutely. But people like me and you have to share it with everyone else and make sure we get it across.
DE: That’s what we —
JW: How fantastic these people were.
DE: We’re trying to do. Yeah.
JW: Yeah.
DE: I think, I think Jacqui I’m going I’m going to leave it there unless you’ve got anything else that you want to say.
JW: Well, what I know we’ve talked a lot and I’m hoping you can make some kind of sense of it beyond excuse me for the emotions but I think Dan it would be valuable to speak to Carolin who heads our German family.
DE: Yeah.
JW: She was seventeen years old when I met her and one of the serving Luftwaffe who was helping me over there Peter Becker, he was a second lieutenant in the Luftwaffe and he was helping me organise the trips. He got in touch with me and said, ‘There’s a young girl who lives in Katzenelnbogen. She knows the Balzer family very very well. Her English is very very good but she wants to do a special project for school about the cross. Would you be able to spend some time with her when you come?’ ‘Absolutely.’ Because Carolin is the people we are trying to attract most definitely and I watched that girl in those woods that day so shy. Hiding. Not having her photograph taken. The press were there and she was hiding behind everyone and when I asked her if she would ever consider coming to the UK, ‘Oh, no. I don’t think so. I don’t think so.’ But she was invaluable with translating as was Peter and she’s now forty years old and she heads my German family and I don’t have any more respect for anyone in my, she is amazing. She’s a very spiritual lady. She appeared on the Gisela film.
DE: Yeah.
JW: Documentary. But to hear it from her story and how she grew in confidence because of our Flightpath family I believe.
DE: Yes.
JW: And now she stands on stages and does speeches and she’s now organising the reunion for September next year in Germany. But then again Kitty [Metz] who is in her eighties who was played host to the air gunners, well one particular air gunner for all those years in Dronten lives on [unclear] and tried so hard to bring the spirit of reconciliation into her town. But now she has built up a bigger German, sorry, sorry Dan a bigger Dutch family.
DE: Yeah.
JW: And in Zeeland this year we had a lot more Dutch people with us. So Kitty, and Kitty was responsible for telling us to contact Coventry Cathedral.
DE: Yes.
JW: And if we hadn’t have done, if Kitty hadn’t have said that and then hearing the story of Arthur Lee going back to Coventry Cathedral and being inspired by it all the air gunners never told me that. I got that from Kitty. So, Kitty and Carolin I think if you can speak to them.
DE: Yeah. That would be really helpful.
JW: They are very good at the internet and they can do things over, over Skype.
DE: Yeah.
JW: But let me know so that I can warn them because Carolin has a job and Kitty is a very very big volunteer unbelievably with refugees and —
DE: I’d love to be in touch. Right. Well, thank you very much. I shall press stop.
JW: Ok. So the beginning is definitely the best place to start and that goes back to when the nation was celebrating fifty years end of World War Two and at that particular time I was running a country pub. I knew nothing about what was happening. I knew nothing about World War Two but I was being approached by so so many people telling me amazing stories I thought I’ve got to do something here. So we got military vehicles involved. We, we were filling sandbags, we were decking the place up but what was the most special thing was veterans started coming and telling their stories and it was difficult for me to understand who they were. One particular group were Gurkhas and I didn’t know what a Gurkha was. So anyway, we wanted to do our best and we wanted to raise money for the Royal British Legion and SAFA so we cracked on and hoped that we would learn as we went along and what happened during that time changed my life forever. One of the things was I was approached by the Doncaster Air Gunners’ Association and a group of amazing men told me an amazing story that in 1944 a Lancaster bomber took off from Wickenby and it was shot down in Germany. The Lancaster came down in a forest in Katzenelnbogen. The crew were all lost apart from the navigator Arthur Lee. Arthur Lee came down and was extremely badly burned. People from the nearby village had heard the explosion and made their way to the forest and so did a young nineteen year old soldier who was on leave from the Eastern Front. His name was Rudi Balzer. He borrowed his father’s motorcycle and went up to the forest and when he got there Arthur was being lynched to a tree. Quite understandable. They were known as terror fliegers. We don’t want them to come back and do it again so let’s get rid of them now. However, Rudi didn’t see it that way. Rudi was quite a spiritual man, as we found out later Arthur was too and Rudi fired his Luger in the air and said, ‘Cut him down. He’s no longer an enemy and he needs medical attention.’ So Rudi took him to the mayor’s office, sent for his father who was a doctor, wrapped him in his greatcoat and his parachute and found the mayor on the telephone to the SS saying, ‘We’ve got an English airman here. I think you should come and shoot him.’ And they did come and again Rudi said, ‘You shoot him. I shoot you. This man is waiting for medical attention. I am contacting the Luftwaffe and he’s under my jurisdiction now not yours.’ Very very brave. A lot of people in the village held it against Rudi for many many years for what he did. Now, Arthur did spend the rest of his time in a POW camp and forty five years after the war ended Arthur told this story that he wouldn’t be here today had he not met and been saved by Rudi Balzer. He, he made it even more special because he’d visited Coventry Cathedral and being a spiritual gentleman that he was he saw the makeshift cross that had been put together from the burnt beams of the roof and the nails that had been made into crosses, the makeshift altar that had been built with the words, “Father forgive.” And Arthur thought that that was quite amazing and he thought I have forgiven what they did to me and this is, it made a very big impact on him and when he told this story there were certain, the Air Gunners’ Association, the Wickenby Register decided it was possibly time for Arthur to go back and pay respects to his crew. To see what had, the place that he lost his crew and pay his respects and that was arranged. I think in 1989 Arthur walked into the woods for the very first time with the Air Gunners’ Association, with the Wickenby Register, with members of serving Luftwaffe and there were other people stood around Arthur didn’t recognise. But what he saw there was a ten foot high mahogany cross with small crosses on the bottom depicting each member of his lost crew and on the cross it said, “Father forgive” in English and in German and somebody had actually got a nail and put [Buz] which was a bit strange. But Arthur said, ‘Who’s done this?’ And they pointed to a gentleman and said, ‘That’s Rudi Balzer. That’s who saved your life forty five years ago.’ And on that blood soaked ground they shook hands and said, ‘Let’s make sure, or let’s try to build a golden bridge where friends can cross and we can maybe tell people that this was a waste of time. Let’s do it together.’ You’re going to have to stop there.
[recording paused]
DE: Starting again. You missed meetings.
JW: Yes, I missed the opportunity to meet Rudi and to meet Arthur which was something that I really really wanted to do. However, I had correspondence from them but they were both quite ill and I believe that Arthur Lee’s ashes are buried, well I know they are because I’ve been. Arthur Lee’s ashes are on the airfield at Wickenby and I was very fortunate to meet his wife and his son. His son was very very much a clone of his father so seeing him was was wonderful but they were very shy people and they didn’t think that their father did anything special. But it was lovely to meet them a couple of times. However, in Germany I got to meet Rudi’s son, Dieter Balzer and as he walked up to me he said, ‘I know my father wrote to you and said that he wanted to put his hand in yours and he unfortunately wasn’t able to do that so here’s mine.’ Dieter and I are very close, very very close and again Dieter mentioned how it hadn’t been good for his father because of saving Arthur. However, they were very influential in the village and they still are now. They, they, the reason the cross was built so fantastically was Rudi was an undertaker, a cabinet maker and in fact Dieter was wanting on the eightieth anniversary to put up a new cross but he wanted to use the materials from the old one that his father built. So we are waiting for that now. So consequently a friendship was made like no other and the air gunners said, ‘This is the story that started our reunions but we’re getting old now and we’re getting decrepit and we can’t do this and we can’t do that and we are kind of looking for someone who could help us.’ And I said, ‘You’ve got me. I’m your man.’ Because that story touched me beyond belief. So I started travelling with them. I gradually brought in some amazing friends. We created this red jacket. Red for the poppy. We created our own emblem. That is the night fighter emblem, air gunners emblem, clasping hands and the Cross of Nails story will come in a minute.
DE: Yeah.
JW: This night fighter emblem we used after we met Wolfgang Falck. Wolfgang Falck was commissioned by Goering to say, ‘I want to put together a night fighter force and you’re the man to do it.’ Falck didn’t want to. He wanted to fly Battle of Britain but Goering assured him that there was new aircraft on the way with special radar and, ‘This is what I want you to do.’ So Falck introduced me and said, ‘Right, Jacqui. I took the falcon after my name. I put it on a black background because we’re flying at night. The bottom is the world globe but there is lightning striking the UK.’ So I met that man, Dan and I am so proud to have met that guy and I’ve been so so fortunate to meet a lot of people like him. But I heard his story from the German side. I was hearing a lot from the English side but I met them in an environment where they all sat together and shared a whisky and talked tactics. They never blamed each other. They didn’t like the word war. They didn’t like being called heroes. They all wanted to find a way to not let it happen again. It was a waste of time. We all lost so many people. So for a very long time as I travelled with these guys I was listening to story after story after story. Amazing. Absolutely amazing. It took my life in a totally different direction and the people that started to travel with me, it did them too. So we, we never prepared ourselves for losing our mentors and there were so many. They gave us the story of their visits to the Netherlands where the propellers of the Lancaster were found when they were building the town. They named the streets after the crew from that Lanc and they brought back, excuse me three surviving crew and that is that Dronten became the home of the air gunners. Because there was no accommodation there the families took them in and they went back year after year after year after year after year. Now, it was very much an air gunners thing. It was around the liberation of the Netherlands time that they went back. However, the members of the Doncaster Air Gunners’ Association who were my family tried to put forward this story that happened in Germany and it wasn’t well reciprocated. Not by, it wasn’t, it wasn’t taken in by the residents of the new town because a lot of them were, didn’t recognise the World War Two and didn’t, didn’t know much about it. However, to see a thousand people gathered in the Square during those celebrations it did touch them in a way but I think they continued to think about it as being the liberation of Holland. Not what can we do about the future. How can we bring together friendship, reconciliation? How can we put it out there that we don’t want wars? So it was difficult for the but the air gunners had made such an impact in the UK with their visits and in Germany with their friendship reunions. I started hosting the reunions in the UK just after the fifty years commemorations of World War Two because the guys were getting too old to travel and to organise but in their words they didn’t want a treasure to be wasted. They’d made this friendship over the years they didn’t want it to stop and they were hoping that someone would come in and take it over because it shouldn’t be forgotten, this story and what had been accomplished from it. And I think that was when I got started putting in classrooms and taking to places and you know being told various things and believe me Dan I have travelled to some amazing places with some amazing people. But it did start with the German friendship. German and English friendship but the Netherlands I always felt very sorry that they never accomplished what they wanted to. To try and bring this story forward because the Dutch people in Dronten had done so much for the air gunners and some of those people did recognise the story. But I think it was the higher Burgermeisters, council members possibly higher people within Bomber Command, the Air Gunners’ Association that didn’t see it that way.
DE: Yeah, I suppose it’s also it’s a bit different. It’s one thing being young lads in aircraft fighting each other, you know.
JW: Yeah.
DE: At eighteen thousand feet every other night.
JW: Yeah.
DE: That’s one thing but being part of a civilian population who were occupied by an invading force is a different thing.
JW: Absolutely. Well, one of the things that happened to me during this time was I was invited to the Escape Lines Committee Reunion. Have you heard of escape lines? Well, I didn’t know much about them but by gum did I meet some amazing people. I met three French ladies that were in the Resistance. I met a Dutch lady called Joka [unclear] who didn’t wear her medals. She had them in her handbag but when I asked her what they were and where she’d got them from, ‘Oh, that one was given to me by the President of the United States. That one was given to me by Queen Wilhelmina in the Netherlands and that one was given to me by Elizabeth, your Queen.’ Ok. Right. Ok. So it means nothing then. ‘I was seventeen years old. I used to, my father was a policeman but he was part of the Resistance that nobody knew and I asked can I help?’ And she started, you’ve seen the films where they are on the bicycles and their dropping messages. They’re all true. Joka did it. Joka told me some of the things that she did. Amazing. And so I met Joka and through meeting her we had a reunion in the UK. The German veterans were there. There was a German fallschirmspringer, a parachutist who [Ted Winkler] who parachuted into Holland and was on the occupation of Holland. But we’d got Joka [unclear] sitting at the side of him who was a Resistance worker. She was a prisoner of war for years and how she, she said, ‘How I’m not dead I don’t know. I was put in front firing squads three times but then somehow it stopped.’ I’ve read her book. Well, I knew her personally but she came home. She came home and thank God she did because she became a part of my life and we share the same birthday. So we’re friends. We’re friends. So her and the, and the German parachutist sat next to a group of air gunners and several Germans, other German veterans, pilots of Messerschmitt 109s and they all sat around the same table. I want every one of those to record.
JW: Yeah. Of course.
DE: I was just in awe of everything and Joka brought up the fact that what is happening in the Netherlands then. Do they not know about reconciliation and why are some people so against it? And I thought this will be interesting and the air gunners were nodding because they’d been trying to do it for years. But there wasn’t an awful lot said about people going into Dronten and holding a friendship reunion again. Yet again. So that was quite sad. But the stories that came out that night were again absolutely remarkable. From Ted parachuting into the Netherlands to Gunther Bahr who shot down seventeen Lancasters in one night and produced his sheet of proof. His logbook of proof. But nobody [pause] everybody was friends. Everybody. There was no animosity Dan and I couldn’t quite get me head around it. And then just after that I got a phone call from the Netherlands saying did I know that Coventry Cathedral were commemorating seventy years of the bombing? Now, the Coventry bombing was massive. Moonlight Sonata was the raid and it was bad. It was pretty bad. The Cathedral was rebuilt. I don’t know if you’ve ever visited it.
DE: I went to uni at Warwick Uni so yeah I know Cov. Yeah.
JW: Amazing. And the ruins. You go in there and the atmosphere is just unreal. So my friend in the Netherlands said, ‘Look, seventy years on and they’re asking for reconciliation stories and I think you’ve got one of the best ones.’ I said, ‘I don’t know. What would I have to do?’ So along with my best best friend Jim Smith we started to put together some information of how we started, who we’d met, where we’d been and what had happened to us during that time and we sent it to Coventry Cathedral and I immediately got a phone call, ‘Can you come and meet the Dean?’ ‘Ok. So, can I bring my friend from the Netherlands please?’ ‘Of course you can. Of course you can.’ So Jim and I and my friend from the Netherlands went along with one of the remaining air gunners who was fit enough to travel at that time and I was so so proud when the air gunner spoke to the Dean and introduced me as the person that was going to take it forward. Yeah. I’m going to do my best and the Dean was extremely impressed. But I said, ‘It’s their stories that have to be remembered always. Always. But what we want to come from this is that there is out of atrocity friendship can be formed. We can cross that golden bridge.’ We should be able to walk that golden bridge and I know it’s there’s been twenty four wars since World War Two at the time that we were celebrating the fifty years commemoration so, and it’s still happening. But the Dean told me what Coventry Cathedral stood for and I was absolutely amazed. They had been presenting these icons, these Cross of Nails to so many places in Germany. Dresden. I had boys that flew Dresden and at East Kirkby when they were there doing a book signing Jimmy [Goldy], a little tiny Scottish tail gunner was introduced to a lady that said, ‘I understand you flew the Dresden raid.’ And Jimmy said, ‘Yes, I did.’ He said, ‘I’d have never got involved in the first place if the King hadn’t sent me a letter in 1939 saying that they needed my help. So I had to come across here and do it.’ And the lady said, ‘Well, Dresden was bad.’ He said, ‘I know my dear. I know. And if I’d have known there would have been someone as beautiful as you I would have told us all to turn back.’ And he gave her a big kiss and a hug. But what can these guys say? There was always arguments about the fire storms of Dresden and whether it was right or wrong and should it have gone on for so long. Should the bombs continued to have been dropped. I heard those stories but Jimmy, amazing amazing guy flew one hundred and eleven operations as a tail gunner. You don’t hear that very often, Dan. I mean their lifespan was very short. But we could prove it. Jimmy had his logbooks of every, and there were so many stories about Jimmy. They dropped a rice pudding through the bomb doors one evening when they were supposed to be on a training exercise. They stole the rice pudding because they were sick of it. There was no other food available other than this rice pudding. So the rice pudding went through the bomb bay doors one night and Jimmy told that story so many times here at lectures along with many many other wonderful people. But the Dean was quite in awe of what he was hearing but they didn’t just give these icons to anyone and I understood that. There was an awful lot of them in Germany. There was some in South Africa from the conflicts that were going on there.
DE: Yeah.
JW: Worldwide and he couldn’t actually tell me anyone that had one in the UK but we found out that sixty had been awarded most of them in other countries and we were going to get the sixty first. I didn’t know what to say. I was speechless. But I wanted to hand it to the guys that deserved it and they weren’t there anymore. Even my best friend Jim Smith was, who had put everything together to get us this far was dying of cancer.
DE: Yeah.
JW: Wasn’t there when the Cross of Nails was presented to us in church. I took it to him in the hospice and he held it and said, ‘Well, would you look at that? How proud would they be?’ So there has been a lot of heartache but memories that stay in your head and in your heart that you can, well you’re listening to me now. I could just go on and on and on with so many different stories.
DE: Yeah.
JW: But the day that that Cross of Nails, she’s in there for you to take a picture of and that Cross of Nails is so important for their memories. But the Dean said, ‘Don’t forget that it is your guys that are continuing it.’ So, yeah I’m proud. I am so proud of my German family. I’m so proud of the family I’ve got in the, in the UK. Everybody is doing sterling work and we do visit that cross in the woods. But what was very special in 2016 I wrote to the mayor in Dronten and my friend who had been host to, host family to one of the air gunners for over twelve years and she’s still with me to this day she wrote to the mayor and said, ‘I think it’s time now, you know and we’ve got something pretty special to prove that it’s time.’ So, once the mayor did his research on the Coventry Cross of Nails he said, ‘Bring it. Bring it.’ So for the very first time two German veterans and two English veterans who knew each other and the Cross of Nails and all of us went to Dronten and accomplished what they had been trying to do for a lot of years and if that’s not reconciliation I don’t know what is. You know. So we, we managed to do that what they couldn’t do and and on the stage when the Germans gave their speeches we finally brought it home where it should be. We’ve just returned now from our last friendship reunion and it was the Netherlands who hosted it once again but we didn’t go back to Dronten and when they said we weren’t going back to Dronten I got a bit of a gut feeling. Pretty much the same when the York Maze owner said, ‘I’m going to move your monument.’ But the story is bigger than that and there’s always the best reasons for it. In Dronten there were no air gunners left. There was no one that was really recognising. They had an air gunner’s room that they built and no one was taking care of it anymore which was really really sad and something I’m working on, Dan right now because we need that back. This is the only air gunner’s room in the UK and it has a lot of our artifacts here.
DE: Yeah.
JW: Hence our relationship with this wonderful place but I’m working on that in Dronten. I don’t want to lose it. But the reunion they took us on this time far surpassed what I ever imagined. We went to a place called Zeeland. The Battle of the Scheldt. Have you heard of it?
DE: Yeah.
JW: I hadn’t and I was in, well we all were. We were, there were thirty five of us. Our Germany family were there. Our Dutch family were there. The UK family were there. All together as one remembering everything from thirty odd years. How it started. The Cross of Nails was there. It was passed from the UK to the Netherlands and then next year it will be passed from the Netherlands to Germany when we do our reunion there. But the Battle of the Scheldt whoa and to visit some of the sites there and to pay our respects at some of the Memorials there again we felt that we were doing our job. We kind of felt this is what we are here for. To remember. To remember these guys. And there was one thing on that trip, Dan. We visited the monument at Uncle beach where they did the final advance and that is when the village of Flushing was liberated. A lot of people lost their lives. A heck of a lot. But just along the way there there was a Holocaust Memorial. A Jewish Memorial I should say and it was topped with barbed wire and it was cut in half and that depicted people’s lives being torn apart. It was unveiled in 2016 by relatives of the forty Jews that were deported from Flushing in 1942. But what I watched was my Dutch friend, thirty odd years old, my German best friend, I think she’s forty now placing stones together on that Jewish monument. I wanted to run up and hug them but I thought no. This is their time.
DE: Yes.
JW: Together. This is where the Dutch and the Germans need to stand together and as we walked away I just said to Carolin, ‘You’ve just crossed that golden bridge.’ You know. So, how marvellous —
DE: Yeah.
JW: Is that. And that was just one thing that happened on our last friendship reunion. So, I think the point that I’m trying to get across Dan is that we’ve got thirty years of amazing stories from veterans. I can sit here for a week with you and tell you stories of every single one but what I’m telling you is that what is important is that we are keeping that alive. We’re keeping their names alive. Their memories alive. Their stories alive.
DE: Yeah.
JW: And through people like you and the museums that we are associated with, there’s a beautiful museum in Germany that my friend has put together then that means we are doing it for them and still doing it for them. And why should they be forgotten? I don’t think they should ever be forgotten.
DE: Yeah.
JW: To me it’s still recent history. I met the last three Chelsea Pensioners from World War One. Beautiful men. Beautiful beautiful beautiful men. In fact, one of them had such a distinctive voice I can hear him in my head all the time. But World War Two there were many people I met. I went to Monte Cassino with veterans that were on that landed on Salerno beach there. I’ve done amazing things with so many amazing people and it won’t leave me.
DE: No.
JW: It’s some of my Flightpath family have wonderful lives, you know. They go and do this, they go and do that but me I’m afraid I live for this and if I have a spare moment then I’m writing down their stories trying to build up even more what I remember. I’ve got boxes and boxes of things that belonged to them and what they wrote. So, yeah I work on that.
DE: Yeah.
JW: As much as I can and I’ve the most, feel so privileged and honoured to do it.
DE: Why is it called the Flightpath of Friendship?
JW: Now, that’s a good question. When we met the air gunners and they told us that they wanted to go on this next visit to Germany and take us with them to help one of the reasons we created the uniform was so they wouldn’t get lost. They’d recognise the red jackets because they were wanderers and we were a little bit frightened of losing them. At that particular time we were organising the visit and we were trying to organise it and help as much as we could so we created the uniform. But then we needed a name. Now, the flightpath was always mentioned. Whenever people were telling stories it was about this flightpath or that flightpath so I knew we needed to use that kind of word. Friendship was what I’d seen.
DE: Yeah.
JW: Already. The friendship that had been made hence the two hands and reconciliation was what we were trying to do.
DE: Yeah.
JW: We were trying to. They had reconciled but we wanted to take it out further. So that is how the name came about but now we’re so privileged to be able to put CCN next to it because we have our blessed icon.
DE: Yeah.
JW: But yeah I didn’t come up with it entirely myself. I can’t take the credit for it. There was a gentleman that was very passionate about World War Two. In fact, I think he had an incendiary bomb dropped on his farm that he still had [laughs] and he was you know he thought that that was a nice touch to put on the logo as we were creating it. As I said we didn’t create the logo until we met Wolfgang Falck. But then it all came together. Yeah.
[pause]
DE: I’m just looking at my notes. So, what can you tell me about the recent Gisela?
JW: Operation Gisela.
DE: Yeah.
JW: Well, after we were introduced to the cross in the woods at Katzenelnbogen the air gunners and the Wickenby boys told me the story that they wanted to have friendship reunions not just in Germany, in the UK as well. Now, they’d formed this friendship and at that time we had RAF Finningley on the go and in Germany we had the Luftwaffe base [Sobernheim] So fortunately the air gunners were being looked after by the CO at Finningley. David Wilby is the most amazing man that I have the most respect for and he was helping those air gunners all the time to keep their friendship reunion going. But they wanted to do, they needed something so they did some research and found that the very last German bomber crashed here at Elvington into a farmhouse. They went and knocked on the farmhouse door. I was with them standing back and the gentleman that owned the farmhouse said, ‘Come in. Come in. Please, come in.’ ‘Well, the reason we’re here is that there was a German aircraft crashed into this farmhouse in 1945.’ ‘Yes. I know all about it. I was a Spitfire pilot.’ Well, how fantastic and I’ve got the newspaper cutting from 1945 when it happened. So, copious amounts of whisky was drunk that day. I won’t mention who was driving. And they were telling stories backwards and forwards and the gentleman from the farmhouse said, ‘That’s where the plane crashed. You put your monument right there.’ So it kind of twinned with the one in Germany.
DE: Yes.
JW: So when the Germans first came over they visited the monument that was built at that farmhouse and they could see where the plane had crashed and that went on for years and years. And then the new owners of York Maze, a very successful business, Tom approached me and said, ‘How would you feel about moving the Memorial?’ And I said, ‘No. I was there when they said that was where the plane crashed.’ ‘But, but listen to the bigger story, right. It will still be in the vicinity. You can still see the farmhouse but this is a very very successful business and I think the story should be known especially what’s come after it with the reconciliation and the visits. I think it should be known by more people. It’s getting ruined there. The traffic is too heavy.’ Which I had to agree with because we tried, we had several filming people there and we even had a choir and it was useless because the traffic —
DE: Yeah.
JW: It was too busy. How the veterans themselves never got run over I don’t know. We were playing traffic warden because they used to go into the middle of the road taking photographs.
DE: Yeah.
JW: Fifty four seater buses used to come across from Germany at that time. So I said, ‘Well, let me take this back. I’m not for it but let me take it back because it’s not my decision.’ And when I took it back to the wider audience and family people said, ‘It might not be a bad idea Jacqui you know because people more people will see it.’ And there was talk of putting a notice board up.
DE: Yeah.
JW: Combining our Association here with, if it could, it couldn’t get any better but it did get better —
DE: Yeah.
JW: Here at the museum. So plans started. This is where we are going to put it. Now, I was invited down here with my friend Lauren who was producing because she’s very talented, producing the notice board that was going to be placed there after the unveiling. I’m just going to put in brackets here David Wilby came back and we haven’t seen him for over twenty years and he, it was as if he was with us yesterday. So we reconnected with David and that was amazing. He came to the unveiling as did a lot of VIPs. So the day I was due to visit here to talk about the notice board with Ian and Lauren we walked into a place like this and there were film cameras everywhere. ‘Jacqui, you’ll be sat there.’ ‘What do you mean I’ll be sat? This isn’t my meeting. It’s yours with Lauren with the notice board. I’m only here to dot the i’s and cross the t’s.’ ‘No. Theres a gentleman here that wants to meet you and you’re going to be talking about some things with him.’ And I met —
DE: Robert.
JW: Robert. Beautiful, wonderful Robert. I’ve just had two emails from him actually. We’re still in touch and Robert said, ‘I’ve heard a little about your Association, what you are doing up there with the monument but can I tell you about Operation Gisela?’ And again my mouth opened. My chin touched the floor because I was hearing yet again of a wonderful friendship that had been made and the people that were coming over from Canada so I recognised that immediately and was in awe of it. Consequently we all ended up doing our little bit on, on Robert’s documentary that has been very very successful. I’m so pleased for him. So so pleased and we, our next intention is to go to the cemetery where Laffoley is laid to rest. Some of them that live closer have already been but that’s on my to do list and I will keep in touch with Robert and I’d like to think that people like Robert might come to Germany with us and see what happens there you know. That’s what we were always trying to do. We had a lot of people in the Netherlands in August at the Battle of the Scheldt. We met so many important people. Serving [pause] serving Dutch personnel.
DE: Yes.
JW: Amazing. So yeah that’s how we got involved with Gisela.
DE: Right.
JW: Yeah.
DE: Yeah. So the Memorial has moved. It has an interpretation board and everyone is, everyone is happy including yourself now.
JW: I will leave here Dan and I will head straight up there and I will still make sure I can see that farmhouse.
DE: Yeah.
JW: Because that is vitally important to to my heart.
DE: Sure.
JW: It is. And I know it is there. I can see it and what was even more special that we didn’t know about was we had an unveiling of the monument itself on the anniversary but then the notice board unveiling was later and it coincided with the Gisela story.
DE: Yeah. Yeah.
JW: So it made our day so much more special and meet so many wonderful people like you. So that made the day so so special but I will be leaving here and going up there and we always try to go there on the 11th of the 11th because we have other responsibilities on actual Remembrance Sunday. But the 11th of the 11th we do try to be there and the Moll family came to the unveiling of the notice board which we’d been trying to get in touch with for years. I used to say to the air gunners, ‘There’s got to be relatives. There’s got to be.’ But you see in those days there were no Facebook or —
DE: No.
JW: Not much connection by internet and we found them.
DE: Yeah.
JW: But I didn’t actually know they were turning up on that day and that, that made my day and I did introduce them and people were quite flabbergasted that they were actually there and they can point out here photographs of their relatives. The chap that came out from the farmhouse that survived was their grandfather. Well —
DE: Yeah.
JW: The little boy that he was carrying was her dad. It gets better and better and you know, you know Dan there has been a lot of times after the air gunners have left us and gone to the great runways in the sky that I’ve thought will our people still be interested. I promised them that I would keep doing it and that’s something that’s in my head. I made that promise but is it just going to be the few or is it worth carrying on? And you know over the years certain things have happened most unexpectedly. Like learning that the propellers from the Lancaster in Dronten flew, that aircraft flew from the same airfield, Wickenby.
DE: Yeah.
JW: From the same squadron as the Lancaster that crashed in the woods in Germany. Now, hang on. Seven and a half Lancs, ten thousand Lancasters I believe were built to fly in World War Two. Seven thousand were lost. How come we’ve got a connection with two from the same airfield? From the same squadron? How weird is that?
DE: Yeah.
JW: And you know, I believe, I like to believe and I’ve got a lot of vicar friends now and I’ve told them this story. How did that happen when I was on the verge of saying let’s give it up? You know. How did we manage to sit around a table with Joka [unclear] and all those people when there weren’t many people left? How did we get presented with the Cross of Nails when, when we thought perhaps it’s not worth carrying on anymore and then that happened.
DE: Yeah.
JW: And then the monument being nice and new now and back to its original state. A beautiful notice board there. Getting involved with Gisela. The stories keep coming and we’re part of it. So it’s not time.
DE: No. No.
JW: It’s not time to forget it yet.
DE: There are so many more stories to tell and there are so many more people who are really interested.
JW: Yes.
DE: Yeah.
JW: I’d like to think so, Dan. I mean I can tell that you and I are certainly singing from the same hymnbook. We have the same passion. But I don’t know how many more people are out there that, you know. I’d like to think —
DE: Yeah. I mean it’s tricky trying to tell. Yeah. I am living it but I do know that there are hundreds of thousands of people —
JW: Well, that’s and I mean its —
DE: And every family who was involved —
JW: Yes.
DE: They’ve got a potential to be interested if they’re not already.
JW: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely.
DE: You’ve spoken a lot about Memorials. Were you, were you involved in the one in London, in Green Park at all?
JW: The Bomber Command Memorial. There wasn’t many of my boys left. When I say my boys [laughs] —
DE: The Doncaster Air Gunners. Yeah.
JW: I class that as the Doncaster Air Gunners because that’s where I started. I mean I’ve met lots and lots of veterans since and as I said the Gurkhas are very close to my heart as well now. But at that time that it was being built, no. My boys weren’t able to travel if there was any of them left at all. I don’t seem to recall now. But the other ones that I talk to from Bomber Command, a gentleman called Len Manning. God bless him he flew one op. He was shot down over Belgium. He was taken in by the Resistance. He was kept in the cellar of a café where the Germans were constantly using the café. He was later taken by, I’ll stop there. What does this remind you of?
DE: It's, “Allo Allo,” isn’t it? [laughs]
JW: Exactly. That is Len. That is where they got the story from. Len Manning. Len Manning’s story became, “Allo Allo.” I didn’t believe him when he told me. I said, ‘Nah, you’re making it up.’ And you know there was never animosity or nastiness amongst my boys but I do remember saying, ‘Have you heard Len’s story?’ To somebody. I think it possibly was [Goldy], a hundred and eleven ops and [Goldy] had two sayings. When I said about Len. ‘He only flew one op.’ ‘Ok, Jimmy you did a hundred and eleven but that one op was very important.’ Dambusters. ‘Flew one operation. Got the damn medal.’ That was Jimmy. That was Jimmy all over with his story about getting the letter from the King.
DE: Yes.
JW: And dropping the rice pudding bomb. But Len Manning was, he [pause] when did he pass away? Two or three years ago and I mentioned it to him about the Bomber Command Memorial. What year was it?
DE: It was either ’12 or ’13.
JW: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and he said, ‘Too little too late.’ And I said, ‘I don’t see it like that because it’s going to be there forever to remember you guys so you’ve got to go.’ But some of them did think like that which I didn’t totally agree with but I’ve listened to every word that they’ve ever said. I, London is not a place that I’ve visited on a regular basis and I have to ashamedly say that I haven’t visited because this place, IBCC, Eden Camp were very very involved with these places and the monuments that we visit in Germany, Netherlands. I’ll go. I’ll go. And I do think it’s something beautiful and it is. When you look at it you’ve got to remember Bomber Command. You can’t not.
DE: No.
JW: So why did Len say, ‘Too little too late.’ But you know I met a lot of Japanese prisoners of war, Dan and at one particular point I’ve always been involved with the Royal British Legion. I don’t suppose that surprises you. But they were trying to get compensation for these POWs. I mean Japanese. You know, don’t even let’s talk about the treatment, you know. Not nice at all and the compensation that they did get I think most of them that I knew just gave it away. You know. It’s, sadly they felt that it was too late for them. But you know in that respect for that particular thing I know we’re not talking about this but for that particular thing maybe it was something that they didn’t want to remember and I can easily understand that. Same as I can understand how the Bomber Command boys, the air gunners, the Wickenby boys made friends with the German Night Fighter Pilots Association. I totally get that.
DE: Yeah.
JW: And then took it later here there and everywhere. Yeah. But no I must see that. It’s [laughs] you’ve made me feel guilty now.
DE: Well, my other question. We were talking before we started recording about your visit to the IBCC .
JW: Yes.
DE: Can you, can you sort of say that again for the recording?
JW: Well, yes. The very first time that I went I think I started to tell you that I’d had a lot of history with the people themselves and I can always say to people I love watching a particular war film now and I get so much from it. But being with the people themselves and travelling with them to the places that they were —Salerno beaches, France, the trenches, various places and hearing it first hand from those people I think that’s how it got to me the most. So the one thing that I never would allow myself to believe is that one day they wouldn’t be here. And they did used to bring it up quite often. ‘You have to do this when we’re not here.’ ‘Just remember this when we’re not here anymore.’ ‘What are you going to do when we’re not here anymore?’ And I said, ‘Start another war maybe because then I’ll have more veterans.’ That is the way that I feel is the road to go down. Yeah. Ok. So I think my first visit to IBCC was maybe not long after we’d had the funeral of possibly one of the last ones and we’d lost so many in Germany. We only had one guy left and I wrote the forward for his book and he wrote the forward and stood up in front of three thousand people and said, ‘Now, it’s Jacqui’s turn.’ So no pressure. I’ve got a forward from a German veteran. Eventually I need to put these words down. So all these memories that are in your head and your heart and they’re not there anymore but you have to remember. Then to walk into a room at IBCC and look at photographs and think I’m sure that’s [pause] I’m sure [pause] it is. And I was recognising photographs but then the thing that got me the most was I picked up a telephone and as I started to press buttons I was listening to voices of people that I’d travelled with and whose stories I’d heard and I think I dropped the damned phone. Didn’t even put it back on the hook and said to my friend, ‘You’ve got to come in here. You have got to come in here and listen to this. You’re not going to believe this.’ And that room just took us all back to how it all started. So whoever did that, whoever did that deserves the highest of recognition because it brought back everything for us and I’m sure the families that have heard it but for us it was remarkable. Remarkable. And it’s very difficult to come out of that room and I’ve yet to see a lot more at IBCC because I won’t come out that room. I just want to hear their voices once again.
DE: Well, you can listen to a lot of them just at home in your own comfort of your own home on the internet because they are all available on the internet.
JW: Well, you see this is something. Without my friend Jim Smith who was very computer literate and I was very lazy I’m still kind of learning.
DE: Right.
JW: How to access certain things.
DE: I’ll have to show you.
JW: Yes, you will. But yeah that is the most amazing place and that brought back so many memories for all of us. She was, ‘Are you sure that’s him?’ I said, ‘I would recognise that voice anywhere.’ And then obviously as we looked and took it all in, the writings and the photographs yeah. Amazing place. So you can understand that I like to be there very often. I like to be here very often because here is where the memories are.
DE: Yeah.
JW: I mean I can remember standing in the Air Gunners’ Room here with half a dozen of them and they’d been given a dagger by a very high ranking, I’m not sure if it weren’t Falck who these German names are in history books you know. Wolfgang Falck, Gunther Bahr, so so many and they had given the air gunners this dagger because we’d told them that the Air Gunners’ Room was opening and yeah so I like to go in there.
DE: Yeah.
JW: Because the boys are still there. The pictures are there and everything.
DE: Yeah. The memories are there.
JW: Yeah.
DE: Yeah.
JW: Absolutely. But people like me and you have to share it with everyone else and make sure we get it across.
DE: That’s what we —
JW: How fantastic these people were.
DE: We’re trying to do. Yeah.
JW: Yeah.
DE: I think, I think Jacqui I’m going I’m going to leave it there unless you’ve got anything else that you want to say.
JW: Well, what I know we’ve talked a lot and I’m hoping you can make some kind of sense of it beyond excuse me for the emotions but I think Dan it would be valuable to speak to Carolin who heads our German family.
DE: Yeah.
JW: She was seventeen years old when I met her and one of the serving Luftwaffe who was helping me over there Peter Becker, he was a second lieutenant in the Luftwaffe and he was helping me organise the trips. He got in touch with me and said, ‘There’s a young girl who lives in Katzenelnbogen. She knows the Balzer family very very well. Her English is very very good but she wants to do a special project for school about the cross. Would you be able to spend some time with her when you come?’ ‘Absolutely.’ Because Carolin is the people we are trying to attract most definitely and I watched that girl in those woods that day so shy. Hiding. Not having her photograph taken. The press were there and she was hiding behind everyone and when I asked her if she would ever consider coming to the UK, ‘Oh, no. I don’t think so. I don’t think so.’ But she was invaluable with translating as was Peter and she’s now forty years old and she heads my German family and I don’t have any more respect for anyone in my, she is amazing. She’s a very spiritual lady. She appeared on the Gisela film.
DE: Yeah.
JW: Documentary. But to hear it from her story and how she grew in confidence because of our Flightpath family I believe.
DE: Yes.
JW: And now she stands on stages and does speeches and she’s now organising the reunion for September next year in Germany. But then again Kitty [Metz] who is in her eighties who was played host to the air gunners, well one particular air gunner for all those years in Dronten lives on [unclear] and tried so hard to bring the spirit of reconciliation into her town. But now she has built up a bigger German, sorry, sorry Dan a bigger Dutch family.
DE: Yeah.
JW: And in Zeeland this year we had a lot more Dutch people with us. So Kitty, and Kitty was responsible for telling us to contact Coventry Cathedral.
DE: Yes.
JW: And if we hadn’t have done, if Kitty hadn’t have said that and then hearing the story of Arthur Lee going back to Coventry Cathedral and being inspired by it all the air gunners never told me that. I got that from Kitty. So, Kitty and Carolin I think if you can speak to them.
DE: Yeah. That would be really helpful.
JW: They are very good at the internet and they can do things over, over Skype.
DE: Yeah.
JW: But let me know so that I can warn them because Carolin has a job and Kitty is a very very big volunteer unbelievably with refugees and —
DE: I’d love to be in touch. Right. Well, thank you very much. I shall press stop.
Collection
Citation
Dan Ellin, “Interview with Jacqui Whitehead,” IBCC Digital Archive, accessed February 7, 2026, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/collections/document/57523.