Losses in the RAF and in Bomber Command. See also PFF Remembrance.
A very fine monument to the Rickinson crew was recently unveiled at Eemnes, a small village in the centre of the Netherlands. The Rickinson crew of 83 Squadron, stationed at RAF Wyton, were lost on the Duisburg operation of 12/13 May 1943. The crew were: Pilot: F/Lt Leslie Arthur Rickinson, […]
Every year on Christmas Eve, a most touching ceremony takes place on Texel, at the War Cemetery at Den Burg. This year the annual lighting of the candles for each of the 167 graves took place despite somewhat blustery weather, and the results after darkness had fallen were spectacular. Sea […]
Jan Nieuwenhuis sent the following message late yesterday: “Today late this afternoon, we again placed candle lights in front of all the war graves at the Texel War Cemetery…” With grateful thanks to Jan Nieuwenhuis and all who have helped in this year’s remembrance. Jennie Mack Gray writes: I have […]
Photograph, possibly taken in November 1942, of a Remembrance ceremony at St. Bartholomew’s Church, Great Gransden, Cambridgeshire. The lych gate in the picture is still there today. The central figure is the exiled King Peter of Yugoslavia, in RAF uniform, with his mother Queen Marie standing beside him. The Yugoslavian […]
The Queen’s long association with the Royal Air Force began during the Second World War. Our second post celebrating her 70th Jubilee concerns Runnymede in 1953. The Runnymede Memorial commemorates all members of the Air Forces of Britain, the Dominions and the colonies who were lost without trace during the […]
The annual lighting of candles on the 167 graves at the War Cemetery at Den Burg, Texel, took place yesterday evening, Christmas Eve. This is a very simple but extremely moving and quietly spectacular ceremony, and for the last three years we have published photographs of it. Extremely powerful guns […]
Surviving photographs of RAF funerals are very rare. Although many were taken officially during the war, so that relatives living abroad could see that their loved ones had been buried with honour, it seems that such photographs were too sad to keep. Norman McIntyre (fourth from left) with two of […]