Unveiling of the Memorial at Laversines, France
Saturday the 6th of July dawned bright and clear over Beauvais, a prefecture in the Oise Département, in the Hauts-de-France region, 75 kilometres north of Paris. At breakfast that morning in the Ibis hotel restaurant were twenty eight guests who had travelled far and wide to be present at the inauguration of a unique memorial raised in memory of a World War II Lancaster crew which had been shot down over the nearby village of Laversines. This particular aircraft, ME699, was one of 19 of 44 (Rhodesia) Squadron tasked that night. Captained by a 21 year old Australian, Bill Young, they had taken off from RAF Dunholme Lodge at 2300 on 4th July 1944. Their mission was to destroy the underground storage facility at Saint Leu d’Esserent, which housed a stockpile of German V1 missiles and was therefore a high value target.
Address on behalf of 44 Sqn Association
When Bill Young and his crew members Sgt Bill Robinson, Fg Off Frank Wareham, Fg Off Harold Braathen RCAF, Flt Sgt Jack Wainwright, Sgt Leslie Jackson, Sgt Bill Rennie RCAF and Sgt Ronald Houseman, took off from Dunholme Lodge that fateful night, they had already successfully completed 20 missions; this was their 21st operation together. Sadly, it was to be their last. After successfully attacking their target, Lancaster ME699 was intercepted by a Luftwaffe Me110 over Beauvais. The fighter inflicted fatal damage and Bill Young ordered his crew to abandon their stricken aircraft. The Bomb Aimer, Jack Wainwright and Flight Engineer Bill Robinson, managed to escape through the lower hatch but the remaining six crew members were killed when their aircraft crashed on the edge of the small village of Laversines. The two survivors were handed over to local police and held at Bresles for nine days. They must have thought the war was well and truly over for them. However, fortune shone upon them in a remarkable way because they were then handed over to members of the French Resistance. Bill Robinson was moved to a family in Agencourt, near Clermont and Jack Wainwright was sent to a house in the village of Haudivillers. The story of how they were sheltered and protected by astonishingly brave members of the Morel and Pelletier families respectively is a fascinating and inspiring one.
Fast forward to the present and Christophe Clement, the leader of Groupe National Recherche Trente-neuf/Quarante-cinq, a French historical research group, took it upon himself to raise enough funds to build a monument to the crew of Bill Young’s Lancaster. This task was finally completed this summer and invitations were sent to all known members of the crew’s families to attend the inauguration, eighty years and one day after the event. The Mayoress of Laversines, Madame Marie-Manuelle Jacques, was a most enthusiastic supporter of the project and a prime site for the monument was selected in the municipal gardens fronting the Laversines town hall. The response to those invitations was extraordinary. On the day of the unveiling something like 28 family members and friends showed up, from places as far-flung as Thailand, Australia, Canada and the UK. They were joined by an estimated 200 citizens of Laversines who had come to witness the unveiling and pay their respects.
Marie-Manuelle Jacques,
Maire de Laversines (left)
Proceedings were heralded by an large procession of Standards, borne aloft by proud members of assorted groups with military affiliations and preceded by a retired Army Lieutenant Colonel, resplendent in full Scottish regalia, with an accompanying lady bagpiper, also in full uniform. The pageant proceeded to the site where the memorial, shrouded in a multi-coloured parachute, was unveiled with due ceremony. There followed several speeches, many of them in French, but with useful translations provided by the Mayor’s staff. A nice touch was the involvement of local schoolchildren, several of whom took turns reading the poem ‘Freedom’ by Paul Eluard. Their presence symbolised the fundamental message of peace and ensured that the memory of those who had paid the ultimate price for it, would live on in future generations. There was a flypast by a vintage Stearman biplane trailing white smoke, sharply contrasted against an azure sky.
Amongst the crowd were two local people of note. One was Ginette Pelletier, who at the time ME699 crashed was the 17 year old daughter of the family who sheltered Jack Wainwright. She is a charming lady, now into her nineties, who rightly enjoyed star status at the event. The other was a man who, despite being only seven years of age at the time, remembered being woken up by his parents in the early hours of the morning, taken outside to witness the burning Lancaster plunging to the ground close to his home.
Later that afternoon relatives and friends convened at the site of the crash on the edge of the village, where another small ceremony was conducted by Christophe Clement, the instigator of the memorial project. The field where the wreckage once lay is now largely overgrown but many of the relatives of crew members found it an emotional experience to be so close to the site where their loved ones had perished.
The concluding event of the weekend was held on the Sunday morning at the Marissel French National Cemetery, Beauvais, where the bodies of six crew members of Lancaster ME699 are interred. Christophe Clement conducted a moving graveside ceremony, bringing to a close a series of commemorations in honour of the young Australian, Canadian and British men who lost their lives on the night of 4th/5th July 1944.
