The family of a Tring airman shot down during the Second World War will be travelling to Holland in the new year to a special memorial unveiled in his honour, thanks to a Gazette article.
On November 15 The Gazette published an appeal to find the relatives of Flight Sergeant Victor Norman Cawdery, from Tring, a rear gunner who was killed along with the other six members of his crew when his Lancaster bomber was shot down over the Neth
erlands as it returned from a raid in Germany.
A Dutch volunteer organisation, the Aircraft Recovery Group (ARG), that has spent decades researching the aerial war over Holland, is planning to honour FS Cawdery and his comrades with a memorial on the spot his plane went down and asked for The Gazette's help in finding any relatives.
Ron Cawdery pictured at home in Northchurch with old photographs of his Uncle Victor, who he never met
Ron Cawdery, of Northchurch, said he got a real shock when he logged on to The Gazette's website and read for the first time the details of what had happened to the uncle he never knew.
Ron said: "The details we knew were very vague and the article went into it far more. When I saw the picture in The Gazette of the German pilot that shot him down it really brought it all home."
Ron contacted his brother Chris, who lives in Walthamstow, London, who was equally surprised to hear that a group in Holland was planning to honour their uncle.
Ron said: "My father didn't like to talk about the war because he was very close to his brother and was deeply saddened by his untimely death, as were so many in similar circumstances. So we knew very little about what had happened to my uncle until we saw the article."
Ron helped add in some more details about his uncle.
Victor was born in Tring in 1923 to Herbert and Maud Cawdery. He had a sister called Joyce and his older brother, Ronald Cawdery, father of Ron and Chris, was also in the RAF during the war as a Lancaster bomber pilot.
Ron's Uncle Victor, (left) and father, pictured as boys
On January 14, 1944, FS Cawdery was returning from a bombing raid over the German city of Brunswick, when their plane was intercepted by a German nightfighter.
On January 14 next year the ARG group will unveil a memorial on the site of the crash, exactly 63 years after FS Cawdery's death.
Pieter Korshuize, of the ARG group, said their mission was to uphold the memory of those that took part in the aerial war.
He added that research they had done showed that FS Cawdery's Lancaster bomber, part of 156 Squadron, had come down, from an altitude of around six km, onto agricultural land, near the village of Kolhorn in Northern Holland.
The ARG uncovered German documents that revealed that despite reports that all the bodies had been recovered, only four out of the seven crew were ever found.
Ron's father, Ronald Kenneth Cawdery in RAF uniform during the war
Ron Cawdery said: "I spoke to Pieter and the work they do is very impressive and they don't get any funding for it.
"My interest is in the German records that say they only found four bodies. I'd really like to find out whether my uncle was one of those four, or if he is still buried in that field with the plane."
He added that he and his brother would be honoured to attend the memorial ceremony.
CONTACT US, TELL US YOUR NEWS, TELL US YOUR VIEWS ETC ON THE NEWS
