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Chapter 6 / St Edward’s and the Wars
at university and distributed illegal newsheets and British
newspapers, operating hidden radios and upsetting German
communications. In 1943 he was arrested and sent to
Buchenwald Concentration Camp, which he survived, he
thinks, due to his fair hair and blues eyes, admired by the
Nazis as ‘Aryan’. While his treatment was harsh it was not
nearly as bad as for others with him, who were
Jews or
Russians. After a year in the camp he was moved to Hamburg
and then in 1945 to a hospital in Sweden.
An altogether different type of heroism from that of
dangerous missions in the air was the experience of one
young man on the ‘Missing’ list, Sergeant-Pilot Arthur Banks
RAF (E, 1937–42), who in 1945 had not been heard from since
being shot down over Italy in August 1944. He had been in
a Mustang aircraft hit by flak and had made a forced landing,
after which he was seen setting fire to his aircraft. We now
know that local farmers then hid him until he was able to
contact the Italian ‘Boccato’ partisans, which he soon did. For
three months he worked with them in planning and carrying
out actions against the enemy. In December 1944 his group
was betrayed, and captured. He was immediately handed over
to the local German Commander for interrogation.
An OSE, Richard Redmayne Turral (G, 1951–6), wrote a
post-war article about Banks’ dreadful ordeal in the hands
of the Germans and Italians. In the archives is a copy of the
transcript of the trial for war crimes of one German and 20
Italians in March 1946 under the heading of ‘The Torture and
Killing of No. 1607992, Sergeant Banks, RAF, at Mesola and
Adria in December 1944.’ He would give nothing except his
name, rank and number and refused to reveal the names of
the Boccato members that the enemy wanted. He maintained
his silence over six days of increasingly terrible torture. The
Germans handed him over to the Italian Black Brigade,
who continued the torture. He was eventually thrown into
the River Po when his torturers thought him dead, with a
boulder tied to his leg. He managed to free himself from the
boulder and swam for the bank, but it was the wrong bank,
next to the Italian barracks, and he was picked up by the
patrol who had thrown him in the river. An Italian officer
then shot him in the back of his head
and he was buried
in the communal dung heap. Later his body was moved to
Argenta Gap, where men from the Royal East Kent Regiment
(the Buffs) were buried. When the details of this almost
unbelievable story came out he was awarded the George
Cross posthumously.
due to the raid on the Mohne, Eder and Sorpe dams in the
Ruhr. His leadership on the Dambusters raid was outstanding:
his bombing was accurate, and he offered his own aircraft
as a target in order to protect others. By this stage he had
completed over 170 sorties and 600 hours operational flying. In
September 1944 the awful news arrived of Wing Commander
Guy Gibson’s death at the age of 26: he had crashed in
Holland in a Mosquito aircraft with his navigator, having been
the master bomber in a raid on Rheydt. He should not in fact
have been on this sortie at all, as he had already fulfilled his
quota of missions and flying hours, but had requested the Air
Ministry to allow him to continue. Churchill, who had sent
him, early in the war, to America as an air attaché because his
example of what Britain could offer was so impressive, wrote
personally to his widow after his death.
Adrian Warburton (B, 1932–5) was a Wing Commander
with the RAF Reconnaissance Section, a less conspicuous
role than that of fighter pilots, but he was nevertheless a
dashing figure. He appeared to be without fear in his sorties
at extremely low altitude to photograph key enemy ships,
ports and strongpoint installations. He was awarded a DSO
and Bar, DFC and two Bars and the American DFC. He
was a much more swashbuckling character than Gibson or
Bader, being based in Malta, not conforming to rules and
regulations, and frequently appearing accompanied by his
dancer girlfriend. He would return again to targets if an
earlier mission had not produced perfect results. The last time
he was heard from was in April 1944,
and he was believed
to have crashed. In 1945 he was listed as ‘presumed killed’
at the age of 27, just a year older than Gibson
.
The crash site
was not finally discovered until 2003: it was in a Bavarian
field, with his body still in the plane about two metres under
the ground. The plane had flipped over prior to impact
and the propellers had dug out a deep hole in the ground.
He was finally buried two miles from the crash site at the
Durnbach Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery.
A contemporary pointed out that neither Bader, Warburton,
nor Gibson courted popularity or set out to win friends –
which makes their resilience and determination all the more
admirable.
The extraordinary heroism shown by these three tends to
make us forget others. For example, Flying Officer Gordon
Sampson Clear (G, 1926–30) received a DFC for leading his
squadron in an attack on the Molybdenum Plant at Knabon in
Norway. This was a particularly dangerous mission as the target
was hidden in a mountainous area with very treacherous air
currents, but he was successful. He was, very sadly, killed soon
afterwards. There are very many tales to tell of extraordinary
bravery which we unfortunately cannot cover in this book.
An interesting story is that of Theodor Abrahamsen
(D, 1933–9), a Norwegian national who had become Head
of School. He joined the Norwegian resistance while still
ARTHUR BANKS
The Prosecuting Counsel at the war crimes trial said that‘Men like
Banks,evenhavingsufferedallthathehadsuffered,donotdieeasily.’
HisGeorgeCrosscitationstatedthat‘SergeantBanksendured
much suffering with stoicism, withholding information, which
would have been of vital interest to the enemy. His courage and
endurance were such that they impressed even the captors.’ His
portrait, reproduced here, was painted posthumously by Robert
Swan and now hangs in the Old Library.
Adrian Warburton (B, 1932–5),
centre, in Malta with the USAAF,
April 1943.
Farleft:Painting(byRobertSwan,paintedposthumously)and
medals of Arthur Banks (E, 1937–42). Below is his half sister,
Margaret Castle.
Left: Arthur Banks,
c.
1942.
Of Adrian Warburton
‘A brave and modest
man, serving and
dying with men who
appreciated his worth
to the full.’
–
Chronicle
obituary,
March 1945.