On Tuesday morning this week we gathered for our annual College ANZAC Day service. Every year a catafalque party comprised of Eddies Men stands guard with silent respect. Every year the young men sitting in our Hall listen intently in quiet deference. And every year we hear a story of the past.
Stories link memory and learning, and in these times of turmoil, how much more important is it to take and learn lessons from these tragic events of the past. In 2024 we remember World War II (WWII) and the story told of a young man. A young man whose life, in many ways, was not too dissimilar to that of the 1000 or so students whose pockets are adorned with our Eddies crest.
In the near four generations that have lived since WWII there will be a familiar ring to the experiences of Stanley Jones. He was a son and a brother but also, he was a soldier in a theatre of war. Here is the point where we hope the familiarity ends.
I sincerely thank St Edmund’s Head of Mathematics, Mr Phillip Trezise for sharing this powerful story on Tuesday and for allowing me to share the text of his speech which is reproduced below. Lest we forget.
Stanley William Jones was an ordinary Australian who was born in Gympie on 12 July 1924, almost 100 years ago. Stan was the first child of William and Elsie Jones. Stan had three younger siblings Les, Dorothy and Ron. When Stan was aged 13 his family moved to Toowong where he attended the Central Technical College in Brisbane. In 1939 Stan successfully attained his Junior Certificate (equivalent of year 10 today) with passes in Geography, English, Arithmetic, Algebra and Woodwork. He failed Geometrical Drawing, Geometry and Physics. He was a keen sportsman who represented his school in hockey, cricket, football, tennis and swimming. As most people did at that time, Stan left school after attaining his Junior Certificate. Only a small minority of the most outstanding academic students went on to senior studies and then university. Stan took up employment as a shop assistant to help support his family.
In July 1940, aged 16, Stan was too young for military service, so he joined the Air Training Corp. The Corp had two objectives. The primary short-term aim was to train young men between 16 and 18 to join the wartime RAAF. The second, long-term objective, was to encourage young men to increase their knowledge of air matters and in particular the RAAF, instil a sense of discipline, and provide elementary training in air-related technical matters.
A few days after his 18th birthday Stan enlisted in the RAAF on 21st July 1942. By now World War II had been raging in Europe for almost three years. After 9 months of initial training in Australia Stan embarked for the UK on 20 April 1943. Once in England there was a further 8 months of training on heavy bombers.
During this time Stan wrote many letters home to his family and friends. The original letters were kept on file by the RAF and photographic copies were sent home to the families. I have selected some quotes from one set of letters Stan sent to his family in November 1943.
- To younger brother Ron: “I suppose I will be with you again someday soon and then we shall go down to Southport and have a good time”.
- To younger sister Dorothy: “I hope you are bucking in and helping Mum with the house-work as much as you possibly can”, “Remember me to everyone at Church and be good”.
- To younger brother Les who by now was also in the Air Training Corp: “I am glad that you are in the ground crew, I can assure you my lad that air crew is not as safe as it might be”, “Mum has got enough worries with me being over here in air crew”, “when I am flying, I damn nearly freeze”.
- To whole family: “please don’t worry about me as I am quite safe where I am. If I send you an order for some new underpants you shall know that I am not as safe as I used to be”.
- To mother Elsie: “I sincerely hope that you are well and that you are not worrying too much about me. I can look after myself and if I can’t well the crew can”.
- To father William: “I am still in training and almost fed up to the neck with it … I expect my turn will come along soon enough”.
It was during this time in training that Stan became engaged to his girlfriend Eileen. Even though he had only just turned nineteen the ever-present dangers of war had the effect of making young men grow up very quickly.
Stan and his crew were training to operate a Lancaster bomber. The Avro Lancaster was the premier British heavy bomber of World War II. The Lancaster was powered by four Merlin V12 engines. The same engine that was employed in the spitfire fighters. With a wingspan of 31 metres and a length of 21 metres the Lancaster could carry 6400 kg of ordinance over a range of 4000 km at a cruising speed of 320 km/h. Defensive armaments were provided by 7.7 mm Browning Mark II machine guns: two in the nose turret, two in the mid-upper turret and four in the rear turret.
Stan was the rear gunner for his crew. The rear gunner was the main defender for the Lancaster as most enemy fighters lined up for an attack from behind their targets. To improve visibility, many rear gunners had the central section of Perspex removed from the turret. This would have made the rear turret extremely vulnerable to the freezing conditions at the operating altitude of 4000 m. To make matters worse, the rear turret was so small that the gunner had to leave his parachute on a hook in the back of the aircraft.
By the end of January 1944 Stan and his crew had completed their training and were posted to 626 Squadron based at Wickenby in the east of England. Over the next two months the crew were assigned to participate in raids on targets in Stuttgart, Sweinfurt, Frankfurt and Berlin. These operations occurred at night and lasted from 6 to 8 hours depending on the distance to the target. On two occasions Stan fought off a German FW190 “Wild Boar” fighter. The FW190 was a typical single engine World War II fighter that was armed with forward facing cannons. The FW190 tactics were to patrol above the German cities during air raids and attack bombers that were illuminated from below by ground fires. The German Luftwaffe soon realised that attacking from above left their FW190 fighters vulnerable to the mid-upper and rear turrets of the Lancaster.
The Luftwaffe equipped their larger BF110 aircraft with radar units that assisted the German pilots to locate the bombers at night. The antennae mounted on the nose of the aircraft are clearly visible in the image. An even more deadly innovation was the use of twin 20 mm cannons that were mounted to fire upwards. This allowed the BF110 to sneak in under the belly of the Lancaster where it was out of sight from the rear gunner. The BF110’s cannons could then be aimed at the wings of the Lancaster to disable the engines or hit the fueltanks.
On the 24th March 1944, just a little over eighty years ago, Stan and his crew departed Wickenby as part of a force of 811 aircraft detailed to attack Berlin. After delivering their bomb load over the target the crew headed west to return to England. At approximately 2:00 am on 25th March their Lancaster was attacked by a BF110 night fighter near the border of the Netherlands. Eyewitnesses reported that the Lancaster was on fire and broke up in mid-air. Stan and the rest of the crew perished in the crash; he was just 19 years of age.
The losses in Bomber Command during World War II were staggering, 55 573 men were killed. More aircrew were lost in the single raid on Nuremberg on the 30th of March 1944 than in the whole of the Battle of Britain. Over the course of the war 55% of aircrew were killed on operations, 3% were injured, 13% became prisoners of war, 2% managed to evade capture leaving only 27% to survive their tour of 30 operations. No other branch of the defence force has ever suffered such catastrophic losses from a such a protracted action. It is even more sobering when we consider that all bomber command airmen were volunteers.
The British prime minister, Sir Winston Churchill, is often quoted as referring to the fighter pilots of the Battle of Britain as “the few”. Many people forget that Churchill was also including the airmen of Bomber Command in that speech. Churchill said,
“Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few. All hearts go out to the fighter pilots, whose brilliant actions we see with our own eyes day after day; but we must never forget that all the time, night after night, month after month, our bomber squadrons travel far into Germany, find their targets in the darkness by the highest navigational skill, aim their attacks, often under the heaviest fire, often with serious loss, with deliberate careful discrimination, and inflict shattering blows upon the whole of the technical and war-making structure of the Nazi power."
Stan and his crew mates are buried in a Commonwealth War Graves cemetery in Germany. In 1989, 45 years after Stan’s death, his sister Dorothy made a visit to the cemetery to pay her respects. The lady in the photograph is my mother and Stan was my uncle, who I never had the chance to know.
We must never forget the sacrifices these young men made. They had their entire lives ahead of them yet were prepared to risk it all to defend our country and our way of life.