Family history across the seas

CAUTION: Some people may find the content of this post confronting and distressing.

It started simply enough as these things sometimes do but became quite the research rabbit warren. Why not grab a drink of your choice and join me.

My friend Ursula C Krause, whom I met at Roots Tech London 2019, is a professional German genealogist at My German Family, as well as founder and educator at German Genealogy Headquarters with Ute Brandenburg. Recently on Facebook, Ursula posted a record she had found for the burial of Allied Air Force crew member in the Evangelische Lutheran records at Bredstedt, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, which are held by Archion. (Landeskirchliches Archiv der Evangelisch-Lutherischen Kirche in Norddeutschland, Kirchenkreis Nordfriesland, Bredstedt-24)

The entry and Ursula’s translation to English are as below:

Entry 39/1944 records:
Date of burial: 8 September 1944
Grave site: 546 d
Eine Strandleiche, USA Angehöriger, Kanadier (deleted), Australier, vom Vorland des Cecilienkoogs, etwa 35–40 Jahre alt, überführt durch eine englische Gräberkommission.In English: A body washed ashore, U.S. national, Canadian (deleted), Australian, from the foreland of the Cecilienkoog, approximately 35–40 years old, transferred by a British Graves Commission.

Ursula posed the question to her Facebook friends “Is there a way of finding out who this was?”

My initial glib response was “no”, as we had no name or specific place of birth though probably Australian.

On further reflection, and a challenge from Ursula, I put my thinking cap on. A clue: the body had been removed by the “British Graves Commission”.

Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC)[1]

Hmm, why not see which CWGC sites are in the vicinity mentioned? The CWGC site is excellent so that seemed feasible.  Narrowing it down to the region around Bredstedt, it suggested the two likeliest possibilities were Kiel and Hamburg. I started with Kiel War Cemetery and searched the records for Australians, using no name and the approx. date and close to the age range the pastor suggested (which with injury and sea impact might have been over-estimated).

Refining my search, I proposed these men as the likely short list to match the information:

F/Sgt Thomas Adcock, ID 434097 died 30 August, age 24 (too young?)

F/O James Standish Leigh, ID 434296, died 26 August, age 29

 F/O Darrell Owen Connolly, ID 429218, died 26 August, age 28

There were others, Albert Norman Billing 21, Kenneth Millett Hutchins 19, and Reginald John Burcide 20, but I deemed them simply far too young, or their deaths not close enough to the date of the Bredstedt burial.

Connolly and Leigh were the ones I chose to focus on because of their age.

National Archives of Australia: AIF Personnel Files

My next step was to look at their personnel files on Australia’s National Archives site. We are so fortunate to have all of the WWII and WWI files digitized…something not available to others[2].

Connolly’s file was sparse on helpful detail, but it did clarify that he had been sent to Canada for training then, on to the UK. Many of those who trained to be air crew had done so in Canada under the Empire Air Training Scheme[3]. He had left Australia on 14 April 1943 and embarked from Halifax to the UK on 24 November 1943. His file also revealed that he had been a school teacher prior to enlisting, and a casualty notice confirmed he was missing from 26 August 1944 and declared deceased.

In a small notation in his file, it stated he was with 100 Squadron, RAF Bomber Command[4] which was a multi-national force with air crew from Allied countries incl RAFVR, RAAF, RNZAF, and RCAF. Leigh’s file offered similar information to Connolly’s as they embarked for Canada on the same date.

Both men’s files included casualty notifications that they were presumed dead on 26 August 1944.

Personnel File CONNOLLY, D.O. page 21/33. https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/SearchScreens/NameSearch.aspx

Losses Database: International Bomber Command Centre

The tendency is to check out familiar web sites first, but a Google search can sometimes be more helpful re detail. A number of people and organisations have put a great deal of time and commitment into recording service details and operations. The following one was a gold mine: The Losses Database for International Bomber Command, World War II[5]. It collates information from a variety of sources and includes the aircraft details, all the crew on that flight and their roles, the memorial where their deaths are recorded and the relevant official casualty reports. You can see the link for Darrell Owen Connolly here.

This told me he and the rest of the crew had been on a bombing flight to Kiel on the night of 26/27 August, but they had not returned, and nothing had been heard from them since take-off. There were hundreds of aircraft on this raid and they were on radio silence. Their plane was an Avro Lancaster III listed as LM622 HW-P.

The crew of LM622 were as follows and I have collated the key information. Further details on each man can be found by searching the Losses Database by their name.

While five of the standard seven-man crew were Australians, two were from the UK. All were single though Leigh had become engaged soon after his departure to Canada[6]. Ancestry trees suggest Reginald Henry Watts[7] may have married in 1940.

Air Crew Remembered

Another internet discovery provided significant additional information and the record for each of this air-crew includes the following:

Claimed by Fw. Gottfried Schneider his 15th Abschuss and the 3rd of three this night, from 1./NJG3 – Sea West of Pellworm Island/Brestedt (SS): 4,000m at 23:35 hrs. Recorded in Abschüsse Luftgaukommando XI: Lancaster in mud flats near Heversteert 4.5km South of Pellworm Island 23:30 through fighter, exploded in mid-air. (Nachtjagd Combat Archive (24 July 1944 – 15 October 1944) Part 4 – Theo Boiten)

Red Cross Records

I was surprised to learn that crew fatalities in Germany were included with the POW record cards available through the UK National Archives (not available online).  However, it reminded me that Red Cross enquiry cards for Australians are now available online at the University of Melbourne.

While the cards for three of these Australians contained nothing more than the casualty reports, Connolly’s includes a reference of a wallet being sent to his family from a Rev Rogers. Unfortunately, the outcome of their enquiry is not recorded on his card. It was Kenneth Millett Hutchins’ card that revealed some new information. His body had been washed ashore on 13 September 1944 near Hallig Habel and buried on the 14^th at Hallig Gröde cemetery. His remains would have been recovered after the war and interred at the Kiel War Memorial.

KIEL WAR CEMETERY, Commonwealth War Graves Commission

Top Row (Left to right) CONNOLLY, DO; HUTCHINS KM; ROGERS, KR. DFC

Bottom Row: BILLING, ANJ; BURCIDE, RJ; LEIGH, JS. Not included: WATTS, RH

Writing this has felt rather like “War and Peace”, though Tolstoy I am not, and peace for both sides was not yet achieved by 1944. Hopefully, what this story does reveal is a little more about just one missing aircraft, its crew and the consequences of its loss.

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[1] https://www.cwgc.org/

[2] https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/SearchScreens/NameSearch.aspx

[3] https://www.awm.gov.au/articles/encyclopedia/raaf/eats

[4] https://anzacportal.dva.gov.au/wars-and-missions/world-war-ii-1939-1945/events/air-war-europe-1939-1945/australians-bomber-command AND https://www.awm.gov.au/media/raf-bomber-command-02

[5] https://internationalbcc.co.uk/history/losses-database/

[6] https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/46764586

[7] https://sites.southglos.gov.uk/war-memorials/people/reginald-henry-watts/