News-Info-Alerts

Re: It's Never Too Late

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: July 16, 2003

"Australian airmen buried in Germany


DAVID Sutherland was nine months old when his father Jack's bomber was shot down on a mission over Germany in 1944.

Today, he watched as the father he never knew and five other airmen - three Australians and two Britons - were buried with full military honours in the Berlin war cemetery, 59 years after they were reported missing in action, presumed dead.

Their remains were unearthed two years ago when German aviation historians found the wreckage of their Lancaster bomber in a forest outside Berlin.

Today, they were given a formal burial in front of a group of relatives flown in for the ceremony from Australia and Britain by the RAAF, the RAF and the Australian and British governments.

Sutherland, 60, a sales representative from Adelaide, said it was an emotional pilgrimage.


"A friend of mine said 'Your father is going to be so happy when you get there. He's been lying there waiting for almost 60 years for you to come and see him. Now you're coming across to see him, he's going to be so happy and so are you'," Sutherland said.

"It is an emotional time."

Flight Sergeant Sutherland was 22 and a RAAF rear gunner when Lancaster ED 867 took off from RAF base Waddington in England in the early hours of January 29, 1933, to bomb Berlin.

But less than three hours later it was shot down 40 km north of its target, killing all seven men on board.

RAF bomb aimer Sid Griffiths' body was found soon after and buried in a local cemetery, before being reinterred in the war cemetery.

But the other men were simply listed as missing in action, their fates unknown for decades.

Sutherland's mother Edna eventually remarried and her first husband was rarely mentioned.

"All I knew was that my father had been killed in the war," Sutherland said.

"I often wondered what happened - did it blow up in mid-air or did it crash to the ground and was he wandering around somewhere. Would there be a knock at the door one day and this person saying 'I'm your father'?

"But I never tried to find out more because I didn't want to cause any disturbances to my mother."

When he got the phonecall two years ago explaining that the plane had been found, he was stunned.

"It was like a smack between the eyes," he said.

"It was very hard to take in one little phonecall. I just sat there and said 'You'll have to excuse me a minute' and I cried for a few minutes.

"That was the first I knew about it."

Following that, and his stepfather's death, his mother began to open up about the loss of her first love.

"I've had two or three photographs of him for years but I always had them locked away in my wardrobe because I wasn't supposed to bring them out," Sutherland said.

"Now I've got them up in the lounge room with his medals and a little plaque."

Among the other relatives was Brisbane builder Ian Ludlow, 59, whose uncle Bob Ludlow was the Lancaster's wireless operator.

"Bob's photo was always up on the wall and we always used to ask about Uncle Bob and all we were ever told was that he was missing in action, presumed dead, in Germany and it was never, ever talked about," Ludlow said.

"After it was confirmed that his plane had been found, it was only then that Dad spoke about his brother.

"It's obviously been a relief for him to know."

The others laid to rest today were pilot Ian Durston, 32, from Brisbane, upper gunner Phillip Gill, 20, also from Brisbane, and RAF navigator Harold Fry and flight engineer Francis Aver.

More than 20,000 allied airmen are still listed as missing. "