Story by Dennis Royston, RAF, Flight Engineer

We flew to the Arnhem area towing Horsa gliders on the 17 & 18 September 1944, packed with members of the Airborne division and their equipment. Due to tragic shortage of aircraft on the 19^th we were rested, but on the 20 September we set off with our bomb bays full of parachute canister supplies and two parachute panniers in the fuselage to be dispatched by two army dispatchers at the appropiate time. We were on course and dropping fairly fast on our run in towards our DZ when!!!  Crump – we had been hit and the port wing between the engines was on fire. The port wing was dropping and the skipper had little control over it. He ordered crash positions and with considerable skill coaxed it down to within a few feet of the deck when he uttered an unprintable mouthful followed by ‘the wing has dropped off’. This saved the fire from spreading to the fuselage. There was a lurch, a loud scraping sound and the nose filled with turnips. We were down, not far from Eindhoven and no-one was injured – not a scratch between us. We were soon out of the astro domw and scanning the horizon. Our Canadian reargunner had drawn his .38 and using choice words invited the gerries to do their worst. Skipper told him to put the bloody thing away. We decided to make for a wood about half a mile away for cover, but hearing shouting we thought we had been spotted and hit the deck. We stayed down – peering occasionally in the direction of the shouting, until we could see men running towards us with their rifles held above their heads. We sensed they were ours. We were taken back to their field HQ at Westerhoven where they informed us that the wood was seething with gerries they had chased there half an hour ago and were expecting a counter attack.

While we were being feted with tea and fags, F/Marshall Montgomery went down the main road in his staff car distributing cartons of 200 cigarettes.

The sergeant gathered some of his men and said they were going to see if they could salvage our cargo otherwise blow it up as they didn’t intend to leave it for them b....? We didn’t hear any explosions from the direction of our beloved ‘E’ Elephant, and they cheered us up by telling us that we were carrying Nitro and Mortars. They supplied us with a driver and truck and eventually after much diving in and out of ditches we arrived at the Belgian village of Veerle where we were wined and dined by a charming couple and their three daughters in their pub and so to bed. The next morning after breakfast we had a hard job preserving our dignity as the daughters wanted all we owned as souvenirs. We ultimately arrived at Diest aerodrome where we boarded an ancient Sparrow with some wounded and flown to Brussels. There we were told to lose oureselves as they had too many wounded stretcher cases to get back – but in due course we were delivered back to Keevil in an Anson with some walking wounded, where there was some jubelation as we were the second crew to return to the field after being missing. Only 8 out of 28 had returned after the op. After a spell of leave we were back in circulation, with more SOE and SAS ops, and a move to Wethersfield to go once more into training, preparing for the Rhine crossing.

Cyril on the right, in entry and escape hatch of Stirling 'E' easy. Four ground staff who serviced our aircraft did a magnificent job, Cyril painted our elephant emblem on the nose. They took as much pride in the aircraft as we did. The three aircrew are Dennis Royston (left in door) George Oliver (right in door) and Chuck Henderson.  1944.

Jimmy Oates

Story by George Oliver, Pilot, RAAF

The first day the things i recall mainly are the fighters, the fighter cover we had, it was tremendous to see the fighters diving around the place, we noticed several of them gunning anything suspicious they saw on the ground. Another thing i noticed was that a lot of the ground was flooded in Holland. I understand the Germans probably did this. We got our glider there allright, dropped it and did not run into any serious trouble that day. It was a highly successful venture i guess. The second day, i can’t recall a great deal about the second day, we took this glider across and we did not get into problems, there was quite some Flak but we were not hit. We got back unscaved. We were fairly pleased with our effort, not knowing of course the tragedy that the whole show was to become.

The third day of course we were not so lucky, we took off with a cargo of mortar bombs and also we had in the rear two army despatchers and big containers of fuel, we went over the channel, flew north across Belgium and entered Holland. We were just south of Eindhoven somewhere when we were surrounded by Flak, nothing happened for a minute or two, suddenly there was a hell of a bang, just as though a horse had kicked the aircraft. It was a tremendous bang. It seemed to be on the port side to me, but i checked the instruments and the engines were running allright, the controls were ok at that time, so we continued on, a little later i noticed that the wing was loosing lift and dropping away, i did not say anything to the crew i just trimmed the a/c and kept my eye on everything, but it kept getting worse and worse and dropping away, i could not understand what was wrong out there. Then a little later, i think it was Les Steele who said ‘skip, we can smell fire down here’ So i think it was about this particular time i began to realise there was something terribly wrong out on the port side there and the wing was really giving me trouble. Eventually the fire broke through, at that time the wing was becoming so seriously enclined to drop i realised i was in serious trouble. I realised the old girl was going to let us down, i had to do something. I decided to go down, i did not like my chance of climbing away, i called the crew into crash positions, selected a field and down we went. We did not have time to jettison so we took our full bomb-bay of mortar bombs and petrol down. I did a wheels up crash landing, managed to kick right rudder on to get up the wounded wing, we slithered along. I recall the burning wing hit a tree and some of it snapped off and this may have prevented any of the fire to spread. Eventually we stopped much to our relief. We had some duties to perform, destroying documents etc and of course i had to turn off some switches, i can’t remember the details. I know we did not waste too much time, i went out of the hatch above my seat, i was not the first. When i came out some of the others where there, standing on the ground.

I seem to recall there were some explosions, we moved away from the a/c of course fairly rapidly because it was burning. We moved down somewhere along a field and found a ditch. We went down in this ditch to gather our thoughts together and check our documents, i remember junior, he was a bit of a hard case, got his revolver out of his pouch and stood looking over the top of the ditch with this thing. I did not fancy any Germans taking us on with our Smith & Wessons. While in this ditch we had some maps and we had a bit of a round table where we were and Jimmy Oates of course was able to give us a pretty good idea of where we were. It was somewhere near a village called Westerhoven, we thought we might go south, that seemed to be the logic thing to do. I don’t know how far we proceeded but we were in a ditch again and saw some soldiers in the distance, we did not know if it were British or Germans, i remember junior waving his S&W again which did not appealed on me much, but as they got close they put their rifles horizontal over their head as they walked towards us, we realised then they were British. They told us the village of Westerhoven had just been taken the previous night, so we headed towards Westerhoven, well all the villagers came out to see us, we must have shaken hands with every Dutch we saw along a couple of kilometers. A army HQ was set up there, we were able to find a radio operator and we asked if he could send a message back to England tell them that we were safe.

We were assured that they would do so, however i found out later the message did never get through. One of the things i recall in this village was that there were some artillery guns along the perimeter of the village, they were firing away, the village people were just having a look over this, just wandering around these guns firing. We went up to the army HQ, and waited there, eventually a officer gave us a map and asked what we wanted to do. I said we wanted to go back to England, he gave us a map which i still posess today and later on in the afternoon a light army truck arrived, we crawled aboard and set off. Headed towards Diest. We were fortunate enough to be taken in by a inn keeper, they really looked after us, they gave us a good meal, we were amazed of the quantity of the food available. We spent the night there and next morning we began looking around for a lift further on. There was a field dressing station nearby and we were told we may be able to get a lift to Brussels.So we went out the the field dressing station and got a lift in a ambulance airplane down to Brussels and we spent the night there. In the morning, i think it was friday morning we decided to look around for a lift back to England. We had plenty of competition, but we got a lift on a Avro Anson, which was carrying blood plasma across. So we piled on board and we were dropped off at Keevil. We got out at Keevil and everyone was flabbergasted, they thought we were dead on gone. That night the old adjudant was very kind to me, PA Wellman, an old WW1 adjudant, always treated me as a son. He was pleased to see us. I phoned my wife, after that we had a meal and then went up to the Duke, including the army despatchers, i’m afraid we had a few drinks that night... Next day we retrieved our kits which were packed up and put in something we used to call the morgue, the kits of the missing crews were there. Geoff Bartholomy packed mine up, i had asked Geoff to write to my mother in the event of me being killed. We were given some leave, i went to my wife.

On November 8^th i did my last operation with 196 Sqdn, on a night SAS special duties trip. Then i was posted to 1665 HCU as a screen, there i spent the remainder of my flying career. I did that until June 4^th 1945. Then was send to embarcation depot to go back home to Australia. 

George Oliver

Eye witness account

On whensday 20th September, our village escaped from a disaster. At about 15.00 allied airplanes came over again, now from the south over the forest. We saw that one of them had it’s engine on fire. The pilot tried to put the aircraft to the ground, he choose the open terrain between ‘de Donk’, ‘de Mozik’ and the village. This emergency landing would have been a success if  he would not have touched a big oak tree with the tip of his wing. The tree broke off and the aircraft turned half a circle and it slithered sideways for about 50 meters and stopped in ‘de kleine Beerze’, the aircraft was burning and lay over a ditch. All of the crew could leave the airplane. The Wintermans saw all this happening and went outside, they saw the crew walking in the wrong direction, towards the Germans. So the Wintermans started waving and shouting but without much success. A while later the British soldiers who were in the village brought the crew to safety. Some days later they returned to England. The Stirling had been on it’s way to Arnhem, to supply the troops. It carried light ammunition, mortar bombs, food and fuel. All was packed in containers, the containers carried a light and battery, so it must have been used in the dark too.

Our cows which were in the same field as the Stirling took off because of  the sounds of the exploding ammunition. We had to go look for them in the village that evening. Also we noticed that the milking buckets and stools were burned. Our fence was damaged so the wreck attrackted lots of playing children. There was no barbed wire so we had to use the wire used by the British, it was difficult to bend this steel wire. The ammunition was a danger for everybody. My brother had found a mortar grenade and had placed it on a fire, then went into the ditch and waited for the loud bang. Nothing happened, so they went back to work. Just when they were on the other end of the field it exploded with a loud bang. Nobody was hurt.Two of the engines were in the ditch so we decided to bring all of the wreckage to the scrapyard, we used the steel armoured plates though to make ploughing scissors and we also used a metal frame attached to the back of the airplane. We drove 30 times to the scrapyard before all was gone. The mortar bombs, about 60, were destroyed by the British, but 25 years later when digging for a new ditch, other bombs came up again. In 1970 all seemed to be gone.

Story by Peter van Gelderen

In 1995 i received a letter from Dennis Royston, a 196 sqdn Flight Engineer in which he told me about his emergency landing near Eindhoven in 1944. He told me that he tried to find the crash site several times when he visited Holland after the war, but he never found it. That’s where i came in and i started a search for the exact location. After a short search in came into contact with Ad van Zandvoort who knew the family Wintermans, the Stirling had crashed near the farm of the Wintermans family. Appointments were made and finally in 1995 Dennis Royston and George Oliver from Australia came over to visit the site. After 51 years they were back on the spot, it was a exciting moment for all of us. They met again the Wintermans who saw the airplane going down and who shouted at them not to walk towards the Germans.Memories came back at the crash site and on the spot we unearthed some remains of the Stirling, parts were taken back to Australia by George and are now in a display case. After some searches at the site we found more; a pilot’s blind flying panel, oxygen bottles, instruments and even a fair amount of the mortar bombs they had carried. Unfortunately all the big parts were brought to the scrapyard after the war, for some time one of the engines of the Stirling was at the farm, but eventually it also went to the scrapyard.