Harry Winter, aged 100, leans forward in his wheelchair and speaks with clarity and passion of his time as a crew member on bombers in the Royal Air Force during the second World War. Time hasn’t dimmed his grasp of detail.
He describes the day in October 1943 that he flew his 19th mission. He had a cold that day. He remembers the “flak” they got as they flew over the Netherlands en route to Germany. He describes how their aircraft was attacked after dropping its payload over Kassel. He remembers being shot and how he slapped the thigh of the tail gunner, who was already dead.
His eyes light up and his hands wave about as he describes parachuting off the burning plane, being found injured in a field, being brought to a hospital followed by a convalescence home run by kindly nuns. Winter can remember it all.
‘It shouldn’t be talked about,’ he says softly, of his time in the POW camp. ‘It was really bad.’
— Harry Winter
But some details are best forgotten. I ask him how he was later treated as a prisoner of war at the notorious Stalag Luft VII camp in Bankau, then in Germany but now part of Poland. He holds my gaze with a pained expression. He is looking directly at me but who knows what he sees in his mind’s eye. Silence descends, then he grumbles slightly.
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Winter slumps back into his wheelchair, looking despondent. For the first time during our conversation at the revamped RAF Biggin Hill Museum & Chapel on the southern edge of Greater London, he looks his age.
“It shouldn’t be talked about,” he says softly, of his time in the POW [prisoner of war] camp. “It was really bad.”
Britain’s military history is woven into its social fabric. The last remaining war veterans such as Winter are respected here in a way that, coming from a country with no recent military past, it can be difficult to fully appreciate from afar. Up close it is more obvious. Winter is the star turn at the official relaunch of the museum at RAF Biggin Hill, one of the most important wartime airfields in Britain.
Winter was a teenager working in a Cardiff paper mill when the war broke out. He joined the RAF two years later and trained as a wireless operator, serving with 427 squadron, a Canadian group. He flew 18 missions over Germany, which was pummelled from the air by Allied forces as the war dragged on.
On the morning of October 22nd, 1943, Winter says he was approached by “Bob the Skipper” at his base. “We’re on tonight,” Bob said. Winter recalls that he had been suffering from bronchitis, but with the rest of his crew they loaded up their Halifax bomber, called London’s Revenge. The Blitz earlier in the war had left its mark on the English psyche.
They flew over the Netherlands towards Frankfurt, before breaking off for Kassel. By then, Winter believes, the Germans had already figured out what the targets would be. The sky was illuminated by flares. After turning for home once it had dropped its bombs, London’s Revenge was shot through by German fire.
Injured in one leg, Winter parachuted from the plane and landed in a tree, breaking the other leg. He fell and was found the next morning by farmers who were spreading slurry. He ended up spending six months in a convalescence facility for injured POWs.
They were forced to march through the bitter cold in early 1945 to Lukenwalde, near Berlin. From there, they were liberated by advancing Russian troops
“It was a home from home,” Winter recalls. He was well treated but after his injuries healed, he was sent on to Stalag Luft VII and life became harsher. The food was the worst thing, he says. They were fed frozen, rotten potatoes. Occasionally rotten fish. Sometimes they got a kind of putrid soup. “We were so hungry, we ate it.” The only proper food came in the odd parcel from the Red Cross, which would be shared among many POWs.
They were forced to march through the bitter cold in early 1945 to Lukenwalde, near Berlin. From there, they were liberated by advancing Russian troops. Winter made it to the local town, where he spent a short time staying in a house with two German women who were afraid of the Russian soldiers. He protected them, answering the door when Russians came knocking in the night.
After the war, he returned to his job in the paper trade, eventually settling in London. He has lived peacefully since and is due to celebrate his 101st birthday in May. I ask if it is painful talking about the war. “Not really. I’m just thankful to be still here.” Among the Biggin Hill museum’s many exhibits are the government telegram informing his mother he had been captured and the 21st birthday card his family sent while he was in captivity.
The government will allocate an extra £5 billion (€5.67 billion) to its armed forces in the budget this week. After Brexit, Britain is grappling with its relative decline as a military force and is unsure of its future in a changing world. But it will never forget its past.