WIX Archives
If the link goes dead, here is the text of the report.
Posted by Lee Walsh on Thu Jun 05, 2003 01:54:39 PM
In reply top Re: Another BoB Airmans Body Recovered posted by Harold Mulder on Wed Jun 04, 2003 10:13:29 PM
Discovery of pilot's body a mystery
His sister in Vancouver is not concerned about who is in his grave
Wednesday, June 04, 2003
The last surviving sibling of a Royal Air Force pilot shot down during the Battle of Britain 63 years ago says she doesn't want his grave opened after archeologists found his remains still strapped in his wrecked Spitfire more than 1,000 kilometres from where he is supposedly buried.
Beatrice Strathdee, who lives in Vancouver, said she sees no reason to question whose body is in the grave at Mortlach Church in Dufftown, Moray, Scotland. As far as she is concerned, it is that of her brother William (Sunny) Gordon, 20, who was shot down Sept. 6, 1940, during a ferocious dogfight with three German Messerschmitts over the Sussex Downs in southern England.
"Let sleeping dogs lie," said Strathdee, 88, from the Arbutus Care Centre where she lives with her husband Stewart. "I don't think that's fair. It was so long ago. What can they do about it now anyway?"
But the discovery of Pilot Officer Gordon's body in the wreckage of Spitfire No. X4036 on Howbourne Farm, Hadlow Down this week raises questions about who is buried in his plot.
Aviation archeologists who had permission from the British ministry of defence to recover the aircraft did not expect to find a body in it when they dug into the rich soil of a meadow beside the River Uck. Their understanding was that Gordon's body was recovered in 1940 and handed over to the family, which then buried it in a family plot in the church cemetery of tiny Dufftown, population 1,700, a famous malt whisky town in Glen Fiddich, northwest of Aberdeen.
But when the archeologists peeled back the soil several feet deep over his aircraft, they found Gordon's remains, complete with a tunic and name tag, still strapped into the cockpit.
Strathdee did not want to believe her brother's bones remained in his aircraft for 63 years, especially since his family had held a very public funeral, including having the closed casket rest in state in the family home for several days.
"The whole town turned out for the funeral," she said. "His body was lying in a coffin in our house for a long time."
Gordon's death came one day before the British war ministry issued its coded "Cromwell" warning, indicating it believed Nazi Germany was set to invade within 12 hours.
At the time the Battle of Britain was at its apogee, with RAF Fighter Command in danger of collapsing. Every day young and relatively inexperienced pilots were being shot down and the RAF seemed unable to cope with the losses.
At the time, Gordon had already had nearly a year under his belt as a pilot, and had been credited with shooting down a German bomber over the English Channel.
His English comrades called him "Scotty" in deference to his place of birth; his sister Beatrice called him "Sunny" because of his disposition.
On the day he died, Gordon and other members of 234 Squadron were attacked by Messerschmitts high in the skies over the Downs.
It was part of a one-hour battle in which British pilots were credited with shooting down more than 34 Nazi bombers and Messerschmitts. Two Spitfires, including Gordon's, were shot down.
The next day, the "Cromwell" code led to the Home Guard being called out, bridges being blown up and church bells ringing across southern England.
In the confusion, Gordon's remains were hastily sent to his parents, Major William Gordon, DSO, MC and his wife Maggie.
His father, a former army officer who became the district registrar, duly recorded his son's death. But apparently, no one opened the casket to check the remains. If they did, they kept quiet, although Beatrice Strathdee said Tuesday she had heard before that the body might not be that of her brother.
"I've heard that story too," she said. "But I don't know ... they can talk like that, and say this and that, but I just don't know ..."
The body was buried with military honours in Mortlach cemetery, near the Dullan Water, which meets the River Fiddich. The commander of RAF Lossiemouth arranged a fly-past.
Gordon's younger sister Elizabeth tended the grave, and when she died last November at 72, she was buried above what was supposed to be her brother's coffin.
His parents were buried next to him. Beatrice said she is the last of their seven daughters.
She and her husband of 58 years moved to Canada from Mortlach more than 50 years ago, bringing his skills as a whisky distiller from Glen Fiddich to the Alberta Distilleries, where he worked until the 1980s. They have no children.
"We were very surprised to find the tunic, as we had been assured that all human remains had been removed and buried in 1940," Steve Hall, who led the archeological team, told The Times. "We had been following the rules of our licence very carefully, and when the bones appeared we looked at them reverently and immediately took them to Brighton police station."
Reverend Hugh Smith, the minister at Mortlach Church, expects the body buried in his cemetery will be exhumed.
"It's the first one we have had here in the 21 years I've been in charge," he said. "It will have to be done of course. We don't know what, or who, is buried down there.
"These things must have happened frequently during the war. If there are some stones in that coffin, it was probably done with the best intentions -- that of the family's comfort."
Beatrice Strathdee doesn't want to get involved with the ministry of defence, which wants to find surviving relatives to find out what to do with the remains found in the aircraft.
Sitting beside her husband, who suffered a massive stroke earlier this year and cannot talk very well, Strathdee said she won't condone an exhumation, even if it means there is another body buried in Gordon's grave.
Strathdee has fond memories of her ebullient brother. "He was so small and he always wanted to pilot a Spitfire. He used to run around in the kitchen going 'zoom, zoom, zoom,' " she said. "My mother used to have a nice laugh and he was like that too.
"The day he was killed I remember waking up and hearing him laughing and laughing and laughing. He was so young and small when it happened."
Gordon's death is still talked about in Dufftown, where he is regarded as a hero. Last month a plaque celebrating his achievements was erected at Mortlach Junior School, his alma mater. He is also remembered on the cenotaph in the war memorial gardens on the outskirts.
The wife of the farmer at Howbourne Farm, where his Spitfire crashed, described in a letter that was passed to Gordon's father how she had watched "a dog-fight high in the sky with three enemy fighters and one of ours engaged.
"There were sharp bursts of machinegun fire and the machine your son was piloting then suddenly nose-dived and came down almost vertically to crash into the earth . . . the pilot was most probably killed in the air as the machine came down apparently quite out of control."
One of Gordon's comrades, who flew beside him that day, still lives almost within sight of the crash site, at Crowborough, East Sussex. Bob Doe, who had served as a wing commander, recalled: "I remember Scotty as a very quiet, retiring chap, who had been with us ever since we formed the squadron.
"When he was shot down, I remember that I was trying to avoid the yellow-nosed Messerschmitts and concentrate on shooting down a Dornier bomber."
Days after Gordon died, British fortunes changed for the better. Fighter Command, which was suffering terrible losses as the Luftwaffe pounded their airfields, was able to regroup when the Germans changed tactics and started bombing London.
Within days, the RAF was able to rebuild, and by Sept. 15 it had inflicted enough damage on the German air force to claim victory in the skies of Britain.
Two days later Adolf Hitler shelved his invasion plans.