Laid to rest; WWII airmen buried 63 years after being shot down

The then Sergeant Jim Hopkins was a 19-year-old flight engineer on a Halifax bomber which was shot down while returning from a raid on Berlin in the early hours of 1 September 1943. The aircraft was hit by flak from a gun position at Datteln, North-West of Dortmund.

Four men - Pilot Officer Ken Sheward, Flight Sergeant R W Barlow and Sergeants Robert Simms and John Baxter - died in the wreck. Badly-injured crew member, Sergeant Ted Wilson, was taken critically injured from the aircraft and lost his battle for life three days later. He is buried at the Hotten War Cemetery, near Namur in Belgium.

Poignantly, the single other survivor, aircraft navigator John 'Jack' Leicester, died at his home in Warrington only a week ago at the age of 88.

In another remarkable footnote to the final chapter of this wartime tragedy, also present for the burial ceremony, which was conducted with full military honours, were two members of the German flak battery which brought down the Halifax.

Jim Hopkins met his two erstwhile 'enemies' when he visited the crash site after the aircraft remains were found in June last year. The men struck up a firm friendship.

Discovered

The remains of the three missing crew were found in May 2005 during work to build a swimming pool. Only one, Halifax JD413 pilot, Flight Lieutenant John Leslie Wilson, was able to be identified. All three remaining crew have now been buried with full military honours at the Reichswald Commonwealth War Cemetery, near Kleve on the German-Dutch border, alongside the graves of the other two crew members.

The ill-fated mixed British and Australian crew of Halifax JD413, from 77 Squadron operating from RAF Elvington, near York, could have avoided the mission on the night of 31 August 1943. The aircraft suffered an engine failure on the way to Berlin but the crew, having turned back after a similar mechanical problem on an earlier mission, elected to continue on the three remaining engines.

It was partly because of lack of power that the plane, having drifted to the South from its direct route back to the UK after dropping its bombs, slipped from under cloud cover as it passed over the heavily-defended Ruhr industrial area.

It was an easy target for the German anti-aircraft battery crew made up, among others, of 16-year-old Hitler Youth members Hugo Bressner and Theo Stevermann, who had been conscripted from the Sixth Form of their local school.

After being shot down, Jim Hopkins spent the rest of the war in a POW camp at Mulberg on the River Elbe. After the war, he became a policeman in Birmingham, where he still lives today. Aged 83, he is long-retired.

His German nemeses were both drafted into the Wehrmacht six months after the aircraft came down. Herr Bresser was taken prisoner by the Americans near Aachen in February 1945, while Herr Stevermann swapped his uniform for civilian clothes and slipped through Allied lines to return to his home after his unit’s last position near Detmold was over-run in the final weeks of the war.

Herr Bressner went on to become a Roman Catholic priest and served for many years until his retirement in a parish near Datteln. Herr Stevermann also remained in the area, working in a local business.

Jim explained how he felt seeing his comrades finally laid to rest:

"It was a bit sad. Quite a cermeony, well put on by the RAF and the British Army based at Rheindahlen. They organised everything. There were a number of unknown soldiers buried yesterday too.

"It was an emotional day. Standing there I could picture them as they were when we were flying together. It was our 19th mission together so we knew each other quite well. I felt sad but it was a good, albeit solemn ceremony. It was nice that the crew had a good send-off.

"There was an excellent attendance too, lots of officers came along which was also nice, along with a colonel from the Australian Army."

The night the aircraft went down is easily brought to Jim's memory:

"I don't really show emotion, which I don't mean in a disrespectful way. But yesterday, my thoughts really were of the crew and how we were back then."

In a separate ceremony at the Reichswald Cemetery, the remains of what could be up to 14 British soldiers from WW2 were interred, in a single coffin, with full military honours. The remains were discovered during construction work at Kleve, not far from the Reichswald Cemetery. The site was used as a temporary burial place in the last months of the war. It is believed the remains were missed when the graves were transferred to their final resting place after the end of the War.

Wreaths were laid at both ceremonies by Brigadier Max Marriner, Commander of the Army’s Rhine & European Support Group based at nearby Mönchengladbach, Group Captain Frank Simpson, Air Attaché from the British Embassy in Berlin and Lieutenant Colonel Sean Armstrong, Commanding Officer of the Rheindahlen Support Unit, part of Brigadier Marriner’s command.