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Nottingham Post

Friday January 6, 2012

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NEP-E01-S2 EP01

NEP-E01-S2 EP01

Visit our website www.thisisnottingham.co.uk

Friday January 6, 2012

Nottingham Post

29

Builders can vote for best breakfast

BUILDERS in Nottingham are being asked to nominate their favourite caf breakfast. Nominations have opened for the national Best builders breakfast competition, run by kitchen company Magnet Trade. Last year the Jukebox Cafe, in Hartley Road, Radford, won the title for the Midlands and North area and was a runner-up nationally . Nottingham builders are asked to vote for their choice by February 14, with the local winner being announced on March 5. There will be ballot boxes for voting in selected cafs, or people can vote at the Nottingham Magnet Trade branch, at 1 Chettles Trade Park, Ilkeston Road. National and regional favourites will be chosen, with a 1,000 prize for the countrys favourite. A caf in Bath was last years winner.

Bygones

Great escape airmans final journey... to be reunited with his crew

The moving war story of Bingham veteran Herbert Dizzy Spiller has waited nearly 70 years for its final chapter. Andy Smart follows the extraordinary trail
THE mission was supposed to be a doddle. An eight-hour flight over the Alps to bomb industrial targets in Milan and then turn back for home. The crew of Halifax W1188 were in good spirits on that October night in 1942, thanking their lucky stars that their 100th and final operation was to Italy instead of a near-suicidal run to Berlin. But as skipper Sidney Fox lifted the huge Halifax bomber of 103 Squadron into the Lincolnshire night sky, he warned the rest of the eight-man crew not to get complacent. He was right. Somewhere over eastern France the Halifax was picked out by a German nightfighter. Bullets ripped through the lumbering aircraft, setting fire to the port wing and engines. The Halifax went into an uncontrolled dive. Abandon, abandon, yelled Squadron Leader Fox. Only three men would make it out alive. Two were captured soon after parachuting to earth. But for 21-year-old London-born Herbert Dizzy Spiller, it was just the start of a long, dangerous run to freedom. He plunged into a forest near the village of Ligny en Barrois, his landing costing him a cracked rib and a blow to the head. Dazed and in pain, he stumbled out of the woods. He stopped at a farmhouse and knocked. He had no idea if they would help him... or turn him in. He was too exhausted to care. It was the home of the Lafrogne family, the first in a cast of brave French people who would eventually help the young airman get home. Some would pay for their courage with their lives. Passed from safe house to safe house, village to village, one resistance group to another, Herbert Spiller eventually reached Paris and into the hands of the Comte Line, an underground organisation dedicated to helping Allied airmen escape. Using false papers, borrowed clothes and a smattering of schoolboy French, he was able to travel through France and Belgium under the noses of the Germans. Led by a formidable character named Madame Ver-

Final wish: Herbert Spillers daughter, Laura Grey, takes his ashes to be placed alongside his comrades, who died when the Halifax bomber crashed in France.

Pride: Herbert Spiller on parade with the Boys Brigade in Bingham.

Behind enemy lines: Warrant Officer Herbert Spiller pictured during the Second World War and, left, the wreckage of Halifax bomber W1188. Mr Spiller was one of three men to escape the crash -- but the only one to evade capture.
told his children that when he died he wanted his ashes taken to Nant le Grand and buried alongside his comrades. He had to wait nearly 70 years for that reunion but after he passed away in August, at the age of 90, his daughter Laura Grey, who now lives in France, began sorting out the details. My Dad was a very private man, said Laura. He kept his thoughts to himself regarding his war experiences and was hugely indebted to the Resistance people of France and Belgium who had helped him escape back to England. So too was he indebted to his five crew, who had remained in the plane and died when he para-

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dain, he reached the Dutch border, so close to freedom. But the crossing had to be abandoned. More parachutists had come down in the area, the German troops were on the alert, quizzing strangers, examining papers. A crossing was too risky Spiller was taken . back to Paris. Instead, he was introduced to the founder of the Comte Line

I was tearful and relieved that we had fulfilled Dads wish

Laura Grey
who turned out to be an attractive young woman named Andre de Jongh (known as Dde). She would lead Spiller, codenamed Parcel 82, and two other escapees by train, cycle and on foot south to the Spanish border, over the Pyrenees and eventually to Gibraltar where, after four months on the run, passage home was waiting. After the war, Herbert Spillers career in the civil service brought him to Nottingham. He and wife Betty raised a daughter Laura, now 55, and son Tim, 53, at their home in Bingham where he was a respected Boys Brigade leader. But he never forgot the comrades he lost, nor the many French resistance fighters who

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helped him. In 1998 he wrote a book about his escape, called Ticket To Freedom, a moving account of the dangers and sacrifices he encountered. It closes with a chapter entitled The Cost which lists many of the people involved, and their fate. The Lafrogne family who were the first to help Spiller survived the war and members kept in touch for the rest of his life; Dde, like several other resistance fighters, was betrayed. She was sent to Ravensbruck concentration camp but lived to become a charity worker in Africa. Her remarkable story was told by Airey Neave in his book Little Cyclone. Others were not so lucky betrayal was often followed by execution. And there are the crew members of Halifax W1188. The two other survivors were Peewee Sgt Rowland Maddocks, Edinburgh; Woolly Pilot Officer Geoffrey Wollerton, Stamford. The five crewmen who died: Sid Squadron Leader Sidney Fox DFM, from Surrey; Norman Flight Sergeant Norman Mercer; Phil Sergeant Philip Heath; Fitz Sergeant Lawrence Fitzsimmons, from Leicester and Sergeant Henry Wood from Essex. They were buried together in the village of Nant le Grand, soon after the Halifax had crashed nearby . Such was his loyalty and sense of pride, Herbert Spiller

chuted out. It took several weeks to make the arrangements but now Laura has been able to carry

out her fathers dying wish. I experienced extreme pride when I was carrying my fathers ashes wrapped in an old

Union flag. Proud of being his daughter, and proud that my daughter and husband were at my side, to witness what the

French people thought of him and his crew. They had made it possible for his ashes to be reunited with his friends and had welcomed him home as one of their own. As we stood in front of the five crew graves, the National Anthem was played, the flags were lowered. I was tearful and relieved that we had fulfilled Dads wish. Initially the War Graves Commission made it clear that it was not possible to scatter ashes on the graves, or leave a plaque or urn on it. If we did they would be removed. The French had come up trumps by having made specially for the occasion a rose granite and black marble columbarium built back to back to the five crew graves.This will house up to 12 peoples ashes, but Dads ashes were the first to be interred. It was a very moving experience to be standing in the same spot where my father had given a speech 19 years ago at the 50th anniversary, knowing that I had returned to fulfil his wish and that I would be back again next year for the 70th anniversary, which this time will be honouring the six crew who were reunited on a day when people from both sides of the channel were joined in celebrating the lives of these men who had fought for freedom. I Herbert Spillers book has been used to aid the script of a film called The Last Passage. Although the makers are still looking for UK distribution, a clip can be seen online at www.youtube.com/ watch?v=Os7qPJr-Uqo

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Great news: The telegram that told Herbert Spillers parents he had made it safely home.

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