John Matthews was born in East Garston and lived with his wife, Winifred and young son, Gordon in Station Cottages before moving to
    1, Rose Cottage. John worked at College Farm before being employed as a civilian at a military establishment (thought to be Shrivenham)

He joined 118 Field Regiment which was sent to Bombay as part of 18th British Division which was being assembled to counter the threat of the Japanese in Malaya. The Division was deployed to the north east coast where the Japanese attack was expected. The attack came from the west however and John’s unit, together with other British units and Australians found themselves desperately defending an ever decreasing perimeter around Singapore. On 15 February 1942 the situation became so dire that the Allied Command had no alternative but to surrender.

 

British forces were rounded up in the Changi area and were parcelled out to various POW camps in the region. The term “POW camps” being a euphemism for they were nothing more than forced labour camps sited along the length of the notorious Burma-Siam railway.

 

John's wife,Winifred was later informed that he had been reported missing in February 1942.. She heard nothing else until January of 1944 when she was told that John was alive but a captive of the Japanese in Thailand. What she was not to know until later, nor, presumably her informant, was that John had died in June 1943 the victim of a cholera epidemic that not only took the lives of British POW’s but also some of their captors.

 

John was 32 and is buried in Kanchanaburi War Cemetery which is situated some 80 miles north east of Bangkok.

 

William Barrington Miflin , known as “Barry” to his family and friends, was born at Compton Basset in Wiltshire but moved to Poughley where his father became farm manager.

 

Barry joined the RAF before the onset of WW2 and graduated from Cranwell with the rank of Sergeant. He joined 217 Squadron which formed part of Coastal Command and flew out of St Eval in Cornwall. The wartime remit of the squadron was to locate and attack enemy shipping in the Western Approaches. It flew Bristol Beaufort bombers which required a four man crew in which Barry was wireless operator/gunner.

 

On Boxing Day 1940 the squadron departed from its remit when it took part in an overland raid to Bordeaux. The objective was to destroy pens containing a potentially dangerous fleet of Italian mini-submarines.

Barry’s plane, Beaufort L9860, failed to reach its target, being hit by flak as it flew low into Bordeaux. The plane was sufficiently damaged for the pilot to have to navigate a U-turn north so as to avoid crashing in heavily populated areas.

Eye witnesses described how the plane descended in flames only to explode on impact in marshy ground in North Bordeaux. All four crew members were killed and were subsequently buried in a closed ceremony by the German occupation forces in North Bordeaux Civic cemetery.

 

The Germans issued photographs of the wrecked plane for propaganda purposes and also stressed the fact that the raid had caused casualties among the civilian population. The reaction of the latter was to provide a constant supply of fresh flowers to the airmens' grave despite German attempts to prevent it. In 1950 the remains of the crew were re-interred at the new military cemetery at the seaside town of Pornic.

 

The story might have ended there had not GAN , a large insurance and banking group,decided,over 30 years later, to build new premises in North Bordeaux . Work commenced in 1974 and in July the contractors while excavating for the foundations came across the remains of an aeroplane 6 metres below ground level.

 

The wreckage, comprising parts of the under carriage, wheels, tyres and some cabin instrumentation, was later confirmed by RAF experts to be that of the ill fated L9860. The find created widespread interest not only in Bordeaux but throughout France, an interest stimulated by two local newspapers that managed to track down surviving eye-witnesses of the crash.

 

At the time of the crash the eye-witness accounts were remarkably consistent but after the intervening period of 34 years there were anomalies. Some memories had faded others had become “enhanced”

In Memory of
Sergeant WILLIAM BARRINGTON MIFLIN

550750, 217 Sqdn. Royal Air Force
who died age 21 on 26th December 1940.

Son of William James Miflin and Gladys Miflin of Shefford Woodlands Berkshire.

Remembered with honour.

Pornic	Military Cemetery, Pornic

In order to establish the true facts, a Frenchman, Michel Baron, researched the flight of Beaufort L9860, right through from the inception of the raid, to the crash itself and the discovery of the wreckage. He published his results in a work entitled “L’avion oublie” ("The forgotten plane")

 

In it he examines various statements and rumours prevailing around the time of the crash. One such rumour was that only one crew member had been killed in the crash, the remaining three escaping by parachute after which they were rescued by the French Resistance and spirited out of the country.

 

Baron was able to show that such an incident had occurred but involving another RAF plane which had been shot down further north. The German claim that they had shot down a Handley-Page Hampden bomber was obviously disproved on the discovery of the wreckage of L9860.

 

Another rumour circulating at the time of the crew’s burial was that the Germans had fired a two volley salute of honour over the grave. Baron’s research confirmed this. (The Miflin family later received a letter stating that a German Pastor had officiated at the burial and had paid tribute to “men, who although enemies, had died bravely”)

 

One anomaly which Michel Baron could not explain to his own satisfaction involved the nature of the burials. The hitherto immaculately kept records of the cemetery indicated that the remains of three crew members had been buried in a single grave. By default the “missing” remains were those of Barry Mifflin .

 

The RAF History unit, on the other hand, was adamant that the remains of all four crew members had been transferred to Pornic. The suggestion was that the confusion had arisen because Barry had been buried in a single grave which, although a common grave, was surmounted by a cross bearing his service details.

Joint Grave of Sergeants Wild  & Miflin, North Bordeaux Civic Cemetery

This explanation seemed the most likely until the Miflin family received a photograph, allegedly taken by a French citizen shortly after the burial, which, although slightly out of focus clearly shows a grave in which both he and his colleague, Sergeant Wild are buried. The jury is still out!

George William Penton was born in Littlehampton in September 1916, the son of George Penton snr and Hannah (formerly Hannah Frankham of Ivy Cottage).

 

He joined the Merchant Navy serving as a stoker/engineer on board the tanker S.S Ahamo. On 8 April 1941 he and 12 shipmates died when the ship was mined off Wells in Norfolk. The remainder of the crew was rescued and taken in to Grimsby.

 

George is remembered in East Garston as something of a Pied Piper character  for he came to the village on leave riding a motorbike with a distinctive exhaust note. Hearing its sound children would run around to “Ivy Cottage” for George was in the habit of giving them pillion rides around the village.

George's maternal Grandparents were William and Susan Frankham. William was a gang leader on the constuction of the Lambourn Valley Railway. Susan, or "Granny Frankham" as she was widely known was a pillar of the Primitive Methodist Chapel a short distance from her home. All of their three sons fought in the Great War. Samuel, later a Scout leader in East Garston and Eastbury, was wounded by shrapnel.

David Kibblewhite Pounds was born in East Garston into a family of eleven children and lived in the family home “Lone Barn” His father Mr F W E (Francis) Pounds had lived in the house all his life and had been active in several roles in the village, As well as being a long serving member of the Parish Council and latterly its chairman he was also manager of the local school.

David married his fiancee, Dorothy, at Wallingford Church in June 1941 but their married life was cut short when he transferred, with his RAF unit, to Toungoo in Burma. In a letter to his sister, Alice, he described the camp as a "Grand place” although somewhat removed from civilisation.

 

There were new films to watch every other night and in the nearby hills a cool stream fed a lake in which he and his friends could swim. He had taken many photographs and it was his intention, at the next opportunity, to buy an album in which to put them and show the family on his return.

 

Sadly that was not to be for shortly afterwards David was involved in a motor accident caused directly by a Japanese bombing raid and received injuries from which he died in hospital on 2 December 1941. He was initially buried in Toungoo but was reburied in Taukkyan military cemetery which lies 20 miles north of Rangoon.

TAUKKYAN WAR CEMETERY

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