Add Information to Record of a Person who served during the Second World War on The Wartime Memories Project Website
Add Information to Record of a Person who served during the Second World War on The Wartime Memories Project Website
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228790
T/WO. Maurice Newton Walker
Royal New Zealand Air Force 582 Squadron
from:Cambridge, New Zealand
Maurice trained in Canada and was briefly in the Ferry Service flying in Wellingtons. On a delivery trip from Gibraltar to The Gambia he was forced to land in the Canary Islands. He was interred there for 4 months from October 1942 to February 1943. Apparently he went horse riding with a Capt. Carillo and was reputed to have drunk with some Germans on leave. Subsequently, after repatriation, he went on to fly in Pathfinders as a navigator observer, then converting to Lancasters and flying with 7 squadron, then with 582 squadron. He was eventually invalided out of the war with lung problems. He fathered a daughter while in England but left England 2 October 1944 and returned to New Zealand to marry his nurse sweetheart in late December 1944. His English daughter was only discovered in 2012 after his death in 1998 and the death of his wife, Helen, in 2005.