Donald Thomsett was my Grandad.
He flew as an RAF gunner during the whole of the war, moving from varying heavy bombers including the Wellington but settled for the majority of the war as a rear gunner in Halifax bombers based at RAF Snaith with 51 Sqn.
My Grandad lasted until January of 1945 before being shot down during a night raid on Hannover. His story was one he hardly ever spoke of and he never really got over his experiences til the day he died. Towards the end of his life he began to talk more and more about the war, eventually dying of cancer in 2000.
Donald was on a night bombing mission over Hannover which took place on the night of the 5th of January 1945. He remembered sitting in the rear turret as usual when out of the darkness, and in heavy flak, he saw a German fighter plane approach from the rear and slightly above his plane. He managed to fire on it and thought he had shot it down as it turned away very quickly and looked to be out of control. Next, another fighter appeared to the rear and slightly below the plane. Don moved the guns downwards and saw the pilots face illuminated by the lights on his German instrument panel. The guns wouldn't reach to a position to fire on the fighter plane. As the Halifax was being engaged, the pilot had gone into a wide sweeping manouvre to make attack from the fighter more difficult - a sort of large u shape, rolling the controls right, then left. Don watched as the German fighter continued to match the Halifax and flew underneath it. He heard a loud explosion and felt the plane shudder, then it changed direction steeply heading towards the ground.
My Grandad said he was supposed to keep his parachute in the turret with him but always slung it just into the bulk inside the fusilage. The angle of the plane meant he thought it would have slid down the length of the plane out of his reach, but it had snagged on something and he put his hand straight on it. Realising that the plane was going to crash he pressed for the turret to turn to bail out but found the hydraulics had failed (probably something to do with the explosion he thought?) so had to turn it by hand until he could get out.
He landed on the roof of a house and fell into the garden, badly spraining his ankle. There was snow everywhere and it was freezing. Local residents came out and, possibly scared, started to beat him with whatever they could get their hands on - brooms, sticks, feet - until some soldiers arrived and took him to a local police station, then marched him to Dulag.
They had removed his flying boots and made him limp in the snow with his damaged ankle. My Grandad said he remembered this taking a couple of days, but thinks there was some transport at some point too. Along the route to Dulag he said he saw the blodies of allied airmen hung on lamposts, killed by the local populace, or German soldiers.
At Dulag interrogation centre he was hung up by his hands and all his possessions taken from him. He was tortured with a knife being run up and down his back - he had scars on his back that I remember seeing, long lines. - and was kept in solitary for a couple of weeks. By that time he had frostbite on his feet and the Germans repeatedly made the room very hot, then cold in an attempt to extract information from him. He was also put into a room with another British airman to live for a couple of days. This airman then told the Germans all the things that my Grandad hadn't - like where he lived, the name of my grandmother, etc. He must have been some sort of double agent my Grandad thought.
He was taken to a train station and loaded into large cattle trucks with lots of other POWs. There they spent a couple of days including one frightening night in Berlin station, locked in their trucks as the allies bombed Berlin.
He intially was taken to Sagan camp, but was soon transferred out to what he called Stalag luft 3b.
He spent from February until May 1945 there and witnessed some horrific things, including the shooting of an attempted escapee. He also mentioned that the Russian POWs, who were kept next door, were treated "like dogs".
In May, and with the camp on the verge of being over-run by Soviet troops, my Grandad, an American airman and a Canadian airman, escaped by going over the wire and running into the countryside.
They happened on a car that had been disabled on purpose and got it going, driving across Germany. They had no food. He told me they managed to meet a German family in a small village who offered them food and somewhere to stay. It was while staying there that the Soviet troops came into the area. My Grandad and his two friends hid in the cellar of the German family's house as they were unsure of what the intention of the soldiers was and I remember him telling me that he witnessed "chinese looking men coming into the cellar and eating raw sugar out of sacks with their bare hands like they hadn't been fed for weeks."
When the Soviet troops left, they made their way towards the west and eventually were picked up by some American troops in the area surrounding Berlin in early June (or late May).
Returning to England, my Grandad was silent. He learned that he was the only survivor from his plane that night and blamed himself for the deaths of his friends because he failed to shoot down the second fighter that night. pHe walked with a slight limp for the rest of his life, received no counselling, compensation, or anything to help him get over what he had seen.
But the story does have a ending of sorts. In his seventies, a historian got in touch with my Grandad and via some research found the name of the German pilot who had claimed the "kill" of my Grandad's plane; one Hermann Greiner. Herr Greiner was still alive. He was contacted by the historian and eventually, after some soul searching and correspondence, my Grandad went over to Germany to meet him. Hermann remembered that night, and told my Grandad that an experimental type of gun was on his night fighter (It pointed upwards from behind the cockpit) meaning that there was nothing my Grandad could have done to save his friends. He flew under the Halifax and merely shot up into the fuel tanks as it lumbered about its defensive manouvres.
My Grandad was able to meet the face he had seen 50 years previously on that fateful night when his life changed forever. He bore no grudge and Herr Greiner gave him his Iron Cross, with Oak Leaf, medal as a token of their friendship and in reconcilliation. Hermann Greiner had around 50 "kills" as a night fighter ace and was one of the luftwaffes "stars".
My Grandad died in 2000 and his ashes were scattered at the memorial site of his old, now long forgotten, RAF base at Pollington, Yorkshire. The war had affected the rest of his life and if it hadn't been for his courage and bravery I wouldn't even be writing this, as his young wife (My Grandmother) gave birth to my father a year after he got home.
