207592 Flt.Sgt. Lewis Edmunds DFM.Royal Air Force 150 Squadron (d.31st July 1943) My dad Lewis Edmunds died in July 1943 only a few months after I was born. He died an awful death, in an iron lung and of polio. A friend said, only a few months ago, that the odds of dying this way must have been very high.
To my young mother his death must have been devastating and she left the air force base where they were living and moved back to her parents in the North of England. Eventually she remarried and in 1959, she and my stepfather and my half sister and I emigrated to NZ.
I knew very little about my dad, except that the warm sheepskin rug in my parent’s room had been brought from Australia by him. I also had his DFM medal, a certificate and gold presentation watch from the local council, his logbook and some newspaper cuttings and photographs that my mother had saved. Sadly, when we came to New Zealand the logbook was given away, but I remember it vividly and I would love to have it back. In 1985 I visited England on holiday and I was determined to visit his family and record his story, so I joined the NZ Genealogy Society to learn how to research my families.
Lewis went to Western Australia in 1929 at that time he was only aged 18, and it must have seemed a big adventure. He was also ‘honest, steady and industrious’ according to the vicar who wrote a glowing testimony for him. It also helped that he had an aunt and uncle living there, and he was able to stay with them for a while. He returned to England, on an Australian passport, in 1935. I suspect that it was only the Depression that sent him home. He learned bricklaying but later enlisted in the RAF in 1938, moving up the ranks and training to be an Air Gunner. He was posted around Lincolnshire and in May 1941, while returning from a sortie to Boulogne, the Wellington Bomber crashed into a hill near Halstead and he was the sole survivor, though his back was broken.
After many years I was able to get the commendation that his Station Commander had written, before his DFM was announced. The investiture took place at Buckingham Palace on the 18 May 1943. A week before he died, my mum said that they were going to a wedding, dad had the flu' but he said "I am going to this wedding if it kills me". The following day mum called the Base doctor and Dad was admitted to the hospital in Donnington, where he was diagnosed with polio, and he died the following weekend.
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