[2Chestnut] Âîåííûå íåêðîëîãè â áðèòàíñêèõ ãàçåòàõ
Signalman Arthur Titherington
Former slave labourer in a PoW camp who campaigned for compensation from the Japanese
A dogged Lancastrian, Titherington lost no opportunity to remind people that he had lost almost four years of his youth in captivity. "I do not forgive and I do not forget," he would repeat over the next 58 years.
As the number of survivors declined and Japan's economic power, with its promise of lucrative markets, grew steadily, the issue was expected to fade. But when the prisoners retired from their postwar civilian jobs in the 1980s they became increasingly exasperated both by the government's seeming indifference and by the public's assumption that only those who had been on the Burma railway had suffered.
Exasperated by what he saw as the mumblings and grumblings of other prisoners' lobby groups, he started up his own Japanese Labour Camp Survivors' Association, whose members turned their backs on the Emperor Akihito in The Mall during a state visit in 1998.
Pierre-Marie Gallois
Strategist behind France's nuclear bomb, which de Gaulle transformed into a projection of national might
Gallois was already an established military strategist when, in 1953, he joined Shape. There he came to the conclusion that as long as America was safely beyond the range of Soviet nuclear weapons, the United States would engage in a war to defend Europe. "They were out of reach themselves," Gallois theorised later. "The risks were small".
But he became concerned that with rapid improvements in ballistic missile technology, America would soon be vulnerable to Soviet missiles and would therefore be much less inclined to start a nuclear war to protect European nations. Gallois shared his fears with Lauris Norstad, the American Air Force general and Supreme Allied Commander Europe. Norstad agreed with Gallois's assessment and told him to alert the French government.
Captain 'Mickie’ O’Brien
Decorated commando who habitually bucked authority and claimed his veins ran with scotch whisky
In the early morning of July 23 1944 O’Brien, commanding Y Troop of 47 (RM) Commando, was leading a patrol on a covert raid on the German lines east of Sallenelles, behind the beaches, when a man trod on a mine and surprise was lost. The enemy lit the battlefield with flares and opened fire with heavy machineguns. O’Brien, with total disregard for danger and by his personal example and determination, rallied his patrol and charged forward to quell the enemy.
When he returned to his own lines with an officer prisoner, O’Brien learned that some of his patrol were missing and immediately returned through defensive fire into the minefield. He stayed there until daybreak to supervise the rescue of the wounded.
Asked later how he coped with the horror and destruction around him and the prospect of imminent death, O’Brien replied he had the perfect temperament: a strong sense of fatalism and no imagination.
Air Commodore 'Jack’ Frost
Fighter pilot whose 'cab rank’ of Typhoons helped the Allies break out from Normandy after D-Day
On August 7 a major German counter-attack, spearheaded by five Panzer divisions, was identified moving against just two US infantry divisions. The Panzers were threatening to cut off the US Third Army near the town of Mortain.
More than 300 sorties were flown by the squadrons on the “Day of the Typhoon”. Frost himself claimed a Tiger tank and a troop carrier, as well as two unidentified “flamers”. His aircraft was hit by 20mm flak but he managed to return to his airstrip. The intense effort of the Typhoon squadrons defeated the German counter-attack, which the Chief of Staff of the Seventh German Army reported had come to a standstill due to “employment of fighter-bombers by the enemy and the absence of our own air support”.
Brilliant Pathfinder Force navigator who was shot down in the opening raid of the Battle of Berlin and was involved in the Great Escape
Joining the RAF in 1938 as war clouds gathered, Denis Cayford was posted to Bomber Command and after training as a navigator was sent to 77 Squadron at Driffield in East Yorkshire. During the first months of the Second World War the squadron carried out reconnaissance and propaganda leaflet-dropping flights over Germany and occupied countries, dangerous enough in itself, given the fighter opposition, but affording valuable navigation practice that was to stand Cayford in good stead when he became a Pathfinder later in the war, with far more sophisticated navigational aids.
He subsequently took part in the Battle of Hamburg, the Peenemünde raid of August 1943 and the opening raid of the Battle of Berlin, during which his aircraft was shot down. He spent the remainder of the war in Stalag Luft III, taking part in preparations for the doomed Great Escape of March 1944, which was aborted just as he was about to enter the final section of the escape tunnel. Later he was involved in the Long March of January 1945 during which PoWs were evacuated from the camp to prevent their falling into Russian hands, suffering both from the freezing weather as they trudged westwards and from the attacks of RAF fighter bombers, who mistook them for advancing Wehrmacht columns.
In peacetime he had a successful career in civil aviation, flying first for BOAC, of which he became an executive, before establishing an aviation consultancy business, which he was still running in his late seventies.
Berkeley Denis Cayford was born in 1918 and educated at Tettenhall College, Wolverhampton. A county swimmer, he travelled with the British team to the Berlin Olympic Games of 1936, an experience that convinced him that war with Germany was inevitable. Although he had begun articles with a local firm of solicitors he joined the RAF in 1938. When asked his Christian name he was told that Berkeley did not have the right ring for the RAF, so he became Denis for his service and subsequent career.
At the outbreak of war he was flying as the navigator of an Armstrong Whitworth Whitley bomber commanded by the remarkable (and indestructible) “Hamish” Mahaddie, then a sergeant pilot, but soon to be commissioned and to attain the rank of group captain by 1943. During the period of the “Phoney War”, in common with the rest of Bomber Command, which was prevented by government edict from bombing Germany, the squadron was tasked (much to Mahaddie’s and his crew’s disgust) to undertake leaflet drops over Germany and occupied Poland and Czechoslovakia.
Mahaddie, later to become the Pathfinder leader Don Bennett’s group training inspector (and “chief poacher” of the best aircrew from other squadrons for the PFF), was to remember Cayford’s navigating skills. And when the Pathfinder Force was formed in 1942 he invited him to join. In the meantime Cayford had finished his first tour of operations by mid-1940 and was posted to RAF Kinloss in Scotland, ostensibly to a training post, which nevertheless involved plenty of antiU-boat reconnaissance sorties.
After a further six months in Canada on an astro-navigation course he returned to Scotland for further anti-submarine sorties, flying Avro Ansons. When one that he was navigating suffered from icing and ditched in the Moray Firth, he and its crew spent nine hours in a dinghy in the freezing conditions of December.
After being selected for the PFF in mid-1942 he retrained on the H2S airborne ground mapping radar, which was to add a new dimension of effectiveness to the bomber offensive. In 1943 he took part in many of the Pathfinder- led raids, over the Ruhr in March-July, and on other German industrial centres. Notable was the series of raids on Hamburg in late July and early August in which “Window” (foil strips) was used for the first time to confuse air defence radars, resulting in some of the heaviest damage (and highest casualties) to be inflicted on any German city.
Cayford had been awarded the DFC in May and was recommended for a further award for his performance during the Peenemünde raid of August 17-18, in which his navigation was instrumental in making sure that the target was marked correctly, with consequent immense damage and serious disruption to the V2 rocket programme.
Shortly afterwards, on August 23, 1943, in the first raid of Bomber Command’s offensive against Berlin (which in the event never achieved the success of the Hamburg assault), Cayford’s Lancaster was attacked by a night fighter and one of its engines caught fire. With the aircraft becoming unflyable, Cayford volunteered to crawl out along the wing and attempt to extinguish the flames. While appreciating this heroic offer, the Lancaster’s captain, Squadron Leader Charles Lofthouse, was obliged to turn it down as being almost certain to cost him his life. Miraculously all the crew managed to bale out.
With the other officer members of the crew Cayford ended up in Stalag Luft III at Sagan in Silesia where, when the Great Escape was planned, he was involved in the disposal of soil from the three tunnels. He was allocated number 82 for the breakout itself, but as he reached the escape point the tunnel was discovered by a sentry and with others who were on the point of emerging he turned round and made his way back to his hut. Of the 76 prisoners who escaped three made “home runs”. Of those recaptured 50 were shot on the personal order of Hitler.
After the end of the war Cayford was involved in the expanding world of civil aviation, operating flying boats on BOAC’s Australia routes before moving in to management, as first BOAC general manager of West and East Pakistan, 1958-63, and later manager of BOAC’s southern routes. In 1965 he became manager of Bahamas Airways, returning it to profit before overseeing its sale of Cathay Pacific in 1969.
In 1970 he set up his own aviation consultancy which had clients in several parts of the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia and Oman.
He married his wife, Christabel, a WAAF officer, in 1947. She died in 1996 and he is survived by his partner, Gill, and by the two sons of his marriage.
Flight Lieutenant Denis Cayford, DFC, wartime Pathfinder Force navigator, was born on March 16, 1918. He died on August 30, 2010, aged 92
