Allies together forever

The Lord-Lieutenant of Gloucestershire, Sir Henry Elwes KCVO, farmed most of the estate during the 1970s and 1980s, taking particular interest in forestry on the estate and in the Arboretum planted by his great-grandfather, Henry John Elwes. He became The Queen's representative, the Lord-Lieutenant of Gloucestershire, in 1992.

His wife Lady Carolyn Elwes, with the aid Herbert Ransom and Richard Nutt, identified snowdrops that had managed to survive from Henry John Elwes' original collection. The collection developed rapidly under her care and there are now over 200 different varieties within the Colesbourne snowdrop collection, open to visitors for the first time in 1997.

Vickers Wellington III serial DF743 coded LT:L was a bomber that had served its time on the front line and had been assigned to the important duty of training new bomber crews who would go on to serve on the famous four engine aircraft that pounded Germany on a nightly basis. This aircraft from the batch DF664 – DF709 was one of 150 Mk.111 versions delivered by Vickers Squires Gate between August and September 1942. After service in combat, the aircraft was assigned to 22 OTU (Operational Training Unit), based at RAF Bomber Command, Wellesbourne.

An OTU (Operational Training Unit) was the final stage of aircrew training, where the various elements of a crew were formed and then trained together to a point where they were skilled enough to be assigned to combat duties. When a new intake arrived they were left to form themselves into crews, in the belief that this would form more cohesive units and therefore more efficient crews. In most cases crews became very close knit.

The training was to a large extent conducted on the Wellington bomber, and included circuits, cross country navigation, bombing, gunnery, night flying, formation flying and defensive manoeuvres. Typically a crew would fly leaflet or nickel raids, trips to soft targets in the occupied territories such as France, to drop propaganda leaflets. Pressure to turn out crews meant intensified training and flying accidents were very frequent, with the resultant loss of life and aircraft. Wellesbourne lost 96 Wellingtons in operational and training accidents, 80 airmen were injured and 315 killed, the majority, 243, were Canadians.

The threat of war and then the invasion of their land led to Belgians fleeing Europe to the UK, Canada and the USA. Roughly a hundred of these volunteered to serve in the first company of Belgian Paratroopers which was officially installed at Malvern Wells Worcestershire, on the 8th of May 1942 by Mr Henry Rolin, Belgian under-Secretary of Defence. It was made up of A Company 2nd Battalion Belgian Fusiliers, a Battalion mainly made up of volunteers from South and North America assembled from January 1941, a platoon of the 1st Battalion Belgian Fusiliers with some qualified parachutists and volunteers from other units of the Belgian Forces who had escaped from occupied Belgium via France, Spain and Gibraltar.

In 1942 the unit obtained its paratrooper qualification at the Ringway Parachute Training School, Manchester. This was the wartime base for No.1 Parachute Training School RAF, which was charged with the initial training of all allied paratroopers trained in Europe. The Belgian paratroopers came from all walks of life, just like every other military unit in World War II. There were lawyers, lumberjacks, aristocracy, a bicycling champion, a professional wrestler, a circus acrobat, engineers and the OC, Captain Eddy Blondeel, was a dentist.

The crew of Wellington DF743 had been briefed to fly to Stert Flats Somerset and return to base, to practice flying a war loaded aircraft . The crew, with the exception of the wireless operator who was RAF VR, were all RCAF. The weather was drizzling with the cloud base at 1200 feet and visibility of 4 miles.Two trainee Belgian paratroopers were aboard DF743 to become familiar with an operational aircraft and to determine their susceptibility to air sickness.

22 OTU lost a number aircraft due to engine problems. Being a twin engined aircraft, the loss of one on the Wellington imposed an extra burden on the pilot even if he was experienced. For an OTU pilot, control of the aircraft would have represented a high work load for him and his navigator especially in the weather conditions of the day. It was wartime and no further in depth investigation was felt necessary, the crash of DF743 was for official purposes simply a tragic training accident, and for the families a devastating cost of war.

On 9th April 1998, 55 years after DF743 went down, a memorial plaque was unveiled by Sir Henry Elwes KCVO in St Michael & All Angels, Withington. It was reported in the Perth Courier, Canada that the ceremony was attended by over 20 Belgians, some of whom were relatives of the paratroopers ‘who had perished in the crash.’

What is a hide

A hide is a very old unit of land area used in England and dating back to possibly the seventh century. It represented the amount of land that could be cultivated by a single ploughman’s and thus the amount of land necessary to support a family. It could vary from 60 to 120 old acres, (30 modern acres or 24 to 72 hectares) depending on the quality of the land. Over time a hide was standardised as 120 acres (48.6 hectares) after the Norman conquest of 1066. Staple Farm was initially then 24 hectares.