The heroic father she never met
Two days after a young pilot went to war, his daughter was born. They would never meet. Theirs is a kinship bound in ink, writes Jimmy Ellingham.
Lorraine Gray remembers struggling to understand the concept of death as a toddler. She also remembers her grandmother telling her when she misbehaved that her heavenly father was watching her.
Lorraine would picture him looking down from high among the clouds.
Then one day when World War II was over, she says, Trevor Gray’s trunk arrived home.
‘‘I was about 4. My mother was crying. I remember a tartan tea cosy he must have bought in England.
‘‘I kept thinking, ‘ Where is he? Where is he?’ That’s when the death part hit me.’’
Trevor’s Wellington bomber crashlanded in northern Holland on November 7, 1941. The 27-year-old and his crewmates died, but his family back home had no confirmation from inside the German-occupied country for years.
Trevor Gray was born in Whanganui and was educated at Marton, Taringamotu and Moturoa primary schools. He was dux at Moturoa before attending New Plymouth Boys’ High School, then worked at Kingsway Menswear in the city.
He and his wife, Doreen, were only married for 11 months before he left her in New Plymouth, pregnant with Lorraine, and headed to Auckland.
His brothers and parents watched him set sail for war-ravaged Britain on May 26, 1941.
Lorraine was born two days later, a month premature, but her father didn’t find out about her birth until about six weeks later when he arrived in London and collected his mail from New Zealand House.
Trevor signed up to the air force expecting to be a mechanic. His application forms mention his knowledge of car engines.
However, he was soon in pilot training and found himself flying with Britain’s Royal Air Force, where many Kiwis were sent, as a sergeant pilot.
After training in England he flew five missions to drop bombs in Europe as a second pilot before his fatal flight.
It’s not known if he was flying on the night of crash, but witnesses have reported the stricken plane, which was on fire, steered away from the village of Akkrum, landing in a boggy paddock and saving lives on the ground.
This wasn’t confirmed for Trevor’s family until the aunt of one of his crewmates wrote in March 1943 saying the Red Cross had reported the plane went down.
Correspondence to Doreen from John Van Veen, an 18-year-old member of the Dutch underground, gave more details. More than a decade after the crash, when the wreckage and the
airmen were given a proper burial, Trevor’s uniform was found with pictures from home.
One was of his parents, one was from his wedding day and one was of Lorraine. Also found was a small wooden tiki, which Lorraine has at her Palmerston North home, along with Trevor’s overseas diary and letters.
As with much correspondence from battle lines, Trevor’s tone is confident, saying ‘‘the Hun’’ will be beaten.
However, a letter to his brother Keith, written the month before he died, reveals some vulnerability and much bravery. In the face of tremendous odds – about 60 per cent of Bomber Command airmen were killed, wounded or taken prisoner – Trevor writes about having no regrets.
‘‘I hope that some day I turn up to laugh at this,’’ he told Keith.
He mentions the high casualty rate, with 14 men killed in one week.
‘‘The job is tough and personally I reckon it’s only a question of how many trips before something happens . . . I’m not sorry I’m in it and none of the boys are, so don’t get that impression. We are all anxious to get a whack at the Huns.’’
Trevor hopes the Russians continue their ‘‘good work’’ and that the war may be soon over, before turning his thoughts to his wife and daughter.
This contrasts with a letter sent to his aunty Bertha Lambert, after he’d completed five raids. He talks of Guy Fawkes and thanks his aunt for a package that arrived intact, except for some chewing gum.
He loves the photo of Lorraine with her feet in the air – ‘‘all the boys remarked on it’’. This was the image of her found on his body.
‘‘I look forward to the day when I shall see you all again. I just wonder what will happen on that day. I’m proud of my daughter and my wife ... I’m glad that Lorraine has brought so much happiness to everyone.’’
Trevor also tells his aunt about a cable he received from his wife saying she’d heard him on the radio.
Overseas servicemen often recorded messages for the wireless back home and one from Trevor, who found the experience nerve-racking, aired the weekend before his death.
The last entry in his diary is for November 6, 1941: ‘‘Uneventful day. Freshmen only on tonight. Went to the pictures with Mac and Tom, Wings of the Morning.’’
His diary talks of his time in England, the dreary weather and writing home. Also, his missions.
On October 26: ‘‘Ops tonight. Cherbourg [France]. We iced up over the target and dropped to 5000 feet, climbed up and got our bombs right on the target.
‘‘Were severely pasted by ‘flak’, but only one hole in the plane. Ran short of petrol and nearly had to bale out, but landed at Honington in time. Exciting trip.’’
After his disappearance, Trevor’s great mate from Bomber Command, Eric Jones, wrote to Doreen offering as much information as he could.
‘‘As a result of an agreement between Trevor and I it’s my duty to write and tell you what I can. I cannot express my regret at having to do this,’’ Jones says.
He tells Doreen that on November 7, 1941, Trevor’s Wellington Bomber took off about 5.30pm for a trip to bomb targets in Berlin, Germany. Jones was on a similar run that night.
‘‘As we reached the target at 10pm I imagine Trevor’s crew did the same.’’
At 10.30pm the unit’s base received a message from Trevor’s plane saying it couldn’t find its target but had bombed another site. Nothing further was heard from the crew.
Jones writes of getting a ‘‘hot reception’’ on the return journey from enemy fire. Trevor’s plane was shot down by Luftwaffe ace Helmut Lent, who brought down more than 100 planes during the war.
After her husband’s death, Doreen signed up to the army. But she wasn’t allowed to serve overseas because if anything happened to her, Lorraine would have been orphaned.
Lorraine became an early childhood teacher, before training others in early childhood education.
In 2010, she travelled to the crash site, where a memorial was unveiled. ‘‘They died heroes,’’ it says.
She moved to Palmerston North eight years ago, bringing with her Trevor’s diary and letters.
Doreen, who remarried, didn’t keep her correspondence with Trevor but plenty of other letters remain. Reading them had a profound effect on Lorraine. She has spent her life missing the father she never met, but hearing his voice through his writing brought him closer to her.
‘‘I felt I really knew him then, very much so, and I felt I knew him when his trunk came home – the tangibles, not the talking about him . . . I never knew what his voice sounded like or who he was, but his actual deeds stay with me.’’