Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Gents, you’re in Luck
Downed RAF men were treated to champagne and caviar by Panzer tank officer.. Von Luck
SAT at a table with champagne and caviar and surrounded by German officers, you would never think these RAF heroes were prisoners of war.
Flight Sergeants Edward Rodgers and Cyril Bartlam were treated to the convivial gathering in France by Panzer tank commander Hans von Luck.
The pair were part of a three-man crew in a Blenheim bomber from 40 Squadron that left RAF Wyton, Cambs, for a raid over St Valery, Normandy, in June 1940.
It was shot down and they bailed out – but colleague Sgt David Dorris went down with the plane as it crashed.
Hauptmann von Luck’s division had occupied the region days before and the airmen parachuted into his position. He said to have told them: “You are in luck. You’ll be staying with me for a while.”
The photo of the men at the table was unearthed by a German historian. It has been digitally colourised by graphic designer Richard Molloy. Another shows Edward and a grinning Cyril surrounded by enemy troops after they were captured. Andy Saunders, the editor of German military history magazine Iron
Cross, said:
“Hospitality extended towards captured RAF airmen at this stage of the war was not unusual, although I suspect this didn’t extend to champagne and caviar.
“Hospitality to one’s captives was also extended by the British. But it became less common as the war progressed and attitudes hardened.
“This photo, though, is remarkable.
“These men, adversaries, seem relaxed together.
“Almost in celebration, and yet the war was then raging at its fiercest.” Edward’s son Brendan added: “My father told me he had been well-treated by the Germans but he never mentioned champagne and caviar. I have never seen the photo before. It’s extraordinary.”
The airmen were sent to a POW camp in Germany. Edward was then taken to Stalag Luft VI in Lithuania. During the winter of 1944/45, he was one of hundreds of Pows sent on a “death march” west across Poland and Germany as the Russians advanced from the east.
Edward, from Dublin, died in 1986 aged 82. Cyril, from Broseley, Shrops, passed away in 1997. Von Luck died the same year in Hamburg.