Liz Filleul explores the life of airman Larry Birk to mark Anzac Day
Liz Filleul marks Anzac Day with the tale of airman Larry Birk’s unusual methods for evading capture.
AUSTRALIA loves a “larrikin” – defined by the Australian Oxford Dictionary as “a mischiefmaking youth” or “a person with apparent disregard for social or political conventions”.
Well-known Australian larrikins include Olympic champion swimmer Dawn Fraser and actor Paul Hogan.
Australia’s World War I soldiers also gained a reputation as larrikins, because they didn’t care about military traditions such as observing rank.
There are countless Aussies who have lifted people’s spirits down the decades, including a World War II airman appropriately named Larry (the word larrikin is believed to have derived from that name).
Flight Sergeant Hilary “Larry” Birk was born in 1922 in Sydney, the second of four children to Reverend George Birk and his wife Elvy.
Larry attended Trinity Grammar School, Sydney, and was working for the Colonial Sugar Refining Company when war broke out.
He enlisted and was trained in Canada under the Empire Air Training Scheme.
Larry was short, but what he lacked in stature he more than made up for in personality and guile.
When his plane was shot down in occupied Belgium in 1941, Larry was determined to avoid capture by the Germans.
He managed to get hold of a priest’s cloak and habit and walked the streets, waving away anyone who approached him by mumbling “God bless you, my son” in French.
He later said he’d grown up watching his father keep walking when parishioners tried to corner him, so he knew this technique would work.
Larry also acquired a labourer’s outfit and wheelbarrow, filled it with sand, then walked 20 kilometres to another village without being apprehended.
He made contact with the Comet Line, run by Andrée de Jong, a Belgian nurse code-named Dédée.
The Comet Line helped shot-down airmen evade the Germans and make their way back to Britain.
Together with England’s Jack Newton and Canada’s Albert Day, Larry was among the first set of “packages” to be taken down the line.
They were smuggled through Belgium and France via safe houses before being taken over the treacherous Pyrenees into Spain, to the safety of the British Embassy.
While out in public, the airmen dressed like locals and were instructed to avoid attracting attention.
On one occasion, Dédée took Larry, Jack and another “package”, Englishman Howard Carroll, to a cinema while waiting for a delayed train.
The film was German propaganda, with footage of Nazis marching into Paris accompanied by military music.
Nazi sympathisers in the cinema jumped up and saluted, shouting “Heil, Hitler”. Larry leapt to his feet, joining in with mock enthusiasm.
While crossing the Bidasoa River into Spain, the evaders had to avoid being spotted by customs officials.
Larry, however, once safely across the river, pretended to knock at the Customs house door, creating first consternation then amusement.
The “packages” reached Spain safely in December 1941 and Larry arrived in Scotland from Gibraltar in March 1942.
While waiting to return to active service, Larry remained the joker.
Albert Day later recalled that, when they were in London, Larry would walk an imaginary dog and refuse to eat in restaurants where dogs weren’t allowed.
Larry was killed in North Africa in July 1942, when his plane was shot down by anti-aircraft fire. He was buried in the Christian cemetery in Benghazi, Libya.
Sadly, his older brother, Doric, was also killed in action a year later. Flight Sergeant Doric Birk died when his plane was shot down over Germany.
Larry’s life was short, but the diminutive larrikin from Sydney was never forgotten by the other “packages” he evaded capture with, or by Dédée and the other brave Resistance workers who helped him escape from Nazi Europe. ■