How It All Happened

CHAPTER 1: UDEN CEMETERY, 1997

My father-in-law, Frank Vogels, was born in a little town in central Holland called Uden where there is a War Cemetery. This cemetery contains the remains of nineteen Australian Airmen who died in combat during World War 2. There, I’ve told you. I’m not one who likes surprises so you can guess that this story is not about mysteries. No, it’s about people; live people and dead people.

My parents-in-law, Frank and Dorothy asked if our daughter Michelle, then 11 years old, could accompany them on their trip to Holland. During the trip Frank, Dorothy and Michelle were hosted and cared for by Frank’s relations. 

They began talking about the years of World War II when Frank and his siblings and cousins were growing up in Holland. They could remember the war years and the constant danger and fear which ruled their lives. Frank’s cousin Martin Vogels took Frank and Michelle to the war cemetery which contained the graves of those who died in the fighting. Frank struck up a conversation with the caretaker of the cemetery and became very interested in the graves of nineteen Australians buried there. The caretaker told him that there were many visitors to the cemetery to view the graves of the Americans and the British buried there and there was a good deal of information on hand about them. There was little, however, about the Australians and because Frank was from Australia, he agreed to see if there was some way of finding out about them.

Back in Australia Frank received from the caretaker the information held by the Uden Cemetery on these nineteen men. It contained their full name, their rank, service number and the date on which they died. It also contained their parent’s names, spouses if they were married and the town they came from.

The information captured our interest and we made contact with the War Graves Commission, the RAAF, the War Memorial in Canberra and the Australian Archives. These contacts encouraged a trip to Canberra between Christmas and New Year to do a bit of research on these men. The RAAF had recently declassified the documents which might contain information about these men.

The information we had was considerable but an important gap existed in that we had no information about the squadron to which these men belonged. This, the RAAF had assured us, was the vital link into any area of research for that service. We hoped to search the “Honour Roll” cards at the research section of the War Memorial to fill in this gap.

Our visit to the War Memorial started badly and ended well. We arrived at 9.00am on Tuesday December 30th. I had rung from Ballarat weeks earlier to confirm that the research section would be open at this time. They had assured me that it was business as usual. Hence, when we arrived and saw the notice declaring it to be shut our jaws dropped. We were standing in stunned disbelief when we were approached by a young female staff member obviously in the process of retrieving objects from her car in anticipation of the start of her working day. She assured us that the sign was correct but that she was not party to the decision making process. I explained that we had travelled from Victoria to do the research and had confirmed the availability of the facility.

She obviously felt sorry for us. She informed us that we had arrived on a lucky day as she and her colleague were in the process of setting up a family history research unit within the Memorial itself and the Honour Roll cards would be available on micro fiche cards in that facility. We helped her to set up the boxes of cards and the other references and in return she retrieved the cards of each of the nineteen men on whom we sought information. We were able to confirm their details and discover their regiments.

With this head start, and armed with the information we needed, we headed for the Australian Archives in Mitchell. On arrival there we were greeted by very helpful staff who gave us a run down on what was available. We could search on their computers for any reference to the men, we could obtain the records of their squadrons and we could request the personal files of these men.

The computer records and the personal records turned out to be exactly the same thing and we lodged requests for these. They were then retrieved from the RAAF and photocopied for us and sent to us by mail. We waited for three months and were amazed at receiving over 400 pages. These gave us minute detail about the lives and service of the men. The documents had been declassified since 50 years had elapsed since the war. Some even contained photos of the men.

While we were at the Archives, the staff searched for and found some squadron records covering the periods when the men were lost. It was a very emotional moment to sit in the reading room holding the records of the 460 Squadron which detailed the flight of a Lancaster bomber which was sent out to bomb Essen on January 4th, 1934. The plane did not return. We knew what happened to that plane.

Frank remembered, as a boy of eight years, all the children of the village inspecting the burned out wreckage of this plane with the bodies of the men still in it.

So the sequence of information about the nineteen men now extends unbroken from their enlistment and  their service through their personal records to their fatal flight recorded in the squadron records, to their final destination observed by Frank as a curious child, to the cemetery where they now rest. The information trail which now needs to be followed proceeds backwards to the families and lives of these men before they enlisted.