Big Read: An incredible untold story of WWII: Link added

[Subdeacon Joe]

 

 

On the gently sloping hillside at Taradale Services Cemetery on New Zealand's North Island is a simple grave belonging to a Hurricane pilot who flew with the RAF during the Second World War.

 

Beside a line of jacaranda trees in spectacular purple bloom, in section J plot 56, a memorial plaque lying flat on the ground marks the final resting place of Flight Lieutenant Charles Fergusson.

 

When this former officer died, more than 100 mourners gathered at All Saints Anglican Church in Taradale, near Napier, for a low-key funeral service. For, as was his nature in death as in life, "Chook", as he was affectionately known, never wanted any sort of unnecessary fuss.

 

Yet today, 70 years after his military service ended and more than a decade after his death, I have been able - thanks to his family, friends and former comrades - to piece together one of the most incredible untold stories of the 1939-45 global conflict.

 

My inquiries stretching across three continents have revealed a wartime narrative that involves a miraculous escape from a plane crash, brutal treatment at the hands of Japanese torturers, allegations of cannibalism and an enduring love story with more twists and turns than a Jane Austen novel.

 

 

 

Charles Douglas Fergusson was born on May 14 1921 in Hastings, part of the fertile Hawke's Bay coastal region of North Island that is renowned for its fruit growing and wines. One of five children born to Francis Fergusson, a plumber, and his wife Rose, young Chook was educated locally, attending Hastings Boys' High School, where he excelled at swimming and rugby.

 

He left school aged 16 and worked for two years as a carpet fitter, before enlisting into the Royal New Zealand Air Force (RNZAF) in November 1940, with the Second World War just over a year old.

 

After basic flying training in New Zealand, Chook went to Canada and trained in 1941 as a pilot in Harvard aircraft at Moose Jaw base, Saskatchewan. Next, Chook was shipped to the UK, where he flew with 3 Squadron and, later, 607 Squadron, RAF.

 

Here he also met and fell in love with Doris Ackerman, a pretty north London girl who was more widely known to her friends as "Pat" (apparently a slight variation of "pet" which she was called as a youngster). Keen to support the war effort, she had enrolled as a private in the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS), the women's branch of the British Army.

 

After a whirlwind romance, the couple became engaged and they married at St Andrews Church, Stanstead Abbots, Hertfordshire, on January 13, 1942 when he was 20 and she was 19. Chook, who was stocky, handsome and 5 ft 9 ins tall, called her his "blonde, blue-eyed English rose", while Pat vowed that their wartime marriage would last forever.

 

However, within months of their union, Chook was sent to India to serve with 607 Squadron and to take on the Japanese in the air over Burma. Before the young officer left, he made his wife promise that if was killed in action, she would travel to New Zealand so his parents could meet her - their son's widow - for the first time.

 

Flying his single-seat Hurricane fighter plane, Chook was soon in action in the skies above Burma. He filed a combat report detailing an attack he and his fellow fighter pilots had made on Japanese bombers on December 16 1942, recording that he had damaged an enemy plane.

 

However, on Christmas Eve 1942, numerous British and Japanese fighters met in a series of dogfights during which Chook's Hurricane was one of two British aircraft shot down.

 

Chook was reported as "KOAD" (Killed On Active Duty). His family back in New Zealand and his fiancée in London were among those who mourned his "death". His squadron leader later visited his "widow" saying there was no hope that Chook had survived: he and others had seen his Hurricane spiral into the ground and burst into flames, and the pilot had been unable to take to his parachute.

 

Yet, miraculously and against all the odds, Chook had survived. His fellow airmen were right: his parachute had not opened but as his aircraft hurtled downwards it had, in fact, exploded only yards before it hit the ground at around 300 mph.

 

He appears to have been thrown upwards before landing in the shallow Irawaji River: this cushioned his fall and the water put out the flames of his burning flying suit. Such a miraculous escape makes him a rare member of the unofficial "Gannet Club", named after the bird that plunges vertically for fish. It is understood than fewer than 20 servicemen survived full-blooded plane crashes during the Second World War because something, including snow and trees, cushioned their fall.

 

For the next half century, Chook refused to speak in any detail about his wartime ordeal because it brought back such painful memories and because he wanted to protect his family from the appalling details of his suffering.

 

However, in the final decade or so of his life, Chook confided in a close friend, Bryan Church, 65, who owns a garage and antique shop in Taradale. He only made Chook's family aware of most of the pilot's revelations at his funeral service.

 

It is truly amazing what some of those guys survived. Pretty amazing that ANY survived being POWs of the Japanese.

 

http://mobile.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.php?c_id=1&objectid=11578684

[DocWard]

Wow! Is there a link?

[Utah Bob #35998]

I've heard the explosion blowing a pilot back up in the air stories. I remain very very skeptical.