Monday, May 30, 2005
MEMORIAL DAY
Jules Crittenden, an American deeply proud of his Australian heritage, writes:
Monday is our Memorial Day, and my brother SFC Peter Crittenden, US Army Special Forces, will be at the small War Graves Commission cemetery in Charleroi, Belgium.
Its occupants are mainly WWI diggers, but it includes a small number of WWII airmen, including my uncle RAAF Sgt Philip George Crittenden, of St. Kilda and Woodend, and RAF Sgt. Peter John Maxwell Hamilton of Sandringham. They were co-pilot and pilot respectively of a Wellington in RAAF Squadron 458 out of Holme-on-Spalding-Moor in Yorkshire, shot down just after midnight Oct 21, 1941, by an ME 109, according to the account passed on by the grandson of now deceased RAF Sgt. P.G.E.A. Brown, the tail gunner and sole survivor.
The crew was mainly RAF due to the practice of filling out Commonwealth crews, and Hamilton had joined the RAF though he was Australian. So Phil, as the sole RAAF crewman, is listed as the first Australian killed under RAF Bomber Command, on his first mission out.
In the last few months, we’ve learned the details and made contact thanks to the Internet with Hamilton’s and Brown’s families. Killed with Phil and Sgt. Hamilton, and lying with them at Charleroi are RAF Pilot Officer David K. Fawkes, the mission’s observer, RAF Sgt. Andrew Y. Condie and RAF Sgt. Thomas Jackson.
Brother Pete, a Melbourne native now serving under the American flag, is doing the honors at Charleroi today for our dead. Lest we forget. Thanks again to both Australia and England for stepping forward in this current time of difficulties.
More Memorial Day posts from Donnah, Austin Bay, and Arthur Chrenkoff, and many more via links at left. Please link to others in comments.