Sixty-eight
years after they were killed in action in the second world war, the
bodies of the poet David Raikes and his comrades are finally being laid
to rest in Lombardy
David Raikes was 20 years old when he died. His poetry was publilshed posthumously.
"And some did not come back. We never knew / Whether they lived –
at first just overdue / Till minutes changed to hours, and still no
news."
When he wrote this poem Sergeant David Raikes was a young man serving in the Royal Air Force during the second world war.
He spoke of the fear of losing his friends – men who "knew moments you have never known, nor ever will".
In the end, however, with a tragic poignancy he could not have foreseen, the 20-year-old himself joined the ranks of those who never came back, dying with three other airmen in a crash over the battle-scarred Italian countryside in April 1945, days before the Germans surrendered, Benito Mussolini was executed, and the war ended in Europe.
Raikes's family was bereft – as were those of Flight Sergeant Alexander Bostock, Australian Warrant Officer John Hunt, and Flight Sergeant David Perkins.
On Thursday, 68 years after they were killed and two since their remains were discovered in Emilia-Romagna, they will be laid to rest with military honours.
Raikes's nephew – also a David – will read his uncle's most famous poem, published, like the rest of his work, posthumously. "Let it be hushed," runs the first line. "Let the deep ocean close / Upon those dead."
For Roger Raikes, one of the young poet's brothers, the burial in the Commonwealth war cemetery at Padua will help bring a sense of resolution to the enduring loss.
"It's difficult to explain," he said. "We all knew; there was no mystery about what happened to him. But nonetheless, it is a relief to know it has been rounded off in the end.
"It is important for us to know how the members of our family died, and when and where. It is not hugely important but it sort of wraps up a life."
After lying virtually untouched for decades, the remains of the crash were discovered in 2011 by Italian amateur archeologists.
When they realised what they had found – the wreckage of the men's Douglas A-20 Boston bomber, along with some bones, an engagement ring and a wristwatch – they contacted the Ministry of Defence via the British embassy in Rome.
The excavation was continued, the wreckage was verified, and yesterday, to strongly Italian-accented strains of God Save Their Queen (sic), the items were put on display in a local museum.
From now on, the Po River Museum of the Second World War, in the small town of Felonica – a key post in the allies' struggle to push up through Italy in the spring of 1945 – will have a room dedicated to the crash. There are belt buckles, badges and bits of the aircraft, including its front-landing gear. However, the ring, which belonged to 20-year-old Perkins, and the watch, which was Hunt's, have been returned to their relatives.
Wes Madge, the Australian's half-brother, who had travelled from New South Wales, admitted that the initials engraved, HJ, were actually those of a brother. The underage Hunt had been so keen to enlist – initially to the army, subsequently to the air force – that he had done so by using his elder sibling's identity. Badly tarnished, the watch still shows his service number.
It was shortly after 9pm on the evening of 21 April 1945 that the crew, from 18 squadron, took off from Forli airbase, near Rimini. Its target was a river crossing at Taglio di Po. The allies, who had been moving northwards through the peninsula ever since invading Sicily in the summer of 1943, were in the midst of a renewed push to move even further into Lombardy. Soon, however, it became clear that the Boston was not coming back. It is believed to have been brought down by anti-aircraft fire.
Coming so soon before the end of the conflict, the fatalities left the men's families reeling.
Glenice Hoffmann, 62, the cousin of Bostock, the plane's radio operator, a keen carpenter and pianist from Nottinghamshire, said the recovery of the remains and the burial would help bring a belated sense of closure to her family. She thinks particularly of Bostock's parents, who died in the 1970s.
"I didn't know Alex: there's a 27-year age gap between the two of us," she said. "But what I did know very well – because they lived opposite us on the same street, and I saw them daily – was the overwhelming grief that she [his mother] suffered, losing her only son in the very last week of the war at the age of 20.
"When others were euphoric at the end of the war, she had lost her son, "missing in action", and was forever waiting for the footsteps, living in hope, trying to find the answer, turning to all sorts of things and people to try to find out where he was."
When he wrote this poem Sergeant David Raikes was a young man serving in the Royal Air Force during the second world war.
He spoke of the fear of losing his friends – men who "knew moments you have never known, nor ever will".
In the end, however, with a tragic poignancy he could not have foreseen, the 20-year-old himself joined the ranks of those who never came back, dying with three other airmen in a crash over the battle-scarred Italian countryside in April 1945, days before the Germans surrendered, Benito Mussolini was executed, and the war ended in Europe.
Raikes's family was bereft – as were those of Flight Sergeant Alexander Bostock, Australian Warrant Officer John Hunt, and Flight Sergeant David Perkins.
On Thursday, 68 years after they were killed and two since their remains were discovered in Emilia-Romagna, they will be laid to rest with military honours.
Raikes's nephew – also a David – will read his uncle's most famous poem, published, like the rest of his work, posthumously. "Let it be hushed," runs the first line. "Let the deep ocean close / Upon those dead."
For Roger Raikes, one of the young poet's brothers, the burial in the Commonwealth war cemetery at Padua will help bring a sense of resolution to the enduring loss.
"It's difficult to explain," he said. "We all knew; there was no mystery about what happened to him. But nonetheless, it is a relief to know it has been rounded off in the end.
"It is important for us to know how the members of our family died, and when and where. It is not hugely important but it sort of wraps up a life."
After lying virtually untouched for decades, the remains of the crash were discovered in 2011 by Italian amateur archeologists.
When they realised what they had found – the wreckage of the men's Douglas A-20 Boston bomber, along with some bones, an engagement ring and a wristwatch – they contacted the Ministry of Defence via the British embassy in Rome.
The excavation was continued, the wreckage was verified, and yesterday, to strongly Italian-accented strains of God Save Their Queen (sic), the items were put on display in a local museum.
From now on, the Po River Museum of the Second World War, in the small town of Felonica – a key post in the allies' struggle to push up through Italy in the spring of 1945 – will have a room dedicated to the crash. There are belt buckles, badges and bits of the aircraft, including its front-landing gear. However, the ring, which belonged to 20-year-old Perkins, and the watch, which was Hunt's, have been returned to their relatives.
Wes Madge, the Australian's half-brother, who had travelled from New South Wales, admitted that the initials engraved, HJ, were actually those of a brother. The underage Hunt had been so keen to enlist – initially to the army, subsequently to the air force – that he had done so by using his elder sibling's identity. Badly tarnished, the watch still shows his service number.
It was shortly after 9pm on the evening of 21 April 1945 that the crew, from 18 squadron, took off from Forli airbase, near Rimini. Its target was a river crossing at Taglio di Po. The allies, who had been moving northwards through the peninsula ever since invading Sicily in the summer of 1943, were in the midst of a renewed push to move even further into Lombardy. Soon, however, it became clear that the Boston was not coming back. It is believed to have been brought down by anti-aircraft fire.
Coming so soon before the end of the conflict, the fatalities left the men's families reeling.
Glenice Hoffmann, 62, the cousin of Bostock, the plane's radio operator, a keen carpenter and pianist from Nottinghamshire, said the recovery of the remains and the burial would help bring a belated sense of closure to her family. She thinks particularly of Bostock's parents, who died in the 1970s.
"I didn't know Alex: there's a 27-year age gap between the two of us," she said. "But what I did know very well – because they lived opposite us on the same street, and I saw them daily – was the overwhelming grief that she [his mother] suffered, losing her only son in the very last week of the war at the age of 20.
"When others were euphoric at the end of the war, she had lost her son, "missing in action", and was forever waiting for the footsteps, living in hope, trying to find the answer, turning to all sorts of things and people to try to find out where he was."
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