Max Barry's veteran story

Introduction

Well, the war was declared in '39, as you know, and I was a schoolboy at high school at the time. I wanted to fly. When I was a kid, of course, I used to go out and watch little planes up in the air, and I wanted to fly so I joined the Air Force.

Becoming a Gunner

In '42, I was called up and became a member of the RAAF. There, I was classified as a wireless operator and was sent to Ballarat radio training school, but I was pretty hopeless at Morse code so I was reclassified as a gunner. And from Adelaide, about 600 of us went on a little cargo ship, Denbighshire. Denbighshire normally had about a dozen passengers. Whatever cargo they had, they'd stripped out the fittings underneath and put in hammocks. We slept in hammocks on the way to England. Went via New Zealand and then to Panama and then to England.

Training in England

We caught a train down to Brighton, south England, and we did a little bit of training there, then posted to Litchfield. 27 OCU (Operation Australia Unit). There we were put into, made into crews. Quite interesting, the way they did that. They put us in a hangar. The officer in charge said, 'Right, we've got 2 hours. Form yourself into crews.' The crew members became very close because we depended on the other - your life depends on the other fellows. So, we were closer than brothers, really, at the end of time. We trained on a Wellington aircraft. A crew of 5, and that was then supplemented by 2 more people, because we moved from 2-engine Wellingtons to 4-engine to finally end up in the Lancaster. It was a very good aircraft. I had the rear gunner position, and to improve the vision, the perspex was cut out of the back of the turret so you just looked at the outside air. Very cold. 

Capture after D-Day 1944

On D-Day morning, we were operating on the coast of Normandy, bombing German gun emplacements, and were flying back west of the Cherbourg Peninsula. I had a marvellous view of the channel. There were over 5,000 ships in there. Marvellous view. Stays in my mind forever. That was D-Day. Then on the night of 10th – 11th June, we'd been bombing railway yards at Allenson in France, and we're flying westward home to get back to base, and the big sheets of flame came past the turret. Both the mid upper gunner and myself alerted the pilot there was fire on the port engine, inner engine. The engineer was able to put that fire out. Other engines start to get on fire also. A few moments later, the plane became difficult for the pilot to handle, and it was losing height. The pilot told the 2 gunners to get out of their turrets and throw overboard anything they could, other than the parachutes, to lighten the weight. So the rear hatch was opened, and it became obvious that we weren't going to go to make it to England. We were crashing into the channel or in France landing. So the pilot told the crew to bail out. So the mid upper sat there and wasn't getting anywhere, so, I gave him a push. He was gone. I sat there too. Couldn't fall out. But fortunately, I was a kid that grew up on a dairy farm that had post-and-rail fences, and I was used to getting through a post-and-rail fence. Leaned forward and got out, so I quickly got back into the aircraft, face forward, sat on the thing, pushed myself out. Down. It was pitch dark, of course, and I pushed myself, waited a few seconds, let the trailing aerial go past, and then pulled the rip cord. Floated down. First I knew I was near the ground was the tree branches passing by. I didn't hurt myself at all. I landed, gathered up the parachute, hid it under some leaves and started walking north. I knew the Allies had landed 4 days beforehand, so I figured if I got up north, I could hide on a farm, wait till the push-through came and get back to England.

Hiding from the Germans

I ran up north. I could hear the guns of the battle. I saw that was close enough. Found a little village, about half a dozen houses and ocular watched. No Germans around. So, I went and knocked on the door of one. A lady came out, and I asked her to buy some food. She realised I was an airman on the run. I realised she was a friendly person. I could speak French reasonably. She said, 'Well, we have a farm just down the lane there. About half a kilometre. Walk down the lane, there's an empty house, barn. Get yourself in the barn and we'll do some food outside at night.' So I was in there for about a week. I swapped some of my clothing with French farm clothes so I had to get out quickly because the Germans were in the village. So I grabbed my little bag, whatever I had, took off. Got about 3 fields away, small fields, hedges all around them, and 2 German soldiers. 'Halt!' Both the German and myself spoke French. My French was better than his, but he said, 'Papier, papier.' Next papier. No papers. 'Pour vous la guerre est finie.' For you, the war is over.

Prisoner of war

Army captain Hoffman interrogated me, quietly, established I was an airman on the run, so they locked me in a room. And the next day, they passed me over to the Luftwaffe. And from there, the Luftwaffe, the German air force people, took me. A young corporal fella in the air force took me to Paris, and then just outside Paris, to interrogation centre that was set up for all the airmen coming in. Few days later, we were sent by train to an NCO Luftwaffe camp at Bankau b-a-n-k-a-u in Poland. We were in that camp at Christmas time when we were alerted that the Red Army was coming west. We might have to move. We walked for a few days, on average about, say, 10 to 15 kilometres a day. Slept in barns or anywhere we could. We were put on a train and moved from there to a place called Luckenwalde. It's a town that was a big camp set up in the civilian days for civilian people, about 30 miles, 30 kilometres, south of Berlin, but it'd become a big camp for American and Australian or British airmen or servicemen. Must have been about 10,000 altogether. Big players. We were in that camp when the Red Army arrived. The first troops were in the tanks. Well equipped. And then the next day, the Red Army people started coming past. Loyal mob, like a crowd going to the football. Swarms and swarms of people on foot, on bikes, on trucks, on horse or anything. It was all going west, hundreds and thousands. Amazing. It has apparently been arranged at Yalta, that the British Allied troops would be repatriated via Odessa, and I stuck with that. A lot of us now started walking down the road towards the American line. I stopped that night in a little German town with a German family. They were pleased to see us rather than the Russians come in. And next morning, we 3 got out on the road, walking down towards the Merkin line. A real Russian truck convoy came along, 3 or 4 vehicles, and we hitched a ride. The identification was to put a little flag on your shoulder. We all put a little American flag on our shoulder because they knew what that was. I was sitting on this truck. The Russians didn't speak any English, and I didn't speak any Russian. Some of them had bandages around their heads and whatever. But I said to one them, 'Ford, or Ford, Chev, Chev?' They both knew those 2 words. The Americans had been providing a lot of equipment to the Red Army. They dropped us off at a place called Zerbst on the Elbe River. The Americans had put in a floating bridge. We said to the Yankee sergeant, 'Can we get a ride back over with you people?' And he said, 'Who are you? What are you?' We told him. He said, 'Well, get inside one of each of these 3 tanks.' We got a ride back in the afternoon with the tanks. Got in about 3 o'clock in the afternoon, and the sergeant said, 'You fellas had anything to eat?' And we said, 'No.' 'Come here.' He took us over to the cook house and said to the cook, 'These fellas, prisoners, haven't had anything to eat. Got anything for them?' 'Oh yes.' Opened a big fridge door, took out a cooked half chicken. 1-2-3. We scoffed a lot. They passed us off to Brussels, and from Brussels we were flown back to England. And from landing there, we went back to Brighton. We were in camp there for 2 or 3 weeks. Waiting to go home.

Returning to Normandy

In 1985, Ruth and myself went to England to see a younger daughter who had married an Englishman, and I said to this son-in-law, who spoke French, I said, 'I'd like to go over to Normandy, see if we could find that family who were so helpful and thank them.' He said, 'Right, we'll go over next weekend.' Until I found the how the old farm, the little village I was in was called La Vente. The old barn had been demolished, sorry, the old house had been demolished and a new house built there. We spoke to the new fellow, had a couple of wines, and I said to him, 'I suppose the farmer and his wife might have passed on.' He said, 'No, no. They retired only about a month or so ago.' They were at such and such, a little village about five ks away. So we got directions, went over there, knocked on their door. They were delighted to see that person all those years later, and we had a couple of wines together, swapped our names and addresses. It was up 'til then, nothing was written down. We've been in touch ever since. I've been back there 3 or 4 times. We still keep in touch, by email now.