Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Flying Officer George Laurie Messenger
 

George Messenger was a clerk at Newbold General Refractories, a furnace brick manufacturer in Waratah, NSW when he joined the RAAF Reserve in 1940. The only child of George Messenger and Martha Messenger (née Francis) of Hamilton, Newcastle, George was born in 1919 and grew up in his grandfather’s hotel, the Criterion, in Robertson Street, Hamilton where his father worked as a barman. His nickname in the RAAF was “Dally” after the famous Australian Rugby League footballer Herbet “Dally” Messenger.

He had served in the 1st Field Brigade of the Militia for two years before discharging to pursue an educational course in 1937. On enlisting in the RAAF, he was presented with a wristwatch from his workmates inscribed with the words, ‘Presented to G. L. Messenger by the management and staff – Newbold General Refractories Ltd 4.10.40’.

George was called up for service in mid-May 1941. Just days later, he was hospitalised for a month at No. 113 Australian General Hospital (AGH) in Concord, Sydney. As a result, he didn’t commence his initial training at 2 ITS in Bradfield Park, until September. He was then posted to 5 EFTS in Narromine to commence his flying training.

At Narromine, George flew the DH-82 Tiger Moth with Sgt Carter as his instructor. He soloed on 29 December. While in Narromine, he flew around seventy hours before joining thirty-four other members of his course in Sydney in April to travel to Canada to complete his training.

George sailed from Australia on the SS President Monroe to San Francisco, before travelling by train to Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. He arrived there on 19 May. In Edmonton, he was processed into the EATS training system before moving eastwards to 10 EFTS at Dauphin, Manitoba to complete his training.

At 10 EFTS George was a member of D Flight, No. 1 Squadron, where he trained on the twin-engine Cessna Crane aircraft. The men were set clear goals to achieve; if they were unable to reach them, they would be removed from the course. By July, George and his course mates were flying regular cross-country flights around central Canada, and honing their flying and navigation skills. On 17 July, George flew as navigator/second pilot to Bill Gunning on a three-hour cross-country sortie. Four days later, he flew the same sortie with Bill acting as his navigator. Bill noted in his diary, ‘We had a very nice trip, it was not at all bumpy’.[1]

Many of the single men took every opportunity to get away from the base and often travelled to the Chalet Hotel at nearby Clear Lake to meet members of the Canadian WAAF. In his diary, Bill Gunning notes that on 31 July, despite George being reluctant, Bill and Peter Frazer managed to talk him into going to the resort with them. It turned into a successful weekend, with a number of other men and WAAFs arriving at the Chalet. On the Sunday, George and Bill met four American girls from North Dakota driving a ‘beautiful big Studebaker’,[2] who took them for a drive.

Over the next two months, George, Peter and Bill would regularly go on short leave together, taking invaluable time away from the rounds of exams and evaluations. In mid-September, the last exams were completed and the three friends were told that after graduation they would proceed on ten days’ pre-embarkation leave before travelling to the United Kingdom to train as heavy-bomber pilots. They graduated as pilots, were awarded their wings and were promoted to sergeants on 25 September 1942.

Immediately following their graduation dinner on the 25th, George and Bill Gunning grabbed a taxi, dropped their bags at the railway station and then headed off for one last dance with the girls from RCAF Dauphin. They caught the train to Winnipeg at 0150, and arrived there at 0700. In Winnipeg, they spent the day sightseeing before re-embarking that evening on the train to Montreal. At Montreal, they changed trains for New York, where they were overwhelmed with the hospitality of the American people.

As always, leave was over all too quickly. In early October, the men reassembled in Halifax, Nova Scotia to await transport to the United Kingdom. They embarked on the RMS Queen Elizabeth on 28 October, sailed on the 31st and arrived in Gourock, Scotland on 4 November. They then travelled to 11 PDRC in Bournemouth.

In Bournemouth, George discovered that there would be an eight-week wait before the men could proceed to the next phase of training. He was allowed a week of leave in early December. At the end of the month, George joined 11 AFU(P) in Shawbury, Shropshire to commence advanced flying training on the Airspeed Oxford aircraft. In Shawbury, his flying skills were assessed and improved. By March, he was deemed competent enough to proceed to 14 OTU at RAF Cottesmore in Rutland. There, George and Frank Morris would train on the twin-engine Wellington bomber and form the crews with whom they would fly on operations. George’s initial crew consisted of six sergeants: Eric Brown (N),[3] MP Holmes (BA),[4] Harry Marshall (FE),[5] Fred Wooldridge (WO/AG),[6] Ron Young (AG) [7] and Jackson (AG).

While in Cottesmore, George was promoted to flight sergeant and recommended for a commission, which he received in early July while he was on his conversion course to the Lancaster at 1654 HCU at RAF Wigsley. On 27 July, George became a member of No. 467 Squadron RAAF at RAF Bottesford, Leicestershire. It had been formed as an EATS squadron in late 1942, and flew Lancasters. It was unusual in that it operated three flights. In November 1943, the third flight, including George and his crew, was used to form No. 463 Squadron RAAF.

George flew his first mission two days after arriving at 467 Squadron. He flew as second pilot, understudying Sdn Ldr William Lewis.[8] The target was Hamburg. During the mission, Lewis’s crew claimed the probable destruction of a ME109 fighter – a tough target and a rough introduction to operations for the new pilot. The following night, George again flew as second pilot, this time with Sdn Ldr Alfred Raphael[9] to Remscheid, south-east of Cologne. Remscheid had been almost obliterated by fire after a raid three months earlier.

The next two weeks were spent conducting training drills. It was not until 9 August that George and his crew flew their first mission together. The target was the German industrial city of Mannheim. On their return, the crew landed at Syerston, just twenty kilometres south-east of Bottesford, and returned to base the next day. The day before George and his crew flew the mission, 467 lost their commanding officer, W Cdr Cosme Gomm[10] on a raid to Milan in Italy. Gomm was one of the most experienced bombing leaders in the RAF and his loss would have been felt in the squadron. Three days later, Sdn Ldr Alfred Raphael would also lose his life on operations.

Over the next four weeks, George would fly three more missions: two to the northern Italian industrial city of Milan – a long flight which took the crew through France and around neutral Switzerland – as well as a raid to Leverkusen in Germany. For reasons unknown, Sgt Erasmus replaced Jackson as the air gunner on these three missions, and then Sgt Gavin Borradaile[11] joined the crew as one of their permanent air gunners.

September would see the crew fly five missions – two each to Hannover and Mannheim and a fifth to Bochum. This was followed by two missions in early October to Hagan and Stuttgart, before the crew were sent on nine days of well-earned leave.

The men returned from leave to find that the ante had been considerably raised. After raids over Düsseldorf and Modane, France on 3 and 10 November, they flew three consecutive missions to Berlin. They returned from the second after being struck by flak, which caused a fire in the starboard outer engine, a holed fuel tank and the loss of their intercom, a vital communications circuit for defence against night fighters. On three engines, they returned to base early in the morning to find they would be attacking Berlin again that night.

The Berlin raid was their last with 467 Squadron. At the end of November, along with the rest of C Flight, they became the nucleus of the newly formed 463 Squadron RAAF. When they joined 463 Squadron, George had already flown eighteen missions and his crew sixteen, with ten of the missions in the Lancaster ED772. Their faithful Lancaster joined them in their new squadron. Immediately the squadron formed it began to fly missions deep into Germany and it relied heavily on old hands like George and his crew to lead the lesser experienced crews into the fray.

On each of their next five missions, George would have a second pilot as an understudy, to whom he would pass on the tricks of flying missions deep into Germany. Four of the five missions were to Berlin. Sadly, at least two of George’s five understudies were killed. One of them, F-Sgt Jack Weatherill,[12] lost his life on one of his first operations with his own crew, just four nights after his mission with George. At the time of Weatherill’s death, George and his crew were again on leave. They returned to operations on 27 January 1944.

On 30 January 1944, 463 Squadron was tasked with attacking Berlin. George and his crew embarked on their twenty-third and final mission. Unknown to George, he had been promoted to flying officer two weeks before, and he departed on the mission still wearing the rank of pilot officer.

The men took off just after sunset in their old warhorse, the Lancaster ED772. Later that evening, at 2045, their aircraft was engaged at 21,000 feet by a night fighter near the village of Jabel in northern Germany. The night fighters were heavily armed with twenty-millimetre cannons, which had a devastating effect on the heavily laden bombers. His aircraft doomed, George desperately tried to maintain control at the same time as fitting his parachute. Flight Engineer Harry Marshall was assisting him. But the aircraft exploded in mid-air.

The explosion caused the aircraft to break up, throwing Brown and Holmes clear. They were able to parachute to safety. George and the remaining members of the crew – Harry Marshall, Fred Wooldridge, Ron Young and Gavin Borradaile – were trapped in the aircraft and killed. The aircraft crashed a few hundred metres north-west of the village of Jabel. The men were buried in adjoining graves by the villagers. Unfortunately, the villagers only recorded and reported the remains of Fred Wooldridge and Ron Young; the remaining three men’s names were not passed on to the Red Cross. Meanwhile, Holmes and Brown were captured and met up in custody a few hours later.

On 3 February, Martha Messenger received the telegram that all the families dreaded. It informed her simply that George was the pilot of a Lancaster attacking Berlin on the night of 30 January, and that it had failed to return to base. The telegram was followed in due course by a letter from George’s commanding officer, Rollo Kingsford-Smith,[13] who described George as an ‘extremely keen, capable and conscientious officer’.[14] In late March, a report was received through the Red Cross that Holmes and Brown had been captured and that Young and Wooldridge, as well as three unidentified members of the crew, had perished in the crash. The chances that George had survived were fast evaporating, but Martha doggedly insisted that he was alive and hiding in occupied territory. In October 1944, a report was received from Eric Brown through the Red Cross that he was certain that George had died at the controls of his Lancaster.

In June 1947, the Graves Registration Unit visited Jabel and exhumed the graves of George and his five crew members. Many airmen’s bodies were stripped of valuables and identification by the German military; the Jabel villagers, however, had treated the bodies with great respect. Gavin Borradaile and Fred Wooldridge were identified by their identity discs, Ron Young by his signet ring, his AG brevet and his number, which was marked on his shirt, and Harry Marshall by his fair hair and airman’s shirt.

George Messenger was identified by his pilot officer’s rank badges, bush shirt and an Australian issue ‘Mae West’ life jacket. The watch that George was presented with in 1940 was found in Harry Marshall’s grave; it was returned to Martha just days short of the fourth anniversary of George’s death. After identification, the crew were reburied side by side in Berlin.

In Australia, George and Martha were left to grieve for decades over the loss of their only child. George senior passed away in 1960, aged seventy-two, and Martha in 1969.

Flying Officer George Laurie Messenger, RAAF and four of his crew are buried in Berlin in the 1939–1945 War Cemetery.

[1] Bill Gunning, diary entry for 20 Jul 1942.
[2] Bill Gunning, diary entry for 2 Aug 1942.
[3] W-O Eric Brown, 1543709, RCAF.
[4] W-O M. P. Holmes, 1576072, RCAF.
[5]Sgt Harold William Hughes Marshall, 576242, RAFVR: of Franche, Worcestershire, UK; KIA 30 Jan 1944, aged 19.
[6] Sgt Frederick Wooldridge, 1035489, RAFVR; of Lye, Worcestershire, UK; KIA 30 Jan 1944, aged 32.
[7] Sgt Ronald William Young, 1376781, RAFVR; of Gillingham, Kent, UK; KIA 30 Jan 1944, aged 24.
[8] S Ldr William James Lewis, DFC 63071 RAFVR; KIA 3 Nov 1943, aged 30.
[9] S Ldr Alfred Sydney Raphael DFC 68155 RAFVR; of Maida Vale, London, UK; KIA 18 Aug 1943, aged 27.
[10] W Cdr Cosme Lockwood Gomm, RAF; regular air force officer; of Curitiba, Brazil; b. 15 Nov 1915; KIA 15 Aug 1943.
[11] Sgt Gavin Carfrae Borradaile, 1332645, RAFVR; of Saffron Walden, Essex, UK; KIA 30 Jan 1944, aged 20. In Messenger’s logbook, he spells the name ‘Borrodale’.
[12] P-O Jack Weatherill, 410021; grocer of Coburg Vic; b. Coburg Vic 16 Jan 1923; KIA 3 Jan 1944.
[13] W Cdr Rollo Kingsford-Smith, DSO, DFC; regular air force officer of Wollstonecraft NSW; b. Northwood, 14 Jul 1919; d. Bowral, NSW, 20 Jun 2009. Kingsford-Smith was the nephew of Sir Charles Kingsford-Smith.
[14] National Archives of Australia: A705, 166/27/343.

Primary Source; High in The Sunlit Silence, Tony Vine, Vivid Publishing 2017.