Skip to content

Memorial helps bring closure for family

It took more than 40 years of searching, but Lloyd Truscott and his siblings are finally able to have some closure about the death of their uncle Harold.
Lloyd Truscott shows off a piece of the “Berlin Special “, that was given to him by officials of Spreckens when he visited the village to unveil a memorial
Lloyd Truscott shows off a piece of the “Berlin Special “, that was given to him by officials of Spreckens when he visited the village to unveil a memorial dedicated to a RCAF bomber crew.

It took more than 40 years of searching, but Lloyd Truscott and his siblings are finally able to have some closure about the death of their uncle Harold.

On July 29, Truscott and his wife, along with family members of two other Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) airmen, unveiled a monument dedicated to the crew of a bomber that crashed in a farmer’s field 73 years ago during the Second World War.

“Just to be able to put my hand on the plaque because it is going to be there well after we’re all gone, means the crew will never be forgotten, has allowed me a measure of closure on what happened to my uncle,” said Truscott, a former Barrhead native, who now lives in Edmonton.

The Lancaster bomber LL678, nicknamed “Berlin Special,” was taking part in a midnight raid on Hamburg on July 29, 1944, when it was hit by anti-aircraft fire. Still carrying a full load of bombs, the disabled Lancaster flew into the ground near Spreckens, about 100 kilometres west of the target and exploded.

Of the eight crew on board, only one managed to escape the burning plane and parachute safely to the ground. The seven others, a collection of Canadians including Harold, a 23-year-old mid-upper gunner, perished in the crash. Harold was on his 26th mission — a tour of duty was considered complete after 30 missions.

But it wasn’t until a few years ago that Truscott had been able to unravel the mystery of what happened to his uncle.

“Growing up [in Trenton, Ont.] there was always a picture of [Harold] on the mantle and we [Lloyd’s siblings Art, Mike, Lynn and Marianne] we were told he died in the war, but no one could really tell us what had happened,” he said.

When Truscott was 21, he moved to Ottawa where he started this quest to find out what happened to Harold through the Department of National Defence (DND).

Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to get a lot of information.

Truscott said before the department is able to release any information, he needed to get permission from Harold’s immediate family, something one of his uncles was reluctant to do.

“My uncle Claire always blamed himself for my uncle’s death because he was the first one to join the air force so he said no,” he said.

Truscott’s father, Art Sr., along with his brothers Claire and Harold, all joined the air force. Claire was a fighter pilot with the RCAF, while Art Sr. was a wireless operator for the Royal Air Force’s Coastal Command.

Unable to get any information from DND, Truscott filed away what little information he had been able to gather about Harold in a briefcase, moved out west, married and started a family.

Then one night in 2013, while rummaging for something in his basement, he spotted the briefcase and renewed his search. Unlike his previous search, this time he had an additional research tool, the Internet.

“I knew there was a survivor [David Scott, a RAF flight engineer], so I Googled his name and the first hit I came up with was a website put up by David Scott’s son [Craig],” Truscott said.

After bailing out, Scott was taken prisoner by German forces and spent the rest of the war as a POW. After Scott passed away, his son found his diary and put it online.

“That was the proverbial needle in the haystack,” Truscott said, adding with the information from Scott’s website, he made an effort to contact the families of the other members of the crew, eventually finding a relative of the radio operator, Gordon Croucher, Jean-Claude Charlebois.

Teaming up with Charlebois they were able to find relatives of all the crew members, and many of the details of the crash itself, including the exact location where it went down and an eyewitness to the event — Hans Hermann Heins, who was just a boy at the time.

“He saw the plane fly over, said it was very quiet because they were feathering their engines, with flames coming out the back and it slowly went into the ground,” Truscott said, adding the bomber crashed in a farmer’s field near the village of Spreckens. “Then after about two minutes the plane’s bombs exploded leaving about a 20 foot crater and scattering the wreckage for about one kilometre.”

After finding all they could about the circumstances of the crew’s death, Truscott and Charlebois, decided they would create a memorial to the crew. They contacted Sprecken’s officials for permission to install it near the crash site.

“At first they didn’t think we were going to do it, nor did we think that they would be too receptive in helping us put up a memorial for a crew that was trying to bomb Hamburg,” he said, adding they didn’t need to be concerned.

“They were just so kind and went far beyond what I ever imagined,” he said. “Not only did they agree to install the memorial [which bears the photos of the ill-fated crew and details of their bomber] in the same cemetery where five of the men were originally buried, but they cut a hole through the trees so we could actually see ground zero, the crash site, from the memorial. Eventually five were moved to the Becklingen War Cemetery south of Hamburg. The bodies of Croucher and Truscott were never found.

“To me that [crater] is where my uncle Harold is,” Truscott said.

At the crash site, Spreckens officials installed a pole, which flies the flag of the RCAF’s 408 “Goose” Squadron.

“I can’t say enough how receptive and open our new German friends were. They really did go all out for us,” he said, adding Spreckens residents have offered to raise the flag every July 29, the anniversary of the crash, at the memorial site. “I hope to be able to go back next year.”


Barry Kerton

About the Author: Barry Kerton

Barry Kerton is the managing editor of the Barrhead Leader, joining the paper in 2014. He covers news, municipal politics and sports.
Read more



Comments

push icon
Be the first to read breaking stories. Enable push notifications on your device. Disable anytime.
No thanks