AUGUST 2015 NEWSLETTER

AUGUST 2015 NEWSLETTER

On Monday 17th August our speaker was Rotary Scholar Abby Tibbetts who is studying for her Masters degree at Essex University. I was unable to be there but according to Neil she gave an illuminating talk about her home town of Tyler, Texas and the content of her dissertation. A really good speaker and it is very pleasing to know that Rotary helps in this way with Rotary Scholars. John Wade gave the vote of thanks. 

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At the Monday 24th August meeting we were entertained by a very talented local young lady , Elizabeth Leaver, who sang six songs and arias in English, German and Italian. She has won many scholarships to various schools and colleges and now embarks on a 4 year course at a university to further her studies in music and singing, She hopes one day to be an opera singer but , if it is found that her voice is not suitable, she will quite happily concentrate on popular songs and ballads. A semi-finalist on the BBC’s ‘The Voice’ program  she has also enjoyed appearing with Andrew Lloyd-Weber and hopefully looks forward to a very promising career We wish her well and thank her for the pleasure she gave to our members, wives/partners, and friends. Our President gave the ‘Vote of Thanks’ and presented Elizabeth with a bouquet of flowers . Thanks to Neil and Colin Hance for all the organisation.

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Reception of Visitors

August 31st BANK HOLIDAY

September   7th Jan Mealing Keith Morris Graham Page

     14th Rod Parmenter Ray Pryce Ron Reeves

     21st David Rutson Shane Scott Alan Thomas

     28th SCATTER WEEK

October       5th John Wade David Wells Chris Whittam

     12th Malcolm Ablett Nigel Barnard Greg Bloss

     19th Charles Bull Tony Burrows Norman Cory

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Dates for your Diary

Monday  31st August - BANK HOLIDAY

Monday     7th September - CLUB COUNCIL

Monday    14th September - BUSINESS MEETING

Monday    21st September - Speaker  PETER HESK

Monday    28th September - SCATTER WEEK

Monday      5th October - CLUB COUNCIL

Monday     12th October - BUSINESS MEETING

Saturday    24th October - GUY CARNIVAL

Thursday   10th October - SENIOR CITIZENS’ XMAS PARTY

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The KLB Club (Konzentrationslager Buchenwald)

I was reading an article the other day which mentioned the KLB Club and having not heard of it before I thought that I would try and  find out more. In the summer of 1944 the Allies had control of the skies over Europe but of course some Allied planes were lost over France, Belgium and the Netherlands and the crews would , when possible, contact the local resistance and try to escape by the Comet and Pat Line through Spain. Hitler ordered the immediate execution of any aircrew accused of committing certain acts , the most common act was being captured in civilian clothes with no identification tags, by the Gestapo. The escaping aircrew were turned over to the Gestapo by traitors in the Resistance , the most notable traitor being  one Jacques Desoubrie,(put on trial after the war he was executed in 1949) and found themselves imprisoned  in Fresnes Prison, outside Paris. Concern was expressed about the shooting of POW’s by the German Foreign Office and it was suggested to the Gestapo that the prisoners should be treated as spies and criminals rather than POW’s. So the 168 allied airmen from Great Britain, America, Australia, New Zealand Canada and Jamaica were  taken on the 5 day journey from Paris to Buchenwald in overcrowded cattle trucks arriving 20th August 1944. Buchenwald was a forced labour camp containing 60,000 inmates mainly Russian POW’s but also criminals. religious and political prisoners. Having to sleep in the open for the first three weeks, they were totally shaven and denied shoes. They feared that they would perish in Buchenwald  because their documents were stamped ‘ not to be transferred to another camp ‘. Colonel Hannes Trautloft (Inspector of Day Fighters) stationed in Berlin heard rumours that Allied POW’s were at Buchenwald and on the pretext of inspecting bomb damage in the area visited the camp. (Another story suggests that a note was smuggled out through a trusted Russian POW and found its way to the Luftwaffe ) When Trautloft was leaving , Bernard Scharf , an American airman called out in fluent German and asked him to get them out of Buchenwald. Trautloft returned to Berlin to began the process of having the 168 airmen transferred to a POW camp – it has been suggested that Goering  was in on the final decision to have the airmen transferred because he could see that captured German aircrew could be subjected to the same treatment. So, at the end of October the airmen were transferred to Stalag Luff 111 ( unfortunately two had died in Buchenwald) and this was 7 days before their scheduled execution date. 

While in Buchenwald the Senior Officer W/C Phil Lamason, a New Zealander, had maintained discipline  and they always marched to roll call , which annoyed the guards. Also , it was agreed to hold meetings to give them a sense of purpose and so the exclusive KLB Club  came into existence and each nation held its own meetings to collate address lists and arrange meetings after the end of the war and a bond was formed. So, they have been meeting over the years since the end of the war but with the passing of time fewer have been attending. At one of the meetings when in Buchenwald it was decided to design a club pin and the winning design ( put forward by Bob Taylor (UK)) showed a naked winged foot, chained to a ball bearing the letters KLB , with the whole mounted on a white star (crest of the Allies invasion forces) The 168 aircrew were made up of 82 Americans,48 British, 26 Canadians, 9 Australian, 2 New Zealanders and 1 Jamaican.

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While we were visiting Southern Germany some years ago we stayed in a small village on the shores of the Bodensee (Lake Constance) and while there visited the Zeppelin Museum in Friedrichshafen.  I knew that Zeppelins had been used to attack the UK in WW1 and had crossed the Atlantic  to America but had no idea that they had circumnavigated the the Globe. After the WW1 the size of any Zeppelin  was  limited under the Treaty of Versailles and these smaller craft were used for inter-city  services. The USA was interested in airships and contracted with the Zeppelin Company to build a much larger airship and the LZ 126 was designed and built  but  when it arrived in America was renamed the USS ’Los Angeles’. So, breaking the limit laid down for German airships, the LZ127 – Graf Zeppelin’ (named after the founder of the company) was  built  to a much improved design  of LZ126 – with a length of 778 ft and a volume of 105,000 cubic metres. Powered by 5 Maybach 550 HP engines that could burn either Blau gas or gasoline, the airship could achieve a maximum speed of 80mph although their cruising speed was usually 73mph.  With a payload capacity of 15,000 kilograms and could cover 10.000 kilometres  and for the first month or so she did short demonstration flights locally before  on 11th October 1928 the LZ127 left Friedrichshafen for America, arriving on 15th October at Lakehurst, New Jersey. She had travelled 9,926 kilometres in 111 hours and had encountered  strong headwings and stormy weather. The LZ 127 had been christened Graf Zeppelin by Countess Brandebstein-Zeppelin on 8th July 1928, the 90th anniversary of the birth of her father Ferdinand (the founder of the company) and was to fly until June 1937 when she was grounded, one month after the ‘Hindenburg’ disaster. She was at this time jointly owned by the German Government and the Deutsche Lufthansa AG (Germany’s national airline at the time). As well as transatlantic flights, she made flights to Spain, London, Berlin, Moscow, the Middle East, the North Pole  and for five years from 1932-37 flew between Germany and Brazil carrying mail  which could be delivered a week faster than by ship. In her career the Graf Zeppelin flew more than 1.7 km  (1,056,000 miles), made 590 flights, carried 13,110 passengers and spent 17,177 hours aloft (717 days), all of which was accomplished without ever injuring a passenger or crewman. Quite a feat, a good example of German engineering  and it is rather sad to think that she ended her days being broken up and the duralumin parts were used by the German war industry. If you ever find yourself down near the Bodensee I would recommend a visit to the Zeppelin Museum in Friedrichshafen,

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Our older members will remember the dropping of the A Bombs on Hiroshima on 6th August and on Nagasaki on the 9th August and the final surrender of Japan on the 15th August, with the surrender being signed on 2nd September. We remember the celebrations on that day and the anniversaries since – we tend to see reports from the Western world including the now Commonwealth but somehow forget that China had perhaps more cause to celebrate the end of the war. Here the surrender was not signed until 9th September and by that time they had suffered 8 years of war , lost an estimated 35 million troops and civilians and had witnessed atrocities we cannot imagine, including their womenfolk used as ‘comfort women’ for the invading Japanese. On top of this there was a civil war going on between the Nationalists and the Communists and although they tried to bury their differences,  most agreements fell apart. They received outside help from America, Great Britain, Italy, Australia and even Germany before Hitler signed the agreement with Japan. After  Pearl Harbour (December 7th 1941) supplies continued and America was acutely aware that the Chinese were  tying down a great number of Japanese troops which would have been used against the Americans and Allies in the Pacific and Burma. The British built the Burma Road in 1937/8 so that supplies shipped into Rangoon could be taken by rail to the start of the road and then driven the length of the road (717 miles long) through mountainous country  to southern China. The Japanese invaded Burma and so the road became useless and supplies had to be flown in from Assam and India so it was decided to try and drive the enemy out of northern Burma so that another road could be built to connect up to the northern part of the Burma Road – this was called the Ledo Road and was finished in January 1945. Before the attack on Pearl Harbour the Americans had formed the 1st American Volunteer Group (AVG) commanded by Claire L Chennault, a retired US Army Air Corps Officer,  who had worked in China with Chiang  Kai-shek  (Nationalist leader) as  director of a Chinese Air Force flight school. As the United States was not at war the whole operation had to be organised very much undercover , but approved by the President, Franklin D Roosevelt. The AVG became known as the ‘Flying Tigers’ and the fighters (Curtiss P-40) had the shark-faced nose art and the pilots came from US Army Air Corps, Navy and Marine Corps. Travelling with civilian passports, 300  men boarded ships bound for Burma in the summer of 1941,  where they would be stationed at a British airfield while the planes were assembled , before moving to China. They first saw action on 20th December ,wearing Chinese uniform , and had notable successes destroying 296 enemy aircraft while only losing 14 pilots – this was the only good news coming out at that time of defeats at the hands of the Japanese. The AVG were disbanded on 4th July 1942 and their role was taken over by the 23rd Fighter Group of the US Army Air Forces which was later itself absorbed into the Us Fourteenth Air Force with General Chennault as commander. 

As we know the 258 miles long Burma Railway was built in 1943 using Allied POW’s and local population – about 60,000 POW’s and 180,000 locals of which 12,621 POW’s died and an estimated 90,000 locals. The railway completed the link between Bangkok and Rangoon and was used by the Japanese to supply their troops in Burma – the route had been surveyed as early as 1885 by the British but was considered too  difficult. Appalling conditions and the brutal and cruel treatment of the POW’s and the locals meant that only the fittest and the luckiest survived, but the mental effects stayed with the survivors for the rest of their lives. I know that the British are accused of always talking about the war but if we don’t, these things would be forgotten – we owe it to those who gave their lives to remember their sacrifice.