June 18, 2011
A Nelson man's curiosity about a relative's wartime death in a faraway land has led to the forging of some strong bonds between New Zealand families and a small Dutch town. Geoff Collett reports.
There are hundreds of thousands of graves like these, neatly and carefully tended, laid out in orderly rows across swathes of the European countryside.
These 20 or so stand in the pretty setting of a small Dutch town called Markelo and mark the final resting place of, among others, four New Zealanders, two Englishmen and a Scotsman: seven comrades who died together on a midsummer's night in 1943, returning from a bombing run over Germany.
Perhaps their stories wouldn't stand out from all the other war dead similarly commemorated with a tidy plot and well-maintained headstone. All across Europe – and certainly all across Holland – the people of towns like Markelo have long prided themselves on tending to those Allied fighters who paid for the defeat of Nazism with their lives.
On the other side of the world, when Darryl Robertson was younger, he occasionally reflected on how lonely and sad it seemed, that his father's cousin and close friend, Andrew McEwin, had died so young and so far away.
When he headed out on his own OE, his father, Don, urged him to pay a visit to Holland, to track down the grave marked in the name of Flight Sergeant Andrew McEwin.
Mr Robertson didn't get there, but nor did he abandon the memory of a relative he never knew.
He remembers one of their last conversations before his father died 20 years ago, when they discussed family history, the older man pondering how, "when you're young, you don't have the time to find out about these things".
For Mr Robertson – by then settled into life as an artist in the countryside near Mapua – another decade was to pass until he decided to find the time.
Among all that he subsequently learned was that, whatever the sadness of their deaths, however distant the men were from home, perhaps their end wasn't as lonely as it might have seemed. And that as easy as it might have been for memories and connections to fade as the decades drifted past, the opposite has proved true.
As another anniversary of the deaths rolls around next week – the 68th – Mr Robertson has helped to close the gap of both time and distance, and changed some lives along the way.
For Keith Burbidge, the phone call from Mr Robertson came from out of the blue. While he had some vivid memories of his older brother, Ken, he knew little of the circumstances around his death.
"We knew that he had been shot down in this town called Markelo," Mr Burbidge says from his Richmond home. He remembers a woman from Markelo corresponded briefly with his mother, including some assurances that Ken had landed in a place where the people had cared for the dead.
Beyond that, he never expected to know more, and now in his 80s, never expected to visit the place where Ken's life had ended.
And yet suddenly came this phone call from a stranger who happened to live not far away, telling him that he had information about how Ken and his fellow airmen had died and been cared for in death.
Within hours, Mr Burbidge was on his way to Mr Robertson's studio to learn the full story.
The men had been part of a massive bombing run that night, Mr Robertson had learned with more than 500 allied aircraft flying from England, among them a Stirling bomber, EF399, part of the 75 RNZAF Squadron, with a crew of seven.
Ken Burbidge, 22, from Otago was in the pilot's seat; Andrew McEwin, 25, from the West Coast gold-mining settlement of Waiuta was bomb commander; Donald Martin, 26, from Auckland the wireless operator/gunner; Walter Wilcockson, of Christchurch, the navigator; Cameron Gibson, 23, of Scotland, the forward gunner; Gordon Lockey, of England, the flight engineer; and Kenneth Shaw, 22, also of England, the tail gunner.
The raid left something like two-thirds of the German city of Mulheim destroyed, but as they turned for home, the Stirling's well-recognised flaws – its slow, lumbering form – made it a sitting duck.
It was apparently hit by flak, making it even slower. Probably, the crew never saw the German night fighter attack, crippling the plane before vanishing back into the darkness.
Flight Sergeant Burbidge managed to keep control as he attempted a crash landing until, with seconds to go, the aircraft broke up, crashing and burning; two of the crew had time to jump for safety but not to activate their parachutes.
All were found dead by villagers. Burial arrangements were quickly made to spare the dead any further indignities, the locals saying the Lord's Prayer over the graves.
In time, as news of the crash reached their loved ones, the occasional letter from afar would arrive in Markelo, seeking some news of what had come of the men.
There were those in the town who took it on themselves to write back, providing what assurances they could: that the men had died in a caring, pretty place, that their graves were tended, candles lit and flowers left for them regularly, the children of the town also taught to continue the devotions.
Mr Robertson's research into Andrew McEwin's death started slowly, but grew rapidly, particularly when he made contact with people in Markelo to see if anybody could help him. A key moment came when he contacted New Zealand's ambassador to Holland, David Payton, "who was amazing – he pulled out all the stops".
That included visiting Markelo, where the ambassador went out of his way to draw attention to the town's Kiwi connection.
He met a keen audience. A flood of information came to the surface – as Mr Robertson puts it, the project got a life of its own.
Subsequent New Zealand ambassadors continued to nurture a relationship with the Markelo people. In 2010, Defence Minister Wayne Mapp made an official visit. Prime Minister John Key wrote to the small group there who drive the effort to honour the memory of dead airmen, to thank them; they were also invited to lunch with Queen Beatrix in recognition of their work.
Mr Robertson, meanwhile, continued his research, including the story of the Luftwaffe pilot who had brought down the Stirling – a member of the Austrian aristocracy, Prince Egmont Zur Lippe Weissenfeld, a night fighter ace and highly decorated member of the Luftwaffe.
Fascinated by what he had learned, Mr Robertson felt a responsibility to share it with others who had relatives on the plane – even though he had no idea where to start beyond the phone book.
He began with the most distinctive name among the crew, Walter Wilcockson, tracking down just one Wilcockson in the country, up in Tauranga. He called the listed number and discovered the man who answered was Walter's son, Ian, who was just six when his father died.
Mr Robertson admits he was dumbstruck to have made such a quick, easy connection. It turned out Mr Wilcockson's health was failing, but on the strength of what Mr Robertson shared with him he decided to arrange a visit to Markelo to see for himself where his father's life had ended, before he himself died.
For Mr Burbidge, the experience proved at least as poignant. Mr Robertson tracked him down in similarly random fashion, simply by ringing people of the name Burbidge in the phone book. By chance, Mr Burbidge was living in Richmond. The consequences of that phone call have been profound for him.
After discovering so much about his brother's death, he and some of his family determined that they too would visit Markelo. In November last year, they made the pilgrimage – Mr Burbidge accompanied by his daughter and son-in-law, Linda and Owen Feary, and their two daughters.
As Mr Wilcockson had also experienced, they were treated with enormous respect by the Dutch.
Perhaps the most moving moment came shortly after they arrived. Mr Burbidge recalls how the family were taken to a museum that specialises in recovering the parts of wartime aircraft; the museum was opened specially for them. A Stirling cockpit was nearing the final stages of reconstruction, "so we could see exactly where the pilot and navigator and everybody was situated in the awful damn machines".
Then, he was presented with a Stirling fuel gauge. "It was very, very emotional," Mr Burbidge says. "I'll be honest – I fell over, I let go, I couldn't hold it.
"As I said in Markelo, if Ken had walked out in the street and been killed, knocked over by a car or something, that would have been final. But buried over there, there was never a closure. But this represented a closure to me."
He is in awe of the Dutch, their kindness and determination; but he adds that in Markelo he encountered "absolute admiration" for Mr Robertson's efforts in making sure the story is known.
The experience, Mr Burbidge says, has brought his whole family closer. His grandchildren have started attending Anzac ceremonies, with their older relatives' medals. "That's a big thing for us. They're proud. Very proud."
Ironically enough, Mr Robertson hasn't yet made his own trip to Markelo, although he's contemplating it. He's not entirely finished with his research efforts.
Survivors of the other four men on board were not so easy to trace; he eventually found relatives of the fourth Kiwi, Donald Martin, and Cameron Gibson from Scotland, but the other British connections have proved more elusive.
He has, however, tracked down the two sisters of Prince Egmont, the Luftwaffe night-fighter ace who himself died in the war and, at the urgings of people in Markelo, has put them in contact with the town.
In two years time, they may even travel to Markelo themselves, to join what will be the 70th anniversary of the night the Stirling crashed.
Perhaps, Mr Robertson says, he'll be there too.
And Mr Burbidge hopes to be as well. He and his family are already tentatively planning for the trip. "I feel I owe it to them [the people of Markelo] for what they've done, and I owe it to myself."
But surely the deepest debt he owes is to the man who phoned him out of the blue to ask if he was related to a Kiwi airman who died in Holland in June, 1943.
"Without him we would never have found out what we have found out, and I would never have got to Holland to pay my respects to my brother," Mr Burbidge says.
"Without Darryl, we would have had nothing."
