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	Halifax - Hank, Holland

Vancouver Sun, Monday, November 11, 2002
For people who have suffered a wartime loss, Remembrance Day is every day of the year. Nov. 11 merely tightens the focus on their loss. In my case, with two brothers lost, that focus seems to blur and sharpen.
In September 1957, at the age of 20, I knew I was lost as I trudged along a rainswept Dutch country road somewhere near Nijmegen.
On my first trip to Europe, my mission in Holland was to find my older brother Sidney's grave and pay my respects. I had mistakenly gone to the wrong cemetery and was trying to find my way to the Jonkerbos War Cemetery in Nijmegen. One of the few cars that passed stopped and the driver and passenger asked if I wanted a lift. When they heard my story, they immediately found a farmhouse with a telephone, and after a warm cup of tea provided by the farmer's wife, we were on our way to Jonkerbos.
My chauffeurs (architects actually) had worked with the Dutch resistance and recounted a tale of hiding a downed aviator in their barn during the war.
We arrived at the correct cemetery, found where the crew of Halifax LV905 was buried and I laid flowers at the headstones, noting at the time that Sid's was a communal grave and that he shared a headstone with another crew member.
Later, my Dutch hosts bought me a meal at their club and after a stiff brandy, they put me on the train back to Amsterdam.
My mission accomplished, I would hold the memory of that day in my mind, not realizing that I was nowhere near Sid.
He was still at his wartime post along with some of his crewmates in LV905 - then, in 1957, as he was in 1944, and as he is now on Remembrance Day, 2002. Still in the Halifax, still four metres down, under the Dutch polder.
When he was a toddler, Sidney was forever slipping out the back gate of our Martin Avenue home in Winnipeg and heading down the quiet lane for adventures in the world beyond. One day, my mother, desperately seeking Sidney, found him a block and a half away on busy Kelvin Street. He wasn't lost, he said, just exploring. He was a born navigator.
As he grew older, Sid enjoyed sports such as lacrosse and fencing as well as serving in the Fort Garry Horse Cadets, rising to the rank of regimental sergeant major. Six-foot-two Viking blond, methodical with a buoyant sense of humour, he enjoyed cartooning and was noted for his ability to caricature.
Being the kid brother in a family of boys born over a time line of over a decade and a half meant that Sid was 14 years older than me. I naturally looked up to all my brothers as being bigger, wiser and more in control of their universe than I would ever be.
I remember when Sid bought a conservative grey-plaid suit, he tried the jacket on me and I was pleased as Punch to swagger about the house, though I must have looked like a miniature Zoot Suiter. He would buy me comic books and made a point of encouraging my cartooning.
Later, in letters home, he would ask how my drawing was progressing and promised to send my brother Clive and me a pair of observer's wings the next time he got to the tailors in London. This was not to be. He was not yet 22 when he died.
Sidney was one of five brothers. The three older boys, of an age to serve in the Second World War, joined the RCAF.
Flight Lieutenant Warren (Pete) Senior Peterson, served as a pilot instructor in Canada. Flying Officer Lawrence Herbert Peterson, a natural daredevil, served as a Hurricane fighter pilot attached to 33 Squadron (RAF) and was killed by an explosion during the Battle of El Alamein in North Africa in 1942. Nothing was recovered and no grave exists.
Flying Officer Sidney Glen Peterson served as observer/navigator in 78 Squadron (RAF), flying Halifax bombers. My brother Clive, being too young for the war, in later years served in the Royal Canadian Artillery Reserve, while I, the kid brother, served in the RCAF Reserve, 442 Squadron (city of Vancouver).
Enlisting in the air force in January 1942, Sid qualified as an air navigator on Sept. 11, 1942. He was sent to Britain, where, after further training, he joined 10 Squadron on Aug. 3, 1943, flying operational missions. He later took operational training with 35 Pathfinder Squadron, then was posted to 78 Squadron, where his total of 26 missions ended.
At 2250 hours on the night of May 24, 1944, 13 days before D-Day, Halifax LV905 (W for Willie) of 78 Squadron (RAF), No. 4 Group Bomber Command, lifted off from its base in Yorkshire.
The crew was: Pilot Officer Eric Benjamin `Tug' Wilson, Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe); Flying Officer Sidney Glen Peterson, age 21, Canada; Flying Officer Norman Allen Marston, age 24, England: Flight Sergeant Joseph Henderson, age 33, England: Sergeant William John White, age 22, England; Sergeant George Herbert Butler, age 21, England; Flight Sergeant Joseph Thomas Lloyd LeBlanc, age 29, Canada.
After navigational and altitude corrections, aircraft from 78 Squadron formed up with other squadrons of #4 Group Bomber Command, then joined the mainstream of squadrons from other bomber groups heading toward Germany. Their target was the Aachen-East railway yards. A second force of Lancasters would attack the West yards an hour later. In all, 442 aircraft made up the attacking force. Their purpose - to destroy the important railway system between Germany and Normandy, France. Eighteen Halifaxes and seven Lancasters would be lost in the raid.
At about midnight, the German "Nachtjagdgeschwader 1" reported a bomber attack on Aachen. From their base in St. Truiden in Belgium, Oberfeldwebel (Ofw) Karl-Heinz Scherfling and his crew from IV/NJGI were scrambled in their radar-equipped Messerschmitt Bf110 nightfighter to intercept the bomber attack.
For the first time in weeks, nightfighter activity was described as "very intense". As the Halifaxes reached Antwerp, on the way in, the first losses began to occur. The railways to the east of Aachen were particularly hard hit. The Monheim war-industry factory and the town's gasworks were among the many buildings destroyed.
As the force left the target area, they were again intercepted by a large number of long range night-fighters. From then on, the stream was harassed and pursued toward the coast and assailed by flak as they dodged the larger towns and cities.
By the time the bomber stream passed near Tilburg, Holland, at 0125 hours, a massive air-battle had developed between the bombers and fighters. When the middle of the stream, where LV905 was, reached Geertruidenberg, a number of aircraft were in serious difficulty.
At about 0120 hours, Ofw Scherfling vectored onto Sid's Halifax LV905 flying at 17,000 feet. By 0127 hours, contact was established and the Messerschmitt began its attack. After two minutes of intense fire from both aircraft, flames appeared on the Halifax as it corkscrewed down to ground level about one kilometre south of Hank and one and a half kilometres north of Geertruidenberg, Holland.
Pilot Officer Lee Caunt, a navigator in Halifax LW137,429 Squadron, bailing out after his aircraft was hit by flak reported: "During my descent a four-engine aircraft, on fire, passed above me, in a shallow dive. It seemed to roll and finally crashed, some way away. I don't think there was an explosion."
Indeed, there wasn't. From the ground, three workers living at Oranjehoeve farm, watching the air-battle above, witnessed the blazing approach of LV905, engines feathered, gliding down to the polder. They were struck by the silence of the controlled descent.
The pilot, trying valiantly to keep one wing from dropping, struggled to make a forced landing in the marsh on the other side of a dike. As the aircraft approached within 100 yards of the witnesses, it appeared to stall before hitting the ground with a heavy, resounding thud. The rear of the fuselage, on striking the small dike, broke off behind the wing root, leaving two of the crew, Air Gunners Sergeant George Butler and Flight Sergeant Joseph LeBlanc, behind as the forward section carried on a short distance, coming to rest in the bed of a small stream surrounded by flooded ground.
This part of the aircraft quickly sank out of sight.
Later that day, Anton van der Pluijm, a teenager at the time, who also worked at Oranjehoeve farm, was conscripted into a work party by the Germans to clean up the surface wreckage from the crash. He recalls that although he could see one of the engines under water, the front section of the aircraft was never salvaged and only the bodies from the tail section were recovered. This has been confirmed by archival records. He is adamant that LV905 should be recovered and the bodies of the crew given proper burial.
Messerschmitt pilot Scherfling went on to claim 33 Allied planes shot down before being killed two months later in combat.
According to an investigation, three bodies were recovered from the wreckage and buried in temporary graves at Oosterhout, near Arnhem. It was only possible to identify one of the three, Sergeant Butler, who was buried separately. The other two unknowns were buried in a collective grave.
The day after the news of Sid's death, I remember telling Miss Cox, my Grade 3 teacher at Glenwood elementary, that I didn't much feel like attending class that day - not realizing that she, a very good friend of Sid, didn't feel much like teaching class that day either.
In 1953, all three bodies were transferred to Jonkerbos War Cemetery. Sergeant Butler has his own headstone; over the collective grave there are four headstones; one bears inscriptions referring to Flight Sergeant Henderson and another to Flight Sergeant LeBlanc; the third bears inscriptions referring to Flying Officer Marston and Flying Officer Peterson and the fourth bears inscriptions relating to Sergeant White and Pilot Officer Wilson. But Sid and his friends and crewmates who weren't recovered are not really there, in body or spirit.
My renewed interest was triggered by a letter that came out of the blue from Norma (Henderson) Morris earlier this year. Norma is the daughter of RAF Wireless Operator Flight Sergeant Joseph Henderson of Liverpool, a good friend and crewmate of Sid. She described a ceremony she attended at Oranjepolder, Hank, Holland, commemorating LV905, the Halifax bomber that had crashed near the village. She passed on the address of Philip de Witt, the archivist who had arranged the ceremony and suggested I contact him.
Oranjepolder? Hank? LV905 crash? I punched up these names at random on the Google search engine of my computer and there a magnificent Web site was revealed. Philip de Witt had assembled a Web site relating to the story of LV905. A home page dealt with the crew, the bomber, the mission, the crash, the inquiry, the commemorative marker, and the events of the ceremony. (Although it was all in Dutch, it was lavishly illustrated and relatively easy to understand). I immediately decided to visit Holland once again to unravel this personal mystery.
Four weeks ago, my wife Margaret and I visited the beautiful village of Hank where we met with Philip de Will and his family. Philip, a retired Dutch army infantry sergeant, is the archivist who, along with Canadian Michael LeBlanc (a nephew of Flight Sergeant LeBlanc), is responsible for the incredible research that has been pieced together to tell this story.
Philip showed me remains and fragments of LV905 that the farmer, and then-owner of the crash site, had unearthed while plowing his field. The farmer passed these artifacts on to Philip, triggering his desire to learn more about the story of LV905. He was kind enough to let me choose a fragment of my brother's aircraft.
A small twisted piece of aluminum, still encrusted with polder clay. To me, a priceless link to Sid's last second.
After a hearty homemade lunch, we drove to the crash site. Today the dike has become a road and the flooded area, then bordering the river, is a recovered field turned into a state controlled conservation area.
In this field, each spring, an impression can be seen in the ground forming a silhouette of the course of the ` De Kromme Holle." The fuel and hydraulics have contaminated the soil and little grows above it. In this way, LV905 (W for Willie) still faithfully marks the spot, still waiting to be recovered. Not lost, just waiting for the powers that be to arrange a proper burial for the remainder of the crew.
And that is something that must happen to bring this bittersweet mystery to a conclusion. The countries involved must shoulder the responsibility either independently or as brothers in arms (and now peace) to excavate "De Kromme Holle," exhume the remains of the crew and give them the dignity and respect they deserve,


At an intersection near the crash site, a commemorative marker has been erected in memory of the crew of LV905. It was unveiled on Sept. 22, 2001, at a ceremony that included a flypast by two Harvards of the Royal Netherlands Air Force Historical Flight. On our visit, we paid our respects, laid our bouquet of flowers, met Anton van der Pluijm and thanked him for his recollections of the crash. We talked to reporters from the Dutch press, then crossed into the farmer's field that still contains half of LV905.
The Netherlands weather was blustery and damp, not unlike that day in 1957 when I first went looking for Sid. The polder clay was wet and slippery as we walked across the field, but soon began to cling about our feet and gather on our shoes. I had the feeling it was trying to hold us there, if only for a few moments, near the black scar where my brother still lies with his friends, still seeking the peace they delivered to us over a half century ago.
In sorrow and confusion, a blurred thought formed in my mind: I think I've found you this time, Sid, but somehow, you're still lost.
And still not at rest.