On January 8, 1945, the Harris Crew was assigned to 550 Squadron at North Killingholme, England.
For the Canadian and British crew -- including David Yemen, the navigator who was born in February 1915 in Theodore, SK. -- this move would signify the start of active service with RAF’s Bomber Command.
Though the Harris Crew’s tour would be a brief one, the crew would participate in some of the most controversial raids of World War II and go to battle against Germany’s top night fighter.
Yemen and his crewmates would participate in six dangerous operations before the crew's seventh and final operation on a raid to Dessau on March 7, 1945 when they were shot down by a German night fighter. Two crew members were found in the wreckage, four, including David Yemen parachuted to safety and became POWs. The remains of Robert Harris, the pilot, were never found.
This past March marked the 75th anniversary of the crash.
Weaving together letters written home by Flying Officer Robert Harris and first-hand accounts written by Sergeant Douglas Hicks along with Squadron records and historical archives, Canadian author Allyson Newburg created a riveting snapshot of the remarkable Harris Crew and their short but harrowing time with 550 Squadron.
Newburg said an interest in the war and a family writer inspired her to write the book, her first.
“I have been interested in World War II for many years, inspired by stories written by my great-uncle Douglas Hicks,” she told Yorkton This Week. “We are fortunate to have one of only two remaining airworthy Lancasters nearby (‘Vera’ from the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum) and she is a frequent sight in the summer in the skies of Toronto. After making several visits to see ‘Vera’ at the museum and telling stories about some of Doug’s experiences as a Lancaster rear-gunner, my now 11-year-old son peppered me with questions about his great, great-uncle Doug’s experiences in the war.
“After telling my son ‘I don’t know’ too many times, I set out to find out more.
“My initial goal with this project was simply to create a chronological timeline of my great-uncle’s service in World War II just for my immediate family.
“As my research continued, my ‘project’ morphed into a profile of the entire crew, growing from ten pages to a hundred to many, many more.”
Of course local interest is of airman Yemen.
RCAF Flight Sergeant David Johnston Yemen, the crew’s 29-year-old navigator, was born February 12, 1915 in Theodore, Saskatchewan. After enlisting, Yemen completed his training in Regina, Virden and Winnipeg before receiving his Air Navigator’s badge and heading overseas.
Yemen’s first posting in August 1944 was to the #83 Operational Training Unit at RAF Peplow, positioned midway between Liverpool and Birmingham, England, explained Newburg. At Peplow, Yemen crewed up with fellow Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) airmen Sergeant Tom Ditson (mid-upper air gunner), Flying Officer Robert Harris (pilot), Sergeant Douglas Hicks (rear air gunner) and Flying Officer Gordon Nicol (bomber aimer). The five would be joined by Royal Air Force (RAF) Sergeant Gerard Kelleher (wireless operator). In October 1944, the crew of Harris, Ditson, Hicks, Kelleher, Nicol and Yemen was moved to 1662 Heavy Conversion Unit at 71 Base, RAF Blyton where they were finally united with engineer Kenneth Smith. The crew was now complete.
On January 8, 1945, the Harris Crew was assigned to 550 Squadron.
Newburg, who resides in Toronto, notes, at the end of the month, Robert Harris wrote to his wife that he and his crew were experiencing “one of the coldest snaps known for years, and fellows are having to melt snow for washing because all the plumbing is frozen up.”
In the same letter, Harris referred to David Yemen and his fiancée, Mary Burton: “Romance has blossomed in our crew. Dave Yemen was smitten a couple of months ago, and is planning to get married in March. His lady love is a schoolteacher (!) in a town not far from here, and from her picture I would say she is a very nice girl. Poor Dave hasn’t seen her since we came here, and he is trying hard today to get a 48 [hour leave] while I am laid up.”
Due to cold, snowy weather, the Harris Crew would not experience their first live operation until February 13, 1945. Rear air gunner Douglas Hicks would later write: “We return home safely with no incidents to report… We land at our home base without incident. This trip lasted for ten hours and five minutes. We have lost our virginity and still there is no jubilation. It seems we did what we were trained to do and that triumphant cries of jubilation will wait for another time. Ata debriefing we tell of the horrendous fires that were evident over the target and we wonder aloud if anyone on the ground survived that holocaust.”
“The crew would fly five more live operations before being shot down over Germany on March 7, 1945 on their seventh operation,” said Newburg. “The bodies of engineer Kenneth Smith and Eric Raymond Robinson (filling in for Tom Ditson in the role of mid-upper air gunner) were found in the wreckage. The remains of Flying Officer Robert Harris were never found.”
For the four surviving crew members, their story was not over.
“After parachuting to the ground, the four were rounded up as prisoners of war,” said Newburg.
Douglas Hicks would become the youngest member of the ‘Guinea Pig Club,’ the group of airmen who were treated for burns at the Queen Victoria Hospital.
David Yemen and fiancée Mary Burton’s March wedding plans would have to wait.
“March would come and go with Yemen first at Dulag Luft then Stalag XIIID and finally at Stalag XIIA where he would spend the last weeks of the war with Kelleher,” said Newburg.
At war’s end, David and his fiancé quickly got to work on their wedding plans, and the two were married (with Douglas Hicks as Best Man) on May 21, 1945.
Yemen returned to Canada via the French ocean liner S.S. Ile de France, docking at Pier 21 in Halifax on July 14, 1945. Back in Mansfield, England, Mary was still awaiting approval of her settlement arrangements, explained Newburg.
“A pregnant Mary would finally arrive in Canada in January 1946 via ship to Halifax and onwards to Saskatchewan by train where she and David would settle in Yorkton,” she said.
Their first child, Fran was born April 10, 1946 and the couple would go on to have five more: Dorothy, Linda, Peter, Bill, and Joe.
David Yemen passed away on May 30, 1986 in Yorkton at the age of 71.
But there is more to the Newburg book than Yemen’s tale.
“Every member of Bomber Command was a volunteer and the Canadian members of the crew, including David Yemen, left their families behind to serve alongside the Royal Air Force,” she said. “The Harris Crew went through trial by fire in a very real sense… their very first live operation was to Dresden.
“The crew flew a famous Lancaster, had a connection to Germany’s top night fighter and the possibility exists that the pilot may have been a victim of a war crime.
“After spending many hundreds of hours on this project, it became obvious the story of The Harris Crew was a fascinating one which would be enjoyed by a wider audience. There are many written accounts from the war, but many are from the perspective of American Air Force personnel. The more Canadian stories we can elevate, the better.”
That did not mean the book came easily, as information was not always easily found.
“One of the common threads for the time at the end of the war in Europe was the lack of documentation,” said Newburg. “At the beginning of the war, records about air missions were very detailed and it was easy to cross-check Allied losses against records of Luftwaffe successes.
“Towards the end of the war, records became more sparse.
“In some cases, there may have been a lack of motivation to document every detail when the war was winding down, bases were being closed and POW records were being seized by liberating US troops.
“Records which may earlier in the war have been meticulously archived were either no longer available or never properly recorded.
“Another challenge was collecting personal photos, mementos and documents for each of the crew members. It took nearly a year just to track down family members of the crew.
“For some of the families, these boxes of memories may not have been opened in many years and it was an emotional journey for many of them digging through their fathers’ photos and documents. In many cases, the families were learning of their father’s/grandfather’s/uncle’s war experience for the first time. The surviving crew members came home resumed their lives and spoke little to their families of what they went through in the war.”
As might be expected the book did not come together overnight.
“The whole process took about two years and I hit a lot of dead ends in my research,” said Newburg. “The project required scouring through hundreds of pages of squadron logs, service records and personal letters.
“I was honored to be given so much information by the families of the crew members. Robert Harris wrote home to his wife Margaret several times a week while overseas and she kept all of her husband’s letters.
“Harris’ daughter Betty was so kind to share transcripts of these letters with me. Families of other crew members shared their photos, log books, letters and other treasures. It was fascinating to piece together the crew’s experiences through all these little jewels of information.”
Once captured, the information on the airmen grew harder to find.
“Piecing together the surviving crew members’ POW experiences was a particular challenge,” said Newburg. “In particular, I was having difficulty determining which POW camp my great-uncle had been liberated from. His writings provided clues, but no firm evidence of the actual camp. I had a long list of stock footage clips of several Stalag Lufts – the prisoner of war camps for Allied airmen. My plan was to narrow down possible locations, and then start digging through the footage. One day while eating my lunch at work, I decided to go through some of it to pass the time. On one of the first clips I clicked on, my heart nearly stopped… there was a clip of my great-uncle, head in bandages, smiling and chatting with his fellow liberated POWs at the Dulag Luft transit camp in Wetzlar. With all the many hours of POW camp footage available, I couldn’t believe my luck at finding the one reel where Doug had made an appearance. I went out and bought a lottery ticket that day. Every time I think back to that moment, I get goosebumps.”
So what does the author think is the best aspect of the book?
“A letter from Robert Harris to a crew member who had been hospitalized after an accident, posted just three days before he was killed,” said Newburg, adding there are others too; “a photograph of Douglas Hicks, his head wrapped in bandages, celebrating liberation from a prisoner of war camp. David Yemen’s first and only letter to his fiancé from the POW camp where he was being held; all these treasures that make the crew’s story heart-stopping and real.”
Newburg likes what she has created.
“I am very pleased with the results of the book, but I would be dishonest to say there weren’t more aspects I would have liked to have delved into more fully,” she said. “I wish I had gone through the process 10 years ago, when I could have asked my great-uncle about his experiences in person.”
So might there be a follow-up book?
“The Harris Crew ends with a puzzling mystery associated with this crew,” admitted Newburg. “On March 7, 1945 the crew was shot down over Germany. Of the seven crew members, four parachuted to safety (to become POWs), two bodies were found in the wreckage and the remains of the pilot, Flying Officer Robert Douglas Harris (from Winnipeg) were never found.
“The morning after the crash, a pilot was discovered by a labourer on a German farm in the town of Klein Flöthe, having parachuted from a disabled aircraft. The airman spoke with the town’s teacher and identified himself as a farmer, from outside of Winnipeg. The airman was marched off by members of the town’s home guard and his body was later found in the nearby wood with two bullets in his back.
“Due to similar physical descriptions and the mention of Winnipeg, RAF investigators believed this unknown airman might be Robert Douglas Harris, though never with enough conviction to have the grave of the remains marked as such. The Air Ministry Casualty Branch of the RAF closed the case in 1949 and the remains of the mysterious airman of Klein Flöthe are still buried in Hanover Cemetery in Germany.”
The mystery lingers.
“Harris’ daughter contacted the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and Canada’s Department of National Defence hoping to get some closure on the identification of the mystery airman,” said Newburg. “The CWGC were able to confirm the burial details but were unwilling to pursue the matter further. She never received a reply from the DND. It is highly unlikely the ‘mystery airman’ could have been Harris, as his aircraft went down 100 km away from Klein Flöthe, however the possibility cannot be ruled out as a number of other Allied airmen parachuted to safety in the same time period and were driven to nearby towns by locals with cars.
“My goal for book two is to find out what really happened in Klein Flöthe and identify the ‘mystery airman.’”
