LAST SORTIE

On 26 April 1944 at 21:32, Lancaster LL919, one of thirteen from No.619 Squadron (5 Group, Bomber Command), took off from RAF Dunholme Lodge, about four miles northeast of Lincoln. The target was Schweinfurt in Bavaria, southern Germany. The crew comprised of Guy Gunzi (pilot), Ernest George Cass (flight engineer), Nikolas Vlassie RCAF (navigator), Jack Mills (bomb aimer), Alan Pickstone (wireless operator), Lewis Leslie Feindell RCAF (mid-upper gunner) and Kenneth Frank (rear gunner).  The original ‘core’ of the crew (Gunzi, Pickstone, Feindell, and Frank) were on their seventeenth operation. Because of the strong headwinds many aircraft were blown off course “due to inaccurate broadcast winds” (Operations Record Book) and LL919 may have been among them. It flew over a heavily defended area where German fighters were out in force and one from the fighter station at St Dizier closed in. The Luftwaffe Night fighters claimed a total of 21 aircrafts of the 215 taking part! LL919 was shot down near the small village of Landéville to the northeast of Chaumont in the department of Haute-Marne at 01:30 (French time) on the morning of 27 April 1944. In the Luftwaffe archives it is listed as being shot down by Oblt. Dietrich Schmidt of 8./NJG1 with combat taking place in the Joinville - Doulancourt area at a height of 4.400 meters. at 00.47 hrs. Nothing was heard from LL919 after take-off; it was one of twenty-one aircraft which did not return from the Schweinfurt operation.  Eyewitness accounts in Landéville say that Lancaster LL919 was on fire and circled low over the village twice, perhaps looking for a place to land, before crashing on a wooded hillside some distance from the town. Flames lit up the night sky so that it was as bright as day. The brilliant, white light was probably caused by burning magnesium, an ingredient of its 1,200 incendiary bombs. The only survivor Jack Mills, the bomb aimer, was severely injured (his parachute had not had a chance to open fully) and was unconscious for six hours. On his regaining consciousness, one of the villagers, Mariette Coutret, offered him coffee and warm milk. His flying boots had fallen off and so she gave him some slippers. He was unable to eat because of a fractured jaw. The local doctor bandaged his jaw and tried to make him comfortable. Jack could speak no French and no one in the village spoke English. However, he wrote his address and gave it to Mariette Coutret, hoping she would write to his family. (She later wrote to the airmen’s families telling them what had happened and continued to correspond with them for some time after the war.) As Jack was so severely injured he had to be handed over to the German authorities who would take care of him and treat his injuries. The German authorities, including a doctor, duly arrived in a car and took Jack to hospital. They treated him kindly and gently. When Jack had recovered sufficiently he was sent to the prisoner-of-war camp, Stalag Luft VII at Bankau in Silesia, now Poland. He became a member of the exclusive Caterpillar Club for those whose lives had been saved by parachutes. The bodies of four other crew members were quickly found. The local French records identified them as Guy Gunzi, Nikolas Vlassie, Leslie Feindell, and Kenneth Frank. The other two badly charred bodies were later identified as those of Alan Pickstone and Ernest Cass. Shortly before his death in 1993, survivor Jack Mills said: "LL919 was a new plane. It had flown only one mission before 26 April 1944. [That was to Munich on 24 April.] We usually flew Lancaster [ED859] V-Vic which was a real old veteran. V-Vic was being overhauled and we were allotted W-Willy. I expect the Air Ministry was annoyed at losing it so soon!" A funeral was held for the identified bodies on 29 April 1944. The church at Landéville was too small to hold all those who wanted to attend; everyone in Landéville came as did people from nearby villages. Many were in tears. Wreaths and floral tributes covered the graves, their cards bearing the words 'Remembrance', 'Regrets', and 'To our liberators'. Over the following weeks, several hundred people came to visit the graves. On the liberation of France, the villagers placed small British and French flags over the graves. "They are ours – they are our soldiers", wrote Mariette Coutret. In 1994, the 50th anniversary of the shooting down of Lancaster LL919, a two-day commemoration and exhibition was held in Landéville which was attended by friends and family of some of the crew members. Mariette Coutret died in 1995, aged 93, and was buried in the family grave in the local churchyard close to the crew of LL919. There are memorials to the crew of LL919 at the former RAF Dunholme Lodge, Welton, Lincolnshire, and Thorpe Camp, Tattershall Thorpe, near Woodhall Spa, Lincolnshire. The Canadians honred the Greek parentage navigator by giving his name to a lake, specifically Vlassie Lake, Manitoba aproxximately 15km east of Snow Lake, Manitoba. May Nicholas Vlassie's memory along with the memory of the rest of the crew be eternal and remind us of the sacrifices of those young men for our freedom.