wife. Your son’s fate is all the more tragic in that he had been at liberty for some time after the gallant raid in which he had taken part and which had left him stranded in enemy-occupied territory. I have not yet received details of his death but am still endeavouring to obtain them …
I knew your son very well personally; he was a grand soldier and a very gallant gentleman, and I am so sorry that he has gone. I lost my own son in Italy last year and know only too well how much it means. 3 But we can be proud that our sons never flinched from danger and saved our country and our people from the worst of fates. They will live in our hearts for ever. 4
Before Graham Hayes left Linton to go to war, the promising young wood-carver had laid down a few choice pieces of oak to season for the duration. He planned to return and work these once the war had been won. Those pieces of oak were used by the village he came from to create his memorial, a memorial he shared with six others from the same village who had lost their lives – including his brother Malcolm, an RAFVR Halifax bomber pilot shot down over France in February 1943, when he was in Fresnes Prison, and the childhood friend who had died on that same day, Geoffrey Appleyard.
On 17 July 1942 Ernest Appleyard, Geoffrey’s father, recorded: ‘there arrived the saddest tidings that ever reached [our] family.’ It was a letter from one of Appleyard’s friends, Major Ian Collins, informing them that he was missing. After outlining what was known of that last mission his letter continued: ‘You will see there is still real reason for hoping Geoffrey may be all right, and every effort will be made to find out.’ Those efforts, however, proved fruitless. Unconfirmed reports that wreckage of the aircraft and aircrew had been found, recorded in the Operation Chestnut Casualty Returns, came to nothing. Other leads proved equally, cruelly, false: ‘I am certain that my father [Ernest] would have followed any trail to the end in requesting information about the death,’ affirms John Appleyard, Geoffrey’s half-brother. 5
The Operations Record Book for 296 Squadron records the loss of Albermarle 1446, Appleyard’s aircraft, and adds: ‘The returning aircraft [from Operation Chestnut I ] reported flak from our own naval forces from Malta to Catania [on the eastern flank of Sicily].’ That aircraft was not shot down by what we have now learned to call ‘friendly fire’. It is at least possible that Appleyard’s aircraft was less fortunate. * In March 1944 his family received official War Office notification that their son was now presumed killed in action.
As the war drew to a close J.E.A. Appleyard began compiling Geoffrey , the slim volume of Geoffrey Appleyard’s wartime letters home which, seventy years later, has provided the invaluable backbone to this story. 6 Geoffrey – which was privately published in 1946 and reprinted in 1947 – concludes with a section entitled ‘As Others Knew Him’. The renowned English Christian theologian and member of the Oxford Group, The Revd Leslie Weatherhead wrote:
I knew Geoffrey from his school-days onwards. At the time of his early manhood I said to a friend: ‘If a visitor dropped down from Mars and visited each country to find out what earth’s inhabitants were like, and if I had the chance to suggest whom such a visitor should meet in England, I should suggest Geoffrey Appleyard … His body he may have given for England, but his soul lives on, part of the wealth of the universe, for it possessed qualities that do not die and over which war has no power. 7
At war’s end Graham’s mother, Lillian Hayes, wrote to Marjorie March-Phillipps about the enduring, life-long friendship of Graham and Geoffrey: ‘So those two who had played as boys together and faced life and death together, went on their way to start a new and free life, continuing, I feel sure, to wage war against the evil that is the cause of all
I knew your son very well personally; he was a grand soldier and a very gallant gentleman, and I am so sorry that he has gone. I lost my own son in Italy last year and know only too well how much it means. 3 But we can be proud that our sons never flinched from danger and saved our country and our people from the worst of fates. They will live in our hearts for ever. 4
Before Graham Hayes left Linton to go to war, the promising young wood-carver had laid down a few choice pieces of oak to season for the duration. He planned to return and work these once the war had been won. Those pieces of oak were used by the village he came from to create his memorial, a memorial he shared with six others from the same village who had lost their lives – including his brother Malcolm, an RAFVR Halifax bomber pilot shot down over France in February 1943, when he was in Fresnes Prison, and the childhood friend who had died on that same day, Geoffrey Appleyard.
On 17 July 1942 Ernest Appleyard, Geoffrey’s father, recorded: ‘there arrived the saddest tidings that ever reached [our] family.’ It was a letter from one of Appleyard’s friends, Major Ian Collins, informing them that he was missing. After outlining what was known of that last mission his letter continued: ‘You will see there is still real reason for hoping Geoffrey may be all right, and every effort will be made to find out.’ Those efforts, however, proved fruitless. Unconfirmed reports that wreckage of the aircraft and aircrew had been found, recorded in the Operation Chestnut Casualty Returns, came to nothing. Other leads proved equally, cruelly, false: ‘I am certain that my father [Ernest] would have followed any trail to the end in requesting information about the death,’ affirms John Appleyard, Geoffrey’s half-brother. 5
The Operations Record Book for 296 Squadron records the loss of Albermarle 1446, Appleyard’s aircraft, and adds: ‘The returning aircraft [from Operation Chestnut I ] reported flak from our own naval forces from Malta to Catania [on the eastern flank of Sicily].’ That aircraft was not shot down by what we have now learned to call ‘friendly fire’. It is at least possible that Appleyard’s aircraft was less fortunate. * In March 1944 his family received official War Office notification that their son was now presumed killed in action.
As the war drew to a close J.E.A. Appleyard began compiling Geoffrey , the slim volume of Geoffrey Appleyard’s wartime letters home which, seventy years later, has provided the invaluable backbone to this story. 6 Geoffrey – which was privately published in 1946 and reprinted in 1947 – concludes with a section entitled ‘As Others Knew Him’. The renowned English Christian theologian and member of the Oxford Group, The Revd Leslie Weatherhead wrote:
I knew Geoffrey from his school-days onwards. At the time of his early manhood I said to a friend: ‘If a visitor dropped down from Mars and visited each country to find out what earth’s inhabitants were like, and if I had the chance to suggest whom such a visitor should meet in England, I should suggest Geoffrey Appleyard … His body he may have given for England, but his soul lives on, part of the wealth of the universe, for it possessed qualities that do not die and over which war has no power. 7
At war’s end Graham’s mother, Lillian Hayes, wrote to Marjorie March-Phillipps about the enduring, life-long friendship of Graham and Geoffrey: ‘So those two who had played as boys together and faced life and death together, went on their way to start a new and free life, continuing, I feel sure, to wage war against the evil that is the cause of all
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