John Alexander (Bennelong, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It was my privilege to attend the book launch in Epping and it is also my privilege to speak at today's event.

It was a pleasure to meet the author, Robert Creelman. His work is most worthwhile and it was certainly a labour of love. It was also a pleasure to meet Sharman's father, Harvey. Dr Stone's father, Harvey Bawden, was a crew member of the Lancaster bomber around which this story is told. A brief excerpt from the story is:

The flak shell that brought down Lancaster PB 853 exploded very close to the starboard side of the aircraft. The blast blew the rear hatch inwards, and the hatch was sucked out into the slip stream. Shell fragments caused damage to vital functions; both starboard engines received hits and fuel lines were damaged; the result was fuel onto hot open manifolds; therefore fire. The hydraulic pump located on number three engine starboard side was one of the burning Merlins, so hydraulics were out and the gun turrets could not be moved or could only be moved by hand. Control of the aircraft was becoming increasingly difficult—

an understatement, I am sure. This book is an account of happenings that occurred in March 1945, when the Australian crew of the Lancaster bomber were shot down over the Ruhr. After jumping from the stricken aircraft, four of the crew members were murdered by German civilians. Harvey still wears leg braces for his leg injuries from the parachute jump.

The story follows the recruitment, training and deployment of the individuals who constituted the crew of Lancaster P-Peter, 150 Squadron, RAF. As was the case with so many in Bomber Command, these young men, barely into their adulthood, volunteered to serve in the RAAF and, after selection, were trained for two years. Those selected represented the very best the country had to offer, and just being selected was an accomplishment in itself.

For decades, the details of events that occurred on 24 March 1945 were not known to the families of the victims, a difficulty particularly for those two survivors who returned to Australia to live out full, wholesome lives. They and their families needed closure, despite the fact that they knew that their fellow crew members were interred in the Reichswald Commonwealth war cemetery near Kleve and that there had been trials of the perpetrators in 1946-47. The full story of the events of 24 March 1945 lay in the UK National Archives in the form of trial documents. Within those documents were accounts of the honourable behaviour of German people. The trials were instigated by the act of a young woman who was appalled by the murders and anxious that the families should know the fate of their sons and thus have closure. She wrote a note in halting English which she handed to a sergeant of the first American armoured unit to enter her village. The story is a dark tale in a dark time but one that demonstrates that righteous people are always present in the darkest of times—in this case, the hell that was the collapsing Nazi state.

At the launch of the book on 29 May 2015, over 40 descendants of the seven men from P-Peter assembled. They will finally be able to honour the crew—men who can justly claim the title of 'airborne Anzacs'. They are representatives of thousands of young Australians who were selected to fly with Bomber Command out of the UK in a bloody air campaign over Europe. The President of the Bomber Command Association in Australia, Dr Ron Houghton, has kindly written the foreword to the book. This launch was a story also of pride—the pride that a daughter would have in her father and that the father would have in his daughter.

See this speech in context