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“To Hunter, Love and Christmas greetings…”
A hand- scrawled note in a tiny illustrated New Testament. Been in my drawer since 1960 – sentimentality rather than any religious conviction.
“…from Auntie Jeanie and Uncle Frank.” The 6/- price tag also penciled points to its age.
The unwrapped gift was slipped to me moments before we all clasped hands around a chicken and trifle family Christmas lunch. Heads bowed, eyes closed, while white mop-haired Uncle Frank, an earnest Presbyterian minister in his dog collar, invocated on our behalf – beseeching his God to bless us with love, protection, guidance and wisdom.
“Amen to that,” said Dad. “There has to be someone out there in the universe, who’s way smarter than us, and who can bring sense to it all.”
Because there had been little or no sense. Here we were – two families thrust together by war, by an evil, genocidal, megalomaniac called Hitler, by an act of supreme sacrifice, by love lost and love won, by an emerald engagement ring – and by a central leading lady, my mother Eunice Olive, or ‘Billie’ or ‘Bill’. Billie because she had been a tom boy. A beautiful one.
The WAAF - Eunice ‘Billie’ Miles. Photo / Supplied
And had this crazy fusion of people and circumstances unraveled ever so differently, I wouldn’t be here. If humanity, decency, and right had prevailed, instead of a filthy war, I would not have been born. It had been a close thing.
Dashing, swashbuckling
Uncle Frank and Auntie Jeanie were parents of Allan Stead – a Kiwi fighter pilot stationed with the RAF No 485 NZ Squadron in Driffield in Yorkshire. I knew him in name only but I had a child’s romantic, comic book image of him – a dashing, swashbuckling Spitfire pilot draped in flowing white silk scarf and leather flying helmet. Dog fighting his way through the Battle of Britain, scourge of Göring’s Luftwaffe. I imagined him shouting “Danger Red Section!” at sight of incoming enemy. Or “One down!” as a Messerschmitt fell away in flames.
Ghastly, tragic mess
But one day the comic story didn’t end as scripted. On January 6, 1945, Stead dive-bombed a train in Western Holland. The train exploded and the Spitfire was peppered with shrapnel. A plane crashed, a pilot died, Uncle Frank and Auntie Jeanie were bereft a son, and only child. My mother, Billie, lost a love, a man she probably would have married. An emerald engagement ring became a keepsake. And I lost one of my two war heroes. What a ghastly, tragic mess.
A few years later, far from the clamor of war, the “alone again” WAAF, or Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, radio/telephone operator Billie, met a shy, suave and sensitive ex-RNZAF Lancaster bomber crewman Malcolm Wells while punting on a river near Dunedin. This time Hitler played no part and Billie made it to the altar. I am one of her four sons.
The cast
Uncle Frank and Auntie Jeanie stayed in our lives. They adopted us – or we adopted them. We became a surrogate “grand-family”. They shared our Christmas chicken and trifle. Billie played the daughter-in-law who never was, Dad doubled for a son and lover lying in a Belgian cemetery, and we boys were stand-ins for the grandkids the Steads never had. It worked perfectly for everyone. We each had a role in this real-life, post-war, soap opera, and we played the roles with dignity and respect, compassion and understanding. Uncle Frank’s prayer was working. And life was as good as we made it.
Haunting lament
It did explain why every Christmas Day Auntie Jeanie would take my father’s hands, gaze wistfully at him, and then draw him to her and weep. A haunting lament for the dead. A mother wanted her son back. She wanted Allan back. And all the time crying her love and acceptance of another man who was there for her when Allan couldn’t be.
And while Auntie Jeanie clung to Dad, Billie clung to us kids and wept. Tears of sadness, joy and gratitude. They would fall on us. And she would apologise, and giggle, and sob, all at the same time. For Allan, for Dad, for everyone, for everything.
My other war hero, the one who did come home, my Dad, RNZAF Pilot Officer Malcolm Stark Wells, service number 43171, would squeeze what little misery was left from Auntie Jeanie, smile reassuringly and say: “There, there”. It seems pats, hugs and “there theres” put right most ills.
‘Blitzed! Flattened!’
Dad fought his war at about 20,000 feet, in the bowels of a Lancaster bomber on night ops, in high-stress, claustrophobic and severe cold conditions.
Unsung hero, RNZAF Flying Officer Malcolm Stark Wells, service number 43171. Photo / Supplied
He never discussed the business end of war – the slaughter, the ruination, the stress. Good men didn’t. So this schoolboy’s impressions were shaped by storybooks and comics glorifying war. But many years later I discovered Dad’s wartime photo album with grainy black and white reconnaissance photos of Essen in Western Germany. Or what was left of it. The strategic industrial city had been blitzed, flattened, scorch-earthed. Did Dad have a role in the Battle of the Ruhr, where the Allies bombed it into oblivion, flattening 90% of the city and killing 21,000 people? These ops also came at considerable human cost to Bomber Command which suffered the highest casualty rate of any service. German night fighters and anti-aircraft flak, claimed 55,000 of 125,000 Lancaster aircrew – nearly 46%. Dad was blessed. We were blessed.
Understanding beautiful
Dad would talk of the lumbering Lancaster warhorses as a “beautiful beast” Beautiful? We teenage boys ogled images of Raquel Welch and Claudia Cardinale and thought we understood “beautiful”. Seems not. And he would hum at the thought of four V12 Rolls Royce Merlin engines winding up to get a 6500kg payload of bombs off the deck and into the night sky.
I did get a sense of Dad’s “beautiful” when, at Auckland’s Museum of Transport and Technology, they cranked up one of the engines on the Lancaster exhibit. There was a high-pitched whine, and a deep rumble as an old aircraft fought back from the dead. Then a huge, dense cloud of smoke and a rhythmic engine roar. Grown men in overalls, with black greasy hands and spanners, who’d been crawling over the “beautiful beast” stood back, dabbed their eyes and cheered. I now understood Dad’s “beautiful”.
‘…leben sie wohl!’
Even after Hitler uttered “Es ist aus, leben sie wohl” – “It is finished, goodbye” – and skulked off into the bunker with a 7.65mm Walther PPK Pistol and one shot in the breech, Dad’s war wasn’t done. Back home in Dunedin, he would clamber aboard the overnight express every second weekend and travel to Sunnyside mental asylum in Christchurch, where his brother was fighting back from three years in a German POW (Prisoner of War) camp.
Hitler’s inhumanity didn’t stop at invading, bombing, shooting and gassing. But Dad’s commitment paid – and one day my uncle walked out of the asylum and into the arms of a new bride. And he and Dad remained life-long, best buddy brothers.
Murdered my Dad
In 1970, about 25 years after WW2, Hitler struck again with a final act of wickedness from beyond the grave. Dad, a 49-year-old draughtsman, was walking to work when he collapsed from a heart attack. Many bomber aircrew died of heart attacks compared to the general population. It was put it down to the severe, sustained and unique stressors they endured.
Medics broke just about every rib trying to kick-start that chest. And they broke hearts when their best efforts failed. It was like the Fuhrer himself, in a final heinous act, had taken up his Walther PPK pistol and shot Malcolm Stark through the heart. Hitler, the despicable, murderous bastard, killed my Dad. For what?
The man who mowed me a cricket pitch on the back lawn, the man who shucked sacks of Bluff oysters with me Saturday morning, who hated racism. The man who always listened, who taught me to laugh at Neddy Seagoon trying to set fire to the English Channel on radio’s Goon Show, who made pink and white coconut ice Friday night, and roast rabbit and stuffing sandwiches for school Monday, and who, embarrassingly, would hold Mum’s hand wherever they went – yes, that man was gone. I would lie in bed at night and weep. I struggled with the immensity of it all. I felt cheated. Still do.
Tears, single malts
A few days later, the uncle took me to view Dad’s body. I wasn’t sure about it. “We will both feel better,” he assured me. Moments later, standing either side of an open casket, the uncle gently took my hand and held it to my father’s cheek. It lingered there and we smiled as we wept. I was grateful for the moment
Later, as we sipped healing single malts in a suburban bar, my uncle shared a favourite Malcolm Stark story. Dad had told him he had an “god-given” altimeter. He would get sexually aroused as the Lancaster took off and gained height. The brothers called it an “airplane boner”, and regardless of all the contributing physical, psychological and environmental factors, they just thought it hilariously funny. So did dad’s air crew. As the Lancaster climbed after take-off, the pilot would call through: “Are we high enough yet Malcolm?” The crew would hoot. Levity before confronting the awful odds in the night sky over Germany.
Dabbling and doodling
Although Billie was still a relatively young and elegant woman, that was that. She had lost two men from her life. “I have had my husband thank you very much.” Yes, that was that. And several would-be suitors at her dance club were politely declined.
When he had a spare hour, Dad would dabble with short stories and pencil-sketch sailing ships. His regular ‘John Citizen’ Letters to the Editor campaigned on social issues like funding for surf lifesavers. People who risked their lives to save lives, he reckoned, should be compensated. He would doodle on our homework – a WWII meme like ‘Kilroy was here’. Teachers loved his artwork and marked it 8/10. There were extremes in my war hero’s life – from deadly bombing runs to pencil mischief.
His ideal Sunday afternoon was visiting a local aerodrome to watch gliders soar and NAC’s DC-3 service from Christchurch plop down. In his head and heart, he was at the controls. And the frustrated aviator would make up model aeroplane kits. Lancasters of course – “beautiful beasts!”
Treachery
One day he bought the “enemy” home – a model German Heinkell 111 and Junkers 88. I was deeply offended. I did not want the enemy at my place. He let the matter settle and then sat me down. “Do you know who flew those planes?” he asked. Germans of course. “Yes. Germans. Human beings – like us,” he declared. “And when they didn’t return home, German mothers wept and grieved too.”
Like Auntie Jeanie? “Exactly! Like Auntie Jeanie!”
Many years later an emerald engagement ring was passed on to a young bride-to-be at a Dunedin department store where Bille worked. Perhaps she decided it was time to unburden herself of some darkness. Or she believed the ring might bring better fortune on the fourth finger of another left hand. We never did get the full story of any of it – just guarded titbits fed over time.
In 2011, a memorial church window to Allan Stead was destroyed when the Canterbury earthquakes rattled Rangiora. Malcolm and Billie are forever holding hands in block 9a, plot 40, at the Andersons Bay RSA Cemetery in Dunedin.
“To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die” – Thomas Campbell