Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

A rare and well-documented Second World War evader’s D.F.M. group of five awarded to Sergeant W. R. Laws, Royal Air Force, who took to his parachute over Belgium after his Halifax was attacked by night fighters returning from Pilsen in April 1943

Distinguished Flying Medal, G.VI.R. (745880 Sgt. W. R. Laws, R.A.F.); 1939-45 Star; Air Crew Europe Star; Defence and War Medals, good very fine (5) £2800-3200

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, A Collection of Medals The Property of a Gentleman.

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D.F.M. London Gazette 16 July 1943. The original recommendation states:

‘Sergeant Laws was the Wireless Operator of the crew of a Halifax aircraft of No. 102 Squadron which was detailed to bomb the Skoda Works at Pilsen on 16 April 1943.

On the return journey the aircraft was attacked by fighters and set on fire over Belgium and the Captain gave the order to bale out. Sergeant Laws landed in a wood north of Montbliart, about 20 k.m. S.E. of Maubeuge. He was uninjured and, after burying his parachute and mae west in the undergrowth, he decided to walk south and get as far away as he could from the aircraft. He evaded capture and eventually arrived back safely in this country.

For the courage and determination shown by this N.C.O., in effecting his escape, I recommend the immediate award of the D.F.M.’

William Robert Laws, a native of Henley-on-Thames who was born in September 1918, enlisted in the Royal Air Force in November 1939. Having then attended No. 2 Signal School at Yatesbury, and No. 8 Air Gunnery School at Evanton, in addition to conversion and operational training units, he joined No. 102 Squadron, a Halifax unit, at Pocklington, in October 1942.

Initially joining Flying Officer Milnes’ crew, he completed four sorties in November-December, namely raids on Stuttgart, Mannheim and Turin (twice), one of the named trips resulting in serious flak damage.

‘The story of ‘J’ of 102 Squadron was an epic. The aircraft was hit by a burst of heavy flak at 17,000 feet, shortly after crossing the Alps, having been coned by searchlights. The starboard outer engine was put out of action and the aircraft spun down to 13,000 feet. Bombs were jettisoned and the aircraft headed for home. At 5,000 feet near Amiens the aircraft was again coned and hit by flak. Both port engines failed and the aircraft lost height to 2,000 feet. At this point the port inner picked up and the aircraft was able to limp home to Bradwell Bay on two engines. From S.E. of Paris until leaving the French coast the aircraft was followed by enemy fighters which, however, made no attack, probably expecting the Halifax to be forced to land. As ‘J’ was leaving the French coast she was illuminated again and a burst of flak blew out the port outer engine. The crash-landing was made at Bradwell Bay with no hydraulics, the captain expressing the greatest appreciation of the help he was given by that station. The Flight Engineer was injured but the rest of the crew only sustained minor cuts. The aircraft unfortunately swung into an Army hut after landing and casualties were sustained by Army personnel’ (official records refers).

A “Gardening” trip and a raid on Dusseldorf having followed in January 1943, Laws participated in strikes on Cologne, Lorient and Nuremburg in February, and Frankfurt, Stuttgart and Essen in April, the latter trip once more proving to be of the hair-raising kind, his Flying Log Book noting, ‘Held in searchlights cone for ten minutes and heavily shelled - hit in many places.’ As it transpired, his very next sortie, against the Skoda Works at Pilsen on the night of 16th-17th, with Squadron Leader Lashbrook, D.F.M., as his pilot, was to prove his last, Halifax HF. 663 falling to the guns of Major Wilhelm Herget of I/NJG/4. Laws’ experiences on that night, and subsequent evasion, are neatly summarised in Valley of the Shadow of Death, The Bomber Command Campaign, March-July 1943, by J. Alwyn Phillips:

‘Halifax HF. 663 of 102 Squadron, 4 Group, captained by Squadron Leader W. I. Lashbrook, D.F.M., was one of the aircraft shot down by night fighter, which obviously had a field day in the nigh perfect weather conditions, when the bombers could be spotted so easily. Fortunately for this bomber crew the underground movement played an important role in helping shot down aircrew evade capture. It was on the return flight at about 04.00 hours, six hours after they had left their base at Pocklington, that the Halifax was attacked by a fighter over Belgium. The bomber immediately caught fire and the order to bale out was passed along, as the intercomm had failed. Sergeant W. R. Laws the wireless operator was the third out after the navigator, Flying Officer K. J. Bolton and the bomb aimer, Pilot Officer Martin with Flight Sergeant Knight, the flight engineer and the pilot immediately behind. Sergeant Laws in his report did not think that the gunners had a chance to get the bale out message. On his parachute descent he saw his aircraft break in two and fall in flames. He landed uninjured in a wood, and like all airmen buried his ‘chute and Mae West straight away and walked quickly south to get away from the crash site.

He rolled down his trousers to cover his conspicuous flying boots, then using his escape compass, he walked through a village. He saw a signpost identifying it as Montbliart. Here he left the road and walked across country, through some woods for about two hours, before stopping in a field to eat some chocolate and Horlicks tablets from his kit. After it became light he studied his map but he was unable to make out his position at Montbliart and did not know whether he was in France or Belgium. At nightfall on the 17th, he continued walking south and used his water bottle to acquire some water from a brook, making sure to put in the purifying tablets before drinking and taking a benzadrine tablet to stay awake. Walking on he passed through the villages of Seloignes and Villers La Tour before he lay up for a rest.

On the morning of the 18th he removed his badges from uniform before continuing on. Eventually he came to an isolated chateau, where a man who looked as if he might be the game keeper, came up to him and spoke in French. Luckily Sergeant Laws could speak French fairly fluently and explained to the man that he was an English airman and wanted to know where he was. The man stated that he was a Pole and was caretaker of the chateau which was unoccupied. He also said the chateau was in Belgium, near Les Taillettes, about 7 kilometres from the French frontier. The man took him onto the chateau and allowed him to shave with his razor and later gave him an old blue mackintosh. In return Sergeant Laws gave him 500 Francs from his escape pack. The caretaker, however, was quite scared to have the airman about the place and advised him to carry on and keep to the woods and walk south to France.

About midnight on the 18th-19th, he again set out and at daybreak crossed the French frontier north of Watigny. He then sheltered in a bombed out house where he ate some of the bread and cheese he had been given by the Pole and went to sleep. When he awoke he set off again walking along the road to Fligny, which he reached at 14.00 hours and continued on to Auge. It was here that a bad storm broke, with exceptionally heavy rain, so soaking wet he approached an isolated farmhouse and sheltered under its front porch. A girl of about 24 opened the door and spoke to him then invited him into the house to shelter from the storm. As Sergeant Laws replied in French, the girl did not know who he was, but when inside he had explained he was an R.A.F. airman. She and her family became very frightened when they found he had no identity discs to show and his ability to speak French so fluently made them even more suspicious of him, but they did give him some food and allowed him to sleep in the barn for the night.

Meanwhile one of the family told a friend about Sergeant Laws, who sent a message asking that he should write down on a piece of paper the names of the rest of his crew and approximately where he had landed. This paper was taken back by the girl that night. Next day he was told that someone would come for him, this in fact did not happen and he stayed in the barn. On April 21st, the man who had asked for the paper arrived and told Laws to stay where he was and that help would be forthcoming. He stayed in and around the barn until May 4th, when at last the man returned with a car and took Sergeant Laws to another village. There he met up with Group Captain Whitley, who had baled out on the Frankfurt raid of April 11th. From here the necessary arrangement were made by the underground movement and finally Laws returned safely to England.’

The closing chapter of Laws’ time on the run is best summarised in the Daily Telegraph’s obituary for Air Marshal Sir John Whitley (Monday, 5 January 1998):

‘Whitley began his run for home on May 4 when, with a bomber wireless operator, Sergeant Laws, he was sent to Paris.

There they were passed to an escape-line helper named Fouquerel, who had been butler to Lord Dudley at La Touquet. His apartment was teeming with escapers, but Fouquerel explained the presence of so many young men to the concierge by passing himself off as a specialist in venereal disease whose patients required residential treatment. Fouquerel was later arrested and shot.

Whitley now received new travel documents and assumed the identity of one M. Bidet, a baker with a business in St. Jean-de-Luz; Sergeant Laws became a hairdresser. On the evening of May 8 the pair began a rail journey to Bayonne, where they picked up bicycles and an escape courier.

Pedalling past Biarritz, Whitley was horrified to be admonished by his escort in English; his cycling style, complained the courier, was much too straight-backed and obviously that of an Englishman. Whitley obediently began to hunch himself low over the handlebars.

At St. Jean-de-Luz, Whitley met Spanish guides who had led him to a farmhouse where he was handed over to the professional smuggler Goicoechea Florentino. He led the party stumbling over the Pyrenees by night, pausing occasionally to revive himself from brandy bottles he had stashed in bushes along the route. At 4 a.m. the escapers crossed into Spain.

The next morning Whitley and Laws were driven to a rendezvous with a second secretary of the British Embassy, who took them into Madrid (and to a bullfight). From there they went to Gibraltar, and on May 24 Whitley was flown home by a Dakota; had he taken the next flight he would have been shot down.’

Following his return to the U.K., Laws attended various training units and was released in May 1945.

Sold with the recipient’s original Flying Log Book, covering the period March 1942 to May 1945, a piece of fabric removed from the propeller of a Whitley in which the recipient survived a crashed-landing at Charterhall in September 1942, and one or two wartime newspaper cuttings, together with a large file of research, containing copy photographs, M.I. 9 reports, O.R.B. entries, letters from fellow air crew and evaders, and several others from Laws, and published references to the recipient’s evasion, including One Way Ride to Pilsen, Laws’ account of his evasion (Aeroplane Monthly, February 1978), and mention of him in Escape or Die by Paul Brickhill, under the entry for Whitley, who, as stated, crossed the Pyrenees with Laws; and another file of copied photographs, including fellow crew members and the crash site of his Halifax in Belgium.