31 Family Secrets Bootle and Litherland - Part 3: 28 September 2024

In most fairytales, the main characters meet each other, overcome the significant obstacles facing them,  and then live happily ever after.  Unfortunately, that did not happen when Josephine Wood married Thomas Clifford Hankin on 10 March 1945.

Josephine was broken hearted because she had lost both her lover and her child, the child who was the son (or possibly the daughter) of her lover.  Her lover might well have also been dead - another innocent victim wiped out by the pathological insanity of a man who had allowed himself to be completely taken over by the forces of evil.  Even if mum's lover Anthony was not dead in 1945, he might as well have been dead.  I am certain mum never saw him again.

In addition to having lost Anthony and her baby immediately after her baby was born, Josephine had been completely cancelled by all of the friends that she grew up with and knew throughout her life in Liverpool.  She was a social outcast who “decent” people refused to have any dealings with.

I know from hard personal experience how hard it has been for me to lose my beautiful Margaret after having known and loved her wholeheartedly for 25 years.  I also know from personal experience what it feels like to be a social outcast and a cancelled human being.  I too have been cancelled for many years by most of those I thought were friends.

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Cliff was at least as broken hearted as Josephine.  The war against Hitler exacted a harsh toll on him.

Bomber Command dropped 1,030,500 tons of bombs on Germany during WW 2 and suffered a very high casualty rate - 55,573 were killed out of a total of 125,000 aircrew, a 44.4% death rate. A further 8,403 men were wounded in action, and 9,838 became prisoners of war.  In 1943, Bomber Command lost 3,031 aircrew, a casualty rate which exceeded the casualty rate on the Western Front in World War 1.  

Cliff knew all of the aircrew whose planes he kept flying.  He mourned grievously when they did not come home.

Death was not simply a remote event which happened when aircrew flew into the night on missions.  Death was also an event that occurred among ground crew.  

One night when he a was drunk, I extracted from dad the information that one of his work colleagues - a ground crew member - had walked backwards one day into a propellor and was sliced to pieces.  Dad would not tell me his friend's name. 

Although his Service Record does not indicate that he served as aircrew, I know Cliff did serve as aircrew.  He briefly returned home to Liverpool for Christmas 1943 and told his family that a Notice had been put up on the Base Noticeboard seeking volunteers from ground crew who were willing to serve as aircrew.  Dad told his family, he had volunteered. 

The Service Record shows Cliff transferred to RAF Feltwell on 13 February 1944.  I believe that while at Feltwell, Cliff was trained as an Official Observer and he then served as an Official Observer as an aircrew member. 

Dad’s duties as recounted by dad to his brother Eric were to watch for enemy aircraft and sound the alarm if he saw any.  He also had to take photos of damage done to enemy targets bombed during missions. 

When I was a child, dad had a metal camera which he never used and which he never explained.  I believe he used this camera when he acted as aircrew on Bomber Command missions.  Uncle Eric Hankin told me in 2019 that dad had flown three missions as an aircrew member and he then sketched dad’s war service medals.

One of the medals described by Uncle Eric was the Aircrew Europe Star; this medal was awarded only to crew members who served as aircrew prior to 5 June 1944 (D Day).  He was also awarded the two standard RAF service medals for service as ground crew.

Dad definitely served as aircrew during the Dresden Bombing which took place on 13, 14 and 15 February 1945.  In these raids, Dresden was destroyed by fire and an estimated 25,000 people were killed.  Dad revealed this information to my brother Patrick.

I think it is likely that Cliff also acted as aircrew during what is called Big Week (Operation Argument).  Big Week is not as well known as Dresden, but it was an essential forerunner to the success of D Day.  For D Day to succeed, one of the essential factors needed was air superiority.  This meant the Luftwaffe had to be eliminated as much as possible before D Day.  This is the wiki description of Big Week.

Operation Argument, after the war dubbed Big Week, was a sequence of raids by the United States Army Air Forces and RAF Bomber Command from 20 to 25 February 1944, as part of the Combined Bomber Offensive against Nazi Germany. The objective of Operation Argument was to destroy aircraft factories in central and southern Germany in order to defeat the Luftwaffe before the Normandy landings during Operation Overlord were to take place later in 1944.

 Initial Bomber Command losses during the early stages of Big Week were very large and all available personnel were needed to ensure the success of the operation.  

Cliff's short period of duty at Feltwell took place just before Big Week.

By the end of Big Week, the Allies had destroyed so much of the Luftwaffe that the Allies had complete air superiority from that point onwards – although the Luftwaffe very definitely continued to be a dangerous opponent.

I am unable to estimate the precise dates when Cliff’s third mission as aircrew might have occurred.  Obviously, it was after Big Week and before the end of the war in Europe in May 1945.

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For many years when I was a child, a photo of Cliff and Josephine on their wedding day sat on a shelf in the living room.  I do not have that photo, but parts of it are available through Ancestry.

This is Clifford Hankin on 10 March 1945 when he married mum.

This is Josephine Wood on 10 March 1945 when she married dad.

 

When I first got a copy of dad and mum’s marriage certificate, I noticed that his “Best Man” was Henry Wood.  Henry was mum’s brother Henry.  In March 1945, Henry Wood was age 18.  I wondered why dad’s best man was not one of his own brothers or perhaps a close friend.  I thought it was unlikely that dad would have been a close friend of Henry given the significant gap in their life experiences, plus Henry’s relative youth compared to Cliff who in 1945 had served in Bomber Command for the last three years.

I speculated that the marriage must have caused some sort of rift in dad’s family.  I found out when I met Uncle Eric in 2019 that my speculation had been correct. 

Dad’s mother was Mary Jane Ethel Robson.  She had met my paternal grandfather when he worked as a sheet metal worker in the shipyards at Newcastle on Tyne.  Mary Jane had been horrified at the idea of her son Cliff marrying a woman who had given birth to a child outside of marriage.  Mary Jane issued an order that no member of the Hankin family was allowed to go to mum and dad’s wedding – or else a cancellation just like that which had already been imposed on Josephine would be imposed on the family member who defied her orders.

No members of the Hankin family dared to attend the marriage which took place on 10 March 1945 apart from Cliff himself.

I am immensely proud at my good fortune in having been the son of a man who defied his mother to marry the woman he loved while he was at that very moment engaged in a battle to stamp out the most monstrous movement of evil that the world had ever known.

If Josephine ever learned any lessons from the behaviour of her mother in law, she completely forgot them.  In 1970, Josephine did to me what her mother in law had done to her.  Like dad, I defied my mother's commands and acted as my heart said I should.  Like dad, I married against my mother's wishes.

They could not know it then, but on 10 March 1945 Josephine and Cliff were like these two love birds. 

Like the two love birds, they had no way of knowing that a monstrous wall of unstoppable events already had a momentum which would crush them.  Like The Titanic, they were about to be smashed by a wall of ice.

(I took both of these bird photos when Margaret and I finally had our trip to Alaska in 2016 - this was the trip which we shelved in 2009 so we could get married in Ireland.)