1/39 Something personal this week.

On 26th October 1944, @NavywingsUK Fleet Air Arm 1771 Squadron flew twice over Norway's Coast on an operation to search and destroy German U-boats and shipping, as well as disrupt shore defences. This was Op Athletic. https://codenames.info/operation/athletic

2/39 Among their number was a young New Zealand @PeopleofNZ volunteer pilot, Acting Lieutenant Raymond Martin Shaw #RNZNVR. He had turned 25 under a month beforehand. Here he is, looking a little dapper, leaning against a random tree. @marinamaral2

3/39 Known as "Arty" to his mates, he'd had an interesting few years between leaving NZ and Oct 1944. He'd grown up on a farm in #Ararimu, outside #Auckland. He signed up, with some mates, to come and fight for a country he'd never known against an enemy he couldn't understand.

4/39 But it was The Right Thing To Do. So he did it. (As did hundreds of thousands of young men and women, from Britain itself and its Empire.) He was a good son - he wrote home regularly, to parents, siblings, cousins and schoolteachers. And they wrote back.

5/39 These letters give us an interesting first-hand account of those times. In London, he worried "money runs through your fingers like water". He missed the vibrant natural colour of his homeland while training in the grey skies of the UK. A NZ friend was posted to Egypt.

6/39 Other friends died in training flights. Through all of this, he remains inquisitive of his home life, and his Mum and Dad keep him in touch with how the farm is going, and send occasional packages (Mum, more than Dad).

7/39 He tells what he can (he trains on Hurricanes). There is a clear camaraderie with his fellow FAA pilots and between New Zealanders abroad. (An aside: the language is splendidly of its time - planes are "crates", blacking out during aerobatics is "a queer experience".)

8/39 But we do not learn everything - and things are getting harder.

From these letters, we do not learn that Ray Shaw was amongst the few survivors of the explosion of HMS Dasher in the Firth of Clyde on 27th March 1943. This incident was hushed up at the time by authorities.

9/39 Of 528 crewmen, 379 were lost. You can read more on the loss of #Dasher here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Dasher_(D37) Incredibly (for him), Ray Shaw (and his watch) survived this explosion and sinking. (What was he thinking as he lay in the water as oil burned around him, I wonder ?)

10/39 Ray's post-Dasher letters seem (to me) to be different in tone. Less youthful, more mannered. There is a stronger yearning for home ("I would love to see the old place again") which grows, post D-Day, as Allied war momentum seems offer hope of an end to the war.

11/39 Something else has changed too. Ray is married (June 1943) to Tink. "Tink", we are told (early 1944), "has been driving sand and gravel lorries ... but finding it pretty rough work for a girl...". Ray Shaw's mail now gets sent (from NZ London Command) to Tink's place.

12/39 Tink gets a decent character reference, in the language of the times and service in which Ray found himself. Ray tells his parents she is a "Cheeky young critter... she's the dearest of cobbers though..". They spend time with Tink's parents, when they can.

13/39 Tink is now also writing to Ray's parents back in NZ (who she has of course never met) while Ray is off, either training or on operations. On 30th June 1944, she writes that he has been back "on embarkation leave, he looks very well, it was marvellous seeing him again".

14/39 They spent that leave on the river, and on cycle rides. Tink tells her in-laws about other NZ mates of "Arty"'s, and gives updates from Germany: "I do hope the war will soon be over, the news is very good and we are all hoping that something is really happening...".

15/39 On 18th Sept 1944, just about ten days before his 25th birthday, by now Acting Lieutenant Ray Shaw writes to his parents that "Tink is very well... but I haven't seen her for a couple of months now, which isn't my idea of justice and the promotion of happiness...". But...

16/39 What he did not say is that, by now, Tink was pregnant with Ray's and her first child (embarkation leave, remember?). In spite of (because of?) the "miserable" summer 1944 weather, war news was good, and the family was going to grow - Ray and Tink allowed optimism at last.

17/39 On 7th Oct 1944, Ray writes home again. Mail by now has become somewhat irregular, but he's pleased to have received from them a letter updating him on springtime on the Ararimu farm. He wishes he could "rest the old eyes on a little NZ colour for a change - ..."

18/39 "still - maybe I won't miss the next spring."

Lt (A) RM Shaw, RNZVR, did miss the next spring. And the one after it, and all since then.

19/39 On 26th Oct 1944, 1771 Squadron #FAA flew twice over Norway's Coast on Operation #Athletic to search and destroy German U-boats and shipping, as well as disrupt shore defences.

Ray Shaw flew his #Fairey #Firefly from HMS #Implacable twice. But he returned only once.

20/39 Ray's group had been sent to attack #Rorvik Harbour, north of #Trondheim. ( http://www.naval-history.net/xGM-Chrono-04CV-Implacable.htm ) There had been fierce anti-aircraft fire, but for the Carrier Group, the attack had been a success.

For Ray, his plane hit by flak, it was less of a success.

21/39 Of Ray, there was no news. Shipmates and Squadron companions rallied round Tink, offering what news they could. One fellow pilot saw a plane go into the sea within the harbour. Others had heard a German radio report that a Sub/Lt Smith (Ray's Observer) had been captured.

22/39 Tink, aged 22 and in her second trimester of pregnancy, held out cruel hope ("his friend seems to think he may have got out safely, I hope and pray he has...", "we will have to .. hope that news will come through to say that he is alive..."). But she despaired.

23/39 In Dec 1944, 1771 Sq FAA returned to the UK for Christmas. Tink wrote to Ray's parents that "It breaks my heart to think that Ray too should have been home for Christmas". Parcels from NZ, posted months earlier, kept arriving with Tink addressed to Ray. Yet still, no news.

24/39 Further, more detailed eye-witness accounts accompanied his Squadron's return. As Tink wrote to Ray's parents, Ray "was detailed to attack a gun position, he went right down to attack it... Ray was hit going down to attack and made an excellent landing on water..."

25/39 "..[a landing] which enabled his Observer to get out; the plane sank in a few seconds, even if Ray got out safely, I am afraid he wasn't picked up...". Tink suspects that Ray (who she believed was not hit) was knocked cold despite of the landing. Now, she fears the worst.

26/39 So her beloved Ray is missing, and 22 year old Tink despairs. "This is a cruel world, the best always seem to get killed, life is so unfair. I loved Ray so much and we were so happy together... "

27/39 "PS I left work yesterday and am now longing for baby to arrive", she wrote on 31st December 1944 to Ray's parents (ten days since her previous letter).

On 11th March 1945, Ray and Tink's healthy baby daughter was born - a daughter who would never know her own father.

28/39 Letters are now travelling more quickly between NZ and England. In late May 1945, Tink writes that she is "so glad you like the names I have chosen for baby - some people call her Angela and some Raye. I think I shall call her Raye... The war in Europe is nearly over..."

29/39 Remarkably, there is a happy ending to this singularly awful story - a story which would have been repeated around families across the world during the mid 1940s. That happy ending is not, however, the miraculous reappearance of Ray.

30/39 Happiness returned to Tink (and baby Raye) in the form of a hero – PHH, who married Tink (and became father to baby Raye) after the war. They had three more children together. PHH is now 103 and continues to be an amazing father to all four of his children.

31/39 What of Lt (A) Raymond Martin Shaw ? His Fairey Firefly was raised by the Germans and his body recovered. Eventually, some personal effects – including a wrist watch – were returned to his widow, while he was taken for burial.

32/39 Ray lies far, far from his beloved Ararimu in @CWGC Stavne Cemetery in #Trondheim, Norway. It's a beautiful place to visit on a crisp autumn day. The Cemetery is wonderfully maintained by @CWGC and the Stavne Pastor.

33/39 The memory of Ray Shaw did return to New Zealand, of course. His NZ family never forgot him and, to this day, remain fiercely proud (if saddened) by his loss on far flung shores. He is remembered in physical form (pic) and online with @aucklandmuseum http://www.aucklandmuseum.com/war-memorial/online-cenotaph/record/C26828

34/39 So, why the thread?

Ray Shaw is my grandfather.
Tink is my grandmother.
Baby Raye is my mother. (She wears his wristwatch – amazingly, it still works)

For my own family, 26th Oct each year is going to be "Grandpa Ray Day". (We should have done this earlier.)

35/39 As we approach #RemembranceDay, it's increasingly easy to doff a cap, see a poppy as “Big Picture History”. But each poppy represents the death of a person. Each lost person will have left shattered their families as did the death of Ray Shaw.

36/39 If you believe, as I do, that the past informs the future, then we owe it to our own children to educate them about the people who made our world what it is today - for all the imperfections with which we assail it. Freedom was not won easily.

37/39 In memoriam, Raymond Martin Shaw.

You gave it your all. Thank you. We remember you.

#LtRMShaw #GrandpaRay #lestweforget #remembrance
@FleetAirArmMus @RNASYeovilton @NZinUK @RealTimeWWII

38/39 POSTSCRIPT: As I say above, Ray and Tink were just one of many to endure such fate. From earlier this month - read this: https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2018/09/kiwi-wwii-pilot-s-grave-plane-wreckage-found-in-norway.html

39/39 POSTSCRIPT: The Richardsons, above, were great mates of Ray and Tink. The pilots’ widows, and their young children (inc Baby Raye), travelled together to NZ in 1946 to meet their inlaws. "Baby Raye" will, in Nov, have tea with the last person alive who knew her father.

40/42: Quick sidebar - PHH, in many ways the hero of this tragically quotidian tale of its time above, is now 104 and is now in hospital. His family doesn’t think he comes out of the front door upright, this time.

41/42 - Wise, sharp and (let’s face it) a total dude beyond measure (to the end?), he notes the following:

“However many of these Do Not Resuscitate forms I sign, I keep waking up in this [bleep] hospital...”.

He wants to go. At 104, he has been the legend we will never be.

Down comes the curtain on this thread, and on that war-time generation within our family.

The family were wrong (40/42, above). Showing typical strength of character, PHH did make it home.

He died yesterday, peacefully in his bed at home at 104 and a quarter (and a bit). #Vale