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My father was a wireless operator in the RAF during the war. He was not aircrew and was posted to North Africa where he worked with the 8th Army on some kind of low key intelligence operation. A unit comprising a lorry and half-track vehicle went forward of the line and had to report any activity witnessed. In fact there were two or three of these units each out of sight of the other just over the horizon. My father's job was merely to operate the wireless, sending morse signals, as directed by the one officer. The personnel of this little unit comprised no more than four people. The nature of this unit meant that they were very much in the vanguard when advancing and very much in the rear when retreating.
When advancing my father's unit always entered enemy airfields as a priority. Consequently this little band of ground based airmen had first opportunity of acquiring any interesting 'war booty'. The only such memorablia that my father subsequently kept was a small selection of belongings owned by a Luftwaffe pilot who he discovered dead in his billet. From this man's paybook he discovered he had the same name as my father, was about the same height, age, religion (Roman Catholic), hair colour, eye colour, in fact the similarities were so startling he felt a special affinity with him; they appeared almost brothers, each in the Airforce but on opposing sides. My father used this man's camera (a Zeis Ikon bellows model now in my possesion)to take photographs of himself in the same locations in Tripoli where the Luftwaffe pilot had had himself photographed when under German occupation.
I was born in December 1945 and went to a de la Salle RC Public School. The monk who taught us German (Brother Edmund)had worked during the war as an interpreter listening to German radio for British Intelligence.(In fact his job comprised listening to all Hitler's speeches; this produced the occasional aside during lessons which was a source of some interest to myself and most of the other boys). I showed him some of the personal items relating to this Luftwaffe officer. The whole class was very interested and we said a special prayer for this man at the end of each German lesson for the rest of that term. However, the monk did caution me that he thought this Luftwaffe man was not a pilot but some sort of technician. His rank is described as 'Flieger' and as there are several photos of him in flying kit with his hand on the fuselage of a Me109 my father dismissed this as nonsense.
There are several photographs of a girl and it is easy to translate the loving messages written on the back. I said to my father as a teenager that it looked to me that the photos comprised three different girls but again my father said what nonsense; clearly this was his fiancee or at least a steady girlfriend because ther was no doubt this man was 'a good catholic boy, just like me, but fighting on the other side'.
The day my father died in August 1976 he gave me the entire collection relating to this man; he knew I had always maintained an interest. I had at that time where my wife and I were living a good friend in the local pub named Horst. He had grown up in Germany and had actually served briefly in the German Army as a fifteen year old in 1945. He worked in machine tools representing a German manufacturer. I showed him this collection and he was in rapture at seeing some cigarette cards; his friends would swop them in the school playground. He was able to translate the scribbled writing that had defeated the monk at school. A personal notebook had in it a selection of quite extraordinary information.
This man was not a pilot but was indeed a Flieger which is about the lowest noncommissioned rank in the Luftwaffe. He was an airframe rigger I believe and had been on courses at both the Daimler Benz and Messerschmidt factories. The notebook contains information he jotted down as an aide memoire. There are also names and addresses of friends and a couple of song verses. A separate page contained more addresses which I took to be more colleagues but Horst said 'no, these are all girls.'
We discovered that the dates on the photos correlated to his various leaves and time spent on training courses. Suddenly this man was being seen in an entirely new light. He had even noted down the extension numbers of some girls at Messerschmidt factory. The replicated photos of him in flying kit, arm on the fuselage, now had an entirely new meaning; it was not only my father who might have been deceived in believing him to be a pilot.
I discovered the truth of this Luftwaffe man within a year of my father's death. It was a great pity for I know my father would have enjoyed learning that he had been so wildly wrong in his interpretation of this 'good catholic boy, just like me, but fighting on the other side.

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