Published: Tuesday, 16th September, 2008 00:00
TRAGIC WWII PILOT LAID TO REST
By Sandy Kilpatrick
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A LUGAR World War II pilot has finally been laid to rest 64 year after his Avro Lancaster came down in the Netherlands.
William Begg’s family say they are “extremely proud to know what a sacrifice he made for us, and the country”.
He was one of seven airmen onboard the Avro Lancaster en-route to blow the Dortmund-Ems canal on the German border when they were contacted to circle and await further instructions.
The aircraft was carrying a ‘Tallboy’ bomb, designed by Barnes Wallace of Dambusters fame. The air crew must have been highly skilled to be entrusted with such a mission.
However their target had already been destroyed by a prior bombardment and so they were ordered to circle to await a new target or instructions to return with the valuable five ton bomb.
Great Nephew James Knox has been researching William’s war record. He said: “If a Tallboy was not able to be used on a proper target it would be taken back to the UK to be used another day - because they were so expensive and rare, they would never just be dropped randomly.”
While the planes circled the skies over the German border the weather began to deteriorate.
Then everything went wrong.
A German Night Fighter, quite by chance appeared in the midnight gloom.
The Luftwaffe pilot closed in on the Lancaster. The big bomber was ripped apart by machine gun fire, the fuel ingited and the plane streaked to the earth like a comet.
The Lancaster landed in a flat spin and tore the woodland apart in a spiral
of destruction.
The peaceful Dutch farmland turned to hellfire.
It crashed near Zuna, an agricultural area between Wierden and the town of Rijssen in the Twente district, close to the German border in the
Dutch province of Overijssel.
Only three charred bodies were pulled from the wreckage as bulldozers buried the remains of the stricken Lancaster.
There it rested for 62 years until October 2006 when it was salvaged.
However it would be another two years before the scant remains of teeth and bone that made up William Begg and his comrades were laid to rest in a local Cemetary.
Great Nephew James Knox said: “It was a familiar story, we never knew anything about him, but it was talked about among the family. We knew he was something in the RAF but didn’t know much about it. Only that he had gone out to war and hadn’t returned.”
William grew up in Lugar during the 1920s and lived at Brick Row with his father and mother, Robert and Nellie Begg. He was one of five siblings with two sisters and two brothers.
The children were educated at Lugar Primary and Cumnock Academy but William shunned the academic life for the toil of a farm labourer. Two years after WWII broke out William signed up at the RAF Volunteer
Reserve. He travelled the world and spent some of his time training in Canada, and became good friends with a airman from the Canadian RAF.
In July 1944, at the age of 21, William flew with the famous 9th Squadron. Two months later William and his Canadian comrade and five aircrew were killed in battle.
The fallen airmen of the 9th Squadron, whose brave fight ended in their tragic deaths, were buried by an RAF padre at Wierden on August 18, 2008.
The funeral - at Wierden General Cemetery - was attended by, among others, James Knox, his mother Janet and uncle Robert, along with people from the British and Canadian embassies, the Netherlands Air Force and Army who carried out the excavation and the local Council and Mayor’s office, who helped fund and support the excavation.
The remains of the four airmen, including William Begg were buried in a small coffin in a joint grave which already held two of the other airmen, beside the other airman whose body was recovered at the time.
Mr Knox said: “The amount of respect and effort the organisers had put in was amazing. As a family we are extremely proud to know what a sacrifice he made for us, and the country. It was a very moving and honourable service.”
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Further Details
Local author tells history of Sorn