About ten years ago now I tried to write a book about my parents’ courtship and marriage during World War Two. It isn’t bad but for some reason I never finished it. And I still don’t know how to do that. One of my sisters at the time said to me: ‘Well, you aren’t them, so how could you?’ Indeed. But you always regret unfinished works. What follows is an excerpt from said book – and the reason for the pic above is not just that Traff flew and died in Wellington bombers but that, when as a nine or ten year old I became obsessed with model aircraft from WW2, a Wellington bomber was the first one I bought and assembled. I had it on lay bye and it took me fourteen weeks of pocket money, at a shilling a week, to pay the price for the kitset. I hung it up on the ceiling above my bed and endlessly replayed fantasies of aerial battles from that war. My father never commented upon my choice of aircraft. He may not have known – but he probably did. Here’s the excerpt:
Trafford McRae Nichol lived with his family in the same street in Seatoun as my father: at #11 Inglis, just up from the beach, whereas the Edmonds were near the top at #109. They met when my father moved there from Wadestown, aged 10, in 1930, grew up together, went to the same college — Rongotai, over the hill in Lyall Bay — for a while; later Traff boarded in town at Wellington College. They sailed an Idalong, a small sixteen by five foot six yacht that had been made by the boat-builder father of a mutual friend, Penn Warren. Traff was the mainsheet hand and I was the forward hand, my father said. And Penn was the skipper. And we raced and went into championships but it wasn’t a big deal, we just enjoyed doing it . . . he was my best friend. Hell of a nice guy.
They were young men about town. When Traff left school he enrolled at Victoria University College and studied Accountancy; and was employed in the city in a clerical capacity by Jenkins and Mack, Engineers. This must have been a family firm; Traff’s mother’s maiden name was Mack. At the same time, in the late 1930s, my father was studying for an LLB at VUC and also working in the city: at Morrison, Spratt, Morrison & Taylor, his father’s lawyers and also lawyers for Todd Motors, where Charlie was General Manager. The Edmond and Nicol families were close. When Traff enlisted, he gave the name of C R Edmond as one of his referees.
Traff joined the Air Force on March 23, 1941 and did his initial training at Levin before being posted to the Elementary Flying Training School at Harewood, Christchurch; thence to Woodbourne, Blenheim, where he was awarded his flying badge. He was commissioned as a Pilot Officer on September 6 1941 and, on the 14th of the same month, embarked for the United Kingdom, arriving at Bournemouth on October 17. More training ensued: at Honington, Suffolk, he learned instrument flying; and then at Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire crew-ed up and completed his training in Wellington bomber aircraft prior to being posted on the 10th of March, 1942, to No. 75 (N.Z.) Squadron, Feltwell, Norfolk and commencing operational flying.
With this squadron, the summary in his military record continues, as a pilot of a Wellington bomber he took part in attacks on Essen, Dortmund and Hamburg. On the night of 23 / 24th April 1942 Pilot Officer Nicol was second pilot of a Wellington bomber which took off [for] air operations to Cologne in Germany. Returning from the target this aircraft was attacked by an enemy night fighter and badly damaged, one of the crew being killed, while Pilot Officer Nicol was very seriously wounded by canon fire.
The Chaplain’s letter to his mother takes up the story: The aircraft reached its base. The pilot having wirelessed that a member of his crew was injured. On landing (one source says it was a crash landing) P / O Nicol was immediately removed to Station Sick Quarters, where he died from multiple injuries to the torso and the legs at approximately 0800 hours on 24th April, 1942. He was buried with service honours on 27th April in the St Nicholas churchyard, Feltwell, Norfolk.
He had flown 328 hours as a pilot; this was his sixth operational flight. Cologne was a major rail nexus and had been bombed numerous times already, the first attack having taken place two years earlier in May, 1940. Traff’s mission, in which sixty-nine aircraft took part, came only a month or so before Operation Millennium, the RAF’s first thousand bomber raid, also to Cologne, happened. Since February, 1942, Bomber Command had been under the authority of Air Marshall Sir Arthur Harris, aka ‘Bomber’ or ‘Butcher’ Harris, the architect of the campaign of terror against German cities. He was a fanatic whose roll of achievements included 600,000 dead civilians, 131 burned-out or devastated cities, 43 cubic metres of rubble for every inhabitant of Dresden, 7,500,000 people left homeless.
It isn’t hard to imagine what effect Traff’s death had on my father; that known body, that familiar form, just twenty-one years old, ripped apart by the hot metal of canon fire; bleeding to death as the Wellington bomber limped back across Holland and the North Sea to Norfolk; the friend he would not see again. It must have been as if a part of himself had died: the mainsheet hand and I was the forward hand. He probably imagined himself likewise haemorrhaging to death in the lonely night skies over Europe.
In April 1942 Dad wrote his poem for Traff, which he gave to his mother, Lousia; she had a portrait of her son, in uniform, framed with the poem, in black ink, in my father’s hand, inscribed below. He kept a copy of it by him all his life and now I too have it among my things. Traff, who was a few months younger than Dad, looks eerily like my mother did in the photographs of her taken around the same time: the same fresh-faced, rounded cheeks, the same full lips, that bloom of youth on the skin, that steady, heart-breaking, prospective look in the eyes.
The most poignant thing for me in Traff’s war record is the list of personal effects, mostly clothes, that he left behind. The shirts and collars, the 29 handkerchiefs and 14 ½ pairs of socks, the Box Brownie camera, the pyjamas and slippers, the keys, the wallet and the travelling rug, the bathing trunks, the flannel trousers and the blazer. The list concludes: 1 Gold Chain with button attached; 1 Ceremonial Hat; 1 Chain & Key; 1 pr Cuff Links; 1 Scarf; 1 Handkerchief; 1 Toy Penknife; 2 Charms; 1 Wrist Watch; 1 Driving Licence; 1 NZ Sixpence.
My father’s poem about his dead friend is, as he knew, conventional and sentimental; it was also of the time. Another contemporary piece of writing, with similar faults and similar virtues, is included in Traff’s war record. It was written a few years after the war by a Mrs Soward who was visiting the grave of her own son, Sergeant Joyce, at the RNZAF cemetery at Feltwell: The rose trees are in full bloom at each grave, she wrote, the lawn is starred with daisies. Larks are singing madly all day: as far as the eye can see are beautiful meadows, corn fields, gigantic old trees in all their lovely new green, and wild flowers in every hedge. The village is very old.
I had the great satisfaction of being taken by Sir Henry and Lady Peat, all through their lovely house, of great antiquity, at Huckwold, a mile or so from the Feltwell Air Station. I saw all the apartments which were set aside as dormitories for the aircrews, so that they could get the necessary quiet and sleep between Bombing Raids. This lovely house was a joy to them, great copper beeches, thousands of acres of meadow and beautifully laid out old time flower gardens . . . many dogs were there and the boys made great friends of them. Such hospitality as was possible, was extended to them in the way of invitations to sherry or other drinks with the family.
I trust that the knowledge of the care, peace and beauty of this spot, if made known, will bring comfort to the parents and prevent them thinking of a “lonely grave”. While I sat here writing the other day, a girl of twelve brought up a great bunch of golden Iris and put [it] on my son’s grave. Apparently she does the rounds, and at her age cannot have known any of them personally. How I wish they could televise this as I see it today, and hear the larks overhead, see outside the plot, the rose hedges, tall grasses waving over four feet high, pink may, dog roses, sorrel, meadow sweet and kindred things.
Isinglass 