RAF Centenary

Jeremy Lefroy Excerpts

Monday 26th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

It is a great honour to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson).

Stafford has been a centre for the RAF for 80 years. It was in 1938-39 that 16 MU, a maintenance unit, moved to the newly constructed RAF Stafford. It remained there for many decades, until the RAF base became a Ministry of Defence base in the mid-2000s. But we still have a strong RAF presence through the tactical supply wing, which is based at MOD Stafford. That wing goes all over the world to refuel rotary-wing helicopters— whether in the Falklands, Cyprus or Kenya, where I came across it a few years ago in Nanyuki on a training exercise with the armed forces parliamentary scheme.

I pay tribute to the Royal Air Force for all it has done for Stafford over so many years. We are greatly honoured to have large numbers of former and current RAF service personnel in my constituency. There are, of course, some other connections. There are airfields at Hixon and at Seighford, which was a back-up base for Wellington bombers during the war. Those airfields are no longer in use, although Seighford is still used for gliding. Of course, we also have the RAF Museum reserve collection, which I and the Secretary of State for Defence had a wonderful visit to. We saw such things as Douglas Bader’s artificial legs and Lawrence of Arabia’s record collection from when he served as an aircraftsman in the RAF. I hope that some of the exhibits can be put on public display. They are very well looked after in my constituency, but it would be nice for more people to see them.

I would like to conclude with a personal recollection or reminiscence. My grandfather, Benjamin Lefroy, was a Canadian, born in Vernon, British Columbia. He was in 43 Squadron, which my hon. Friend the Member for Stirling (Stephen Kerr) mentioned, when the RAF was founded 100 years ago. He joined the Army and then the Royal Flying Corps, and then became a Sopwith Camel pilot in 43 Squadron.

On the first day of the battle of Amiens, the RAF, as the RFC had become, was trying to knock out bridges near Peronne. The RAF lost 60 aircraft that day, 8 August 1918—an astonishing rate of loss that shows just how much they were in a ground attack role; they were very exposed to enemy fire—and one of them was my grandfather’s. He later wrote—this is in the history of 43 Squadron and I am grateful to my step-uncle, Bob Lefroy, for some of this:

“I had done my work for the day, two sorties, and was reading my mail in the mess. An orderly came haring in and asked for volunteers as a pilot in A had gone sick. As the only person in the mess—it was me! The only machine I could get was ‘R’, the target practice machine, a slow and bad machine. My own Camel was being repaired, having collected some bullets on my previous sortie. Soon after coming out of cloud, we ran into fifteen German fighters. My engine was not good, and trying to get more out of it I ‘choked’ it. At this time, I saw Cecil King with a couple of German aircraft on his tail and so pulled up to give ‘em a squirt and down they came on me. The universal joint was shot off the joystick, my rudder wires cut and petrol was squirting all over the cockpit. With the throttle I kept pulling the nose up until, at 300 feet, I went into a spin and went in. I came to four hours later, in our barrage, with a German at my side. I had three bullet holes in me, both knees out of joint, fractured skull and fractured wrist—and of course was a P.O.W.”

As Germany began to fall apart at the end of the war, he was taken to hospital in Germany so that they could make a better job of repairing his wounds, for which I give great credit, but civil order broke down and an orderly, who believed he was doing the best thing for my grandfather, as he abandoned the hospital cut the traction ropes on his legs, and he was left for three days utterly immobilised and completely unattended. In the end, the British sent trains throughout Germany to collect such people at the end of 1918, many of whom were stuck without any care in hospitals. After the war, my grandfather stayed on as one of the Dominion scholars and then met my grandmother.

I want to finish by going back to Cecil King, whom my grandfather was up in the air with at that time. They were both 19 at the time. Cecil King was an RAF fighter ace—one of the real aces of 43 Squadron—who shot down 22 aircraft. He was awarded the Military Cross and the Distinguished Flying Cross as well as the Croix de Guerre from the French. He was killed in a flying accident in January 1919; he was just 19.

As we remember the huge heroism of the men and women of the RAF over the years, we remember those who survived into old age, like my grandfather, who died in his 80s, and those such as Cecil King, who died as a 19-year-old, hugely decorated.