Earlier this year, Helga Wynne visited the IBCC. When staff heard her story, they persuaded her to be interviewed for the IBCC Digital Archive.

Helga was born in 1926 in Kiel, Germany. At age 14, she started work on a farm, but an accident left her with severe injuries. After months of recovery, she became a student nurse at a children’s hospital in Kiel. During an air raid, she was buried in rubble and survived only because of the determined efforts of fellow students to dig her out.

She became engaged to a German submariner in Kiel. The train on which they were travelling to his home in Westphalia for their marriage was strafed and her fiancé was killed. Of this tragedy, she remarked, ‘you just cope when you are young’.

In 1947, Helga met Harold Wynne, a British paramedic on national service, at a dance in Kiel. Harold brought her to live in the UK in 1948 and they were married in Burton upon Stather church, near Scunthorpe. Harold’s family adored her. Apart from being homesick at times, her life was very happy. Altogether she was mother to four sons and now has six great grandchildren.

Since Harold’s death in 2000, his lifelong friend Graham Atkinson has been Helga’s companion. Gordon remembers standing outside during the war to watch the bomber streams departing, and many limping home on less than four engines. One of his relatives, Arthur Leslie Horton, served in the RCAF at RAF Linton-on-Ouse and was killed in action in 1944.

Both Gordon and Helga were deeply moved by the exhibition at the IBCC – ‘it brought back many memories’, said Helga. Their story seems a living embodiment of the IBCC’s values: as Helga noted, ‘no matter what country you came from, all these young men had mothers’.

Harry Thomas Ansell’s logbook showing daylight operation to Caen.

As well as the RAF 100 celebrations and flypast, this month includes the 74th anniversary of Operation Goodwood, part of the battle of Caen. Throughout July 1944, Bomber Command carried out numerous tactical operations in support of Allied troops in Normandy after D-Day, targeting transport networks and troop concentrations.

Northern and central Caen was badly damaged on 7 July 1944 by almost 500 aircraft attacking German troop positions north of the city, and on 18 July 1944 villages east of Caen were bombed by over 900 Bomber Command aircraft in support of Operation Goodwood. Seven aircraft were lost with 24 aircrew killed on this operation. Most of the French population had already left the city but several hundred of those who remained were killed and much of the city was destroyed.

Target photograph of Caen from the Margaret Hourigan collection. Taken on 18 July 1944 by Flight Lieutenant Mouat from 50 Squadron, RAF Skellingthorpe.

Following the IBCC’s aims to promote remembrance, recognition, and reconciliation, the Digital Archive is recording and preserving stories and material about the bombing war from all perspectives. This includes those who flew, served on the ground or were bombed – on both sides of the conflict. We’d be very interested to hear from anyone who witnessed RAF bombing in Germany and occupied Europe. Please contact archive@internationalbcc.co.uk or call (+44) 01522 837707.