Nephews know where uncle was shot down

GROWING up in Yorkshire in the 1950s and 60s, Richard and Alasdair Lyon remember a distinctive framed photograph on their father's desk. They knew that it was an image of their father's half-brother Russell, from Edinburgh, who was reported missing in action in the Second World War.

But their curiosity was never satisfied, because speaking of the war was a taboo subject in the house. Both their parents had lost brothers and their father was haunted by his own memories of active service. Consequently, the handsome young man in the picture was never mentioned.

Alasdair explains: "It was something they didn't want to talk about. It was like getting blood from a stone. A lot of people had their war experiences and didn't want to talk about them."

But in April this year, part of the story behind the man in the picture was revealed for the first time. Richard was contacted by French historians who said they had discovered the wreckage of his uncle's Spitfire in Brittany and believed they had found his unmarked grave. They are now awaiting the results of a Commonwealth War Graves Commission inquiry in the hope it will rule that the grave can be finally inscribed with their uncle's name.

It was an emotional revelation for Richard, 59, whose father Stanley died without knowing where his half-brother's body lay. "My parents would have been absolutely chuffed to have found the grave," he says, earnestly.

Russell, a former George Watson's pupil, was shot down over France at the age of 21, in July 1944. Now Richard, from Cambridge, is trying to piece together fragments of information to get a clearer picture of his uncle's life.

He knows Russell was brought up in Bonaly Road, Colinton, before joining the RAF in 1941, and was going to the US for pilot training. Russell's father worked as a civil servant for the Department of Agriculture and his mother died when he was 12 or 13.

At George Watson's, director of communications Fiona MacFarlane is able to shed a little more light on Russell's interests, but says the school only has a record of his last three years there. She says: "He joined us from George Heriot's and was with us for fourth, fifth and sixth year.

"He got the bronze medal for swimming in fourth year and by the time he was in sixth year he was in the rugby First XV. He did English, French, physics and chemistry in sixth year, was a patrol leader in the Scouts and was also in the Army Training Corps and played tennis and cricket."

Richard, an architect, attended an anniversary reunion of Russell's 234 squadron in September, where he heard precious anecdotes about his uncle. After pilot training in the US, the 19-year-old went on to work as an instructor. In one lesson, he ushered a young David Ferguson into a small aircraft and instructed him to take off. But as soon as they were airborne, Russell seized the controls and began flying so low that the trainee was scared out of his wits.

Richard recalls with a wry smile: "David Ferguson told me this story at the reunion. I think it was a deliberate attempt to get David familiar with the scarier aspects of the things he would end up doing.

"

Alasdair, 60, travelled in July to the crash site, near Lorient, to meet the French historians and see his uncle's grave. He was taken to Jean Robic's family farm, which had been taken over by the Germans during the war.

Jean had renovated an underground wartime bunker, turning it into a museum. He showed him the cockpit, engine and propeller of his uncle's Spitfire, which had been found in nearby woods by someone out walking around five years ago. The intervening time had been spent trying to identify the wreckage and track down the Lyon family.

Alasdair, a financial consultant who lives in Surrey, recalls: "It was fascinating. I was presented with a plaque made from one of the Spitfire's valves. I felt nostalgia rather than sadness."

He was introduced to the farmer who witnessed the crash, Joseph Le Corroller. "He remembers seeing my uncle before the Germans came. The body was still moving, about seven or eight metres from the wreckage. I wondered whether he was still alive or were they just after-death twitchings. My thoughts were that he was almost certainly fatally injured and they were just his last minutes."

Finally Alasdair was taken to the well-kept local cemetery, with a number of war graves, to see the nameless headstone, now believed to mark his uncle's grave. He felt a great sense of history. "It was a nostalgic place, with some fairly tragic history," he says, "We never knew our uncle, but it was sad and tragic, most definitely."

Monument to the fallen

ERNEST Russell Lyon, known as Russell, was one of nearly 400 former pupils of George Watson's College in Edinburgh who joined the RAF between 1939 and 1945. More than 20 per cent of them did not survive the war.

The young Spitfire pilot's name is recorded on the Airforces Memorial at Runnymede amongst more than 20,000 other air services personnel with no known grave. His name is also on the World War Two memorial in Colinton Parish Church Cemetery, where his mother Elizabeth is buried.

In total nearly 140,000 British servicemen and women are commemorated on World War Two memorials to the missing.