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F/Lt Edwin A Haddock (LIB/861) - so near yet so far ..
This page first posted 14 Apr 2024 - updated 16 Apr 2024
After the war, Edwin Aldridge Haddock (originally from Durham) became a family doctor (described as “affable and professional” by John Frost, one of his younger patients) in Grimsby. He was also a classic car buff and artist but on the afternoon of 15 July 1943, F/Lt E A Haddock was the 23-year-old pilot of 181 Sqn Typhoon 1B R8866. Intended as an interceptor, the Hawker Typhoon, being very fast but less agile than the latest model Spitfires, was by then being flown in a ground attack role, with 2 TAF squadrons like 181, carrying two 500 lb bombs. Unfortunately, Haddock's regular aircraft was not available and he was flying the aircraft of a senior pilot (F/Lt Arthur Ernest Seal Vincent), which was also due for a service, and had a faulty supercharger. Their mission that day was to the bomb the aerodrome at Poix-en-Picardie, south-west of Amiens but on the way back, and with Haddock lagging behind, he was attacked by enemy fighters and shot down, baling out to land in a field near Ercourt (Somme).
He was soon helped by a farmer named Camille Ternois who hid Haddock in his barn until evening, meanwhile fetching school teacher Rene Quint (of Occoches par Doullens), who arrived with his niece, and was wearing two suits, one of which was for Haddock. That evening, Haddock was taken to a church where he was visited by Marcel Lecointe, a barber from nearby Vismes-au-Val, who asked for Haddock's identity discs. Haddock declined to hand them over but did give Marcel his photographs.
The following morning, Marcel Lecointe pushed Haddock on a bicycle - Haddock's left ankle had been hit by cannon shell splinters - back to his tiny house in Vismes, where Haddock was sheltered with Marcel and his wife Charlotte for the next two and a half months. His injuries to ankle, and back where he had hit the tail plane of his aircraft on baling out, were treated by their neighbour Emile Tavener, and included removing pieces of shrapnel from Haddock's ankle.
About a week after Haddock's arrival at Vismes, an architect from Abbeville named Maurice Merchez brought Haddock identity papers (stating he was Belgian to explain his lack of French), and members of the de Loziere family at Tours-en-Vimeu made several visits and brought food.
On 6 September, Haddock and Marcel watched as a British fighter was shot down, and Marcel promptly set off on his bicycle to look for the pilot. He returned later that evening with S/Ldr Johnny Checketts (1495), who was burned around his hands and face, and Checketts stayed at the house for about two weeks before being “sent on” - Haddock explains that with his higher rank, Checketts had priority for getting back to the UK.
On about 30 September, Marcel Lecointe and Maurice Merchez took Haddock by bicycle to Abbeville. They were met by Edouard de Loziere and his son who took Haddock in a three-wheeled gazogene to Boufflers where he was sheltered for two days with Mme Marguerite Tellier at the Manoir de Gourlay - Checketts had been sheltered there overnight about a week earlier before being taken to Auxi-le-Chateau.
It was while Haddock was staying with Mme Tellier that he was visited by a man named Georges Varieras (aged about 77, he had been in the army) who took Haddock to his house in Gueschart for the day, and that night, Haddock stayed overnight with his neighbour Albert Colson. Next day, Haddock was taken to Maison-Ponthieu, where he was sheltered by Mlle Paule Legris.
On 15 October, Georges Varieras took Haddock by car to Auxi-le-Chateau, where he met fellow Typhoon pilot, F/Sgt Ernest Boucher (1595). Next day, they were taken to a small clothing shop in the village where they met seven more evaders, including F/O Graham Kelly (LIB/1459), P/O Leslie Prickett (LIB/1561), S/Sgt Eugene Williams USAAF - and Sgt Harold Merlin (2432), who was working “with the maquis”. They were all taken by truck to Amiens where Georges and another man (who had just arrived from Lille) bought tickets and took them (eight evaders with 3 guides) by overnight train to Paris.
S/Sgt Eugene F Williams was the left waist gunner of B-17 42-29754 Shangri-La Lil - and the party also included S/Sgt William S Wood (#252).
They were taken to a cafe near the Gare du Nord, from where guides collected them and took them to a large block of flats in the west of the city (probably in the Port de Versailles area). The evaders were then split up, with Haddock and S/Sgt Williams being taken to 15 rue des Acacias in the Etoile district, home of Mme Mireille Combat, who took them to another flat nearby where she supplied them with food from her husband's restaurant. Haddock reports that during the week they were there, Merlin left to escape through Switzerland.
Harold Merlin says that on 15-16 October, he and Joseph Becker (both of whom worked with René Guittard and the Bordeaux-Loupiac organisation) were interrogated by two German counter-espionage agents, who then returned to Paris convinced that Merlin and Becker were in fact “good German collaborators”.
Harold Edwin Robert Merlin was born on 3 February 1920 to British parents in Greece, and after emigrating to America for eight years, the family moved to Paris. Harold was educated in Switzerland and at the beginning of the war, as a fluent French and German speaker, was working for an American magazine in Paris. He joined the RAF in June 1941, and was flying 175 Sqn Typhoon JP577 when he was shot down on 16 August 1943. Joseph Becker was an Alsatian (born 10 November 1910 in Moselle) and naturalised German with his own transport company and a Gestapo permit to drive his German registered car. Some evaders suspected him of being a Gestapo agent but in fact he was one of the five local Bordeaux-Loupiac section heads.
Ernest Boucher (who set off across the Pyrenees from Pouzac on 24 October) says that Merlin was one of the men taking him to Paris, and Merlin states (in his 1 October 1944 report) that he took 11 Allied airmen, including P/O Haddock, to Paris on 26 October (although this date is clearly wrong). In the capital, Merlin says he made arrangements for the accommodation of nine of the evaders, including Hadddock and an American Staff Sergeant, with friends of his - Mireille Combas (sic) of 17 rue des Acacias, Paris XVII and Marcus Celli, Bar Possoz, Place Possoz, Paris XVI. He then left Paris on 7 November.
Graham Kelly says that from Paris he was due to leave for the UK via Brittany but then Sgt Andre Poirier (LIB/1499) arrived with news that the party with whom he was to travel had been broken up and scattered around Rennes (Jean-Claude Camors and Remy Roure of Bordeaux-Loupiac were shot outside the Café de l'Epoqu e on 11 October). Kelly and Leslie Prickett stayed in Paris with Mme Emilienne Marechaux at 19 rue de la Chapelle until 17 December when they were taken to Place de Pantin, where they and sixteen other evading airmen were captured in a German trap (see Article).
William Wood was passed on to Paul Bazille of CDDL (Ceux de la Liberation), and joined a party that crossed the Pyrenees to Orbaceita at the beginning of November.
Following Merlin's departure, Georges Varieras and Victor Toronelli (of 33 rue des Martyrs, Hotel Clauzet) (described by Haddock as the head of the Underground Movement in the Paris area), took Haddock and Williams to Rueil-Malmaison, where they stayed with an elderly man named Jean Buthon. They stayed with Jean for about three weeks, with Toronelli and his wife bringing them food, until being moved to the home of Smithson family, also in Rueil-Malmaison. The Smithsons were English, and the father was interned but his wife, daughters and sons looked after Haddock and Williams for about two weeks.
It was about the middle of December when the Toronellis took Haddock and Williams to the Gare Saint-Lazare, where they were met by a Mme Simone (Haddock gives her address as 9 rue Pasteur). This was Mme Simone Verdain (born 10 June 1904) and she took them by overnight train via Tours to Chatellerault, and then Maillé (Centre) from where they walked the three kilometres to Draché. They were sheltered with the village curé, Abbé Henri Pean, for about four days before being collected by the comtesse Marie-Thérèse de Poix, who arrived on a bicycle and took them on foot back to her home, the Château Laroche-Ploquin at Sepmes.
At the beginning of February, Haddock reports they assisted in the collection of “a lot of equipment which had been dropped by aircraft”, and that while he was at the chateau, “he had the wireless in his room as instructions generally came through in English”.
On or about 14 February, they heard that the priest at Draché (Abbé Henri Pean) had been arrested, and Haddock wanted to leave but was persuaded to stay, although they did bury the radio. On 16 February, the Gestapo arrived and arrested everyone at the chateau, including Haddock, Eugene Williams, a Dutchman and his wife who had worked on an underground newspaper in Holland, and a Frenchwoman named Michelle, whose sculptor husband had already had to flee to England.
Haddock was taken to Tours, where he spent two and half months in solitary confinement, only interrupted by frequent interrogations. He was then sent to Angers, where he was held for two weeks, again in solitary with interrogations, and on 10 May, taken to Fresnes, outside Paris, where he shared a cell with P/O L M Anderson RCAF (from 405 Sqn Halifax HR813, shot down the night of 3-4 July 1943) and an American sergeant named Laycock (Sgt John Frederick Laycock from B-26 42-95845, shot down 26 April 1944). On 10 June, Haddock was sent to Weisbaden, where he spent a fortnight in solitary confinement before being interrogated (this time on military matters rather then details of his evasion). On 12 July 1944, he was finally treated as a POW and sent to the Dulag Luft (transit camp) at Oberursel, and on 15 July, to Stalag Luft III (Sagan). On 6 February 1945, he was transferred to Stalag IIIA at Luckenwalde, from where he was liberated by the Russian army on 22 April 1945.
Abbé Henri Emmanuel Pean (born 25 August 1901) was arrested outside his church on 13 February 1944. He was tortured by the Gestapo at Tours and died of his injuries five days later.
The comtesse Marie-Thérèse de Poix (born 27 September 1894, a widow whose husband had been gassed in the first war) was deported to Germany and survived Ravensbruck. She died on 5 February 1970.
Sources for this article include various MI9 and MIS-X reports, with some added detail from Edwin Haddock's 1996 Oral History recording for the Imperial War Museum.
My thanks to John Frost in Grimsby for the original idea, and sending me the link to Edwin Haddock's IWM Oral History recording; and to Jean Michel Dozier, John Howes and Franck Signorile for identifying some of the helpers mentioned in this article; and Oliver Clutton-Brock and Edouard Reniere for identifying the other captured airmen.