Phil Bullock outlined his own history, which included his schooldays at Worcester Royal Grammar School, and sharing his surname in his year group with three others that were not related. It is a Worcestershire surname. He introduced us to his parents and his grandparents through photographs, which led in turn to his uncle, Philip Harold Bullock, aged 21.
He held the rank of sergeant and was the Flight Engineer on Aircraft Stirling 1 W7506 out of RAF Marham in Norfolk during World War II Operation Canonbury – a British long-range bombing attack on the Skoda armaments factory at Pilsen in German-occupied Czechoslovakia on 26 April 1942. It was one of six four-engine, long-range, heavy Stirling bombers from 218 Squadron to take part in this mission on that night.
One aircraft was shot down by a night fighter at Hügelsheim, near Baden-Baden, with the loss of all eight occupants. The Pilot Officer Harold Reuben Millichamp and an Air Gunner Percy George Detmold were Canadians, but the others were from the UK: the Second Pilot Thomas Cunningham Bird, the Observer/Navigator John Albert Stokes Banting, the Wireless Operator/Air Gunner Thomas Macfarlane, the Wireless Operator/Air Gunner David Holley Bird, the Air Gunner Stuart Alan Bain Kellie and the Flight Engineer Philip Harold Bullock. All held the rank of at least Sergeant.
Their gravestones remain together in Section 22 of the Rheinberg British War Cemetery under the care of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Philip Harold Bullock’s parents Harold Alfred and Ethel May Bullock chose the personal inscription and epitaph for his gravestone “At the going down of the sun and in the morning we will remember them.”
The family had preserved telegrams and letters from the War Office, reminding us of the pain and suffering of those left behind.
