A tribute to those who never came home
Still under construction
As details and tributes are sparse, or non existent, and sadly those who can remember them become ever fewer as the years go by, I have decided to include some information and photos I have of my friends and colleagues who made the ultimate sacrifice and never came home as my personal tribute to them. I hope it may be of interest to friends and relatives and help keep their memory alive for future generations.
In the year 2000 Terry’s youngest son was able to make a brief stop over while on a flight and visited the Kranji Commonwealth War Memorial and was able to take a short video of some of the Gravestones for Terry. Below are some still frames extracted from the video – Please excuse the quality as they are after all still frames extracted from a 1990’s technology video.
Brigand VS869 crashed on 1st June 1951 while carrying out a practice single engine approach at RAF Tengah. The crew of three, Pilot Flying Officer Keith Fullager, Flt/Sgt Harry. L. “Greg” Gregory and Flight Sgt. “Jock” Sharkey, were lost.
A short church service was held at Tengah’s church which all of 84 Sqdn’s aircrew attended. 84 Sqdn have quite a number of its ‘boys’ in Kranji cemetery and whilst we were out there we only saw the coffins in Tengah Church when we often acted as pall bearers so never actually saw the Gravestones.
Keith Fullager
Harry "Greg" Gregory
"Jock" Sharkey
It was only 12 days since I had said my goodbyes and left the squadron, when on 20th December 1952 Brigand RH832 crewed by a couple of extremely nice guys, Pilot B. Massey and Sgt Nav. Cliff Powell crashed. They were just pulling out of a shallow dive when the starboard wing was seen to break away. The aircraft crashed and burst into flames with of course no survivors. This was the prelude to No.84 Squadron ceasing activities in Malaya. On January 16th 1953 a parade was held at Tengah and for a time 84 Sqdn. was disbanded only to re-emerge at Fayid in the Canal Zone, Egypt. Instead of Brigands they flew Valletta transport aircraft taking over 204 Sqdn’s number plate and aircraft.
N.B. If Terry's log book is correct, and I have no reason to doubt it, RH832 was the very same aircraft Terry had flown all the way back to the UK (Tengah to Abingdon) in March of that year for it to be inspected at Farnborough to try and find out why so many Brigands were crashing. I can only assume it must have been ferried back to Tengah after the examination as Terry thought it had been taken out of service (Terry had returned to Tengah in a Hastings). RH832 was also the number recorded by Terry as having suffered bomb damaged while being flown by 45 Squadron in March/April 1950 requiring repair by 390 Maintenance Unit at RAF Seletar so either there is a discrepancy in the serial number or this was a very unlucky Brigand.
B. Massey
Cliff Powell
In the small town of Batu Gajah in Perak there is an Anglican cemetery known as “God’s Little Acre” where there are gravestones and a Roll Of Honour dedicated to those who lost their lives in the “Malayan Emergency” of 1948-1960.
On the bottom right of the Roll Of Honour you may just be able to make out the names of Sgt Signaller Paul “Lofty” Blakey, Pilot Flt/Lt Desmond C “Tubby” Marshall and Navigator Flt/Lt Richard S Wrigglesworth of 84 Squadron who died in the crash of Brigand RH815 on 31st July 1950. They had been taking part in "Operation Swan-song" which was to give aerial cover to a convoy of school children going by road from the Cameron Highlands to Tapah to start their summer holiday back home but crashed after clipping the top of a tree damaging the nose and port wingtip before climbing steeply, stalling and crashing into the jungle with no survivors.
