One week - John Gulliver: Heroic Harry Gilleland’s story gets clearer

LIGHT is being thrown on the death of a Camden war hero 68 years after his plane was shot down in the Second World War.
Last week I reported how a Dutch man, Mike Kleinlugtebeld, had written to me asking for in­formation about Harry Gilleland whose grave he tends in Zwolle.
All he knew was that Harry came from St Pancras, his parents were David George and Emma Gilleland, and his wife was called Zena.
This week Hugo Barnacle, many of whose older relatives fought in the RAF during the war, wrote to me with more details about the day Harry was shot down in a raid on Bremen on December 17, 1942.
Hugo, a writer who lives in Croftdown Road, Kentish Town, looked up a book, The Bomber Command War Diaries, which records how Harry, a rear gunner on a Lancaster bomber, was killed when his plane was brought down by German flak and night-fighters.
It was Harry’s third sortie over the target, a factory turning out U-boats. The first sortie was aborted because the squadron spotted how the enemy had already been alerted, the second because of bad weather. When Harry’s squadron returned to base the first time, his wing ­commander, known to have a bad temper, accused the crew of ­“cowardice”.
On the final raid, in which Harry was killed, the pilot of another bomber was awarded a VC.
Hugo told me that his uncle, Wing Commander Lawrence ­Petley, was killed in 1941 and is buried in Becklingen War ­Cemetery situated, curiously, near to where Harry’s bomber was heading that fatal night.
Among his uncle’s fellow airmen at the start of the war were the famous cricketer Bill Edrich and Ken Wolstenholme, a sports ­commentator famous for his 1966 World Cup Final phrase: “They think it’s all over – it is now!”
Another reader, R Morris of ­Harlow, Essex, has sent me a few more details about the graves in Zwolle where Harry and other ­airmen are buried. Mr Morris, who read this column while waiting for an operation at the University ­College London Hospital last week, said that Flight Sergeant Ernest Peek, the best friend of his brother, is buried in a cemetery near Zwolle. Ernest was killed a few days before his wedding which was to be a joint one with his brother’s. “Everyone attending my brother’s wedding was in tears during the whole ceremony performed at a registry office,” said Mr Morris.
If readers have any more ­information about Harry please send it in to me.

Who’s in frame for cycle clash?

CAMDEN’S top police officer Superintendent Dominic Clout has revealed he was the victim of a near-death experience after a cyclist ran into him as he walked to the force’s Holborn station.
Superintendent Dominic Clout, who was off duty and in civilian clothes when the incident took place last summer, described how his copper instincts kicked in and he immediately made chase, but couldn’t catch the cyclist.
Joking at a neighbourhood police meeting on ­Tuesday, he said: “I came close to death walking to work, I couldn’t believe it. I was off duty and I chased after the cyclist and he gave me the finger. I didn’t catch him but I’ve got his face in here ­[pointing to his head].”
Asked what he thought the cyclist would have done had he known he’d nearly knocked down the most senior police officer in Camden, the borough commander replied good-naturedly that he believed the rider would have celebrated. 

Brown out of ‘order’ over Tom 

THE tragic death of 22-year-old Tom Hurndall, shot by an Israeli sniper while defending children six years ago in Gaza, was remembered  yesterday (Wednesday) in the Commons by Labour MP Richard Burden.
He asked Gordon Brown on the sixth anniversary of Tom’s death, to “pay tribute” to the Hurndall family and their “tireless efforts in cutting through so many smokescreens” from the Israeli officials to “find the truth”.
“Will he agree with me we have no less responsibility than to uphold that principle of accountability for the 352 Palestine children who died last year,” asked Mr Burden.
At that point during Prime Minister’s Question Time, Mr Burden’s speech was drowned in uproar, and the Speaker stepped in calling for order.
In his reply, Gordon Brown managed to describe the situation in Gaza as “serious” and to call for a “political settlement”. Then he flung out how Britain had spent £20million on aid in Gaza and £53m on aid to Palestine.
But hadn’t Burden asked him to pay a “tribute” to Tom Hurndall? Yes, but somehow Gordon Brown, presumably embarrassed about upsetting Israel,  managed to slip past that one, without mentioning Tom’s name.
Tom, a compassionate young man, lived in Tufnell Park and attended the Hall  School in Hampstead and later the sixth-form at Camden School for Girls.

Taking high road to paper success

ON my travels in Scotland the other week I dropped into the offices of a unique local newspaper.
I know, of course, that this organ is also unique, but the West Highland Free Press has stolen a march on us, though we are both members of an exclusive club – the club of independent local newspapers.
In Britain there are only a very small handful of independents – the great majority of the 2,000 weeklies are owned by five conglomerates, one of them a US transnational.
In a small office in the Isle of Skye I chatted to Paul Wood about how the Free Press has become employee owned, along the lines of the John Lewis Partnership – the first of its kind in the history of regional publishing.
From its birth in the 1970s – among its founders was Brian Wilson who later became a Labour MP and minister – the Free Press established a reputation as a campaigning paper with the sort of fearlessness and courage that has largely gone out of fashion in these anodyne days.
The Free Press, a paid-for newspaper, has a healthy circulation and is in profit.
Now, the paper will be run by a trust with dividends paid to its employees. There is no danger that one day the Free Press will be bought up by one of the big boys – as so often happens with independent newspapers – because the trust is governed by covenants that forbid it.
Little publicity has been given to this bold experiment. It lights the way not only for local newspapers but also for other small businesses. The economist Schumacher got it right when he coined the phrase “small is beautiful”.