#peter bird

Indie Focus: Koji Wakamatsu & Masao Adachi.

-  Peter Bird

This is my obituary of my friend, Peter Bird, which appeared in edited form in The Times today. Peter and his late wife, Joan, were the inspirations for the characters, Francis and Bea, in my first novel, A Place of Strangers. Peter was also the dearest man I've ever met. * Group Captain Peter Drury Bird, who has died aged 94, was a former British defence attaché and one of the last surviving Lancaster pilots who bombed Nazi-occupied Europe. He flew some 2,700 operational and training hours and once famously attacked the Third Reich on his own. Bird, an effortlessly charming David Niven look-alike, was fond of classical music. Having taken off on a night raid, his crew tuned into a continental radio station for a concert to relieve the tedium before the ferocity of combat ahead. But as Bird recounted: “I noticed something a bit unexpected over the target. We were on our own... no British bombers, no German fighters.” Something was dangerously wrong. He released his bombs and escaped before he could be trapped like a moth in the searchlights and shot down. It would transpire that Bird and his comrades were enjoying orchestral music when the return to base signal was sent. “The Germans would’ve intercepted it so we weren’t expected and just about got away with it.” Bomber Command lost some 55,000 personnel. Crews had more chance of dying than infantrymen on the Western Front. Bird faced such odds by “...pretending to be brave, for the sake of my men.” He was born in Peterborough and joined the RAF reserve in 1937. He was a qualified pilot - and newly married - when war broke out. But instead of fighting in the Battle of Britain as he hoped, he was appointed an instructor to meet Britain’s desperate need for pilots. His wife, Joan - as beautiful as she was capricious - was one of three daughters of Gabriel Coury, a Liverpool cotton broker who won the Victoria Cross in World War 1. Despite Peter Bird’s impressively brave record, he didn’t receive the Distinguished Flying Cross. It’s unclear if he was black-balled in the post-war controversy over Bomber Command’s allegedly needless destruction of some German cities or because of a fight he had at RAF Spilsby when in charge of night operations early in 1945. By then, the Luftwaffe were unable to mount raids against Britain. Air strips could therefore keep lights on for damaged aircraft to land more safely. Realising this, German fighter bombers followed unseen behind planes returning to east coast bases and attacked. An officer more senior than Bird - one despised for his reluctance to fly - rushed into the control tower in a panic and turned off the landing lights. Bird, still only 24, knew this could cause great loss of life among the crews he led in 44 (Rhodesia) Squadron. He punched the older man to the floor and switched the lights back on. Bird could have been court martialled but wasn’t. It always rankled with him that he might have been the victim of revenge served spitefully cold. After the war, he flew jets like the Meteor, Canberra and Vampire, took part in the Berlin airlift, was appointed Bomber Command’s chief accident investigator and had roles at the Air Ministry, the RAF Staff College and Bomber Command HQ. Bird became Britain’s defence attaché in Scandinavia in 1961, helping to organise periodic over-flights of Soviet air space from northern Norway to test Moscow’s reaction times. These were Cold War cat-and-mouse days, each side probing for the other’s weaknesses. A joyful Norwegian intelligence officer rang Bird to say they’d trapped a “red” submarine in a fjord near one of Oslo’s most secret naval installations. Equally delighted, Bird transmitted a coded message to London and was ordered to await the arrival of a senior UK naval figure. “I said ‘wonderful news about the Soviet sub, Sir’ only for him to say, ‘Not really... it’s one of ours.’” It could have become a damaging diplomatic incident between allies but the affable Bird helped to calm the waters. For him, it was all part of the great game. This continued following his transfer to Israel after the Six Day War in 1967. In the pomp of his ceremonial uniform and with the glamorous Joan at his side, they were a cinematically captivating pair. But Joan could be engagingly scatty. Sitting by future president Chaim Herzog at a dinner, she heard his Irish accent and asked if he was enjoying his stay in Israel. “I certainly am,” said Herzog, smiling. “Especially now they’ve put me in charge of the Israel Defence Forces.’ Bird’s unstuffy style endeared him to Israel’s military and political elite. Moshe Dayan, David Ben Gurion and Ezer Weizman all held him in high regard. A less likely friendship developed between Bird and Rolf Friedemann Pauls, Germany’s first ambassador to Israel. These former enemies - Pauls was ADC to Rommel - knew reconciliation was the only way forward, though it incensed many Israelis to have an ex-Nazi accredited to their country. However, Bird admired Pauls for having been party to the plot to assassinate Hitler, only escaping arrest and execution thanks to the silence of others. Bird’s standing in Tel Aviv led to an invitation - before the Americans - to make an intelligence assessment of a state-of-the-art Soviet Mig 21. It’d been flown to Israel by a Syrian defector, courted by Mossad agents who then airlifted his entire extended family from a desert location to join him. That was audacious enough but the Mig was subsequently repainted in Egyptian Airforce colours to allow an Arabic-speaking Israeli pilot to land at key Egyptian bases and spy on their secrets in comparative safety. In retirement, Bird and his wife - who died three years ago - ran a camp in Surrey for displaced Ugandan Asians. He also worked for the Foreign Office, accompanying visiting heads of state like George Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev. At Bird’s emotional funeral, it was said that a man was a success who’d lived well, laughed often and loved much. As people filed out, a video showed him some months before he died, confined to a chair but doing arm and leg exercises in a “dance” to the unlikely music of Daft Punk. Those who’d wept at his passing could at least leave the ceremony smiling. He is survived by daughters, Susie Drori and Stephenie Noble and son, Simon Drury Bird. Group Captain Peter Drury Bird, born October 9 1920, died October 22 2014

Hurry the fuck up and take me to Neverland