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‘He’s gone. We do not understand. We only know as he turned to go and waved his hand
In his young eyes a sudden glory shone and we were dazzled by a sun-set glow and he was gone.’
A poem inscribed in Sergeant Stephen Burns’s flying log book by his distraught mother, following his death in action in December 1943.
A deeply poignant ‘Dambuster’s’ uniform and extensive archive appertaining to Sergeant S. “Ginger” Burns, Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve, who flew as Rear Gunner in Pilot Officer Geoffrey Rice’s crew on the night of 16-17 May 1943: detailed to attack the Sorpe Dam, their ‘bouncing bomb’ was torn from its mountings when their Lancaster - flat out on the deck - hit the water at Vlieland: as his gun turret flooded up to his waist in salt water Burns was heard to exclaim, “Christ! It’s wet at the back, skipper”
Already a veteran of assorted operations in No. 57 Squadron, he was killed in action in No. 617 Squadron’s attack on the armaments factory at Liege in December 1943: on his last leave he had told his mother that he didn’t expect to live and to prepare his younger brother and sister for his imminent death.