The Hand of Fate and Squadron Leader Anthony O. Bridgman DFC. (Part Three).
By Mitch Peeke.
In Part 2 we saw how Tony Bridgman’s war had been going, his friendships, falling in love with John Collier’s sister in law and ultimately; how he’d been shot down and taken prisoner. Now, we find him incarcerated in a POW Camp in Germany.
One month after capture, Kriegsgefangenen (POW) 1264, Bridgman: Anthony Oslands, Squadron Leader RAF, was transferred from the Dulag Luft at Oberursel to OffizierLager (Oflag) IX-A. Better known as Spangenberg Castle, it was a traditional medieval German Schloss. There he would find himself in the company of fellow officers from all three services who would later become distinguished escapers.
Tony’s POW Card showing his continual movements (Photo courtesy of Frances Leach).
On 4th March 1941, Tony and a number of other POW’s from all three service branches, were transferred from Spangenberg to Stalag XX-A, nearly 500 miles away to the East. Word had reached the Germans that some of their officer POW’s held in Canada were imprisoned at Fort Henry, which was not a camp deemed suitable for officers. As a reprisal, the Germans sent British officer POW’s to one of their equally unsuitable camps. Three months later, they were transferred back to Spangenberg.
On October 8th 1941, Tony was transferred to Oflag VI-B at Doessel, Warburg; about 50 miles North-East of Spangenberg. On September 4th 1942, he was transferred again, with other RAF and Fleet Air Arm pilots, this time to Oflag XXI-B at Szubin, Poland; about 480 miles East of Doessel, as the camp at Doessel was temporarily closed.
Escape is forbidden!
By now, Tony had well and truly had enough of this nomadic German hospitality. He was becoming ever more determined not to remain at Oflag XXI-B. It was here that he turned his own skills toward escapism, and I don’t mean idly reading novels, though he did keep a daily journal during his time as a POW.
During his attempt, he and a friend had successfully tunnelled out of their compound. On 5th November 1942, their appointed night to go, Tony went into the tunnel first. By the time he had reached the end of the tunnel and broken the soil to exit, their attempt had been rumbled and Tony’s comrade had already been caught. Tony poked his head out of the ground to find himself confronted by torch beams and the bared teeth of a snarling German Shepherd Dog that was straining at the end of it’s handler’s lead, just inches from his own face. “AUS! AUS!” growled the Dog Handler. Tony climbed out and was marched/shoved back into camp with his hands on top of his head and the barrel of an MP40 Schmeisser at his back. He also very probably had rather a wry smile on his face, too!
As was usual for would-be escapees, the following day he was placed under strict Stubenarrest (House Arrest) for a period of ten days, as a punishment for his Tunnelbau (Tunnel construction). A tedious reminder that “Flucht ist verboten!”
On 28th February 1943, Tony developed a middle ear infection known as Otitis Media. Usually a painful childhood condition, it could also be fairly common among pilots and submariners. The treatment he received was a ten-day course of what was then a crude first generation of antibiotics, known as Sulfa tablets. Given in high doses, these tablets would often have most unpleasant side effects of their own, but it was better than the old treatment of an equally painful incision made in the inner ear to drain it. The condition and especially the surgical treatment for it, could often lead to long term hearing problems for the sufferer.
Another change of address.
After nearly two years of his not being a model prisoner, Tony was moved again on April 14th 1943, with others of his troublesome ilk, to a brand new camp near Sagan; about 100 miles South-east of Berlin, in upper Silesia and 190 miles South-West of Szubin. (It is now a part of Poland). This new camp was sited there because the soil is quite sandy. Also, the topsoil and the subsoil are distinctly different colours, which combined with its sandy texture and the fact that the huts were built raised off the ground; led the Germans to believe that these factors would make tunnelling extremely difficult. Just to be sure, the Germans installed seismographic microphones at regular intervals, into the ground around the perimeter. The camp was opened in March 1942 and Tony and the others were sent there purely because they had been a considerable nuisance to their captors. Oflag IX-A, East Compound, Stalag Luft 3, was now Squadron Leader Tony Bridgman’s latest address.
Someone who frequently used that address, as well as his previous ones, was Tony’s girlfriend, Virginia Bishop. The two maintained as steady a correspondence as was possible throughout Tony’s incarceration, but theirs was very much a long distance relationship now. At least through Virginia, via her sister, Elizabeth; John Collier was being kept informed of his friend’s situation.
Tony was once more in good company at Stalag Luft 3. Among some of his more renowned inmates were people like Roger Bushell, Robert Stanford-Tuck, Roland Beamont, Paul Brickhill and a Naval Pilot named Peter Butterworth, who would later find fame in the Carry On films.
Never look a Gift Horse in the mouth.
In October of 1943, the East Compound was set for the first ever escape from Stalag Luft 3. Inspired by the ancient story of the Trojan Horse, the prisoners had constructed a gymnastic vaulting horse, mostly from the plywood cases of their Red Cross parcels. The horse was designed to conceal one or two men, the tools for digging and bags for excavated soil. Each day, the horse, with either one or two men hidden inside it, was carried out to exactly the same spot near the perimeter fence and while a long line of prisoners conducted gymnastic exercises over it, a tunnel was being dug from within the horse. Two of the many “Gymnasts” vaulting over the horse every day were Tony Bridgman and Peter Butterworth. When Tony wasn’t vaulting; then he, Peter and many others, took turns at tunnelling. The sounds of the men vaulting and landing prevented the sound of the digging from being detected by the buried microphones.
Model Stalag Luft_III used in the film The Great Escape. (Free to use image, courtesy Stalag Luft 3 Museum).
At the end of each “exercise period”, a wooden trap door was placed over the tunnel entrance, on a ledge a few inches below the surface, and carefully covered with the surface soil. The horse, with its hidden cargo of men, tools and bagged-up spoil, was then carried back inside to be unloaded, and the day’s excavated soil distributed evenly in the roof space of the prisoners’ huts.
Over a few months the prisoners, working in shifts of one or two diggers at a time, had managed to dig a tunnel over 30 metres (100 ft) long, deep underground. They used bowls as shovels and poked metal rods carefully through the tunnel roof to make air holes. The only shoring they’d used was for the entrance.
In the early evening of 19th October 1943, Lieutenant Michael Codner, Flight Lieutenant Eric Williams and Flight Lieutenant Oliver Philpot, all three dressed in “suits” made from blankets, made their escape. All three men spoke German fluently, which is why they were nominated to go. Williams and Codner successfully reached the port of Stettin, where they stowed away onboard a Danish ship. Philpot posed as a Norwegian businessman and managed to catch a train to the port of Danzig. Once there, he stowed away on a Swedish ship bound for Stockholm. All three made it safely back to England and once home, they sent a coded postcard to Herbert Massey, (Later Air Commodore Massey) the Senior British Officer at Stalag Luft 3, which boosted morale in the camp considerably when he read it out to the prisoners, during morning parade. The story of the escape was made into a film in 1950 called The Wooden Horse. An interesting aside here is that Peter Butterworth auditioned for a part in that film, but was turned down. Apparently, he wasn’t considered to be sufficiently athletic and heroic-looking, to take part!
Obviously, news of the successful escape of three prisoners from this brand new, supposedly very hard to escape from camp, was not well received by the Germans. The Kommandant at Stalag Luft 3 was a Luftwaffe Officer: Oberst (Colonel) Friedrich Von Lindeiner-Wildau. Von Lindeiner was a highly decorated veteran of WW1 and before. He was a German patriot and most irrefutably anti-Nazi in his beliefs. He had a reputation for fairness and liberal open-mindedness. He had tried to retire before the war, but was not permitted to. As a result of the Wooden Horse Escape, he ordered that certain prisoners were to be relocated to other camps. Having spent close to two years in Stalag Luft 3, Tony Bridgman was among those who had to go. This was probably just as well, as that was not the only escape project that had been on the go in Stalag Luft 3. Five months after Wooden Horse, in March 1944, came the mass breakout that would become known as The Great Escape, organised by Roger Bushell. Given his track record for getting involved in these things, Tony may well have been up for it and as history has shown, a very high number of those involved, including Bushell, were recaptured and executed by the Gestapo; an event which sickened Von Lindeiner. Subsequently relieved of command at the camp, Von Lindeiner was arrested. Facing Court Martial and a likely execution, he cleverly feigned mental illness to avoid further punishment. After the war, he identified and testified against those who had been responsible for the wholesale murder of his prisoners, at the Nuremberg Trials. Von Lindeiner himself was found to have behaved impeccably throughout the war. He died in May 1963 in Frankfurt, aged 82.
Oberst Von Lindeiner-Wildau, Kommandant of Stalag Luft 3 (Photo: Free to use image, commons-wikipedia).
After leaving Stalag Luft 3, the Germans stopped recording Tony’s whereabouts on his POW Identity Card. It wasn’t too much longer till news of the successful Allied D Day invasion and breakout began reaching the camps. As the net closed in on Nazi Germany, the guards became increasingly averse to the idea of surrendering to the Russians coming in from the East. They decided to gather their prisoners and march them Westwards, toward the advancing British and American forces. The overall distance involved in these staged marches was in the order of a couple of hundred miles or more and it was all done on foot. Thirty to forty miles per day was not out of the ordinary and the guards and POW’s slept in Churches and Barns along the way. By the time they reached their destination camp somewhere on the outskirts of Berlin, the POW’s, Tony included, had literally made it there on their hands and knees. Tony later recalled crawling into a bunk and staying there for about three days.
Liberation
By now it was becoming increasingly clear to the Germans that their war was lost. In those final weeks and days, the Germans’ treatment of their prisoners became more relaxed. In the event, that long, agonising march had been for nothing. The prisoners woke up one morning to find that the Russians had arrived to liberate the camp. Now the war really was over!
However, the prisoners had to remain in their camp for another couple of weeks, till transport could be arranged for them all on trucks. Once the trucks had been arranged, the prisoners were driven to an American Army Camp. The Americans then flew them on to Brussels in Belgium, ready for the cross-Channel journey home, but there were naturally delays and problems. By now, Tony was fulfilling the role of Senior British Officer.
From Brussels, the men were finally all flown home to England, but Tony was asked to bring a list of all his fellow POW’s to General Grant, at his headquarters in Paris. Tony was duly put on a C47 (the Military version of the famous DC3 Airliner) and flown to an airfield just outside of Paris. From there he was taken to General Grant’s HQ.
Tony said that he was feeling very self-conscious at this point because he now found himself standing in this very fine building, surrounded by well-dressed Americans, dressed in the clothes he’d been wearing when he was shot down four and a half years previously! Despite his attire, Tony was ushered in to see General Grant.
At the end of their meeting, General Grant put Tony up in the smartest hotel in Paris at Uncle Sam’s expense. He also took Tony out to dinner. Grant asked Tony if there was anything he needed and Tony asked him for a new uniform, if it were possible. Tony was duly fitted out with such.
After a few days and nights of General Grant’s hospitality, Tony was put on a ship back to England. Having arrived in Newhaven, he boarded a train to London. Somewhere on that train journey, Tony had a keepsake of some kind that he’d managed to hang on to throughout the war, stolen from him. He was particularly upset by that, as can be imagined.
Tony stepped off the train at London’s Victoria Station and went to a friend’s house for dinner. After dinner and a no doubt pleasant evening, Tony left his friend’s house to walk to the Barracks where he was being put up. Quite suddenly, he found that he did not know what to do or where to go. He later tearfully recalled that “I just felt finished, and didn’t know what to do”. Wandering aimlessly about and obviously in a state of some bewilderment, Tony was found by a Policeman, who directed him to Knightsbridge Barracks. Tony’s war had suddenly caught up with him.
This was not an uncommon occurrence with returning POW’s. The subject of one of my previous books was a former POW of the Japanese and exactly the same thing happened to him. Driving the normally short distance home from work one night, he just went blank. When he “came to”, he was in his old home village of Radway in Oxfordshire, with absolutely no recollection of how he’d got there. Unfortunately, he lived in Kent.
The RAF officially gave Tony a backdated promotion to Full Squadron Leader and the corresponding back-pay due to him. They also offered him a Commanding Officer’s job, but he turned it down. The RAF wasn’t the same now and besides, he’d lost nearly everyone that he knew. He’d also lost Virginia Bishop. She had met and married somebody else in the four and a half years that Tony was a POW. (Her son would grow up to become Patrick Bishop, the author). A man who seemingly now had nothing much left to lose, Tony went on three months leave and was officially discharged from the RAF in 1946.
Civvy Street.
So, what on earth was a now Ex, highly trained, low-level attack pilot and dedicated serial escaper, going to do in peacetime Civvy Street? Well, to start with, someone he knew got him into Ogilvy and Mather’s of Fleet Street, and certainly for a while, it seemed like a good idea. They had connections in America and were a large advertising and publishing company. But a man like Tony was far more used to giving the daily orders, than he was to taking them.
In 1950, Tony was asked to meet someone at London Airport. An American woman by the name of Jeannette Graef, from New York. Tony got talking to her in the car and it was the start of a whirlwind romance that would see them getting married that very same year, despite the fact that she was fourteen years younger than he was.
Tony in 1951 at Temple Golf Club (Photo courtesy of Frances Leach).
The couple spent the early 1950’s living something of a nomadic life involving London, then Camberley and finally, Canada. For a while, they lived in J M W Turner’s old house at 119 Cheyne Walk in Chelsea; then they moved to Camberley in Surrey. They also found time to have three daughters; Judith in 1951, Frances in 1952 and Kathleen in 1957. Kathleen was born in Canada, as Tony had moved the family to Vancouver in 1956. Tony and Jeannette separated not long after Kathleen was born. Jeannette took all three children to Nassau in the Bahamas; and there she stayed. Tony remained in Canada, convinced he could still make it.
In Canada, Tony had ended up working in a Gas Station on the Alaska Highway. One snowy, icy night, he was the passenger in a car being driven by a friend, who lost control and crashed. Tony’s back was broken in the accident. As can be imagined, he was in hospital for a very long time and was lucky indeed that he was finally able to walk away from it. Meanwhile, one of his sisters, Marian; concerned that nothing had been heard from him in ages, contacted the Missing Persons Bureau to find him. Find him they did and he was brought back to England; to Hindhead in Surrey.
“Pressed” into action
Once recovered, Tony needed something to do, workwise. Keen not to go down any roads he’d been down before, he still took another chance and bought a small printing company in nearby Guildford. This was the start of the rest of his career, as with presses rolling, Tony Bridgman got Dramrite Printers Ltd off the ground. Guildford was all well and good to start with, but if any money were to be made, it would surely be in London, so Tony decided to move Dramrite’s. He found a small but suitable premises in Long Lane, Southwark, SE1.
In 1968, my Dad, Jim; got himself a job at Dramrite’s, as a printer. My Dad was the original “get on your bike and get yourself a job” type, long before Norman Tebbit’s advice! I was a six year old boy at the time and my Brother was four and a half. It was shift work, as most print jobs were and indeed still are. One week on earlies, one week on lates and some days of double shifts. Fortunately, we lived within easy walking distance of Long Lane; in Great Dover Street.
Most of Dramrite’s work was the urgent kind of jobs, fast turnaround. My Dad loved working there. He loved the small, close-knit fraternity of it and he quickly came to like Tony, very much. My Mum would often help out from home, especially during the school holidays, with some of the finishing work, which Tony paid her for. Typical of the work she did was collating the business forms that Dramrite’s seemed to turn out in their thousands. I well remember the four piles of different coloured paper that seemed to live semi-permanently on a table in our front room. They had to be collated into one pile, in the order white on top, then pink, then yellow and then green on the bottom. Once collated, they were boxed up ready for Tony to collect in the firm’s van. As he collected them, he would of course drop a lot more off to be collated! Tony used to sit in our kitchen sometimes having a cold drink and playing little “where’s it gone?” games with my Brother and I. My Dad always said he was such a fair man to work for, but I don’t remember Tony paying me for any of the collating that I got roped into!
Tony at his desk at Dramrite’s, taken about eight years after my Dad worked for him (Photo courtesy Frances Leach).
My Mum says that Tony was always “such a Gentleman”. One day during the second summer that my Dad worked for him, I took my first flying lesson; …….over the handlebars of my bike! The resultant crash landing wasn’t exactly text-book and I broke my left forearm. Crying and cradling my arm, I ran home and my Mum decided it would be quicker if we walked up to Guys Hospital. We had no phone in those days and we’d have to pass Dramrite’s anyway, so we stopped off to let my Dad know what had happened. On hearing me crying, Tony came out of his office to find out what was going on. My Mum quickly told him and then off we went to Guys. Just after we left, Tony told my Dad to get himself cleaned up as soon as he could and come straight after us. My Dad said to him “but what about the job on my press, its urgent?!” Tony said: “They’re all urgent, Jimbo; (Seems being given an RAF-style nickname was still traditional!) don’t worry, we’ll cope! Now GO!” He still paid my Dad to the end of his shift.
It is fair to say that Tony lived and breathed Dramrite’s. He lived in the flat above the print works. Frances recalls visiting him there as a student. Frances would often rent a little bedsit during any term time in London as both she and Judith were living and studying at University in London by then. Tony would often call round to them with food shopping and anything else an impoverished student was likely to be in need of! My Mum said Tony often told her how he missed his girls. Frances describes him as being a good and kindly Dad, but he seemed to find it hard to express emotion. After he and Jeannette separated, Tony never remarried, though Jeannette did.
Tony did have two other passions though. One was Golf and the other was horses. No, not the wooden, vaulting-over kind again! The four-legged show-jumping kind. An accomplished horseman himself, Tony owned two horses at Hickstead. One was named Contrast and the other was called Sandyman. I can remember my Dad taking us to a show somewhere to see Contrast compete. Champion show-jumper David Broome used to ride Tony’s horses for him.
Tony with Sandyman (Photo: Courtesy Judy Costa).
In May 1972, my family moved out of Central London to the then leafy suburbs of Sidcup, Kent. My Dad didn’t want to leave Dramrite’s, but with nowhere to park a car nearby, he had to rely on the train to get to work. Despite his earnest efforts, British Rail’s timetable just couldn’t be made to fit the demands of a busy and necessarily flexible shift pattern such as that at Dramrite’s. Reluctantly, my Dad had to leave Tony’s employ, but armed as he was with a glowing reference, he quickly found work locally. Although he happily settled in first at Ashmead Press and shortly after at Masterprint, he always said that he never again found anywhere like Dramrite’s. My Dad (who must have liked his nickname, because he was still known as “Jimbo” 16 years later at Masterprint), died very suddenly in 1988, eight weeks short of his 51st birthday.
“Jimbo” a few years later at MasterPrint. (Photo Mitch Peeke).
Steer South-west, more Gardening Ops
With retirement in mind, Tony finally sold his beloved and very successful Dramrite’s in 1980 and moved to the picturesque village of Polruan in Cornwall, where he lived in a very comfortable semi-detached house by the sea. He still loved gardening, but it was the green-fingered type this time, and he grew lots of vegetables, which didn’t explode or sink enemy ships! Frances described his garden as being; “Military. Everything was in very straight rows.” He also kept a meticulous daily journal of his gardening activities. Tony bought a small Sailboat too, but he never really got into sailing and he ultimately sold it with very few nautical miles on the clock.
I asked Frances if she knew whether Tony had ever kept in touch with any of his old RAF friends. She said; “No, not really. Though he would sometimes cut obituaries out of the newspaper and file them away”. Leonard Snaith, his old C.O. in 83 Squadron, died in 1985 and John “Joe” Collier died in 2000. Jamie Pitcairn-Hill, Rossy and Guy Gibson of course were all killed in action during World War 2. Tony had once given Frances a copy of Guy’s book, Enemy Coast Ahead to read.
Tony with Judith 1951, Tony in his garden at Polruan and Tony on an outing in Paris (Photo courtesy of Frances Leach).
Tony lived happily in his house by the sea for nearly twenty two years till in 2002, he moved up to Hartland in North Devon. By the time he’d reached 85, Tony was starting to have trouble coping on his own. Frances had long been married with two children of her own by then and was an established potter. She and her husband had their own business, a successful pottery in Hartland, and Tony had moved there from Cornwall so that he could be nearer to them. It wasn’t long though till Tony really couldn’t cope on his own any more and he moved into the Lakenham Residential Home in Northam, North Devon; just a few miles up the A39 from Hartland.
Squadron Leader Tony “Oscar” Bridgman DFC, passed away on 14th January 2006 in the care home, aged 90. He left his three daughters and five grand children. In the end, it was he who was the very last of “The Old Guard” from 83 Squadron. However, Tony’s story doesn’t quite end there.
The unfulfilled destiny of Tony Bridgman.
As I mentioned earlier, Dramrite’s was a very busy printers, but they had breaks! During those breaks, the printers, my Dad included, would often get Tony to share one of his stories. He seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of them! During one such break, the subject of Guy Gibson and the Dambusters was raised; possibly after the film had been on the television. Tony smiled and told his “chaps” (as he often called them) “If I hadn’t have had the damned bad luck to get shot down, the history of that raid may well have been different.” Asked what he meant, Tony got up, signifying that it was time to go back to work and said; “Because that could easily have been my show, and not Gibbo’s!”
My Dad didn’t tell me that one till I was about 14. I had more than a keen interest in aircraft by then. I was in the Air Cadets and a weekend flying member of the Kent Gliding Club. I didn’t know all that much about the Dams Raid, then. I’d seen the film (more than once) and read Paul Brickhill’s book, but my knowledge was really not much more than that. So at the time, I tended to think that it may have been something of a “line shoot” perhaps. After all, I’d been brought up with my Grandad’s sea stories and everyone knows how old sailors love to yarn! Why should airmen be any different? Furthermore, Tony wasn’t mentioned in either the film or the book. So, I left it there, but I never actually forgot it.
Fast forward to April/May 2020. I am nearly 58 and we are in the middle of the Coronavirus lock down. For about twenty one years now, I have been something of a writer/historian in my spare time. I’ve had four books and countless articles published in that time and in what is surely a sign of the times, those articles have been increasingly less for printed magazines and increasingly more for websites.
With being somewhat “confined to Barracks” due to the lock down, I have been keeping myself busy (and my sanity preserved), by writing more articles. I was having an email discussion with a man called Paul and he sent me a slightly unusual, though typically posed photo, of Guy Gibson; asking me if I could tell him anything about it. I dug around a bit and was able to tell him where it was taken and that it had been taken shortly before he was selected to command 617 Squadron. I also mentioned that my Dad had once worked for a man who knew Gibson very well.
Then I remembered what my Dad had once said about the possibility of the Dams Raid not being Gibson’s show if circumstances had been different. In what could only be described as my having a “Light bulb moment”, I suddenly found that I had the idea for another article. Little did I realize at the time quite what a mission I had just set myself, or what the sheer size of that article would turn out to be!
So; now that we are all familiar with Tony’s frankly, amazing story; we can come to the $64, 000 question: Namely; is there any truth in Tony Bridgman’s assertion that if he hadn’t been shot down, he may well have led 617 Squadron himself, with Gibson as a Flight Commander.
John “Joe” Collier was a Group Captain by 1943 and was working in Bomber Command’s Raid Planning Dept. As a pilot, he could easily have led the Dams Raid himself, but he was now far too senior and far more valuable where he was. Collier did much of the initial planning of the Dams Raid, including putting forward his suggestions for a suitable leader for such a daring enterprise.
In 1943, in looking at a suitable leader, they were looking for someone with a proven track record in low-level precision attacks. Somebody who was a highly skilled, experienced and successful leader of men. A man who was openly daring, fearless almost. He would have to be a superb pilot of course and if it could be somebody you actually knew personally who possessed all those traits, well; so much the better.
Now, put yourself in Collier’s shoes. He is asked to come up with a recommendation for such a man. Roderick “Babe” Learoyd VC, formerly of 49 Squadron; the man who brought down the aqueduct in August 1940, was available. He was undoubtedly highly experienced and highly skilled. He was certainly extremely brave and a great leader, but he perhaps didn’t quite have that “openly daring” side to him. He was something of a reluctant hero, perhaps; a more than admirable character trait of course but not one that, of necessity, you are looking for at that precise point. Guy Gibson; a skilled and decorated pilot, known personally as both a friend and a squadron mate and still very eager to win himself that VC, was also available. Now, let’s add a third name to the shortlist: That of “Oscar” Bridgman DFC.
Let’s say Tony hadn’t been shot down and that perhaps he had then followed the same sort of path that Gibson did. He’d have left 83 Squadron, been promoted to full Squadron Leader, moving on to larger aircraft types and being given command of a night bomber squadron, followed by further promotion to Wing Commander. Tony was very much the senior man of the two, so he would have done it all that bit sooner and therefore would have had that much more experience. Gibson, if Tony hadn’t have been shot down, would always therefore have been that much behind, following in Tony’s footsteps.
Then the idea for the Dams Raid is put forward. You are still in Collier’s shoes. You have known both those men personally and professionally for years, Tony Bridgman slightly longer. Whom would you choose, if you had to make that choice? The highly skilled but still slightly impetuous and VC-chasing Gibson, or the man who had taught him; the very man that Gibbo himself looked up to: “Oscar” Bridgman. Put it into that context and I really do think there is a great deal of truth in Tony’s assertion.
However, the reality in 1943 was that Tony was shot down, so that choice simply wasn’t one that Collier would ever have to face making. Given the choices that Collier did have available to him, Gibbo was naturally going to be his recommendation and it was Gibson of course who did get the job, as Air Chief Marshal Cochrane evidently went along with Collier’s recommendation.
Ultimately though, I personally feel that if the hand of fate had not intervened that night over Germany in September 1940, this somewhat epic article might never have been written; because Tony Bridgman, like his protogee, probably would not have survived the war. The one thing that both “Oscar” and “Gibbo” never considered, was taking a rest. That mindset certainly took its toll on Gibson. Although he finally got the VC he so desperately wanted, for leading the Dams Raid; his war ultimately cost Guy Gibson his young life.
As something of a finale perhaps, what remained of the wreckage of Tony’s Hampden and that errant 500lb bomb that the German disposal engineers blew up, was found in 2015 by Herr Volker Urbansky; a passionate German local historian. I am indebted to him for the extra information he has so happily and freely provided me with. I am also deeply indebted to Frances Leach, nee Bridgman; for everything.
Sources and Acknowledgements for (Part 3).
Frances Leach (Tony Bridgman’s middle Daughter).
Judith and David Costa. (Tony Bridgman’s eldest Daughter and her Husband).
Stalag Luft 3 Museum, Poland.
My Mum; Eve.
My own memories of my Dad; “Jimbo” .
Old Waynfletes Magazine. Issue 36, Page 18. Tony’s Obituary.
Herr Volker Urbansky.
Ditte Trudslev of Aalborg Bibliotekerne, HistorieAalborg, Denmark.
Philippe Listemann at www.raf-in-combat.com
A final acknowledgement must also go to James Marley of The Ringwood and Verwood Round Table; to Mrs Nicky Van der Drift and Dan Ellin, both from the International Bomber Command Centre in Lincolnshire, and to Mr Patrick Otter.
My thanks again to Mitch and everyone who has contributed to the story. It can be read in full in Heroic Tales.
Following the writing of this post, a new page has been created in Wikipedia about Anthony Bridgman.
Aviation Trails 