From our reporter Sophie Barnett

IN Berkhout, a village in the Dutch province Noord-Holland, a Handley Page Hampden bomber was shot down by German nightfighter on its way back to Scampton, Lincolnshire, on November 8 1941. The pilots were found and are buried in the Commonwealth war graves in Bergen, Holland. But two other crewmembers are still lying there in a potato field 64 years on. One body belongs to GREAT HOLLAND-BORN STANLEY GORDON MULLENGER and the other to an Irish aviator called John Kehoe. Now the family of the Irish man have just found he was not buried with the others - they are desperate their 19-year-old war hero should be buried in consecrated ground. But first, they must find the family of Stanley Mullenger.

AN emotional search is being made to find the family of a hero who died in the Second World War. The body of Stanley Gordon Mullenger from Great Holland still remains under the ground in a war plane that crashed in the Netherlands on November 8 1941. Now, an international search has begun to find his living relatives after a heart-felt plea from the family of an Irish aviator, whose body also remains in the plane. Dutch authorities have ruled that the family of John Edward Kehoe cannot excavate his body unless the family of Mr Mullenger agree or cannot be found.
So a desperate investigation involving the British and Irish Embassies, Dutch Airwar Research and Excavation (DARE), the Joint Casualty Compassionate Centre and others has begun. Because, as a Dutch newspaper editor explained, Kehoe's sister Margaret Walsh, now 86, only discovered where his body lay last year. Now, she desperately wants to take the remains of her little brother home from the make-shift grave he has remained in shortly after turning 19 years old.

Editor Eric Molenaar contacted the Gazette to help answer the family's plea. He said: "She promised her mother that she would find him before she died. It was her last wish. Kehoe left them to fight in the war. He volunteered for the RAF because it was not his war - Ireland was mutual. But he left and they never saw him again and they never saw his body again. He was only 19."

The Gazette has found Stanley Mullenger's name on the Roll of Honour at All Saints Church in Great Holland - but very few details are now about him. But clues as to his relatives are being followed up with a fine-tooth comb. Mr Molenaar said: "His sister is Elsie Sharpe-Mullenger, on September 18 1945 she lived on 115 Dean's Lane in Edgware, Middlesex. She had at least one son, Ian." But a letter dated August 2 1978, Ian Sharpe wrote that his mother lived in Great Holland. And Mr Sharpe who is believed to have lived in Frinton wrote he had been to see the graves in Berkhout and may have believed his uncle was buried with the rest, not in the plane. Here the trace ends. Mr Molenaar said: "DARE found out there are 12 Sharpes there, and didn't reach the right one yet.
"The name of Stanley Mullenger is not in the logbook of John Kehoe. The conclusion of DARE is that the crew of the bomber never flew earlier with each other, it happenend more often that the crew of a bomber was put toghether instantly.

"In Holland, 2,500 warplanes from the Second World War are buried in the ground or in the Ijsselmeer. In 400 of them, there are still human bodies, mostly British. "The one in Berkhout is one of that 400, but it's a special one, since the request of the sister to have it excavated." Mr Molenaar said time is running out for the 86-year-old sister of John Kehoe.

* Anyone who can help find a relative of Stanley Mullenger or have any information should contact our newsroom on 01255 254211.

Monday 14 november 2005

Source: Evening Gazette.