Page 8 - Edward 'Ted' Cachart

Ted Cachart picks up the story:

ʻAfter interrogation at Dulag Luft and a short spell in the transit camp, the three officers were sent
to Luft III at Sagan whilst the four NCO's (Spud, Alan Vidow, Len Crossman and myself) were sent
to Stalag 4B near Muhlberg. During appel (roll call) one evening just after Easter my name was
called out and told to be ready to leave next day. No reason given and much speculation during
the night (Commissioned, Batman at Luft III, Repatriation, Shot! were all options discussed).

The following morning two Luftwaffe personnel told me that I was to be taken back to Dulag Luft
for further interrogation. We travelled for two days by train, always in the reasonable luxury of
second class coaches. On the second night sitting in a darkened carriage, I was lighting a
cigarette when I sensed the intense stare of the person next to me, then a broad Northern English
voice said ʻWhere are you from?ʼ

The voice was that of a Royal Army Medical Corp POW who was accompanying a Serbian Officer
back to his camp; this Officer had been shot through each hand and tortured into insanity. I don’t
recall if the Orderly had any guards with him or not but remember him asking me if I
needed any cigarettes.

The interrogation at Dulag was all about some new radio jamming equipment they found in the
wreckage of our Lancaster, this had been installed a few days earlier whilst I was in hospital and
all I knew was how to switch it on! After 11 days I was sent to Luft 6 at Heydekrug near the
borders of Lithuania and I did not see or hear from the rest of the crew until 1945.

Just before entering his Lancaster on the night of that last op, Ted found that he still had his wallet
in his pocket. He gave it to WAAF MT driver Dot Everitt for safe keeping. When Ted didn't return,
Dot contacted his parents, and sometime later, she and Betty Wilcox (a local Reepham girl who’s
Mother had adopted the crew) visited his home in Pinner and returned the wallet and spent a few
days leave there. Also missing in N-Nan that night was 'Nancy Pants', the `Lucky Mascot’ rag doll
made for the crew by Dot, together with all the ground crews’ caps; they always put them just
inside the aircraft's entrance door as a gesture of faith that the aircraft would return.

It is just possible that Flight Lieutenant Palmer’s S - Sugar was the Lancaster that was in collision
with N - NAN as it would have been in the same wave, and if slightly ahead of Nan it would have
changed course and be heading back across the track of the oncoming tail-ender.