During World War Two one of the major users of Gransden Lodge airfield was the Canadian No. 405 Squadron. Throughout the conflict it had served to mark targets as part of the R.A.F.’s Pathfinder Force, but at the war’s end it took part in several operations that were decidedly less warlike in nature.
As the war was drawing to a close it marked the points at which other R.A.F. bomber aircraft could drop food supplies to starving Dutch civilians as part of Operation MANNA.
On V.E. Day itself, the squadron participated in Operation EXODUS, flying allied prisoners of war back to the U.K. Edwin Horner, a flight engineer, remembered that day’s operation. He recalled that there were thousands of ex-POWs waiting at Brussels for a flight home, of which his crew from Gransden Lodge picked up 24. One of these was, unusually for a released prisoner, wearing a fine pair of boots. When asked how he had come by them, he replied that for months he had seen them being worn by one his guards, from whom he had demanded them when he was released. When the crew and their passengers arrived at R.A.F. Westcott near Aylesbury, the ex-prisoners were given a warm welcome and a buffet meal, but when the flyers from No. 405 Squadron got back to base in the late afternoon they found that not only had they missed the victory celebrations, but that there was nothing left for them to eat. Despite this, Horner remembered the day as one of the most satisfactory of his life.
The image shows a Lancaster of No. 635 Squadron picking up prisoners at Lübeck as part of Operation EXODUS.
