Noel Pearce and Douglas Box

Sergeant Douglas Charles Box
19. 10. 1922.  RAFVR 1578987.
Mid Upper Gunner, Stirling, EE-878 AS-P
75 (New Zealand) Squadron based at Mepal Cambridgeshire
Flight details: Shot down in Berlin raid 31.8.1943. Hit by anti aircraft fire and then attacked by a JU88. Crashed in Ahlberg, Germany with the loss of three of his fellow crew, all New Zealanders.

Pilot: Pilot Officer Douglas Charles Henley (23)
Air Bomber: Flight Sergeant Ian Hector Ross Smith (34)
Navigator: Flying Officer Clifford Arnold Watson (33)
Douglas later named his son Ian Douglas after two of these best friends.

Douglas Box, along with remaining crew, were all taken prisoner and ended up in Stalag 4B in Muhlberg on Elbe.

Warrant Officer Noel Livingstone Pearce
24. 12. 1920.  RAFVR 941082.
Mid Upper Gunner, Halifax, HR867 DY-A

Flight details:  Shot down 29.12.43 during raid on Berlin. Combination of anti aircraft fire and night fighters. Loss of crew member Flight Sergeant Terence Patrick O’Hare. (Air Gunner) whose parachute did not open. He was Noel’s best friend and Noel later named his son Terence after him.

Noel was on the run for three nights before being captured. It turned out when he was hiding by a bridge one of the nights and heard what he thought were Germans,  only to find out later, when he was taken into the prison that it had been one of his crew members on the other side of the bridge. They too had thought the noise to be Germans and therefore both had gone in different directions. They only realised this when talking together as captives.

This was Noel’s third crew. His first flew without him when he got Peritonitis and was hospitalised and were all killed. His second air crew once again flew without him when there was a tragic accident involving a lorry on base. Noel was in hospital dangerously ill when the second crew went out never to return.

After capture by the Germans and being transferred to Stalag 4B, Noel and Douglas met in the hospital in the beds next to each other and became firm friends. They shared the same hut for the next 18 months. Finally released from the POW camp when the Russians arrived at 7 am on 23.4.1945, releasing them on 6.5.1945. They were returned to England on 18th of May.

Both were rehabilitated at a Centre in Newbold Revel in Warwickshire until early 1946.  Both then went their separate ways with Douglas returning to his home in Herefordshire and Noel to Nottingham before joining the Control Commission in Germany. They remained close friends.

Joyce Pearce, 5.4.1924, was in the Land Army during the War later joining the Control Commission out in Germany. She met Noel briefly the first day she arrived although it was a year later before they met again. They finally returned home to England to marry in 1948 and lived in  Nottingham.  In 1955 they moved down to Wembley to work for Joyce’s parents who owned a shop in Kilburn.

Barbara Ellis, 5.10.1929, worked in the War Office in Worcestershire.  It was during this time that she met Doug who was also working at the War Office in 1947. After a whirlwind romance, they married a year later, living initially in Malvern.

Noel and Joyce had a son, Terrence in Moorgreen, Nottingham in 1950.  They moved to Nuthall, Nottingham where daughter, Lorraine (1954) before moving to Wembley, Middlesex in 1955.

Doug and Barbara had a daughter Sandra (1951 ) a son Ian (1954) in Cradley, Herefordshire before moving to Wolverhampton where daughter Elizabeth was born (1957).

Over the years they all attended the POW reunions each year in Edinburgh.

Doug’s football team, Wolverhampton Wanderers, appeared at Wembley in a Cup Final and his son, Ian, and Noel’s daughter, Lorraine, met briefly at Noel’s house.  A couple of years later they met again when Ian came to stay with Lorraine‘s family whilst attending an interview in London. They dated for a year before splitting for four years, reuniting in 1980, Lorraine moved from Wembley to Wolverhampton where they eventually married in 1983 and moved back to Nottingham.

Ian and Lorraine had a daughter, Jordan in 1986 followed by a son Luke in 1990. These were the grandchildren of Douglas and Barbara and Noel and Joyce.

Whoever would have thought that when they met in those hospital beds in a POW Stalag 4B in 1943 that they would attend the wedding of their children Ian and Lorraine?  Later becoming Grandparents to their children’s children- some 40 years later. ❤️