Paul Jean Georges Vekemans

PAUL VERMEULEN OR AS I NOW KNOW HIM PAUL VEKEMANS aka VERBEKE

I first identified this man while reviewing:

Reference: AIR 46/25

Description: Prisoners of war and escapes from enemy occupied territory

Date: 1944 Apr. 1945 Aug

Where he appeared in a message between 30 Military Mission, Moscow and the War Office.

This led me to https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/98/a4680498.shtml which identified Sgt Donald Mays or Mace as Donald Meese.

“Donald worked in the Sheffield Steel works prior to volunteering and joining the RAF in 1943. Whilst still in Sheffield he helped with fire fighting and assisting people to shelters after raids had caused explosions at the gas works

Donald did initial training in Torquay and London in 1943 and was then posted to 615 Squadron Bomber Command in Chedburgh and eventually joined 622 Squadron based at Mildenhall in Suffolk. Donald learned to fly on simulators in his spare time. As a flight engineer he was very aware that in the event of a pilot being injured or killed, another crew member would be needed to be able to fly the aircraft.

Early in June 1944: Flight Sgt Meese was the flight engineer/co-pilot on a Lancaster that was part of a bombing mission the Pas de Calais/Northern Region of France. Lancasters had been recently adapted to take a greater bomb load with some guns removed on the underside. Planes had to perform a ‘corkscrew’ type manoeuvre to avoid fighters and would ‘tip’ the wings to check if any fighters were about below them.

In the early hours of the morning they flew into clouds after releasing their load. A German fighter attacked from below and the Lancaster was hit, its wings catching fire and the controls badly affected. The crew had literally seconds to get out when the call came from the pilot, “Emergency, bale out!” Mr Meese and four of the crew baled out, however the Pilot and the Upper Rear Mid Gunner were killed when the plane came down near St Omer. Mr Meese recalls jumping out, pulling the rip cord and nothing happening, however at some point he says he straightened out, the plywood front of his chute came up, the webbing hit the sides of his face, but his chute opened.

He landed in 10/10ths pitch darkness in a field and promptly buried his parachute and set off through the fields. At one point he lay down in a corn field to collect his thoughts and then realised that in getting to the centre of the field he would have left a trail that the Germans could spot from the air. He stuck to the fields going along the hedges and as it became light started to head for a church. He met up with four French men, two of whom ran away when they realised he was an English flier, the other two sent him in a direction that they said would take him through an area where there were no Germans. After blundering into an area of minefield, Mr Meese, who was only 19 years of age realised that the lanes were probably safer. He turned his flying jacket inside out and cut his flying boots down and began walking down a lane, which was bordered by high hedges. He decided that his best hope in being mistaken for a Frenchman was to sing the only French song he knew “Clair de lune”. However at around 7.30am he became aware of someone emerging from the hedges behind him, felt a tap on his shoulder and was taken into custody by four Wehrmacht soldiers.

He was taken in a ‘massive German car’ to a castle and at some point reunited with the other surviving members of the crew. He was offered coffee, which he says he spat out, and he wouldn’t eat any food offered. At some point he was taken to identify the plane wreckage at the crash site, and the two crew members who had died. The surviving crew were taken to a Gestapo Jail in Lille and over a number of weeks subjected to varying degrees of torture, mainly psychological, but also physical.

It was whilst in solitary confinement in Lille prison that Mr Meese experienced a kind act from a young German that was to change his opinion of all Germans being bad. A young lad came in singing ‘Lilli Marlene’ and shared his food and some cigarettes with them.

Donald finished up as a prisoner in Stalag Luft 7 POW camp in Upper Silesia in German Poland. Towards the end of 1944 with the Russians advancing from the East the Nazis started moving POW’s back toward the German lines and the River Oder. In January with snow thick on the ground prisoners were taken from the POW camp and embarked on a 650 mile walk towards Dormstadt. At the time they had no idea where they were going and Mr Meese, who had managed to keep fairly fit had no intention of marching west towards Germany. Together with a Dutch friend, Paul Vermulen, a member of the OSS he hid behind a woodpile when the prisoners were halted in a brickworks. Establishing they had 16 seconds when their sentry guards turned during their furthest time apart the two men gradually ran desperately towards the forest. Using the night sky to navigate the two men spent 8 days trekking through snow bound forest in soviet liberated Poland. At night they would huddle together for warmth listening to air and artillery barrages around them, the cold was so intense that their boots were frozen in the morning. They were on the point of giving up when a Russian plane flew over as they attempted to enter a village the Russians fought over the previous night. A jeep full of Russians were initially unconvinced the two men were escaped POW’s, but using sign language the men managed to convince the commanding officer and the Russians took them away and fed them.

During their time on the run, Donald and Paul were discovered hiding in a barn by a young German girl collecting eggs. The young girl persuaded the farmer not to give them up and to let them rest before setting off again for the Russian lines.

Donald was later to meet up with this young German girl in Czestochowa and to save her from the liberating Russians, married her and brought her to England as his wife.

Donald was the only British soldier to escape through Russian lines, and the only Englishman to marry a German girl in the course of the war.

In 1945 their marriage was front page news in all the national newspapers and Mai Zetterling starred in a play at the Sheffield Royal, based on their story which was later turned into a film ‘Frieda’. What started out as a marriage of convenience became a long lasting love story.”

 

And a number of newspaper reports which muddied the waters by using various surname for Vermeulen spellings but saying that Paul Vermeulen was “of London”.

 

Meece could now be firmly identified as

Rank Name, Number Date Captured Unit

Sgt Donald MEESE (2201408) 1944-06-23 622 Sqdn

 

Paul Vermeulen remained elusive. He did not appear in War Office POW Lists published in September 1944 and March 1945. He could not be found on https://www.rafcommands.com/ as well as any other website. He could not be found in UK birth/marriage/death records etc.

In the book Footprints on the Sands of Time: RAF Bomber Command Prisoners of War in Germany 1939-1945 Oliver Clutton-Brock wrote of him “No trace in RAF records”.

I also had found a note saying “M.I.9 /BM 1255 13&21 Feb” and another note saying “not RAF or Army Intelligence”. These notes were in connection to enquiries as to his identity before he was allowed to leave Moscow for the UK; standard practice for all men claiming to be ex-POW on arrival in Moscow and later Odessa. Someone must have vouched for Vermeulen as he subsequently arrived in the UK; a newspaper report puts him in Yorkshire with Donald Meese after their return to the UK via Murmansk.

 

By this time, I saw him as a foreign national and likely Special Operations Executive not that I could find him in HS 9 Special Operations Executive: Personnel Files at the UK National Archives.

 

The release by the UK National Archives of further German POW Cards in early 2023 reignited efforts to identify Paul Vermeulen.

Reference: WO 416/373/39

Description: Name: Paul Vermeulen. Date of Birth: 15/10/1914. Place of Birth: Cheltenham. Service: [unspecified]. Rank: Sergeant. Regiment/Unit/Squadron: [unspecified]. Service Number: 1322786. Date of Capture: [unspecified]. Theatre of Capture: [unspecified]. Camp Name/Number: Stalag Luft VII Bankau. PoW number: 872. Date of Death: [unspecified]. Number of Photographs: 0. Number of Fingerprints: 0. Number of X-rays: 0. Number of Cards: 2.

 

Checks on this reference and a successful search to see if he had completed a liberation questionnaire:

Reference: WO 344/328/1

Description: VERBONCOEUR – VILJOEN

Date: 1945-1946

failed to convince me that I had the man’s right name.

He might well have convinced the Germans to record him as Paul Vermeulen and have written out a liberation questionnaire as Paul Vermeulen but the finding on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website of

SERGEANT IAN WOODMAN FERGUSON

Service Number: 1322786

Regiment & Unit/Ship

Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve

Date of Death

Died 26 September 1943

Age 20 years old

Buried or commemorated at OXFORD (BOTLEY) CEMETERY

Plot I/2. Grave 79.

United Kingdom

convinced me otherwise.

The use of a service number of a dead man convinced that Paul Vermeulen was Special Operations Executive. A throw of the dice in the hope that Paul Vermeulen was born on the 15/10/1914 as given on his German POW Record Cards produced just one result in the Special Operations Executive: Personnel Files.

Reference: HS 9/1525/1

Description: Paul Jean Georges VEKEMANS aka VERBEKE – born 15.10.1914

Date: 1939 Jan 01 – 1946 Dec 31

 

A search of these records produced a card that showed that Paul Jean Georges VEKEMANS aka VERBEKE had used the alias VERMEULEN. The notes in HS 9/1525/1 support what he said in his liberation questionnaire but the full story of his time in occupied Europe remains unclear. I cannot find, as yet, an escape/evasion report written in the name of either Vermeulen or Vekemans/Verbeke. I have no doubt that he was debriefed on his return to the UK. Might it be found in the Belgian National Archives?

 

Prepared and researched by Brian Cooper, detail correct at 22/06/2023