Lt. Billy Robertson

Memorial Day is the day when I weep the most.  Not because I am a weepy person.  But it is the day when such wonderful stories of courage and service and duty and love of country and love of fellow soldier all emerge.  It is hard not to be moved.  

I thought this year, and perhaps going forwards in the future, to provide individual remembrances from among family.  Memorial Day should not be just in the abstract and conceptual.  These are real people, real sacrifices, and real consequences to those left behind.  It is easy for individual stories to get lost in the abstract of the holiday.

This year's Memorial Day post is for Lieutenant (jg) William (Billy) Robertson USNR, my aunt June's older brother.  

Lt. Billy Robertson was the navigator on a PBY-5 Catalina flying boat, used for patrolling, anti-submarine, and rescues.  Usually, a 7-10 person crew.  

Click to enlarge. 

Lt. Billy Robertson was in the Navy air force, stationed at RAF Pembroke Dock in southwestern Wales from June 1943 to his death on August 1, 1943.  His squadron was there from June to December, 1943 before they were transferred to Morocco.  

Their time at RAF Pembroke Dock was spent on Operation Seaslug.  German submarines attacking the American East coast were based out of French ports and had to exit and return via the Bay of Biscay.  Operation Seaslug was the deployment of PBY-5s to patrol the Bay of Biscay, making it increasingly unsafe for use by U-boat commanders.  

As unsafe as it was for the German U-boats, the PBY-5 patrols were also dangerous in themselves.   

Lt. Billy Robertson was on patrol with Lieutenant William P. Tanner commanding on August 1, 1943.  Robertson was Navigator as well as Fire Control Officer when under attack.  Having completed their outbound patrol, the PBY encountered eight German Junker 88s on the return flight towards RAF Pembroke Dock.  

Under repeated crushing attack, the captain first sought escape in cloud cover.  However, there was not enough cloud to hide in effectively and ultimately the captain had to crash-land the plane in the ocean.  The pilot, co-pilot, and one of the waist gunners managed to escape the sinking craft.  The other five crew members were killed during the encounter with the Germans or on the crash landing.  Lt. Billy Robertson was wounded, believed mortally, at his fire control position in the waist of the plane.  

Click to enlarge.

The three surviving crew members were able to retrieve an inflatable raft and survived 20 hours before being rescued by the HMS Bideford.  

Five days after the crash, four days after their rescue, the three surviving crew members gave their after-action reports of their final flight.    

 

Click to enlarge.  

Uncle Billy Robertson left behind a grieving war widow and his own family.  My Aunt June did not talk about Uncle Billy often but I recall her speaking of him.  We lived in England for a period time and his memory was unusually near.  During the war, he had been accorded a burial in East Anglia but all such interments were relocated after the war to Brookwood Cemetery in Woking, the town in which we coincidentally lived.

For most of my youth I only knew that he had died in WWII and was under the mistaken impression he was in the USAAF.  It was only a couple of years ago, when doing genealogical research, that I came across the after action reports which clarified his service as a navigator in the USNR and his death over the Bay of Biscay.  

Each individual death is a tragedy but its scope and meaning can only be understood in the context of events, family, and the emotional wound left behind for all those who loved the young man.  

Memorial
by Mae Winkler Goodman 

Still sleeps the unknown soldier
His long and dreamless sleep,
While loud with prayer we reaffirm
The faith he died to keep -- 

In graveyards without number,

Upon the nameless stone,

The heart stops to remember,

Then goes ahead, alone . . .  

 

Today we pause in tribute;
Tomorrow we will pass --
The grave marked only by the green
Memorial of grass!