Biography on Hexham RAF World War II hero Arthur Garwell

Arthur Garwell, from Hexham, volunteered to join the RAF in 1940 and became a bomber command pilot. 

His son John published a biography in late 2022 titled Letters from Stalag Luft 3 - A Tale of Two Heroes about his father's exploits in war.

Arthur's return home in 1945. Arthur and Joan, his fiancee, with his mum and dad and youngest sister, Nora (Image: John Garwell)

After surviving a full tour of thirty missions, including two crashes on takeoff, Arthur was promoted to flying officer and awarded a Distinguished Flying Medal by King George VI.

In late 1941, he joined a group of bomber crews to test a new secret aircraft, known as the Avro Lancaster. 

The Hexham Courant article from June 1945 (Image: John Garwell)

His next mission was to be his last. Crews flew low in daylight to Augsburg in Southern Germany, to attack a factory making U-boat engines. It seemed so dangerous the Lancaster crews of 97 and Arthur's 44 Squadron could scarcely believe it.

Arthur (left) in Stalag Luft 3 prison camp (Image: John Garwell)

It was April 1942 when twelve Lancasters, six from each squadron, took flight. Intercepted by Luftwaffe fighters over France, the six in Arthur's formation were brought down one by one.

Only two hit the target, and Garwell's aircraft was burning. Choking and barely able to see, he landed the dying Lancaster beyond the city. He and three of his crew escaped the burning wreck, were arrested and taken prisoner, and three others died. 

The front page of the book (Image: John Garwell)

The raid was national news and published by the Courant.

He was taken as a prisoner of war to Stalag Luft 3, the camp that would later become famous for the film The Great Escape. It would be three years before Garwell returned to Hexham.

The discovery of more than fifty letters with photographs inspired his son John to turn his father's story into a book. Joan, Arthur's wartime sweetheart, had kept them half-forgotten in an old carrier bag.

"My mother had told me many of the stories when I was a child, but it was reading my father's own vivid descriptions of prison camp life that inspired me to write."

There were stories letters could never tell, including Arthur's escape and recapture, spells of solitary confinement in the cooler, the murder of fifty escapees by the Gestapo and march to liberation through the snow. When Arthur returned to Hexham in May 1945 he described his experiences to local Rotarians. It was front-page news in The Courant.

"I needed to do a lot of research to write the book, but luck played a part as well, like making contact with the sons of two of my father's prison camp roommates, one in Australia and one in the USA. They knew things I didn't know and that helped a lot."

The book extends Arthur's story after the war and becomes a personal account of family life amid post-war austerity. A second, unexpected hero then emerges - the author's mother.

"I started off simply wanting to preserve the story for future generations of the family, but soon realised that such extraordinary events deserved a wider audience," John said.

There is one person for whom the book has special significance: Arthur's youngest sister, Nora, who first read the letters eighty years ago.

Now in her nineties and a resident at Hexham's Acomb Court, it brought back memories of her big brother who went to war and survived.