F/Sgt. Robert Fitzgerald (Gerald) Conroy was the pilot of Wellington HE593. On the outward journey from a bombing mission to Düsseldorf the bomber was hit by flak south-east of Eindhoven. When the aircraft was almost out of control Conroy ordered to bail out. As the intercom was dead he didn’t get any response from the other crew. Later it turned out that the rest of the crew had perished in the crash. Conroy himself landed in a muddy field and after discarding his parachute he hid it in the mud. He first continued to wear his Mae West until he could dispose it in a ditch. He began then walking north-west, away from the burning aircraft which was at about two kilometer from his landing spot.
At dawn he hid in the middle of a field with ‘very high wheat’ where he stayed for the rest of the day. He started walking again an hour before darkness and moved until later that night when he neared a village. He hid for the rest of the night (12/13 June) in another field. He resumed his travels and the following morning at about 10 AM. After about an hour he reached a ‘paved highway on which there was considerable traffic’. Because he couldn’t cross it without being noticed and he was still in his uniform he hid in a ditch on the edge of the highway. He left the ditch at about 10 PM crossed the highway and walked all night in north-westerly direction. Also the next day - 14 June - he continued walking.
At about 2 PM on 14 June he approached an isolated farmhouse. He watched it for an hour and saw only a woman and two children moving around. As he was cold, hungry and it was raining he decided to contact the woman. He was received quite friendly and got a meal but ‘obviously didn’t want to keep him’. Conroy left and continued walking north-east until 10 PM when he neared another isolated farmhouse. He had seen only a woman and a small girl but there were also two men inside. After it became clear for them that he was a British airman he became a ‘proper meal’. After about an hour the two men left and returned with another man from the neighbouring village of Oirschot. Conroy explained that he wanted to go to Spain but according to the man this was impossible. Conroy was taken to another house in the same village (east of Oirschot) to stay the night in the family's barn.
The next day, 15 June, the man from Oirschot brought Conroy some civilian clothes and took him back to his house for the afternoon. That evening, he drove Conroy by car to Esbeek, near the Belgium border, and left him in a restaurant where Conroy stayed the night in the house of the owner, Eugene van der Heyden. Here he probably joined P/O. A.T.L. Cullum (E0043). The following morning at 8 PM, a Dutch marechaussee (Dutch military policeman), Karst Smit, took Conroy and Cullum to a nearby forest at estate “de Utrecht” near Esbeek where they joined four Dutch students who were hiding here in a dug-out from the German forced labour service. After two days, in the early morning of 18 June, another Dutch (military) policeman took Conroy and Cullum by bicycle to a point in the wood at about two kilometer of the Belgian border. From here they walked to the border where the first policeman was on duty. Conroy and Cullum were given a Belgium ID-card and handed over to a smuggler and his son who took them accros the border to a village. From there they took the tram to Turnhout. In this town Cullen and Conroy to a train to Antwerp and thence to Brussels, arriving in the Belgian capital at about noon on 18 June.
Here where they were given over to an organization and his journey arranged. Cullum eventually reached Paris, but was arrested in the French capital on 24 July 1943. Conroy managed to return to England in October 1943. He was repatriated to Canada in October, for a period of two months 'special leave' and then arrived back in the United Kingdom just after New Year 1944. He first trained with1664 HCU and returned to operational flying with 429 Squadron. He lost his life in the night of 23/24 March 1944 after staying with damaged Halifax LV914 which had been damaged by an enemy aircraft. This gave his crew time to bale out. As he was himself seriously injured himself he tried to crash-land the aircraft near Merbitz, in the vicinity of Halle, Germany. Whilst his crew survived, Conroy died before help could reach him. The Canadian was initially buried locally in the churchyard near the aircraft's crash site. After the War Robert Conroy was re-interred in Berlin War Cemetery. A memorial was erected at the crash site in March 2009.
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