Originally Posted by
Ged
Please tell more
Bader, never left Germany or Poland during the 4 years of his incarceration, fact !!! Over the past few years Mr Williams has been peddling this story on many websites and forums on the Internet, his main argument has been “I was there, you weren’t”. Bending the facts and using supposition to fit his own ideas with no conclusive proof, has been the order of the day.
Many people and in particular several noted historians who have access to Bader’s family and friends have blown his story out of the water. Each time he has taken it upon himself to slander them on his (now defunct) website, with no possibility for these individuals to counter his wild accusations.
On 9 August 1941 Bader was shot down over France, there are two theories to this.
1. That he collided with a Luftwaffe fighter a Messerschmitt Bf 109F of II/JG26 flown by Feldwebel Meyer, which removed the tailunit of his aircraft; or
2. He was accidentally shot down by F/L Buck Carsson.
There is a lot of evidence for the latter, which has been well researched and presented in a Ch 4 documentary “Who downed Douglas Bader”. Mr Williams would not accept this account and maintains that the only plausible explanation is the former, his reason being that it was what Bader had recounted to Paul Brickhill, the author of Reach for the Sky, therefore it had to be true.
Bader’s intention to keep on taking the war to the enemy, even as a POW are legendary, he under took several escape attempts on one occasion reaching the Polish boarder as part of a work party before being recaptured. Williams uses this attempt and the fact that Bader was off the radar for several days as the most likely point of Bader’s return to the UK. Flying from Germany to Ireland and then by boat from Ireland to Liverpool, to have new legs fitted and then back by the same route. All in 8 days. Williams concludes that this has to be fact, as this was the route taken, at the time, for the repatriation of allied servicemen, despite being shown that repatriations from Germany did not happen for several months after he claims to have seen Bader in Liverpool.
Other accounts that don’t add up, are that in early 1942, the bars and clubs were full of American soldiers. America didn’t enter the war until 7 December 1941, the first troops to arrive anywhere in the UK, landed in Northern Ireland in March 1942, and then it was only a small advance party of several hundred. The main influx didn’t happen until much later, after Roosevelt and Churchill had agreed a plan of Germany first Japan second. When this was presented to Williams his counter was, “you weren’t there’’.
In another recount Williams claimed that the Liverpool Blitz was at it’s height during his time at the Stork and in particular when he was tending to DB. It was pointed out that the Liverpool blitz was at its height in 1941 and the last raid on Liverpool was February 1942. Admittedly after being presented with these facts, he slightly amended his website, but not before slating the person who gave him these facts.
One thing I do find strange is that Mr Williams pulled the plug on his website in September because in his words, the reactions that he was getting was effecting his health. Odd that slightly before this event he has posted his story here.
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I could go on but to be honest the story has, for a long time, lost all credibility because of Mr Williams venomous reactions and his inability to accept the facts when presented to him. The mind is a great thing, but can play awful tricks at times.
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