Frederick Hugh Mosen
Sadly, I cannot find portraits for all the people listed on the war memorial, but this book was written by a crew member who survived the incident where Hugh was killed. I have referred to him as Hugh because I have found several newspaper clippings where he is referred to by that name and in john Martin's book (above) he is also called Hugh.
Frederick Hugh Mosen (to give him his full name) was born on 9th March 1911 at 103 Cartvale Road in Langside, south Glasgow.
His parents were Joseph Frederick Mosen and Mary McVicar Millar, originally from Edinburgh. On their wedding record both gave their occupation as "postal telegraphist" working for what was referred to as the GPO at the time, the General Post Office, so it seems safe to say they met at work (many telegraphists were well educated women who, according to the norms of the time, were paid less than a man to do the same job):
Hugh was their second child, his elder sister being Marjorie.
When Hugh was three, World War One started and his father enlisted for service with the Royal Engineers in October 1914. Of course, we do not know Joseph's motives but his employer, the GPO, sent a letter to every male employee urging them to enlist, despite his young family.
He went to France in September 1915, not before his third child, Elizabeth, was born. At this time the family had moved to 5 Maxwell Terrace in Westerton (see Milngavie and Bearsden Herald below); I assume this is now part of Maxwell Avenue, but maybe someone can confirm this?
The 1915 Valuation Roll is not much help as, while Joseph is recorded, the street has no name and the house has no number:
I have reproduced the whole page because the street seems to have been full of people who were either telegraphists or sorting clerks!
Hugh's father ended his war service in April 1919 by which time he may have been away from home for the best part of four years, but he resumed his job at the post office.
The family seem to have lived in Westerton from here on and there are repeated mentions of the children in local school events (especially drama) and awards. In the valuation roll, by 1935 the Mosens have a street name and number, 27 Maxwell Avenue, and this appears to have been the same property they were living at in 1920, so could also be 5 Westerton Terrace.
It is a surprise to find the family on the Isle of Bute for the 1921 Census, presumably there as part of Joseph's work for the GPO.
This is St Blanes Terrace at Kilchattan Bay, looking to the west side of Great Cumbrae across the water.
Hugh and his sisters completed their school education at Bearsden Academy, then located at Bearsden Cross in the building now serving as Bearsden Primary School. In Hugh's case, the main mention of him in local newspapers is when playing cricket (he was a bowler, batting about number eight).
Marjorie and Hugh both went to university, and in Hugh's case I can be sure it was to Glasgow. He would have been 18 years old in 1929. There are brief newspaper mentions of him playing tennis for the university in local tournaments in 1934 and 1936 and he was awarded a tennis 'blue'.
Around this time he entered a career as a chartered accountant, initially with Macadam and Shaw in Glasgow. He must have impressed as by 1937 he had a job with Whinney Murray and Company in Poland (Warsaw); note that this company subsequently merged with Erst and Ernst to form Ernst and Whinney, and then with Arthur Young to form Ernst and Young).
He came home in September 1937 to be 'best man' at a friend's wedding:
Back at home, Joseph had retired from the GPO and was awarded a medal for lifelong service:
The "bungalow on Westerton Hill" referred to was number 16 Kinellan Road, off of Henderland Drive by Switchback Road.
There's a gap in Hugh's story from 1937. Tensions were growing in Europe and as Hitler took over country after country it became clear that his attention was on Poland next - did Hugh leave at this point? We don't know. However, he returned to the UK to work for another accountancy firm, Brown, Fleming and Murray. At some point he joined the RAF. Many crews were trained overseas, Canada being an important destination but in Hugh's case it was South Africa.
By 30 January 1944, we know he was the navigator in an Avro Lancaster of 166 Squadron based at RAF Kirmington in Lincolnshire, just south of the Humber estuary. (This is now Humberside Airport.):
Sketch map of the base - the heavier black lines on the left forming the triangle are the three runways.
I am now switching to John Martin's book for information. John, who was the wireless operator, Hugh and the rest of the crew were posted to Kirmington arriving 23rd January1944. Hugh (nicknamed Jock) and the pilot, Jimmy Tosh, were older than the others by about ten years.
Being the new boys, they were assigned the Lancaster that (to quote John) had "gone through the mangle a number of times", meaning it had been heavily damaged on previous bomber missions and nobody else wanted to fly it.
The so-called Battle of Berlin was raging, named by the RAF historians, with Bomber Command's leader trying to ground down German morale by sending several hundred bombers each night on the long flight there (it was seven hour round-trip once account had been taken of the need to fly an indirect course to try to keep the defenders guessing), braving the heavy flak (anti-aircraft fire) to drop their bombs and then return home, hoping to dodge the German night-fighters.
Their first mission was to Berlin and they took some light flak. However, on their second mission (also to Berlin) the plane was more heavily hit by flak and was not fit to fly. When the mission for Sunday 30th January was revealed as Berlin again, the crew was not due to fly - not every crew flew every mission. However, the squadron commander wanted to rest one of his senior deputies, a flight commander and his crew, so John, Hugh and the others were given the flight commander's plane to fly. John remembers him saying "Don't bend it, it's a new one!" (This wasn't entirely accurate, the plane had been heavily shot up on a raid before Christmas 1943.)
On previous missions they had taken a more direct route over the North Sea and the Netherlands, but for this mission they flew to Denmark, then turned south for Berlin. They took off at 17.00 (it must have been dark at that time of year) and three hours later were nearing the target flying at about 20,00 feet (nearly four miles, 6km) when cannon shells from a night-fighter started hitting the Lancaster and it was quickly clear they were in serious trouble; on the intercom the pilot gave the order to bale out.
John saw Hugh grab his parachute and clip it on. There were two exits from a Lancaster and John headed for the rear one but the fuselage was ablaze and he turned back to follow the pilot, flight engineer, bomb aimer and Hugh out of the forward exit in the nose.
With the aircraft in a steep dive, opening the front hatch was proving difficult - it could have been damaged by the shell fire but John speculates the bomb aimer was either dead or seriously wounded and was difficult to move from above.
John says he could see the pilot and flight engineer looking down so it must have been Hugh who was trying to get the hatch open. John describes going to the cockpit to try to open a third hatch above the pilot's seat but this was badly damaged, and then returning to his own wireless operator position. He then remembers "a huge red flash - I didn't register any noise of an explosion - then I blacked out."
Of course, we do not know what happened to Hugh, other than that he did not survive. His body was recovered and he was buried at Werder Neuer Friedhof:
On 24th April 1947 he was reburied in a CWGC Cemetery in west Berlin:
The inscription on his head stone says "He shall give His angels / Charge over thee, / To keep thee / In all thy ways":
With two sisters in his family, I was hopeful of finding living descendants but while both lived to a ripe old age (Marjorie was 91 and Elizabeth, 'Betty', 81 when they died) neither married. Marjorie was a teacher:
This is from the Milngavie and Bearsden Herald of 4th October 1947.
Hugh's 'obituary' was in the same newspaper on 5th August 1944 (more than seven months after his death):
The other crew members who died were:
James Findlay Tosh, the pilot - from Dundee but had been a policeman in London
Reginald Arthur Morris, the bomb aimer
Richard Walton, the rear gunner, from Wallasey
The survivors were:
David Allerton, the flight engineer, an engineer in coal-mining civilian life as well from Nottingham
Bob Brown from the RCAF, a Canadian
Ernest John Martin
You might recall the crew had 'borrowed' another crew's plane for the night. The other crew were shot down over Nuremberg exactly two months later with five of the seven surviving to become prisoners.
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