My friend Ted West, who has died aged 100, was one of the few Britons – possibly even the only one – to have served in the US Air Force during the second world war.
Ted had moved from his native Yorkshire to the US at the age of eight, and in 1943, as a 21-year-old, he enlisted in the US Army Air Corps. After initial training he was assigned to the 8th Air Force, 351st Bomb Group, and was sent to Britain to be stationed at Polebrook airfield in Northamptonshire.
He served on a Boeing B17 Flying Fortress as a radio operator and gunner and flew on 28 bombing missions over occupied Europe between April and August 1944. On what proved to be his final mission, his aircraft was hit by enemy fire while flying back over the Netherlands. All 10 crew members bailed out safely, but seven were captured soon after landing and were taken away as prisoners of war.
The remaining three – Ted and two colleagues – evaded capture by hiding in a sugar beet field overnight, and were eventually able to make contact with members of the Dutch resistance. They spent six harrowing weeks being smuggled through German-occupied territory in the Netherlands and Belgium as they were hidden in remote farms, given false identification papers and disguised as young farm labourers.
Ted finally made it through a fluid battle front, narrowly avoiding being shot by Free Polish troops, and ended up first in Brussels, then Paris, where he was repatriated on 22 September 1944, 45 days after being shot down.
During the war years, and even after, Ted never met another serviceman in the US Air Force who had been born in the UK, and in his own modest way felt that he was probably, in that sense, one of a kind.
He had been born in Hoyland, South Yorkshire, to Elizabeth (nee Dickenson), a homemaker, and her husband, Charles, a coalminer, and lived there until his parents emigrated to the US in 1930 in search of better employment opportunities.
He grew up in New Brunswick, New Jersey, where he went to New Brunswick high school, and then worked in the stock room at the pharmaceuticals company Johnson & Johnson. After the war he returned to his employer, became a management trainee, and over the ensuing years managed production facilities for the company across the world, including in Australia and New Zealand. He finished his 40-year career with the firm as an executive vice-president.
In retirement Ted and his wife, Betty (nee Shelton), whom he had married in 1945, divided their time between Florida and New Hampshire. Ted also made numerous trips back to the UK, as well as to the continent, where he reconnected with resistance members who had aided his escape. He always maintained unequivocally that the resistance fighters were the real heroes of his war.
Betty predeceased him, as did their son, Edwin. He is survived by their daughter, Barbara, three grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
