Name
Albert Henry Wettone
Conflict
Second World War
Date of Death / Age
08/06/1944
23
Rank, Service Number & Service Details
Warrant Officer
1151961
Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve
605 Sqdn.
Awards: Service Medals/Honour Awards
Cemetery/Memorial: Name/Reference/Country
VILLENEUVE-ST. GEORGES OLD COMMUNAL CEMETERY
Grave 100.
France
Headstone Inscription
WE WILL REMEMBER THEM
UK & Other Memorials
Hitchin Boys’ Grammar School Memorial (WW2), Welwyn Garden City War Memorial.
Biography
He attended the Hitchin Grammar School from 1933-1937 and on leaving school joined an agricultural firm in Wisbech and later took employment with the goods office of the London & Northeastern Railway in Welwyn Garden City which was his hometown.
Early in 1940, on his nineteenth birthday, he volunteered for the RAF and was given the Service Number 1151961. On completion of his training he passed out as a Serjeant Wireless operator and Air Gunner. By the Spring of 1943 he had been on operations for seventeen months and was posted for operational rest. He then passed a Navigator's Course and returned to 605 Squadron. After he had been on operations for three months he was reported missing during an operational flight over France. He was the Navigator in Mosquito V1 NS941 on an intruder sortie to Coulommieres in France. His pilot, Flight Lieutenant D.H.H. Gathercole D.F.C., was killed at the same time.
It was later discovered that the Mosquito in which he and the pilot were flying came down near Coulommieres and their bodies first rested in the local cemetery. Later they were moved to the cemetery in Solers, a village some thirty miles from Paris. The present location (1999) is described as Grave 100, Villeneuve St. Georges Old Communal Cemetery, Valde Marne, 18 km southeast of Paris in France.
His parents were Albert and Winifred Constance Wettone of 16, Coneydale, Welwyn Garden City and later of Baildon in Yorkshire. He was an only son.
Acknowledgments
David C Baines – ‘Hitchin’s Century of Sacrifice’, Hitchin Grammar School Chronicle, Hitchin Grammar School Registers, Mr Peter Russell - former acquaintance, ‘Fighter Command Losses - Vol. III’ by N.L.R. Francis
