SOME OF THE BRIGG WAR CASUALTIES

FROM CLIFF TURNER, 91, IN NEW ZEALAND

Just before the war I was the youngest member of a table tennis club; we played in a room above what had been stabling at The White Horse.  We owed this to Percy Goates whose mother was the licensee. 
Percy was in the RAF and is listed on the Monument as a Leading Aircraftsman. This leads me to think he died while in training, for aircrew as all operating air crew were of a least sergeant’s rank. 
Four other members died in the war. Alan King was an infantry officer; he won a posthumous Military Cross after the Normandy invasion. His older brother Peter, who was not a club member, also lost his life while serving as air crew. 
Only two families in Brigg lost two sons in the war; the others were called Neall.
George ‘Pudge’ Longbottom also flew with the RAF. I had known since the war that he had been killed but only in the last year or so have I found that it was in North Africa.
John Lang lived with his grandparents in Albert Street. After the defeat of France in 1940 it was thought that the Germans would move into Syria and Lebanon which were French colonies. To forestall this, British and Australian troops moved into those counties from neighbouring Palestine; some fighting with the Vichy French took place and it was during this that John lost his life
Ken Taylor and I sat together in the Lower Sixth at Brigg Grammar School during the Christmas term of 1940. He became an observer in Bomber Command and his plane was shot down when on a bombing raid. Only a few days earlier I had been on leave in Brigg and met up with Ken. His parents had left Brigg by then but he was stationed nearby and got into Brigg whenever possible.  Although his parents had left the town, his name is on the Monument.