Veteran recalls day war ended
Seventy years ago today, Wembley man Alex Kerr was lying in a hospital bed in Brighton, England, while 1000km away the Soviets were laying siege to Berlin.
The Royal Air Force No.115 Squadron pilot had escaped from a German prisoner-of-war camp four years after his Wellington bomber was shot down over Hamburg.
When news of Germany’s surrender reached the young West Australian on May 8, 1945, he could not contain his joy.
“I was near the end of my stay when victory in Europe was announced,” Mr Kerr said.
“We went out into the main street of Brighton with the nurses and danced in the street,” Mr Kerr said.
“We were in our hospital pyjamas and the street rapidly filled.”
The 93-year-old is one of eight WWII veterans who flew to Europe yesterday as part of an official Australian contingent for VE Day commemorations.
His war stories are as harrowing and compelling as any movie script, from his near-death experience in the Wellington to his three escape attempts.
The trip to Britain, where he plans to catch up with his only surviving crew mate and the man who saved his life, Dave Fraser, is sure to stir emotions.
Alex Kerr is his RAF uniform during WWII.
On their ill-fated fourth mission, they were caught in search lights and riddled with bullets as they turned for home.
“I took seven bullets in my body and that knocked me out,” he said. “My rear gunner, Dave Fraser, managed to climb out of his rear turret and come forward into the body of the aircraft.
“He picked me up, clipped my parachute on, kicked me out of the aircraft and said ‘For God’s sake, pull your cord’.”
Sgt Kerr, then 20, regained consciousness in time to pull the cord, but he needed life-saving surgery when he was captured on the ground.
He would later form a friendship with the German pilot who shot him down, exchanging Christmas cards with him until he died in 1992.
His first escape attempt as a PoW was the most daring.
More than 50 prisoners left the camp through a 42m-long tunnel that had taken five months to dig.
They jumped trains and pinched whatever food they could only to be recaptured 10 days later.
It wasn’t until the final stages of the war that Sgt Kerr made it back to Allied lines, fleeing during one of the Nazis’ long marches and even using his broken German to hoodwink an enemy tank commander.
He married in 1947 and went on to become the foundation professor of economics at Murdoch University.
