Wing Commander CA Maton
Charles Aubrey Maton
- Rank
- Wing Commander
- Honours
- DSO
- Squadron
- No 502 Squadron
- Born
- 1917
- Fate
- Prisoner of war
- In the book
- Pages 84, 109
From the book
Links of Long Standing
Second Lt RWC Burgess, the youngest and most junior SAAF recipient, was awarded an immediate DSO for his actions as the co-pilot of a Liberator after the pilot in command baled out during a Warsaw sortie and at around the same time in 1944, Wing Commander Maton a South African RAF Air Gunner, the first to command a Coastal Command squadron became another recipient. An award he only became aware of several weeks later as he was by then a Stalag III “POW”.
More than a “Few” South Africans
Charles Aubrey Maton, another South African who served with Coastal Command was born in Cape Town in 1917 and commissioned in the “Administrative and Special Duties Branch” in November 1939. He trained as an Air Gunner after being transferred to the “General Duties Branch” in mid-1940. A Squadron Leader by 1943, he was a Wing Commander by May 1944 when he assumed command of No 502 Squadron operating Halifax’s from RAF Stornoway in Scotland.
More than a “Few” South Africans
Maton, the only Air Gunner to command a Coastal Command squadron during the Second World War, was due to take up an administrative posting but his last sortie ended in the icy seas off Norway after being hit by fire from a vessel they were attacking. Five of the nine-man crew, ironically rescued by their target an armed steamer the “Amisia”, became “POW’s” 23. He had completed over 70 sorties but the Germans believed the Air Gunner Wing Commander was a spy. However, he and three other crew members eventually arrived at Stalag III in late October, unaware of his “Distinguished Service Order” award announced in “The London Gazette”. A Stalag III POW No 8711 for three months, Maton relinquished his RAF commission in 1954.
Not at Home for Christmas
A distant event by the time they learnt of bandleader Glenn Miller’s December 15th Channel disappearance and a hasty January 27th evacuation of the camp in the face of advancing Russian forces 8. POW No 8222, Pilot Officer WE Ames and Wing Commander A Maton DSO had spent three months in the Camp, POW No 22 Derek Heaton-Nicholls had by then been behind barbed wire for 64 months.