Flight Lt DG Heaton-Nicholls

Links of Long Standing

1930’s Cranwell graduates included HR Goodman, EMC Guest, JER Hayter, DG Heaton-Nicholls, T de T Macdonald, H Mundy, TS Rivett-Carnac, BP Young and HNG Wheeler. Most, including British born NM Hall and MA Aylmer were educated at Bishops, St Johns College, Michaelhouse, Hilton College or St Andrews.

Links of Long Standing

Former Hilton College pupil Derek Heaton- Nicholls was a very early “Prisoner of War”, Noel Mudie Hall another former pupil was killed during the “Battle of Britain”, Herbert Mundy lost his life in a February 1941 flying training accident, Bishops educated Flight Lt Guest DFC and Squadron Leader JER Hayter DFC were shot down in separate incidents on October 4th 1943. Guest, flying a Coastal Command Liberator and Hayter a No 83 Squadron Lancaster. Wing Commander Herbert Goodman, Hall’s Hilton College contemporary shot down in a No 103 Squadron Lancaster in May 1944, was commanding the squadron at the time.

More than a “Few” South Africans

Albert de Villiers Leach was born in Queenstown and attended St Andrews College in Grahamstown at the same time as Thomas Rivett Carnac. According to “The London Gazette”, Flying Officer Albert de Villiers Leach, a member of the Reserve of Air Force Officers, was promoted to Flight Lt in September 1940.Anecdotal evidence suggests his RAF involvement predated the 1936 formation of the RAFVR and he was one of five South Africans including early “POW” Derek Heaton- Nicholls, who flew No 224 Hudson’s. Flight Lt Leach was awarded the “Distinguished Flying Cross” in April 1941, a month after his South African squadron colleague Nicholas Selley lost his life and an acting Squadron Leader Leach when he was “Mentioned in Dispatches” in September.

Not at Home for Christmas

Pilot Officer Derek Heaton Nicholls, an RAF Cranwell graduate and No 224 Squadron Coastal Command Hudson pilot shot down on September 30th, 1939, was one of “those who arrived in Germany at the start of the war”. POW No 22 had by then experienced a third Christmas behind barbed wire, did not share the Red Cross view Stalag III was a model camp and would not have anticipated three more Christmas’s in the Camp 2.

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.

Not at Home for Christmas

Derek Heaton Nicholls had not seen his parents for over six years but did not have to travel far as his father George, had been appointed as South Africa’s High Commissioner to London a few months before his repatriation. Flight Lt Heaton Nicholls resigned his commission in 1946 and returned to South Africa.