‘I am a very proud girl!’ - Daughter of Jamaican RAF officer thrilled at brave gunner’s memorial

Seventy-nine-year-old Yvonne Paul never met her father.

For years, she believed that the couple who raised her as part of their family was truly her biological parents. And the stories told of their eldest son, George Mercier Edwards, who had gone off to fight in the Second World War in 1940, did not resonate as much as it did with her other ‘siblings’ – because she really did not know him.

Her family circle, she thought, was her parents, Sidonia and George Edwards, and her siblings: George, Linda, Dora, Joyce, Mark, and Trevor.

It wasn’t until much later that she learnt the truth – the man she thought of as her eldest brother, George, was actually her father.

Earlier this month, in a telephone interview from her home in Toronto, Canada, Yvonne shared: “I had heard little stories about him, but I did not know that he was my father at the time. I really thought that they were my mother and father. It wasn’t until I was a teenager, I think about 13 years old, that I walked in on a conversation where they were discussing it, and that’s when I found out that I had been adopted.”

Yvonne says she cannot remember what the conversation was about, only that a woman she had come to know as ‘Mother Irene’ was her biological mother. She later found out where Mother Irene lived and ran away to her.

But Mother Irene explained that her grandparents loved her very much and had asked to raise her. She told Yvonne that they could take care of her much better than she could. Mother Irene already had three other children and was a single mother.

“But by then, it didn’t matter because I was so well taken care of. I always felt loved. And my mother (who I did not know was my mother at the time) used to come and visit me every Sunday, and she always took a gift. She didn’t have much, but she always brought something,” Yvonne said.

Operation Freshman a failed mission

She would soon learn much more about her father, the sole Jamaican in an elite team selected and trained to sabotage a Norway-based facility being used by the Nazis to assist their efforts to build a nuclear bomb for Hitler’s war. Despite the odds against them, the team pressed on, determined to carry out the daring plan. The mission failed as bad weather and malfunctioning guidance systems prevented the aircraft from reaching its target. On the return journey, three of the planes crashed in the mountains of southern Norway.

All the members of Sgt Gunner Edwards’ seven-member tow plane unit died immediately. The 14 surviving members of the glider they were towing were executed by firing squad the following day.

Norway-based researcher Dr Bruce Tocher has been searching for surviving family members/relatives of the team as part of a project to honour their sacrifice and provide a fitting memorial to the brave soldiers.

“Due to the secrecy surrounding Operation Freshman, the servicemen who died never received any official recognition for their valour and sacrifice. This is one of the reasons I am determined that their story should be more widely known via the Operation Freshman Project,” Tocher said.

An article carried in The Gleaner highlighted the search.

The Gleaner reported that Sgt Gunner Edwards left the island in June 1940 to join the RAF and serve in World War II, quitting the Jamaica Constabulary to do so.

He was initially reported missing in December 1942 after a mission over Norway – later confirmed as Operation Freshman – but it was not until 1946 that his family received final confirmation of his death, via a letter from his sister, Linda, to their mother.

For Yvonne, the information on her father’s other life and work has been a revelation, helping to fill in the blanks of the father she did not know.

Family getting goosebumps

“I am a very, very proud girl! Although I did not know him, I’m very proud of his story,” she gushed.

Her daughter, Michele Davidson, shares her joy.

“We knew about Aunt Dora and Uncle Trevor and that they raised her as their own child, but we never knew the entire story. This is big for us. It is important that his work is not forgotten. This is great; I am super excited,” she said.

Yvonne married Adolph Paul and had four children: Michele, Adolph, Andrea (deceased), and Christine. She now lives in Toronto with Christine. She celebrates her 80th birthday on June 30.

Back in Jamaica, another side of the family is also getting goosebumps. Debra Edwards relocated to Jamaica from Canada in 2018 when her father, Trevor, died. The only family member now living in Kingston, she had been longing for some link to her father’s family.

“I was telling a cousin of mine that I wish I knew more about my dad’s side of the family, and that same day, I saw this article in the paper.

“His daughter, Yvonne, grew up with my grandparents. She went to live with them when she was 11 months old. She never got a chance to meet him, but my father always spoke fondly of him to me. He was so proud of him. And there was a picture of him that I had seen before at home. So when I was doing my CXC history, I saw a picture of this guy in a plane in my textbook, and it looked familiar, so I showed it to my dad, and he was like, ‘That’s my brother. That was Bully’.”

Edwards says that while she was excited about the new information, she questioned whether it could really be true.

“So one of the questions I had for Dr Tocher was, ‘How could you be so sure?’,” she said.

Records from Tocher’s research include text from Jostein Berglyd’s book, Operation Freshman, The Hunt for Hitler’s Heavy Water (2006):

“A deep depression in the ground made it very clear where the plane had initially crashed. After which, the main body of the plane had travelled over the top of Jonsokknuten and continued several hundred metres further onto a plateau made up of large stones, ending where the mountain again became steeper. As a consequence, the plane’s fuselage had been ripped apart, but the fuel tanks were still intact. Near the spot where the plane had first impacted lay the body of a coloured man. Martin Sandstøl assumed it was the rear gunner, who would have been seated farthest back in the plane.”

“In their war diary, the Germans made special note that a coloured man was among the deceased,” said Tocher.

He also referenced an unpublished account of the plane crash by the late Per Johnsen, a Norwegian who spent many years researching Operation Freshman:

“When the young rescuers reached the top of Hæstadfjell, they saw a horrific sight. The 30-ton aircraft had impacted at full speed on a sloping mountain and had continued a further 700-800 metres along a fairly flat, rock-strewn plateau, finally stopping at a point where the mountain again rose steeply. The impact was such that the aircraft was smashed to pieces; to the extent that it was hard to recognise any specific parts of the plane.

“At the outermost edge of the sloping mountain lay the intact body of Halifax’s tail gunner, Sergeant-Gunner George M Edwards (24) from Kingston, Jamaica.”

For Yvonne, the commendations and pictures now have even more special significance. For Debra, it’s the satisfaction of knowing her father’s dream has come true.

“This would have made my father so happy. He loved him and was so proud that he fought in the war and that he earned a lot of medals. I think his one regret was that he was never ever recognised, that nobody knew that he was so brave, that nobody ever got to know what a hero he was.”