WADDINGTON WINS! - The Insight Online

Air Commodore Fred West Victoria CrossA couple of days enjoying the rare sunshine in a beautiful churchnear Windsor all started with a simple tweet by @VCTrust...Being a curious personand never having heardof this charity, I had a lookat their website www.victoriacrosstrust.org.Air Commodore West VC?Why does that sound familiar?His grave was on the page asneeding urgent refurbishment.Air Commodore FerdinandWest; the First World War flyingace and Victoria Cross recipient,who had a German Gestapoprice on his head in the SecondWorld War, was the very firstRoyal Air Force Victoria Crossrecipient and just happened tobe on 8 Squadron at the time.Lieutenant Ferdinand MauriceFelix West’s Victoria Cross wasgazetted on November 8th, 1918- Ferdinand Maurice Felix West,Lieut. (Acting Captain), Royal AirForce (formerly of the SpecialReserve, Royal Munster Fusiliers).Captain West, while engaginghostile troops at a low altitudefar over the enemy lines, wasattacked by seven aircraft. Earlyin the engagement one of hislegs was partially severed byan explosive bullet, and fellpowerless into the controls,rendering the machine for thetime unmanageable. Liftinghis disabled leg, he regainedcontrol of the machine, andalthough wounded in theother leg, he, with surpassingbravery and devotion to duty,manoeuvred his machineso skilfully that his observerwas enabled to get severalgood bursts into the enemymachines, which drovethem away. Captain Westthen, with rare courage anddetermination, desperatelywounded as he was, broughthis machine over our lines andlanded safely. Exhausted byhis exertions he fainted, buton regaining consciousnessinsisted on writing his report.After a full RAF career, he diedJuly 7 1988 at Windsor andis buried in the Holy TrinityChurchyard, Sunningdale,Berkshire. His Victoria Crossis held by the Imperial WarMuseum, London.As a current member of 8Squadron, I wondered whatwe could do to renew ourassociation with what is afundamental part of ourSquadron and the Royal AirForce’s history. Tweets bouncedback and forth until a date hadbeen set and a plan of actiondecided upon. I gatheredtogether an intrepid band of 8Squadron personnel, with thesole aim of tidying up the graveof Air Commodore West VC.With lots of help and assistancefrom the Victoria Cross Trust wesoon found out that the graveactually needed professionalrefurbishment, so a ‘just giving’page was set up and withindays the required £1000 wasraised and the Victoria CrossTrust arranged for a stonemasonto carry out the work at thesame time 8 Squadron wouldbe at the site.This could have madethe need for 8 Squadron’sinvolvement defunct until asearch found out that the samegraveyard contained variousCommonwealth War GravesCommission graves. The VictoriaCross Trust gained permissionfor us to also tidy their gravesand we were back on! An earlystart at the beginning of Mayand a fair amount of timeparked on the M25 led ournow tired team to the gravesite in Sunningdale. The stonemason had arrived beforeus and had made amazingprogress turning what initiallylooked like stone back to thebrilliant white marble gravestone that was placed in 1988.16 InsightMAGAZINE