Christopher Harry George DAFT
Image from Find a Grave; see the whole picture here.
Christopher Daft was born in Oxford on 18 January 1922, the youngest of three brothers. His father Thomas came from Nottingham, where Daft is a common surname. Thomas’s parents and older siblings worked in the lace-making industry, but as a teenager he was employed as a solicitor’s clerk. Later he worked as an attendant at the Cambridgeshire County Lunatic Asylum.
Christopher’s mother was Edith Goodey, who was born and brought up in Littlemore (just south of Oxford), one of sixteen siblings. After Sarah’s father – an agricultural labourer – died young, her mother became a successful market gardener, and the family had a greengrocer’s stall in Oxford’s Covered Market; in her twenties and early thirties Sarah worked there as a saleswoman.
Sarah was 38 when she married Thomas Daft in Oxford in September 1915. He was 33. Thomas joined the Royal Garrison Artillery as a Gunner in January 1916. He and Sarah’s first son Cecil was born a year later. Thomas was demobilised in February 1919, by which time the family was living at 26 Western Road, Grandpont. A second son, Arthur, was born in April 1919. In the 1921 census Thomas was recorded as a musician at Buol’s restaurant on Cornmarket, but currently “Out of work”. As well as Edith and the two boys Cecil (aged four) and Arthur (aged one), the house (which had six rooms other than the scullery and bathroom) accommodated three lodgers and Thomas’s older brother George Daft, who was visiting from Nottingham. He was in the lace trade, but also currently out of work. The lodgers were a chauffeur at (William) Morris’s Garage on Queen Street and his wife; and a musician employed at the Picture Palace cinema on George Street.
Thomas and Sarah’s third son Christopher was born in January 1922. His older brother Arthur died two months later, not long before his second birthday.
At the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 the Daft family was still living at 26 Western Road. The 1939 register, taken on 29 September, four weeks after war started, recorded Thomas working as a labourer at the Army Stores, probably at the Ox & Bucks Light Infantry’s regimental headquarters in Cowley. Cecil (now aged eighteen) was employed as a printer’s linotype operator, probably at the Clarendon (or Oxford University) Press in Jericho. Unfortunately Christopher’s entry in the register is still redacted (due to data protection rules), so we can’t yet see what his occupation was. Edith was looking after the family and four boarders, one of whom was a colleague of Thomas’s in the Army Stores; one was a labourer for the City Corporation’s road repair department; one was a contractor’s labourer on public works; and another was a vacuum cleaner salesman.
Christopher was a member the Royal Air Force (RAF) Volunteer Reserve and during the war he was called up and assigned to 78 Squadron as a Sergeant, service number 1315406. 78 Squadron had been formed in 1916 as part of the Royal Flying Corps, later to become the RAF. It was disbanded in 1919 but reformed in 1936 and was based initially at Boscombe Down in Wiltshire. By the outbreak of the Second World War the squadron was based in Dishforth, North Yorkshire, and by June 1943 it was operating out of the newly-constructed RAF Breighton south of York, flying Halifax bombers. 78 Squadron flew over 6,000 sorties during the war, and sustained the loss of 182 aircraft and over nine hundred crew.
Christopher was trained as a wireless operator and air gunner. On the night of 25/26 July 1943 he and six other crew set off from RAF Breighton to bomb Essen, the industrial heart of the German Reich. They joined up with aircraft from other squadrons, but Christopher’s Halifax II (JD330 EY-F) was shot down by a German night-fighter and crashed near Duisburg, just short of their target. Four of the crew – including Christopher – were killed outright; the remaining three were captured and taken to prisoner of war camps. Christopher was 21.
The RAF planes that went on to bomb Essen were successful in their mission; there was much damage to the industrial eastern part of the city, including the massive Krupps steelworks. Over fifty other industrial buildings and over 2,800 homes were destroyed. Five hundred people were killed, including 22 children.
Christopher was initially buried in Düsseldorf North Cemetery. In October 1946 his body, together with those of nine others killed on the same day, was reinterred in Reichswald Forest War Cemetery near Kleve, close to the Dutch border. He and his three crewmates were buried in adjacent plots. This cemetery was created immediately after the Second World War; burials were brought in from many parts of Germany and it is the largest Commonwealth war cemetery in the country. The inscription on Christopher’s grave reads “Loved by all”.
Christopher is commemorated on the Oxford City WWII Roll of Honour which is in the Church of St Michael at the Northgate on Cornmarket.
His father Thomas died in 1954, aged 73, and his mother Edith died in 1956, aged 78.