Edward Percival BUTTRUM-GARDINER

Eddie Buttrum-Gardiner in RAF uniform. Image courtesy of Eddie's nephew Rod Andrews; click here to see the whole photo.

Edward Buttrum-Gardiner, known as Eddie, was born on 13 January 1921 in New Hinksey, the oldest of eight siblings. His father was George Gardiner, born in Stony Stratford, Buckinghamshire, the son of a labourer. His mother was Dorothy née Sherman, born at 188 Abingdon Road, New Hinksey, the daughter of a carman at the Great Western Railway station.

In 1912, when he was eighteen, Eddie's father George joined the Reserve Battalion of the Ox & Bucks Light Infantry as a Private; during the First World War he served in India and in Turkey. In 1915-16 he was involved in the Siege of Kut Al Amara in Mespotamia (modern-day Iraq); following the British surrender of the garrison he spent the next two and a half years as a prisoner of war. When de-mobbed in April 1919 he returned to Oxford and seven weeks later married Dorothy Sherman at St John the Evangelist Church in New Hinksey. He was 25 and she was 21.

By this time Dorothy’s family were living at 11 Green Place, New Hinksey, and she and George began their married life there. The house must have been fairly crowded: in 1921 the five rooms were occupied by ten people, including Dorothy’s parents and five of her younger siblings (aged eight to seventeen), plus Dorothy, George, and their five-month-old son Eddie. George was then working for the Oxford Corporation as a relief attendant at recreation grounds and bathing places around the city. A second son, Alfred, born in the summer of 1922, died almost immediately. The first of six daughters, Florence, was born in the summer of 1923.

By the time George and Dorothy’s next daughter Dorothy was born in 1924, they had moved to Headington, and another four daughters – Doris, Eileen, Jennifer and Megan – were born there over the next eight years.

By September 1939, Eddie, his parents, and his six younger sisters had moved to Cold Harbour, at the southern end of the Abingdon Road, in the parish of St Matthew’s. In the 1939 register, taken on 29 September, four weeks after the declaration of war, George and Dorothy were living at 38 Weirs Lane with five of their children. Eddie, the oldest (aged eighteen), was working as a welder-fitter and his father George was now a motor-fitter; it is likely that they were both employed at Morris Motors in Cowley. Two of Eddie’s younger sisters (still at school) were living nearby in Fox Crescent with their maternal aunt Cath Coppock and her husband Arthur.

At some point after the outbreak of war, Eddie joined the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve and became a Sergeant (Air Gunner) in 218 (Gold Coast) Squadron, service number 1851287. He was based at Chedburgh in Suffolk. On 1 January 1945 he was part of the seven-man crew of a Lancaster bomber which took off at 4:06pm on a mission to bomb the railway yards at Vohwinkel in western Germany. This followed an unsuccessful operation the day before, when many of the bombs had fallen outside the target area due to strong winds. Seventeen aircraft from the 218 squadron took part in this New Year’s Day mission.

The attack was successful this time, and the target severely damaged, but almost immediately, at 21,000 feet, Eddie’s plane was hit by flak causing damage to the fuel lines feeding the port inner engine. During the homebound trip the aircraft was twice hit by flak from units of an American anti-aircraft battery at Namur in Belgium. The port side of the aircraft was engulfed in flames and the Australian pilot Flying Officer Robert Grivell gave the order to bale out. Only the bomb-aimer GE Ingram was able to do so. The Lancaster began to spin, and crashed at around 8pm nearby at Emines, killing the other six crew members: the Australian pilot, a Royal Canadian Airforce navigator, and four RAF Volunteer Reservists, including Eddie. He was 23. Another Lancaster was also hit in the same barrage of American anti-aircraft fire; all eight crew were killed.

Edward Buttrum-Gardiner and his five crew mates were initially buried at the temporary American Cemetery at Fosses-la-Ville near Namur. After the war, in November 1946, their bodies were re-buried at Leopoldsburg (British) War Cemetery at Limburg, Belgium. The inscription on Eddie’s Commonwealth War Grave is “He gave his greatest gift, his own unfinished life”.

Eddie’s squadron is also commemorated on the RAF Chedburgh memorial on the village green, and his is one of the 398 names in the Book of Remembrance in the church of All Saints, Chedburgh. He is also commemorated on the Oxford City Second World War Roll of Honour which is in the church of St Michael at the Northgate on Cornmarket.

Eddie seems to have started using the surname ‘Buttrum-Gardiner’ during the war, but it is not clear where the ‘Buttrum’ came from. On the St Matthew’s war memorial his name is spelled incorrectly as ‘R Buttram-Gardener’.

All six of Eddie’s younger sisters married after the war. His oldest sister Florence married Albert Andrews, who came from Jubilee Terrace in Grandpont. He, his three brothers, and their father, all worked for Salter's Steamers at one time or another. During the war Albert served in the Navy and in 1943 his boat was torpedoed and he was badly injured, but survived. After the war he became the Oxford University Waterman, a post he held for 35 years. He and Florence lived in the flat above the University Boat House, on the towpath between Folly Bridge and Donnington Bridge.

Eddie's father George died in 1977, aged 83, and his mother Dorothy died in 1981, also aged 83. The last of Eddie’s sisters, Megan, died in 2018.

Research by Liz Woolley; with thanks to Rod Andrews, nephew of Edward Buttrum-Gardiner.

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