Randle at the head of the RAF team during the Nijmegen March of 1962
Bomber pilot who made a ‘home run’ to freedom after being shot down in the Ardennes and later commanded RAF Odiham
Baling out of his Wellington with his crew after a raid on Essen when flak had put one of the bomber’s engines out of action and made it impossible to steer, Bill Randle came down in the branches of a tree in the Ardennes, releasing himself from his parachute and reaching the ground without mishap. He then spent two days hiding by day and walking westwards by night before revealing his identity to some friendly Belgians, who put him in touch with an escape line set up by Belgian and French Resistance.
After a number of adventures and close shaves, he made it to the Pyrenees and thence down through Spain to Gibraltar. From there he returned to the UK by plane and, as an NCO, was awarded the Distinguished Flying Medal for his first tour of operations.
Having baled out over enemy territory and been helped by the Resistance, he was not permitted to return to operations until late in the war, in case he might fall into the hands of the enemy and let slip details of Resistance escape lines. In consequence he spent the remainder of his war training bomber crews for which he was awarded the Air Force Cross.
Randle was born in 1921 at Colaton Raleigh in Devon and educated at Exmouth Grammar School, which, with the family in financial straits, he left in 1937 and joined Lloyds Bank as a clerk in London. After the outbreak of war he joined the Local Defence Volunteers (Home Guard) from which he was called up in 1941 and sent for pilot training in the RAF in America. On gaining his wings he returned to the UK and after further training at an Operational Training Unit was sent in July 1942 as a sergeant pilot to 150 Squadron, a Wellington unit based at Snaith in East Yorkshire.
Flying his first operation — a raid on Wilhelmshaven docks — on the very night of his arrival at Snaith, as second pilot in a Wellington, Randle flew as No 2 in two further raids before captaining his own crew for the first time in an attack on Duisburg in the Ruhr. For his second op as captain he was honoured with the dropping of the squadron’s first 4,000lb “cookie” from a Wellington Mk3, “Z for Zebra”, especially modified to carry the bomb. But the unaccustomed weight of such a heavy bomb on the Wellington’s airframe fractured some hydraulic piping, flooding the aircraft with oil. Z for Zebra had to return home, jettisoning its cookie in the North Sea en route. When the problem had been rectified Randle got the opportunity to drop his first cookie, in a raid on Saarbrücken, on July 29, 1942.
Thereafter he took part in raids on further Ruhr targets, as well as Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Kassel, Mainz and Bremen, before the fateful Essen raid of September 17, 1942.
Hit by flak over the target as her bomb was dropped, Z for Zebra suffered an engine failure and damage to rudder and flaps which meant that Randle could only fly her in a wide circle. A 130mph jet stream was pushing them eastwards, and realising that their pilot could not get them home against it, Randle’s crew agreed with him that baling out was the best option. He watched them each exit safely before jumping himself.
In his memoirs Randle recounts the story of his 55-day journey overland from enemy-occupied Europe, through suspicious, fascist, neutral Spain to the eventual haven of Gibraltar, and thence by air to Portreath in Cornwall. He was glad to know that all his crew had survived the bale-out, one as a prisoner, the others, like him, as “evaders” — as they were known to differentiate them from escapers from prison camps. In 1943 he was commissioned.
Randle spent the remainder of his war in various capacities other than operational flying. Late in 1944 he was informed that the ban against successful evaders flying on operations over Europe had been rescinded, and he converted to the Mosquito with a view to joining the Pathfinder Force. In the event the war in Europe ended before he was posted. The chance of flying Mosquitoes as part of “Tiger Force”, the proposed British air component of an Allied assault against the Japanese mainland, was also forestalled by the dropping of the atomic bombs.
Granted a permanent commission in 1946, Randle worked on the planning of continental escape routes in the event of a Cold War, served on the Air Attaché’s staff in Washington, and flew helicopters with the US Air Force during the Korean war, for which he received the US Air Medal. During a posting to Rheindahlen in Germany, close to the Dutch border, in the 1960s he led several RAF teams in the Nijmegen Marches, a form of recreational non-competitive marches lasting four days involving teams from around the world. He later commanded RAF Odiham, helping in the Zambian oil lift at the time of Ian Smith’s unilateral declaration of independence in Rhodesia. For this he was appointed CBE.
In retirement from the RAF after 1971 he devoted much of his time to raising money for charities, particularly RAF charities, with his wife, Wendy, whom he had married in 1945. He published several novels with air force backgrounds, and a memoir, Blue Skies and Dark Nights ( 2002).
His wife died in 2006, and he is survived by two daughters. His son died in 1956.
Group Captain Bill Randle, CBE, AFC, DFM, wartime bomber pilot, was born on May 17, 1921. He died on August 12, 2012, aged 91
Dom Alberic Stacpoole
Ñîëäàí, ó÷¸íûé è ìîíàõ, êàâààëåð Âîåíîãî Êðåñòà (1953 ãîä, Êîðåÿ)
Soldier, scholar and monk who was awarded the MC in the Korean war and later became Acting Master of St Benet’s Hall in Oxford
John Stacpoole enjoyed a distinguished military career, during which he was awarded the Military Cross in 1953 for his courage and leadership while commanding an assault pioneer platoon in the Korean war, before becoming a monk at Ampleforth in North Yorkshire and later Acting Master of St Benet’s Hall in Oxford.
Humphrey Adam John Stacpoole was born in 1931 in Belfast, where his father, Lieutenant-Colonel H. H. Stacpoole of the West Yorkshire Regiment, was stationed. He was educated at Ampleforth and RMA Sandhurst, becoming a junior under officer there before being commissioned into the Duke of Wellington’s (West Riding) Regiment in 1951.
In the spring of 1953 he was commanding the assault pioneer platoon of the 1st Duke’s with the 29th Infantry Brigade in Korea. As the Panmunjom peace talks appeared to be nearing a conclusion, the Chinese were detected preparing for a third attempt to capture “The Hook”, a 200ft hill dominating the Sami-ch’on valley held by the Duke’s at the heart of the Commonwealth Division’s sector. In the lull before the battle, Stacpoole’s pioneers were withdrawn from the line for a crash course in mine laying and wiring before beginning an intensive programme of strengthening the battalion’s defences. Much of the ground to be mined and wired lay on forward slopes in clear sight of the enemy and was vulnerable to artillery, mortar and small arms fire. Work continued despite bright moonlight and the close proximity of the enemy.
Stacpoole worked with his pioneers, guiding and leading them by example until he was wounded by a mortar bomb while erecting wire. When the attack came, the work of his pioneers proved invaluable and the Duke’s held “The Hook”. He was awarded the Military Cross for his courage and leadership. “His personality left as strong an impression on his seniors as it did upon those who served under him,” the citation said. On his return to England, Stacpoole volunteered for secondment to the Parachute Regiment and served with the 2nd Battalion in Cyprus during the Eoka terrorist campaign and in the Anglo-French intervention in Egypt after President Gamal Nasser’s nationalisation of the Suez Canal.
In 1957 he was appointed aide-de-camp to the British GOC in Nigeria, where he served until leaving the Army in 1960 to become a monk at Ampleforth — thereby “exchanging one red hat for another”, as a fellow officer wrote in the Duke of Wellington’s regimental mess-book. He took the monastic name Alberic because, as he said, “St Alberic was a bad soldier and became a good monk, while I was a good soldier and make a bad monk.”
It was not until he was a monk that he finally went up to Oxford to read history. His tutor, James Campbell, remarked that his essays were like a military campaign in which every gun must fire at least once. Stacpoole subsequently gained first-class honours.
As editor of the Ampleforth Journal (and later founder of the short-lived Ampleforth Review) from 1967 to 1980, Stacpoole assembled a stellar group of historians and theologians to write articles for him. He transformed the Journal from a school magazine into a respectable scholarly publication — not entirely to the satisfaction of its intended readership. At the same time he edited a 1,000-page tome on York, The Noble City of York (1972). After a dozen years of teaching at Ampleforth, and after being ordained priest in 1970, he returned to Oxford as Acting Master of St Benet’s Hall, and later as Senior Tutor. No active sportsman himself, he took a naive delight in the quite unduly high proportion of Blues among his students. He also completed an important doctorate on the early work of the Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission.
His ecumenical work perhaps even triumphed over his passion for military history. For many years he presided genially over the Ecumenical Society of the Blessed Virgin Mary as general secretary, becoming known for inviting his many distinguished friends to “a Mass and a glass” at St Benet’s. Perhaps his most important original achievement was editing The Vatican Council by Those Who Were There, published in 1986 to mark the 25th anniversary of the council, and containing detailed accounts by a wide range of the most important participants still living.
After another spell as Acting Master of St Benet’s, he returned to Ampleforth in 1990 to become parish priest of the two neighbouring towns of Helmsley and Kirkbymoorside, bewildering some of his Yorkshire flock by the sophisticated scholarly, international and royalist tone of his weekly bulletin. He also became the scourge of newspaper editors for his painstaking and meticulous correction of the smallest errors in military obituaries.
In his last few years he suffered from dementia but retained to the end his ready smile and his perfect courtesy, and fulfilled his final ambition of living until the London Olympics.
Dom Alberic Stacpoole, MC, soldier, scholar and monk, was born on April 19, 1931. He died on September 30, 2012, aged 81
