John Ward, MC, (15 December 1918 – 29 August 1995) was a Flight Lieutenant in the Royal Air Force decorated twice for bravery. During World War II he was a member of a bomber crew shot down and taken POW but escaped and served as a BBC war correspondent behind enemy lines and fought with the Polish resistance Armia Krajowa (Home Army) participating in the Warsaw Uprising in occupied Poland being wounded in action against the SS controlled German forces.
Early life
Ward was born in December 1918 the Kings Norton district of Birmingham and grew up in the nearby suburb of Ward End where he was educated at the local council school.
Royal Air Force service
He joined the Royal Air Force (RAF) in 1937 aged 18, as an Aircraftman 2nd class, to train for aircrew as a wireless operator/air gunner and by 1939 was serving with No. 226 Squadron RAF based at RAF Upper Heyford. On 2 September 1939 the squadron was part of the RAF contingent which moved to France ready for war. Under the Advanced Air Striking Force it was based at Rheims.
Prisoner of war
Ward was an Aircraftman 1st class and member of the crew of a No. 226 Squadron RAF Fairey Battle light bomber (serial number "K9183") on 10 May 1940 when it was shot down by the Luftwaffe during the Fall of France.
Tasked to bomb German troop convoys as they advanced south-west of Luxemburg, four aircraft from the squadron took off at 17:00 hours GMT from Rheims, Champagne. After locating a column of 30 to 40 vehicles they made several dive bombing attacks in the face of heavy defensive fire. They suffered one aircraft shot down in flames (K9183) and another which crashed after being badly shot up. All three crew of Ward's crew were taken prisoner wounded, although the fatally injured pilot died three days later.
Ward was captured and held as a prisoner of war. He was at Stalag Luft I near Barth, Western Pomerania in December 1940 before being moved to an unnamed labour camp in Upper Silesia in January 1941. At the end of March 1941 he was sent to a labour camp near Lissa in Poland.
Escape and the Polish resistance
On 17 April 1941, Ward was with a working party of twenty prisoners supervised by two German soldiers when he hid, changed into civilian clothes and escaped. At Gostyn he was arrested in the railway marshalling yards and taken to the police station where he escaped through a window at night. In six days Ward travelled to Sieradz where he was directed to the local Roman Catholic priest who provided an introduction to the Polish Home Army. On 30 April 1941, he was taken by train to Lodz. At the end of May Ward was taken by bus to Warsaw. The plan had been to get Ward across the border to the Soviet Union but when the Germans invaded it in June 1941 that became impractical. Ward met Otto Gordzialowski, a lawyer who ran an underground newspaper called Dzien, and worked for him transcribing British Broadcasting Company (BBC) radio broadcasts for translation into Polish for the newspaper. In September 1941, the Gestapo located the newspaper and captured the printers and distributors but failed to catch Gordzialowski or Ward. During 1942 Ward began to build wireless receivers and transmitters which were supplied to Polish resistance groups. In June 1942, he opened his own newspaper, the Echo, and after building it up passed it to the ZWZ organisation in February 1943. During this period he trained a number of Poles as radio operators.
Operating with the Polish resistance, he was tasked with facilitating communication between the British government and the Polish underground. From 1941 to 1945 Ward was the communications liaison between the British government and the Armia Krajowa (Polish Home Army); he also worked as a war correspondent for the London Times including over two years in occupied Warsaw.