* 17.05.1906, Přehořov.
† 16.10.1940, Pinner, UK.
Pre WW2
Jan Veselý was born on 17 May 1906 in Přehořov, a small village some 60 miles south of Prague, into the family of blacksmith Matěj Veselý and his wife Marie. He also had a younger step-brother, Jaroslav, the son of his father’s third wife, his previous two having died shortly after each other from the Spanish Flu epidemic. This was the deadliest respiratory outbreak of the 20th century, which infected some 500 million people worldwide between February 1918 until April 1920 and resulted in the deaths of between 50 and 100 million people. Sadly, when Jan was 12 years old, Marie also succumbed to the Spanish Flue and died. Jan attended elementary school in his native village for five years, then studied at the secondary school in nearby Soběslav. He continued his education at the State Teachers’ Institute, a prominent teacher-training college at Soběslav, a central institution for the professional training of primary school teachers in South Bohemia, from where he matriculated in 1926.
Czechoslovak Army
On completion of his education, for his compulsory military service Jan enlisted in the Czechoslovak army. During this period he decided to make his career as a professional soldier. In 1926 he began studying at the Military Academy in Hranice, from which he graduated on 29 July 1928 with the rank of poručík [Lieutenant] in the infantry. On 1 August 1928, he was posted to the 10th Border Battalion, who were deployed at Třebišov, near Košice, in the eastern Slovakia region of Czechoslovakia. Following a training course at Milovice, he returned to Třebišov, and on 11 August 1929 he was appointed platoon commander of the 2nd Company of the regiment and in March 1930 to its 3rd company.
Czechoslovak Air Force
As with many young Czechoslovak men of that time, aviation became his aspiration so he transferred to the fledgling Czechoslovak Air Force. On 1 October 1931 he was accepted into the 18th Observer school at the Military Aviation Academy at Prostějov, from where he graduated, as an observer pilot, on 30 June 1932. In July he was posted to the 66th Squadron of the 4th Air Regiment who were deployed at Hradec Králové airbase, fighter squadron which was equipped with Avia B-534 biplane fighter aircraft, the most advanced fighter used by the Czechoslovak Air Force.
On 3 April 1934, Jan was transferred to the 5th Air Regiment, who were deployed at Kbelý airbase, Prague, where he completed a two-month night flying course. On completing this, he returned to the 4th Air Regiment’s 66th Squadron. On 30 June 1935 he went back to the Military Aviation Academy at Prostějov where he attended the elementary pilot training course and on 1 April 1936 the advanced pilot’s course for bomber aircraft. On 15 October 1936, on completion of the course, he was posted to the 84th Squadron of the 4th Air Regiment, who were deployed at Brno airbase. They were a bomber and reconnaissance unit and equipped with Letov Š-16 single-engined twin-seat biplanes used in bomber and aerial observation roles.
On 1 October 1937, Jan was appointed, at the rank of Kapitán [F/Lt] to the 5th Air Regiment’s Technical Squadron. From 15 April until 22 July 1938, he completed an instrument night flying course at the 5th Air Regiment’s airbase at Brno.
Mobilisation
By the Autumn of 1938, the political situation in central Europe was changing rapidly. Hitler and the Nazis in Germany were making territorial demands on the Czechoslovak Government in respect of the Sudetenland border regions. This resulted in Czechoslovakia calling a general mobilisation and thus all men of military age were drafted into the military to help defend the country in the event of invasion.
During the September 1938 mobilisation, Jan was the Commander of the 5th Aviation Regiment’s 84th squadron who were deployed at Brno airbase.
Munich Dictat
Following the Munich Agreement, also known in Czechoslovakia as the ‘Munich Dictat’ or ‘Munich Betrayal’, of 30 September 1938, when the Sudetenland was ceded to Germany, Poland and Hungary also took some Czechoslovak territory. About 30% of Czechoslovakian territory had been lost, which included its border defences, and the new revised German border was now only some 30 km from Prague.
Despite assurances given by Hitler at the Munich Agreement, that he had no further interest in territorial gains for Germany, just a few months later Hitler extended his demands that the remaining regions of Czechoslovakia become part of Germany.
German Occupation
On the evening before the invasion, on March 14, 1939, Czechoslovak intelligence officers called a meeting where they announced that the threat of invasion was imminent and recommended measures which would prevent the most important assets from falling into German hands. However, no orders were handed down until too late. The Chief of the Czechoslovak Air Force General Fajfr and his deputy General Vicherek ordered that no aircraft were allowed to take off. The Department of the Ministry of National Defence started organising the transfer of the aircraft to several airfields in Moravia with the intention of getting the air fleet to Romania and Yugoslavia. None of these plans were carried out.
The Germans occupied Czechoslovakia on 15 March 1939. Under pressure, Emil Hácha, the Czechoslovak President, had acceded to their demands, and in the early hours of that day, he had ordered all Czechoslovak military units to stand down, remain in their barracks and not resist the occupation. Germanisation of Bohemia and Moravia began immediately; they were now the Reich Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (Protektorat Böhmen und Mähren), while Slovakia, in return for its allegiance to Nazi Germany, had become the ‘puppet’ independent state of Slovakia. By this time Jan had achieved 850 flying hours and had achieved the rank of štábní kapitán [S/Ldr].
Resistance
Upon occupation, the Czechoslovak Air Force was disbanded by the Germans and all personnel dismissed. But just four days later, on 19 March 1939, former senior officers of the now-disbanded Czechoslovak military had started to form an underground army, known as Obrana Národa [Defence of the Nation]. Obrana Národa also worked in co-operation with Svaz Letců, the Airman Association of the Czechoslovak Republic. One of their objectives was to assist as many airmen and soldiers as possible to get to neighbouring Poland where they could be formed into military units to fight for the liberation of their homeland. These two organisations provided money, couriers and other assistance to enable airmen to escape to Poland. Usually, this was by crossing the border from the Ostrava region because of the close proximity of the ‘new’ Polish border since Poland had occupied the Český Těšín region of Czechoslovakia on 10 October 1938.
To Poland
Following the occupation, Jan was one of the many Czechoslovak airmen and soldiers who regarded the German occupation as unacceptable and who saw it was their patriotic duty to go to Poland from where they could fight to achieve the liberation of Czechoslovakia. With the help of those two organisations, Jan covertly escaped over the border to Poland on 26 April 1939, and then travelled to Kraków and reported for military duty at the Czechoslovak Consulate there.
Polish Disappointment
At the Consulate, Jan was advised that the formation of Czechoslovak military units in Poland was not permitted. The Polish Authorities, who recognised the new puppet State of Slovakia, showed little interest in the Czechoslovak military who were escaping across their border in groups and would not allow independent Czechoslovak units to be established on its territory as they were concerned about provoking neighbouring Nazi Germany.
Only after lengthy negotiations between Vladimír Znojemský, the Czechoslovak Consul, in Krákow, his counterparts in France and Great Britain, countries with which Czechoslovakia had an Alliance Treaty, and the French Government, did the French agree to permit 4,000 Czechoslovaks into the French Foreign Legion. French law did not allow for foreign military units to be on its territory in peacetime, and the Czechoslovak escapees would be required to join the French Foreign Legion for a five-year period with the agreement that, should war be declared, they would be transferred to French military units. The alternative was to be returned to occupied Czechoslovakia and face German retribution for escaping – usually imprisonment or execution with further retribution to their families.
They were accommodated at the ‘Dom Turystczny’, a cheap tourist hostel near the Czechoslovak Consulate whilst preparations were made for their onward journey to France.
To France
Following the completion of those preparations, Jan received his travel document on 20 May. With 108 other escapee Czechoslovak military personnel he then took a train to Gdynia, a port on Poland’s Baltic coast. There, on 23 May, they boarded the Polish ocean liner SS Batory, which was en route to New York, making a stop at Copenhagen, then passing through the Kattegat and Skagerrak straits, into the North Sea, before going through the English Channel to the French port of Cherbourg, arriving there on 26 May 1939.
France
Once in France, the escapees first travelled to Le Bourget airfield, in the north-east district of Paris, where they were billeted pending acceptance into the French Foreign Legion. It was a slow process as the SS Batory was the first ship bringing a significant number of Czechoslovaks to France and so only now had the French authorities began to actively address the emerging situation regarding the Czechoslovak escapees. During that period, they underwent medical checks and also took part in French lessons prior to being accepted into the Legion. On 19 August 1939, Jan was accepted into the Legion at the rank of Lieutenant.
Fall Weiß
Fortunately for Jan, he was still awaiting transfer to the Legion’s training centre at Siddi-bel Abbes, Algeria when, on 1 September 1939, Fall Weiß began, the German invasion of Poland. That resulted in England and France declaring war on Germany two days later.
L’Armeé de l’Air
With war being declared, the Czechoslovak escapees who were now serving in the French Foreign Legion, were released from their service contract. For the airmen amongst them, this meant being transferred to the l’Armée de l’Air. In October, Jan was posted to their Centre d’Instruction á la Reconnaissance at Base Aérienne 705 at Tours, some 130 miles south west of Paris on 2 September 1939. The airbase was a training centre for pilots, observers and air-gunners intended for reconnaissance and bomber units in l’Armeé de l’Air. Jan was put in command of 90 Czechoslovak airmen there.
Subsequently, Jan in command of 60 other Czechoslovak airmen continued their French bomber aircraft re-training at Centre d’Instruction á la Bombardiers at Base Aérienne 119 at Pau, some 400 miles south-west of Paris. There they trained on the modern Hanriot H-436 advanced dual-seat biplane trainer and then the twin-engined Potez 35, Potez 540, MB-200 and MB-210 bombers. Further training was then continued at Base Aérienne 103 at Châteauroux-Déols, some 150 miles south-west of Paris.
Fall Gelb
The relative calm of the Phoney War ended at 05:35 on 10 May 1940 when ‘Fall Gelb’ – the German attack on Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg and France – took place. In France they came through the dense Ardennes Forest to skirt around the main defence of the Maginot line and swept Northwards towards the English Channel. The Battle of France had begun.
The lightning speed and ferocity of the German Blitzkrieg attack caused the l’Armée de l’Air units to rapidly retreat westwards. For Jan and his group, this meant continuing their training by re-deploying to Base Aérienne 118 at Tarbes, some 20 miles east of Pau near the Pyrenees mountains and only some 50 miles from the Spanish border. With the French capitulation now imminent, the Allies realised that the war on mainland France was lost and the priority now was evacuation. By this time Jan and his group had not completed their retraining and thus they never flew operationally in the Battle of France.
In between 28 May and 4 June, some 338,000 personnel from the British Expeditionary Force as well as French and Belgium military had been evacuated from Dunkirk – Operation Dynamo.
Winston Churchill, the British Prime Minister, appealed to all the Czechoslovak airmen in the l’Armée de l’Air to come to Britain and continue the fight from there. The Allies were making every effort to evacuate Allied military personnel from the west coast of France and for those in North Africa, from Casablanca on the Atlantic coast of Morocco.
Operation Aerial
Operation Aerial, the evacuation of Allied military forces and civilians from ports in Western France had been in operation from 15 June. To be included in this evacuation, the Czechoslovaks made their way to Bordeaux where they met up with other Czechoslovak airmen. From Tarbes, Jan and his group made their way through the chaos of westward-bound fleeing civilians and military personnel, to Bordeaux, some 115 miles north-west, to be evacuated.
There they met up with other Czechoslovak airmen from other airbases also seeking evacuation. From there, a total of 89 Czechoslovak airmen, under the command of Major Alexander Hess and 300 Polish airmen were evacuated aboard the ‘Ary Schaeffer’. This small Dutch cargo ship provided cramped conditions for all on board, and sailed at 13:30 on 19 June to Falmouth, England. After a prolonged voyage going 300 to 400 miles out into the Atlantic, to avoid U-Boats and Luftwaffe attacks, before changing course East to Falmouth, they arrived four days later at Falmouth, which was good timing as France capitulated on 22 June.
In the period from June to August 1940, 932 Czechoslovak airmen were evacuated from France and reached England. Operation Aerial was concluded on 25 June.
France capitulated to Germany on 22 June 1940, when an armistice was signed in the Compiègne Forest, in the same railway carriage that Germany had surrendered to France in November 1918. The armistice to come into effect on 25 June.
RAF
After their arrival, the Czechoslovak airmen were transferred to RAF Innsworth, Gloucestershire, for security vetting. On 7 July 1940, Jan and his fellow airmen were then transferred to the Czechoslovak Depot at RAF Cosford, near Wolverhampton. There, they underwent basic RAF training, Link Trainer instruction and elementary English lessons.
At this time Britain was under threat of invasion by Nazi Germany and the RAF’s emphasis was for fighter pilots for the Battle of Britain. Thus, Czechoslovak fighter pilots were quickly accepted into the RAF Volunteer Reserve and sent for fighter aircraft retraining. However, at RAF Cosford, there was now also a pool of experienced Czechoslovak airmen assembling that were not fighter pilots and thus became the embryo for a bomber squadron which would not need extensive retraining, but only require some brief retraining to familiarise them with RAF equipment and procedures. Officers amongst them were formally commissioned, and Jan, because of his senior rank, was commissioned at the rank of S/Ldr.
To 311 Sqn
On 2 August 1940, Jan was posted to the 311 [Czechoslovak] squadron, a newly formed bomber unit deployed at RAF Honington, some 7 miles north of Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, becoming one of its founding members. There, he was appointed C/O of its ‘B’ Flight.
The squadron was in No.3 Group of RAF Bomber Command, and equipped with Vickers Wellington twin-engine medium-range bombers. Initially the squadron was jointly commanded, with Wing Commander Karel Mareš (who chose to change his surname to Toman to protect family and relatives who remained in the former Czechoslovakia), together with Wing Commander John Griffiths DFC, a Canadian serving in the RAF. Its role at that time was bombing raids on the Channel ports to thwart the build-up of landing barges that the Germans were assembling there in anticipation of invading England. They also targeted the railway marshalling yards in northern occupied Belgium and France to frustrate the movement of the German Wehrmacht to those Channel ports.
In WW2, the standard operational tour for a RAF Bomber Command crew was 30 completed operational sorties. But by 1941, the odds of surviving a full tour were slim, and statistically only 1 in 6 were expected to complete their first tour without either being shot down and killed or captured.
The squadron’s first operational sortie was carried out on the night of the 10 September 1940, when three crews took off from RAF Honington to attack the railway marshalling yards near Brussels. They redeployed to RAF East Wretham on 16 September 1940.
Jan’s 1st operational flight was 12 October 1940 for a night raid on the Air Ministry building at Berlin. That night, four Wellington bombers took off from RAF East Wretham at 18:55 with Jan at the controls of Wellington Ic, N2771, KX-H. His aircrew were Sgt František Zapletal co-pilot, P/O Jaroslav Slabý, navigator, P/O Jaroslav Matoušek, radio-operator, P/O František Truhlář, front-gunner, and Sgt Josef Albrecht, rear-gunner, all of whom were on their maiden operational flight. In spite of heavy anti-aircraft fire, en route to Berlin, the target was hit, resulting in numerous fires being observed. All four aircraft returned to base, Jan landing at 02:16 after a flight of 7 hrs 21 min.
Fateful Flight
However, just a few days later, the night of 16/17 October was the darkest ever for 311 Squadron – it lost three aircraft out of four sent out for a raid on Bremen, Germany.
That night, Jan was Captain of Wellington Ic, N2771, KX-H, and his aircrew the same as his previous flight of 12 October. Take-off was at 18:45 from RAF East Wretham. The weather that night was bad and combined with fog, visibility was poor. En-route to the target, the Wellington iced-up, so the crew aborted the mission, and instead dropped their bombs in the area of Oldenburg, some 30 miles west of Bremen, before returning to base. On the return, the aircraft was hit by anti-aircraft fire which seriously injured Matoušek and damaged the radio equipment. With poor visibility and unable to obtain an accurate radio fix, the pilots lost their orientation in the fog and, at about 03:20, in the north London area, came into contact with the steel cable of a barrage balloon protecting the capital, which sliced off half the wing.
The aircraft crashed in flames onto the tennis court at Bentley Priory near Stanmore, north London, a few hundred metres from the headquarters of RAF Fighter Command. Only Truhlář, in the rear part of the aircraft, which was torn off by the impact, survived the crash but was badly burnt. His extensive burns caused him to become one of two Czechoslovak RAF airmen who required plastic surgery treatment at Dr Archibald McIndoe’s specialist burns unit at East Grinstead – the Guinea Pig Club.
S/Ldr Jan Veselý was 34 years old. The five airmen who died on the spot were buried on 21 October 1940 in a communal grave at the new Pinner Harrow cemetery.
Of the four 311 Sqn aircraft sent out that night, three did not return to base, and of their eighteen crew members, ten men were killed, two were captured and one was seriously injured. S/Ldr Jan Veselý’s Wellington had crashed in the grounds of Bentley Priory. Wellington, L7844 KX-T, flown by P/O Bohumil Landa was shot down over the Zuider Zee, Holland and the entire crew were killed. S/Ldr Josef Šnajdr, in Wellington N2773 – KX-K, with a failed radio, fog, low cloud and running out of fuel, had to bail out of the aircraft, having just crossed the East Anglia coast. Unfortunately, due to mistaken identity, P/O Miloslav Vejražka was killed after landing.
As a reprisal for Jan escaping in 1939, the Germans had interned his relatives in Svatobořice internment camp, some 220 km south-east of Prague, during the war.
Medals Awarded
Air Crew Europe Star
War Medal 1939–1945
Válečný kříž 1939
Za zásluhy I.stupně
Pamětní medaile se štítky F–VB
Remembered
Great Britain:
Lincoln – International Bomber Command Memorial:
Jan Veselý is remembered in International Bomber Command Memorial, Lincoln.
London – St Clement Danes:
Jan Veselý is remembered in the Remembrance book at St Clements Danes Church, London.
London – West Hampstead :
He is remembered on the Memorial Plaque at the Bohemia House, the former Czechoslovak National House, at West Hampstead, London.
London – Westminster Abbey:
Jan Veselý is remembered on a Memorial Plaque at Westminster Abbey. for five 311 Sqn airmen who were killed during the period of the Battle of Britain.
Czech Republic:
Prague 1 – St Vitus Cathedral:
He is remembered in the Remembrance book at St Vitus Cathedral, Hradčany, Prague.
Prague 1 – Klárov:
In November 2017, his name, along with the names of 2533 other Czechoslovak men and women who had served in the RAF during WW2, was unveiled at the Winged Lion Monument at Klárov, Prague.
Prague 3 – The Army Museum:
He is remembered on the Memorial Plaque at the Military History Institute, at Žižkov Prague.
Prague 6 – Dejvice:
He is named on the Memorial for the fallen Czechoslovak airmen of 1939-1945, at Dejvice, Prague 6.
Přehořov:
At the initiative of the Jindřichův Hradec Aviation History Club, a memorial plaque was unveiled to S/Ldr Jan Veselý on Saturday, 19 May 2018 in his hometown of Přehořov (Tábor district). The monument was built by the municipality of Přehořov. Its Mayor, as well as General Emil Boček – former RAF fighter pilot and the club’s Chairman Mgr. Vladislav Burian presented the personality of Jan Veselý in their speeches.
Prostějov:
He is commemorated on the Airmen’s memorial at Prostějov.
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Thank you for this informative story. It sheds light on my mother’s first husband Jan Filip, who was also in the 311 Squadron. My father, Frank Volny, was a friend to her after Filip’s Wellington crashed returning form a training mission. He is buried in Plymouth. I don’t know a lot of the details.
We will remember them.