Tweddell

Flt. Lt. Ian William Tweddell
World War II
Biography
January 12, 1917 to June 19, 1975

Ian Tweddell was born in County Durham, England. His father, William Henry, was overseas in the British Army (Durham Light Infantry). He didn't meet his young son until four years later when he left the army in Asia and joined Ian and his mother, Margaret Ethel, who had travelled from England to meet him in Canada. They settled in the Tyrone District south of Lashburn. Ian studied at Tyrone through grade six and then, in the British tradition, went to boarding schools in Prince Albert from 1929 to 1934. He worked at home on the farm for two more years and then completed his grade 12 at Lashburn High School in 1936-37 and moved on to the University of Saskatchewan in 1937.

Ian came from a family with a history of military service in Britain. In the summer of 1936 he joined the Saskatchewan Mounted Rifles and served at Dundurn as a trooper. When he entered the College of Engineering, he joined the Canadian Officers Training Corps. His academic career was cut short after two years when he had to return home to help on the farm after his father was injured. Finally, in April of 1941, Ian enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force.

Ian trained at bases in Penhold, Edmonton and Lethbridge, Alberta and finally, at Rivers, Manitoba before being sent via Halifax in March 1942 to England and a Royal Air Force Trainees Pool. He was assigned to the Royal Air Force 98 Squadron in which he served as a navigator, observer and squadron photographic officer on Mitchell bombers. he was shot down May 13, 1943 after completing a bombing run on the railway yards near Boulogne in France. He parachuted into the sea and was taken prisoner by the Kriegsmarine (German Navy).

He spent the rest of the war as a Prisoner of War at the infamous Stalag Luft III near Sagan in eastern German (now part of Poland). Ian was not involved in the "Great Escape" for which this camp is so well known, but like all the POW's, the murder of fifty of the eighty escapees by the Gestapo haunted him. The prisoners suffered from hunger, loneliness, boredom, and fear. Their conditions worsened considerably when the camp evacuated in January 1945 and the prisoners led on a forced march first westward, away from the advancing Russian forces, then back towards the east, away from the Allied forces, and then back towards the west when it became obvious that the war was near its ened and their captors chose to surrender themselves to the Allies rather than the Russians.

The POW's, fleeing westward with countless others, both combatants and civilians, were finally intercepted by Montgomery's forces. They were trucked to an airbase and flown to England. Ian was "safe in the U. K" on May 10, 1945. He was able to visit his much loved Auntie Lillian and her family in County Durham, see his younger brother, Colin, who was also by then in the RCAF and stationed in England, and purchase a new uniform before he was repatriated to Canada on June 1, 1945.

Ian and Doris Melville married in January 1942. They were able to live together for only two months before he was sent overseas. Doris waited anxiously, often not knowing if he was alive at all, for his safe return. He was welcomed back to Lashburn by his wife, Doris, his parents, his in-laws, Rob and Eva Melville and Doris' sisters, Iris (Nicholdson) and Mern (Napper). After his discharge, Ian returned to the University of Saskatchewan and finished his Engineering degree.