Lower Hutt pupil's project on grandfather's WWII service wins award

By SIMON EDWARDS

Stuff.co.nz | Sunday, 16 August 2015

Lower Hutt 11-year-old Genevieve Woolf was a runner-up in a national genealogy poster competition but the real prize was finding out more about her late granddad.

The New Zealand Society of Genealogists challenged young people to research and tell the World War 1 or 2 story of a family member through the competition "What Did You Do in the War, Grandy?".

Genevieve, who goes to Saints Peter and Paul School, wrote about her maternal granddad Noel Kelly, a 'triple specialist' with the RNZAF - bomb aimer, navigator and gunner.

Her granddad died three years ago at age 89, and while Genevieve got to spend lots of time with him, like so many who fought in the war he didn't talk much about those days - especially the bombing raids over Dresden and other parts of Germany.

But Genevieve was able to write about one tale he would chuckle over - the night they got bored out over the Irish channel on submarine search, and decided to make a visit over Dublin.  That was neutral territory during the war but Irish gunners nervous at the appearance of the large bomber opened fire.

"Granddad had to come up with this very long story in explanation ... about running low on fuel, having to take doglegs here, there and everywhere to get home," Genevieve said.  "They didn't believe him but [with no proof] they had to let them off."

Later, in camp for repatriation home after the war, Air Marshal Arthur 'Bomber' Harris, came up to her granddad and with a smile on his face and asked 'been to Dublin lately?'."

Genevieve also wrote about how one of her grandad's friends, later best man at his wedding, Fr Jack Ward, used his log book to track a village near Dresden which the crew feared had been caught in fallout from one of their bombing raids targeting munitions factory.  He went back in the 1990s to apologise to people living there.

Genevieve says as her birthday was approaching one year and she was wondering what presents she might get, she thought of her grandad, whose eighteenth birthday 'present' was a letter calling on him to enlist.

He survived bomber missions when many didn't and achieved much in his life, including becoming the trustee of The Public Trust, the Attorney-General in Western Samoa, writing law textbooks and chairing Medic Alert NZ.

Though his wartime log book was confiscated after the Dublin escapade, Genevieve and her family are glad to have other war records, including photographs of his fellow flying officers, including of them getting up to hi-jinx in Trafalgar Square, and peeling onions while wearing gas masks.

Genevieve won $125 as her competition prize and, with a talent for writing, can now say she has banked her first cheque as a wordsmith.

  Genevieve's project, and other top entries in the national competition, will be on display at the Family History Open Day at the Hutt Bowling Club this Saturday [22 August 2015].

- Hutt News