Flight Lieutenant :Romualdas (Romas) Marcinkus of Lithuania :Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve

FLIGHT LIEUTENANT
ROMAS MARCINKUS
Service Number: 89580
Regiment & Unit/Ship
Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve

1 Sqdn.

Date of Death
Died 29 March 1944

Buried or commemorated at
POZNAN OLD GARRISON CEMETERY

Coll. grave 9. A.

Poland

• Country of Service United Kingdom
• Awards Mentioned in Despatches
• Additional Info Of Lithuania.

Romualdas Marcinkus - Wikipedia.

 

Whenever I see a RAF casualty with date of death being 29 March 1944 and Poznan being recorded as buried or commemorated,I immediately think of the mass escape of officer aircrew from Stalag Luft 111

All were cremated at the various locations where they were captured which proved to provide vital information to the RAF Special Investigation Branch in discovering which Gestapo district had carried out the murders.From there the trails led to the perpetrators who had carried out the atrocities following intensive detective work by the RAF S.I.B

In the case of the murders of F/L Romas Marcinkus,F/L Edward Brettell,F/L Gilbert Waleen and F/O Henri Picard,these were carried out by the Danzig Gestapo and cremation records indicated that they were cremated at Danzig. It was virtually impossible to conduct field research in Danzig because the British were barred from Danzig. The case was finally cracked from the philosophy of "Find the woman and you will find the man".The link was found to be in Hamburg,

The killer was a huge sadistic thug by the name of Reinhold Bruchardt...tracked down through the Hamburg link,he was sentenced to death on 5 November 1948 but escaped the death penalty.His death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment when Britain experimentally abandoned the death penalty.

A pen picture of F/L Marcinkus from "Exemplary Justice" by Allen Andrews reveals he was ..."A pillar of Stalag Luft 111 forgery department but also a pillar of every department.He was the principal pumper of information from soft Germans.He was the intelligence expert for the Baltic and the Low Countries; intelligence and language adviser to the forgery department ; and grand Know All on the economics,military dispositions and transport opportunities with Germany.Using an enormous file of German newspapers which the Camp Censor kindly allowed him,with a Baedeker and railway timetable which the Censor was not consulted about,he compiled an exhaustive dossier of the week to week changes in German life,locations of industry,and above all the railway timings which were essential to any "compleat" escaper. Marcinkus could read between the lines,for instance,Aachen had suffered heavy recent bombing raids.All travel into seriously bombed areas was banned until communications were restored: therefore it was not only futile,but an invitation to arrest the holder on suspicion,for Tim Walenn to issue a forged railway pass to go to Aachen".

F/L Romas Marcinkus 22 July 1910-29 March 1944..... one report indicates he was 36 years old when he was murdered.

Served with No 1 Squadron and was shotdown on 12 February 1942 while piloting Hurricane 11c BD 949 JX-J and acting as a fighter escort during Operation Fuller. Fuller, a disastrous operation to intercept the Channel Dash of the two Kregsmarine battle cruisers,the Scharnhorst, Gneisenau and the cruiser.Prinz Eugen led to heavy losses for the attackers and escorts.

Per Ardua ad Astra

 

I never cease to be amazed at the sheer worldwide nature of WW2 RAF members . I must compile a list of all the nationalities represented one day

 

Just as a link up to this from another thread, he's mentioned in the book 'Slipstream - Raymond and Langdon' I'm currently reading which is excerpts from the RAF journal. The particular article concerns a woman running a Lithuanian restaurant near the base he operated from and how she's convinced he's alive while his colleague (H.E Bates) is equally sure he must have died during the channel dash. The focus is that he was a free man, making a free choice to stand up for his beliefs. It ends with the news he's a POW and they naturally assume he's therefore safe.

 

No 1 Squadron was operating out of Tangmere when F/L Marcinkus was shotdown,the squadron having been based there from 1 July 1941.