158 Squadron Memorial

The land around the East Riding of Yorkshire feels very flat if, like me, you are used to hills.

Fields are largely fenceless, more reminiscent of land around Norfolk or rural Germany, a place many young men and boys were bound during World War Two, some of whom are remembered here in this sculpture, Squadron 158 Memorial.

There's something stark and haunting about this work. Driving on a bright and breezy day under a big, unbroken blue sky, it stopped me in my tracks.

It almost felt as though these men, cut from metal, were marching towards me with cold courage.

They are seven larger-than-life silhouette statuesque fellows, dressed in their bomber jackets, carrying their parachutes, heading toward their plane.

I turned the car at a field end and drove back for a more considered look, but they were looking at me. Seven stares over dark, furrowed brows and consternation.

The story behind the steel charts the lives and losses of the men and women who were all members of Squadron 158 from Driffield, East Yorkshire.

The Royal Air Force's Bomber Command controlled Britain's strategic bombing force, which played a central role in WWII. The average age of men signing up was 22, but many of these lads were just 18. Look at their young faces. They lost nearly 56,000 personnel. In 1941 the average life expectancy of a rear gunner was just six weeks in action. No wonder the look in their eyes is dark.

The sculpture looks like a collective movement of people walking towards the onlooker. The seven of them going to board their bombers, taking them on missions where they don't know the outcomes.

The sculptures are solid silhouettes except for the cutaways in their faces, which project the fear and emotion of heading off to the unknown. The faces were made using a water-jet cutter and not a laser, as people may assume. Here we see Peter at work designing the cut-out details for the faces.

And this is the end result! Magic, what the simple removal of a solid substance does! Just enough detail to hold together the identity of a man with a girlfriend, or a wife and maybe children or someone's son, who wouldn't know if he'd be returning home.

The work is made in weathering steel, which over time ages and softens down, to blend into its surroundings, giving an earthy, aged effect. It's gritty, realistic, grounded, not overblown and sentimental or ostentatious.

Artist, Peter Naylor, seen above, is local and from Beverley. Here he is sighting the memorial figures in a maquette.

He worked initially as an art teacher, then moved abroad to teach English as a foreign language.

In his own words:

The backdrop of these seven men is significant in peacetime.

The twelve-turbine wind farm now sits on the land that was RAF Lissett Airfield in East Yorkshire. This was the base for the 158 Squadron during the Second World War from 1943 to 1945.

There were 250 operational missions using four-engined Halifax Heavy Bombers.

Today, a more peaceful and peaceable alternative is that the land has been turned over to the Lisset Airfield Wind Farm, with twelve huge turbines turning to feed the national grid, propellers of a different nature. They were made in Germany, coming from the very areas that 158 Squadron devastated in 1945. Eleven of the turbines are named after Handley Page Halifax Bombers that flew from the base, whilst the twelfth commemorates six ground crew members who died in an accident at the airfield in July 1943.

The turbines meet the needs of just over 13,000 households.

The memorial was made in sections and unveiled in May 2009. Here you can see the work in fabrication and then it being lowered into place next to Lissett Airfield. The work doesn't stop in the studio.

At 8 feet tall, the men are larger than life, but cut a sharp shadow on the skyline.

Viewed from the other side, they appear to be returning from their mission. If you look closely, you will see that Peter has hand-scribed the names of 851 of the 158 Squadron who lost their lives in missions overseas.

With reference to the hand scribed names, he told me:

851 of the aircrew and some of the ground crew lost their lives. How eerie is it that this number creates an emordnilap.

851 of the 158 Squadron. This is when a word or number reads in reverse as a valid word or number. It is simply the word palindrome spelt backwards. A palindrome is a word or number that reads the same either way e.g racecar or madam!

Peter told me:

The names of the dead are positioned randomly across the bodies of the seven men. It's an intentional detail. Names are not alphabetised for ease. They are here and there, mixed in to make the reader slow down and acknowledge the passing of everyone despite rank and order. Sergeant Olive Mary Morse was the only woman. She was 25. Someone's sweetheart.

Peter continues:

There's something haunting about the piece. In some light, it appears the men are strong and brave, bold in their collective stances, and in another shade, as if they are just shells of themselves.

Peter concluded:

As war memorials go, they can sometimes seem jingoistic, mythologising and triumphalist. Here, Peter Naylor seems to nail it, by telling the story in steel, capturing the feelings of fear whilst commemorating those who lost their lives, and holding this history in place to learn from.

Thanks to Peter for all his interesting information, and for sharing some beautiful images of his work in progress.