Roamer: Dromara WWII hero drank cocktails with Margot Fonteyn

Born in 1921 in Leitrim in County Down, a little village near Dromara, he became known as Mac.

“The house lies in the shadows of the Mountains of Mourne and is still there to this day,” says Mac’s son, Simon McIlroy, who has written a gripping book about his dad, ominously entitled POW 3267.

Mac’s Stalag Luft III POW documents feature on the book’s front cover, a unique story “of many contrasts” Simon told me.

Little Mac walked barefoot to school in summertime when his only pair of boots were uncomfortably hot.

At home he milked cows, collected eggs and picked apples.

In his teens he did a correspondence course in Communications Engineering, studying by oil lamp in a farmhouse with no electricity.

He hoped to work for the Post Office but instead trained as a Wireless Operator and Air Gunner (WOP/AG) at RAF Cardington in Bedfordshire.

On the same day of the trainees’ final parade, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain declared war on Germany and Mac’s ‘many contrasts’ began to unfold, listed on the book’s first page.

From ‘a tranquil way of life as a farmer’s son in Ireland to aircrew on an RAF bomber’; ‘from complete freedom to being a Prisoner of War in Germany’; from fitness and health to multiple serious injuries and lengthy hospitalisation after being shot down; from post-war tranquillity in rural Ireland to a luxurious lifestyle in a plush Viennese hotel; from a Dromara horse and cart to Winston Churchill’s chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce and from near starvation with fellow-POWs to a Sadlers Wells cocktail reception with superstar ballerinas Pamela May and Margot Fonteyn!

Flight Lieutenant McIlroy survived six crash landings, one post-war with the RAF’s ‘VIP Squadron’ flying military top-brass, statesmen and celebrities around Europe and the Middle East.

He took part in three legendary 1,000-bomber attacks on Cologne, Essen and Bremen and flew over two dozen other Bomber Command operations including raids on Hamburg, Frankfurt, Nuremburg, Stuttgart and Berlin. He also flew operations dropping propaganda leaflets (nickelling) and laying mines (code-named ‘gardening’)

Many of his squadron’s planes were lost, with comrades killed, injured or taken prisoner. On the 15th of April 1943 Mac was part of a massive raid on Stuttgart. He was in the rear-gun turret of a Halifax JB 909 that was attacked by a night fighter over France.

The crew were ordered to bail out of the seriously damaged, burning plane by the pilot, 20-year-old Australian Ian MacKenzie, who remained at the controls.

Despite horrendous injuries and “flames streaming past” Mac bailed out and parachuted to ‘safety’. MacKenzie steered the stricken Halifax away from a French town and died in the resulting crash. Captured by the Nazis Mac spent nine months in hospital, almost losing a shrapnel-shredded leg.

He survived interrogation, solitary confinement, starvation and severe leg infection in Stalag Luft III POW camp. Tunnels were dug and there were escape attempts, with concerts, plays and lectures diverting prisoners’ ‘otherwise monotonous’ captivity.

Warned that ‘stragglers would be shot’ Mac took part in the long march to Germany, avoiding the advancing Russians - in thick snow, ice and blizzards, 20-30 degrees below zero. He was ‘stuffed into a locked cattle truck, 50-60 per truck’ on a train to Luckenwald, south of Berlin, to a camp ‘swarming with rats.’

On page 100 of the book Mac and two comrades crawl under a damaged part of the barbed wire fence at night and although still in Germany are ‘free at last’.

He returned home to Dromara on 17th May 1945 with 100 pieces of shrapnel in his right leg and on 14th September 1946 married Nurse Marjorie Worrell in Cheshire.

He rarely recounted his wartime experiences (excepting an eight-page outline) but son Simon’s research tells a remarkable story including the identity of the German pilot who shot Mac down; a visit with his father to Australian pilot Ian MacKenzie’s memorial in France and a reunion with the daughter of a French nurse who befriended Mac in hospital.

POW 3267 by Simon McIlroy is available on Amazon.