Airman, Prisoner, Saviour, Spy

Stanley Booker volunteered for aircrew at the age of 18 and qualified as an observer, flying operations with 10 Squadron in the summer of 1944. Shot down just before D-Day, he was betrayed to the Gestapo and imprisoned in Fresnes, the notorious gaol on the outskirts of Paris, where he was subjected to a brutal interrogation and torture at the hands of the SS. His experiences troubled him for the rest of his life.  Rather than being treated as a prisoner of war, Stanley was one of 168 airmen transported to Buchenwald Concentration camp to await execution as ‘Terror Flyers’, only to be saved at the eleventh house by the intervention of the Luftwaffe. On his ultimate return to England no-one wanted to believe where he had been or what he had seen. So began an 80-year battle with the authorities to prove what had happened, and to receive the recognition which he and his fellow prisoners were due, as well as ensuring those servicemen who had died or were murdered in the camp were properly commemorated.  After the war, Stanley flew more than 200 operations during the Berlin Airlift, aiding a nation which only a few years earlier had been intent on his elimination. He was later recruited by the Intelligence agencies in Berlin at the height of the Cold War and suffered another betrayal, this time at the hands of the traitor George Blake.  As John Nichol has written in his foreword:“Stanley Booker’s extraordinary story is painstakingly researched and sympathetically written, providing a remarkable account of individual service and sacrifice. Even though I was shot down myself during the Gulf War in 1991, held as a prisoner of war by hostile captors, I can only begin to imagine the terrible suffering Stanley had to endure, and I marvel at his fortitude as a survivor who died in January 2025, still fighting for justice, at the remarkable age of 102.”