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The Flying Grocer
By: Rupert Guineness (950/35703)
Publisher: Random House Australia ISBN: 978-1-74166-531-4
In May 1945 a Lancaster bomber flew so perilously low over the fields and viaducts of German-occupied Holland that the crew could see the happiness on the faces of the starving people below. On their return from dropping lifesaving food supplies over Rotterdam, a small parcel of cigarettes with a note bearing the Australian pilot's name and home address fell from the rear-gunner's position and landed at the feet of a group of locals. Then the pilot dipped his wings in the traditional airman's salute and flew away back to England.
A Dutch girl picked up the note, and the letter of thanks she wrote to the 'flying grocer' sparked a lifelong correspondence and friendship between two people from very different worlds.
This is the story of Operation Manna, one of the greatest humanitarian missions ever undertaken in modern war, to rescue the starving people of Holland in the dying days of World War II - yet one which went largely unrecognised. It is estimated that after the famine that struck the country in the winter of 1944-45, known as 'the Hunger Winter', more than three million lives were saved by the food parcels delivered by men who only days before had been unloading bombs over Germany.
Using letters, interviews and diary extracts, Rupert Guinness weaves together the tales of a teenage Dutch girl whose house had been occupied by Nazi soldiers, and the pilot of an Australian Lancaster crew based at Binbrook in northern England. A moving true story of how lives can touch in the most unusual circumstances, The Flying Grocer records a fine and proud moment in Australian military history.
August 2007
