William Caster RIP

[Leon]

This past Wednesday I attended the funeral of Adele's great-uncle, William 'Bill' Caster.  Bill served in the RAF through the latter half of the war, completing 32 bombing missions across Europe and another 16 in Burma/South-East Asia.  His final scheduled mission got changed at the last minute, leaving him back on the base while the rest of his crew set off to drop supplies to prisoners in Saigon.  Sadly the plane crashed shortly after takeoff and all of his comrades were killed.  

Throughout the rest of his life Bill helped with a number of services support groups, helping to run trips and organise hundreds of military funerals for other servicemen and women.  It was nice to see those same groups there on Wednesday, continuing that support for Bill.

In recent years, some of the family members had taken Bill down to London for a variety of things, including some of the 70th Anniversary celebrations and the opening of the new Bomber Command memorial in 2012.

In a strange coincidence, I actually knew Bill long before I met Adele, as he lived across the road from my parents house when I was growing up and we used to chat to him when we'd see him out walking his dog.

There was a full story in our local paper: http://www.gazettelive.co.uk/news/teesside-news/he-hero-indeed-funeral-d-10794505

Adele's brother in New Zealand also managed to find this link, which lists the details of every mission he flew, including the aircraft, crew and flight times: https://75nzsquadron.wordpress.com/tag/william-caster/  There's a huge amount of interesting info on that site about the 75 NZ Squadron in general.

[paulr]

A life well lived

[Techno]

Well said, Paul.

Cheers -  Phil

[Steve J]

Agreed and nice to see he had a good send off.

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

Condolences but sounds like he was a good man.

[Leman]

What a great life to have led.

[Westmarcher]

Condolences to the family, Leon. Thanks for letting us get to know him.

[Nosher]

RIP Bill.

[Tawa]

RIP good sir!

*tips hat*