In the quiet, ancient churchyard of St. Cuthbert in Brattleby, nestled amidst the rolling limestone hills of the Lincolnshire Edge, stands a memorial that speaks not only of local loss but of global conflict and imperial ties. It is a Portland stone headstone, immaculately maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, its form uniform with hundreds of thousands of others in cemeteries across the world. Carved into its surface are a name, a rank, a date, and two powerful symbols: the wings of a Royal Air Force pilot and the distinct, serrated outline of a Canadian maple leaf. The inscription reads:
FLYING OFFICER C. A. CONNOR, DFC PILOT ROYAL CANADIAN AIR FORCE 8TH NOVEMBER 1941 AGE 26
Beneath this, a personal epitaph chosen by his family adds a poignant human touch: “HE DIED THAT WE MIGHT LIVE IN FREEDOM.”
This grave, belonging to Flying Officer Clare Arthur Connor, DFC, is more than a simple marker of a life cut tragically short. It is a physical testament to a profound story that binds this small Lincolnshire parish to the vast, violent stage of the Second World War. It tells of the transformation of a peaceful county into the strategic heart of Britain’s bombing offensive, of the young men who travelled thousands of miles from across the Commonwealth to fight from its airfields, and of the personal love story that made Brattleby not just a temporary billet, but a home. In the story of Clare Connor, the local history of the Barony of Brattleby intersects with the grand narrative of the twentieth century, turning a parish churchyard into a site of enduring transatlantic memory.
The Transformation of a Landscape: Lincolnshire becomes ‘Bomber County’
To understand why a Canadian pilot rests in a Brattleby grave, one must first appreciate the dramatic transformation that Lincolnshire underwent in the late 1930s and early 1940s. For centuries, this was a landscape defined by agriculture, ancient market towns, and the soaring towers of its great churches. The rhythm of life was governed by the seasons—ploughing, sowing, and harvesting. Brattleby itself, a settlement recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086 as ‘Bratelbi’, held by Gilbert de Gant, was a quintessential part of this rural fabric. Its history was layered and deep, but overwhelmingly local.
The looming threat of war with Germany shattered this pastoral identity forever. From 1936 onwards, under the RAF’s ‘Expansion Scheme’, the flat, open countryside of Lincolnshire, with its good weather and clear approaches from the North Sea, was identified as the ideal location for a massive network of bomber airfields. A frantic period of construction began. Fields were requisitioned, ancient hedgerows bulldozed, and vast concrete runways laid down where sheep had once grazed. By the height of the war, Lincolnshire would host more RAF Bomber Command stations than any other county—nearly fifty in total—earning it the enduring and sombre moniker, ‘Bomber County’.
One of the most significant of these was RAF Scampton. Located just two miles south of Brattleby, Scampton’s history stretched back to the First World War, but it was redeveloped in 1936 as a state-of-the-art bomber base. Its hangars, barracks, and administrative blocks rose from the fields, creating a new, metallic skyline that dominated the local view. The drone of aero engines—first the twin-engined Handley Page Hampdens, later the ill-fated Avro Manchesters, and finally the legendary Avro Lancasters—became the incessant soundtrack to life in Brattleby and the surrounding villages. The war was not a distant event heard on the wireless; it was an immediate, visceral presence on the doorstep. The village, which for centuries had looked west towards Lincoln Cathedral, now found its gaze drawn inexorably south to the runways of Scampton.
A Canadian in Lincolnshire: The Path to War
Into this militarised landscape came tens of thousands of young men. They were not only British but also volunteers from across the British Empire and Commonwealth: Australians, New Zealanders, South Africans, Rhodesians, and a great many Canadians. They came under the aegis of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan (BCATP), a colossal undertaking established in December 1939. This agreement between Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand used the vast, safe airspace of the Dominions to train aircrew for the common war effort. Young men who had grown up on prairie farms or in bustling North American cities found themselves posted to the unfamiliar lanes and pubs of rural England.
One such man was Clare Arthur Connor. He was born on 2nd May 1915 in Westmount, a prosperous Anglophone suburb of Montreal, Quebec, to Arthur and Mary Connor. Growing up by the banks of the St. Lawrence River, his world was a hemisphere away from the ancient fields of Lincolnshire. Like many of his generation, he answered the call to duty as the world descended into war. He enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) and, after completing his initial training in Canada, embarked on the perilous Atlantic crossing to Britain.
Upon arrival, he was posted for operational duty with the Royal Air Force. His destination was No. 83 Squadron, based at RAF Scampton. In 1940 and 1941, No. 83 Squadron was at the sharp end of Bomber Command’s burgeoning offensive against Nazi-occupied Europe. When Connor joined, the squadron was equipped with the Handley Page Hampden, a twin-engined bomber nicknamed the ‘Flying Suitcase’ for its cramped and narrow fuselage. These were the aircraft that carried the war to Germany in its earliest, most difficult phase, flying long and dangerous missions at night with rudimentary navigation aids against increasingly effective German defences. For the aircrew, the odds of survival were stark. A full tour of operations was thirty missions, a milestone that a terrifyingly small percentage of men would ever reach.
Love, War, and a Home in Brattleby
It was during this period of intense operational stress that Clare Connor’s story became intertwined with Brattleby. While the life of an airman was dominated by the airfield—briefings, maintenance, training, and the long, cold hours of operations—they sought normality and respite in the nearby villages. Local pubs, village halls, and private homes welcomed the aircrew, offering a brief escape from the grim calculus of war.
Sometime in 1940, Flying Officer Connor met a local woman, Josephine Dorothy Katharine Hotchkin. The Hotchkin family were well-established in the area, and for the young Canadian pilot, far from home, Josephine represented a connection to the life he was fighting to defend. Theirs was a romance forged in the shadow-sm of war, where the future was uncertain and every moment precious. They married in the Lincoln registration district in the last quarter of 1940.
Following their marriage, the couple made their home in Brattleby. For Clare Connor, the village was no longer just a place to seek recreation; it was where his wife lived, the place he returned to after each perilous flight over enemy territory. This simple fact is central to his story. While many thousands of Commonwealth airmen are buried in England, the vast majority lie in dedicated service plots or large military cemeteries. It was the direct request of the next-of-kin that determined a burial in a local parish churchyard. Clare Connor’s presence in St. Cuthbert’s is therefore a direct result of his marriage to Josephine and the home they established together in the village. He was not merely an airman billeted nearby; he had, for a brief and precious time, become one of Brattleby’s own.
One can only imagine the stark contrast of his daily existence: the domestic peace of a cottage in Brattleby, followed by the ritual of preparing for a mission—donning the heavy flying gear, the tense briefing in the Scampton Nissen hut, the walk out to the waiting bomber—and then the hours of deafening noise, intense cold, and mortal danger over the darkened landscapes of the Third Reich.
Courage and Distinction: The DFC
Clare Connor was not just a competent pilot; he was an exceptional one. By the autumn of 1941, he had completed numerous operations and established a reputation for skill and bravery. The squadron had by this time begun to re-equip with the Avro Manchester, a larger, more powerful heavy bomber. Plagued by its unreliable and fire-prone Rolls-Royce Vulture engines, the Manchester was a deeply flawed aircraft that demanded immense skill and courage from its crews. It was in this challenging machine that Connor continued to fly against the most heavily defended targets in Germany.
In recognition of his service, he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC). The award was officially announced in the London Gazette on 26th September 1941. The citation, a typically understated summary of immense bravery, read:
This officer has completed numerous operational missions, including attacks on Berlin, Hamburg, Kiel and other important enemy targets. He has at all times shown great skill and courage in pressing home his attacks, often in the face of heavy enemy opposition and in adverse weather. He has set an excellent example.
To have attacked Berlin, the capital of the Reich and one of the most heavily defended targets in the world, multiple times required a fortitude that is difficult to comprehend. The DFC was a formal acknowledgement of his place among the elite of Bomber Command’s aircrew. For his wife Josephine in Brattleby, the news must have been a source of immense pride, tempered by the constant fear that every mission might be his last.
The Last Flight: Operation Fulminate
The fear became reality on the night of 7th-8th November 1941. That night, Bomber Command launched a major raid, codenamed Operation Fulminate, against Berlin. It was one of the largest raids on the capital to date, involving 169 aircraft—Wellingtons, Stirlings, Halifaxes, and Hampdens. Additionally, No. 5 Group, to which 83 Squadron belonged, dispatched its new Avro Manchesters. The objective was not just to cause material damage but to strike a major blow to German morale.
Flying Officer Clare Connor, DFC, now an experienced veteran at the age of just 26, was rostered to fly. His aircraft was Avro Manchester I, serial number L7424, with the squadron code ‘OL-Q’. His crew, a typical mix of young men thrown together by the war, comprised:
Sgt. Eric Bernard Stinton, RAFVR (2nd Pilot) Sgt. John Charles Pamment, RAFVR (Observer/Navigator) Sgt. Charles Frederick Stewart, RAFVR (Wireless Operator/Air Gunner) Sgt. John Richard Billing, DFM, RAFVR (Wireless Operator/Air Gunner) Sgt. Horace Frederick James Cope, RAFVR (Air Gunner) Sgt. Robert Thomas, RAFVR (Air Gunner)
(Note: Sgt. Billing had also been decorated, holding the Distinguished Flying Medal, marking this as a highly experienced crew.)
They took off from Scampton in the early evening of 7th November, climbing into the cold night sky over Lincolnshire one last time. The flight path to Berlin was long and hazardous, taking them over the Netherlands and deep into Germany, crossing a formidable belt of searchlights, anti-aircraft ‘flak’ batteries, and Luftwaffe night-fighter patrols.
Manchester L7424 and its crew never returned. For a time, they were simply posted as ‘missing’. Hope would have faded as the hours and then days passed with no news. The exact circumstances of their loss remain clouded by the fog of war, as is the case for so many of the 55,573 men of Bomber Command who were killed. They were one of twenty-one aircraft lost on the Berlin raid that night, a catastrophic loss rate of 12.4%. Another seven aircraft were lost attacking other targets. The raid was deemed a failure; poor weather meant most crews never identified Berlin, and the bombs were scattered widely.
Records compiled after the war confirm that Connor’s Manchester crashed at Stöckheim, south of Brunswick (Braunschweig) in Germany. The cause is unknown, but was likely either anti-aircraft fire or, more probably, an attack by a German night-fighter. There were no survivors. All seven crew members were initially buried in the main cemetery at Brunswick before being re-interred post-war in the Hanover War Cemetery. All, that is, except one.
A Place of Memory: From Brunswick to Brattleby
In Brattleby, the news of her husband's death must have been devastating for Josephine Connor. As his next-of-kin, she was faced with decisions about his memory. When the work of the Imperial (now Commonwealth) War Graves Commission began to concentrate the graves of the fallen into large, manageable cemeteries, she made a different choice. She requested that her husband’s remains be brought home—not to his birthplace in Canada, an impossible distance away, but to the home they had made together in England.
And so, Clare Arthur Connor’s final journey was not to a military cemetery alongside thousands of his comrades, but back to the small Lincolnshire village that had claimed him as its own. He was laid to rest in the churchyard of St. Cuthbert, within sight of the fields and lanes he had known during his brief marriage. His funeral and burial transformed the churchyard. It was no longer solely a resting place for generations of villagers from Brattleby. With his interment, it became a part of a global network of remembrance. The solitary CWGC headstone stands as a stark and powerful link between this single parish and the wider story of the British Commonwealth’s sacrifice.
The grave symbolizes the profound and often overlooked personal dimensions of the war. It represents the love stories that blossomed against a backdrop of violence, and the way in which communities across Britain absorbed men from half a world away, making them part of the local fabric. Clare Connor was a Canadian hero, but he was also a Brattleby husband. His grave is a memorial to both identities. It speaks of the imperial alliance that brought him to Lincolnshire, but also of the personal bond that kept him there.
Looking at the headstone today, one sees the story of a global war writ small. The maple leaf signifies a man’s origins in Canada and his service in the RCAF. The DFC, a mark of singular valour earned over the skies of Germany. And his final resting place, a quiet village churchyard, signifies a love that gave him a home in England, a home that would ultimately become his shrine. Flying Officer Connor’s grave ensures that Brattleby is not just a parish with a history, but a guardian of a powerful transatlantic and imperial memory, a silent, dignified reminder of the price of freedom.
Sources & Further Reading
Primary Sources:
Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC). Casualty Record for Flying Officer Clare Arthur Connor. Available online at [www.cwgc.org](http://www.cwgc.org). The London Gazette. Issue 35287, 26 September 1941, p. 5592. Citation for the Distinguished Flying Cross. The National Archives, Kew. AIR 27/686/2. Operations Record Book for No. 83 Squadron RAF, detailing missions from September 1939 to December 1941. (Provides context for Connor's operational career). General Register Office for England and Wales. Index of Marriages, Q4 1940, Lincoln District. Vol 7a, p. 2005. (Connor & Hotchkin).
Secondary Sources:
Chorley, W. R. RAF Bomber Command Losses of the Second World War, Volume 2: 1941. Midland Publishing, 1993. (This work provides specific details on the loss of Manchester L7424 on the night of 7/8 November 1941). Donnelly, M. The RAF Lincoln and Bomber County. Pen & Sword Aviation, 2008. (Provides general context on the role of Lincolnshire airfields). Falconer, Jonathan. Bomber County: The Lost Airfields of Lincolnshire. Ian Allan Publishing, 2008. Halpenny, Bruce Barrymore. Action Stations 2: Military Airfields of Lincolnshire and the East Midlands. Patrick Stephens Ltd., 1981. (A seminal work on the history of RAF Scampton and other local airfields). Hastings, Max. Bomber Command. Pan Books, 1981. (An essential overview of the strategic bombing campaign). Middlebrook, Martin, and Chris Everitt. The Bomber Command War Diaries: An Operational Reference Book, 1939-1945. Midland Publishing, 2014. (Contains details for the raid of 7/8 November 1941). Ward, Chris. 83 Squadron, 1917-1969. Keyham Books, 1999. (A specific squadron history providing detailed background). Wright, Patrick. The Village That Died for England: The Strange Story of Tyneham. Faber and Faber, 2002. (While about a different village, it provides an excellent model for understanding the impact of military requisitioning on rural communities).