Arthur Henry Jarand

Arthur Henry Jarand was a pre-war regular officer of the Royal Air Force, the holder of a low service number that marked him as a career airman commissioned in the 1930s. By the start of 1945 he was a Squadron Leader and flight commander with No. 102 (Ceylon) Squadron, flying the Handley Page Halifax from RAF Pocklington in Yorkshire as part of No. 4 Group. He was the son of William and Emily Jarand and the husband of Bettine M. Jarand, of St Marks on the Isle of Man.

On the night of 16/17 January 1945, Bomber Command sent a large force against the city of Magdeburg in central Germany. Jarand captained Halifax LW142, coded DY-N, with a crew drawn from across the Commonwealth — among them an Australian wireless operator, Pilot Officer James Marshall Carter, and a Canadian bomb aimer, Pilot Officer Ernest Leroy Davies. The aircraft was lost over Germany and the entire crew of seven was killed: Jarand, aged 33, his navigator Warrant Officer Daniel Galbraith, Carter, Davies, the flight engineer Sergeant Enoch Pope, and the gunners Flight Sergeant George Telfer and Sergeant John Wilson.

All were buried at Hanover War Cemetery in Germany. Jarand’s loss, late in the war and after years of service, was typical of the experienced flight commanders the squadrons could least afford to lose, and of the international make-up of a single Bomber Command crew.