Guy Pegler

Guy Pegler was born on 27 September 1921 in Ringwood, Hampshire, the elder of two sons of Claud and Charlotte Pegler; the family later moved to Letchworth, Hertfordshire, where he attended the grammar school. He joined the RAF in 1938 as an aircraft apprentice at Halton and spent the early war years as ground crew, mostly servicing fighters, before retraining as a flight engineer in Bomber Command during 1942. Posted to the conversion flight at No. 106 Squadron, he teamed up with pilot Lewis Burpee and gunner Gordon Brady, flew all twenty-five of Burpee’s operational sorties with the squadron, and moved with him to the newly formed No. 617 Squadron for Operation Chastise. On the night of 16/17 May 1943 Pegler was flight engineer aboard Lancaster ED865, coded AJ-S, part of the raid’s third wave; outbound over the Netherlands the aircraft strayed too close to the heavily defended airfield at Gilze-Rijen, was hit by light flak, caught fire and crashed in flames on the aerodrome, killing all seven men aboard. The Germans could not identify several of the dead and buried them communally at Zuylen Cemetery, Prinsenhage; after the war the whole crew was exhumed and reinterred together at Bergen-op-Zoom War Cemetery, where Sergeant Pegler, aged 21, rests in collective grave 24.B.5-7.