The remains of a German airman were washed up at Dengie in 1941. But who was he? Stephen Nunn investigates.

 

ON Saturday, July 19, 1941, at 5 o’clock in the afternoon, a decomposed body was found washed up on the shore at the little coastal village of Dengie.

That might sound rather precise, but I know for sure that is when the gruesome discovery was made, because it is in the Civil Defence Records of the time.

The anonymous author, probably an ARP Warden, described the exact location as being “Coate Outfall” – a wide and deep discharge point on the edge of the Ray Sands.

The remains were said to be of a German flight sergeant and an inscribed watch found on the body named him as Rolf Kolweyer.

There was also an identity disc bearing the number 62757/125.

When I first read that brief, sad entry about a futile loss of life, it seemed quite insignificant amongst the extensive chronicle of aircraft crashes, bombs and other incidents spread across the Eastern region.

However, I then started to feel guilty – I even dreamt about Rolf.

After all, he was someone’s son. He once lived as we do today, was loved and he died doing what he was doubtless told was “his duty to the Fatherland”.

I became a bit obsessed about him and wanted to find out more about his story, but search as I might I could not find a Rolf Kolweyer in any of the official archives.

Frustrated, I decided to try different spellings and eventually discovered a Rolf Kollmeyer in the Civil Registration Death Index for Maldon.

Dated July 1941, it gave his age as 40 (so born “about 1901”). I don’t know where he was initially buried (it could well have been at Maldon, where other enemy aircrew were laid to rest), but the remains of most German personnel were repatriated in the 1960s to Cannock Chase German Military Cemetery in Staffordshire.

Maldon and Burnham Standard:

  • The German airman's headstone at Cannock Chase

I consulted their archive and, sure enough, there is a 'Rolf-Eberhard Kollmeyer' commemorated there.

His headstone has his date of birth as November 14, 1916, and his death as January 26, 1941, making him 24 and not 40. His rank is given as Feldwebel – our RAF equivalent of a sergeant, not flight sergeant.

Armed with all this new, albeit somewhat contradictory, information it was time to look at German records, in particular the index cards titled 'Deutschland, im Kampf gefallene Soldaten, 1939-1948' (Germany, Military Killed in Action, 1939-1948).

There are four surviving cards for Rolf and, after a bit of hit and miss translation, I managed to make out that he was, indeed, born in 1916 and in the Schöneberg borough of Berlin. His dog tag number confirms that it was his body that was discovered on the beach at Dengie and that he was part of III/Kampfgeschwader 30, a Luftwaffe bomber unit operating Junkers Ju88 aircraft out of what is today Amsterdam Airport.

Rolf was part of the four man crew of Ju88A5 registration 4D+AS (werk number 3261) and served as its wireless operator.

Along with pilot Oblt Ignatz Kraft, bombardier/co-pilot B Ofw Kurt Frohlig and machine gun operator Bs Uffz Herbert Mollerstein, their mission on Sunday, January 26, 1941,was to attack British shipping off our East Coast.

However, their luck ran out that day when the Royal Navy escort destroyer HMS Wallace returned fire and scored a direct hit on the Junkers.

Maldon and Burnham Standard:

  • The Civil Defence Records include the discovery of the body

It was all over in an instance and the aircraft crashed into the sea off Brightlingsea at 4pm.

No parachutes were seen, but a Naval Patrol vessel went in search and managed to pick up Kurt Frohlig, handing him over to the police at Brightlingsea the next day.

When the prisoner of war was questioned, he stated that he was the only survivor and that all “his companions had drowned”.

Some six months later Rolf’s remains were then found.

We don’t know how and when his father, Adolf Kollmeyer, of Minden, Westphallia, was notified, or if he ever knew the exact circumstances of his son’s death and how his body was discovered.

Neither do we know if the watch and ID tag were ever returned to the family.

However, what I am really pleased about is that I came across that scant entry and gave it more than just a cursory glance.

All these years on, we have now resurrected Rolf’s life story and in peacetime we can now properly remember him.