Glen Allen "Happy" Holland

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Air Force Casualties

Ottawa, 25 May 1944 — The Department of National Defense for Air today issued casualty list No. 892 of the Royal Canadian Air Force, showing next of kin of those named for Ontario [includes]:

OVERSEAS

Missing After Air Operations

HOLLAND, Glen Allen, F/L, Mrs. G. A. Holland (wife), Hurdman's Bridge, Ottawa.

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Casualty Description

At 11 minutes after midnight on April 21 1944, Mosquito VI NS 928 departed Manston for an Intruder Op to Handorf airbase in northeast Germany, a distance of about 450 kms. Happy Holland was pilot with F/O R. Howard “Wilkie” Wilkinson as navigator. At about 2:00 a.m. the Mosquito and a German night fighter described as an ME188 (probably a Ju188) crashed in mid-air. The latter, based at Handorf, crashed near Everswinkel, about 10 km southeast of Munster in northeast Germany. The German crew bailed out successfully. Holland’s plane crashed into the Gross-Beckman farm house of Herr Spitterhover, located about 20 km north of Everswinkel. Both Happy and Wilkie were killed. The farmer and his wife were also killed. His son and mother survived. Happy and Wilkie were buried the next day at the Catholic cemetery at Everswinkel in an unmarked grave. In April 1946, an RAF investigator visited the grave with the local priest and town clerk and met with Herr Spitterhover’s son. The investigator had a white cross installed with an inscription from Rupert Brooke “Some corner of a foreign field which is forever England”.
The son described the crash and a subsequent meeting with the German pilots. They thought the Mosquito had rammed them. Also, they thought the Mosquito was the only enemy aircraft in the area that night and had been responsible for bringing down four aircraft including theirs. The investigator requested that “further investigation be made with a view in consideration of a gallantry award”. The awards office later declined any award on the basis that the evidence was hearsay and from an enemy source.
The son at the time was rebuilding his farm house and requested permission to include a plaque on the wall, to read “On the 21st of April 44 an English Mosquito aircraft crashed into this house and in the flames died Herr Josef Spitterhover and Frau Anna Spitterhover with two English airmen named F/L G.A. Holland and F/O R.H. Wilkinson”. Presumably it is still there.
Their remains were exhumed in June 1947 and reburied in the Reichswald Forest War Cemetery at Kleve, Germany.

Source: Glen Holland’s service record, Library and Archives Canada (via Mark)

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Air Force Casualties

Ottawa, 29 Dec, 1944 — The Department of National Defense for Air today issued casualty list No. 1078 of the Royal Canadian Air Force, showing next of kin of those named from Ontario [includes]:

OVERSEAS

Previously Missing, Now Officially Presumed Dead

HOLLAND, Glen Allen, F/L, Mrs. G. A. Holland (wife), Hurdman's Bridge, Ottawa.

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Victories Include :

8 - 4 / 0 / 1

All with 605 Squadron & probably all with F/O Wilkinson as R/O

[1] If we are to believe the story in the "Casualty Description" above, "Happy" got at least one and as many as four Ju88s that night before colliding with the last plane and crashing. This would bring his score up to at least 5, making him an Ace, with a possible max of 8 destroyed. Given the RAF usually awarded a DFC after a pilot destroyed 3 planes, I wonder if one was in the works when he was killed. If not, and had he lived to tell, he most surely would have been commended for this, even if he only got the one.

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