Page 12 - Oundle Life November 2023

LEST WE
FORGET
We will remember them
Visitors to Oundle Cemetery on Stoke
Doyle Road may have noticed a number of Commonwealth War Graves and other Service headstones there. Of particular note are two showing the same date of death: 6th February 1945. Their graves are side by side.
Warrant Officer Donald Barber and Flight Sergeant John Coleman of the RAF Volunteer Reserve were serving with 83 Group RAF based at Westhampnett in Sussex. On that fateful
day they were the crew of an Avro Anson communications aircraft flying over Sussex when both the aircraft’s engines failed at low level, and it crashed near to their airfield. They were buried side by side at a double funeral later that month.
John Coleman’s family lived in All Saints Road, Peterborough. His name is
Leslie Barber
Donald Barber
12
commemorated on the Peterborough War Memorial which may be found online. He was aged 21. Donald Barber was an Old Laxtonian and was an auctioneer’s clerk when war broke out in 1939. His family lived on West Street in Oundle. He was aged 23. He is commemorated on the Oundle War Memorial and in St Peter’s Church.
Sadly for the Barber family, Donald’s elder brother Leslie was killed exactly a year later on 6th February 1946 in a road accident in Algeria