Where he fell
When ND994 broke apart in the air, the tail section came down on its own, with Bill still in his turret. It landed on open, grassy ground at a place the old maps call Basse Maison, in the commune of Essoyes, about 2.5 km from the rest of the aircraft and about a kilometre south of the hamlet of Le Grand Mallet. A small road ran past it, and still does.
The tail lay there until about 1946. The ground has changed since: what was pasture and scrub is now mostly vineyard. Eleven aerial photographs of that ground, from 1948 to today, are lined up on one grid so you can step through the years, slide one over another, and see it for yourself.
9 Sept 1948
Today
His life
Bill was the son of John McCollum, born in Ireland, and Elsie McCollum, born in London, and grew up on Grenadier Road in Toronto. He went to De La Salle Oaklands and Parkdale Collegiate. He had two brothers, Robert (Bob), who served in the navy on a Canadian minesweeper, and John (Jack), and five sisters: Anne, Eileen, Doris, Joan and Margaret.
He enlisted in the RCAF at Galt, Ontario, on 19 July 1941, not as aircrew but as ground crew, training as an airframe mechanic. He later remustered as an air gunner. His RCAF file describes him as “intelligent and well educated, quiet and a deliberate thinker with a sense of responsibility.”
He went overseas in December 1942. In England he trained as an air gunner, then at 30 Operational Training Unit, 1656 Heavy Conversion Unit and 1 Lancaster Finishing School, before joining an operational squadron in May 1944.
Service
- Born in Toronto.
- Enlists at Galt, Ontario. Aircraftman 2nd class, airframe mechanic.
- Leading Aircraftman.
- Overseas to Britain.
- Sergeant, air gunner.
- No. 550 Squadron, North Killingholme. Rear gunner in P/O Ken Newman’s crew. Three operations over Germany.
- No. 576 Squadron, Elsham Wolds. Rear gunner in P/O Raymond Linklater’s crew.
- Flight Sergeant. The squadron paperwork never caught up, and still lists him as Sergeant three weeks later.
- Killed when ND994 is shot down returning from Revigny.
Nine operations
Bill flew nine operations in fifty-five days, every one as rear gunner. The first three were high-level attacks on German cities. The last six, after D-Day, were over France: a V-weapon site, railway targets, and the battle for Caen. On his third, over Aachen, a night fighter engaged his aircraft. The squadron recorded the combat as inconclusive: the German broke it off.
| # | Night | Target | Aircraft | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| No. 550 Squadron · pilot P/O K. J. Newman | ||||
| 1 | 21/22 May 1944 | Duisburg | LL796 “O” | Bombed from 23,000 ft. Three of the squadron’s crews failed to return. |
| 2 | 22/23 May 1944 | Dortmund | ME193 “C” | Bombed from 18,000 ft. |
| 3 | 24/25 May 1944 | Aachen, marshalling yards | ME193 “C” | Engaged by a night fighter. “Inconclusive, the enemy breaking off the engagement.” |
| No. 576 Squadron · pilot P/O R. E. Linklater | ||||
| 4 | 2 Jul 1944 | Domléger, V-weapon site | ND859 “L2” | Daylight, fighter escort. Bombed from 14,000 ft. |
| 5 | 4/5 Jul 1944 | Orléans | NE854 “D2” | One of the squadron’s crews failed to return. |
| 6 | 5/6 Jul 1944 | Dijon, marshalling yards | JA868 “V2” | Diverted to Coningsby on return. |
| 7 | 7 Jul 1944 | Caen | ND859 “L2” | “A message of appreciation was received from the 2nd Army in Normandy.” |
| 8 | 12/13 Jul 1944 | Revigny, railway yards | ND994 “F2” | Marking failed; ordered home with bombs. |
| 9 | 14/15 Jul 1944 | Revigny, railway yards | ND994 “F2” | Failed to return. |
ND859, which Bill flew on two of these, was lost with another 576 crew on the first Revigny raid, two nights before he died. ND994 was normally flown by P/O V. Moss’s crew. Linklater’s crew took it out twice.
The last flight
Twelve Lancasters of 576 Squadron took off from Elsham Wolds to bomb the railway yards at Revigny-sur-Ornain. ND994 was airborne at 21:16. It was the second attempt on the target in three nights, and it went the same way as the first.
On the way home, over the Aube, ND994 was caught by a German night fighter. The loss is credited to Oberleutnant Ernst-Georg Drünkler of 1./NJG 5, his nineteenth of an eventual forty-five victories, claimed at 02:17 about 5 km north-east of Celles-sur-Ource, at 1,300 metres.
Rolland Jeanvoine, not quite seventeen, was at his family’s farm at Valvimbourg. He heard the bombers going home, then one that sounded different, as if it were circling, and another aircraft passing fast and low. There was an intense light in the sky and an explosion, then silence, then a second explosion on the ground. The Lancaster had broken in two.
The main section, with six of the crew, came down in the commune of Loches-sur-Ource and burned. The tail, with Bill in it, came down whole at Basse Maison, about 2.5 km away.
Basse Maison
At about four in the morning, as it was getting light, Roland Favier, a factory foreman cycling home to Essoyes for the weekend, saw a strange shape on the hillside. He found Bill still seated at his guns in the rear turret, and rode the five kilometres to Essoyes for the mayor, Étienne Decesse. At about six, Favier, the mayor and Dr Claude Poisson came back. They lifted Bill out and laid him on the grass, and found his RCAF identity card in his jacket.
Dr Poisson found a large bruise on his cheek, most likely from striking the gun breeches when the tail hit the ground, and probably broken ribs. Speaking to Raymond Jeanvoine in 1992, he said he believed Bill had lived for a short time after the tail came down, perhaps half an hour. When Rolland reached the spot at about seven, Bill was lying in the grass, watched over by two men of the Resistance.
Essoyes register of deaths 1943–1950, entry 13, as transcribed by Raymond Jeanvoine.
The mayor brought Bill to the town hall at Essoyes in his own truck for a wake. Since most of the crew had died in the commune of Loches-sur-Ource, the two mayors agreed that he would be buried there with them.
The crew
Five Canadians and two Englishmen. None survived. Ranks and details are as the Commonwealth War Graves Commission records them.
Row 3, Grave 3
Row 3, Grave 2
Son of Russell and Alice Maud Pringle; husband of Barbara Pringle, of Hightown, Lancashire
Row 1, collective grave 6–7
Row 1, collective grave 6–7
Son of William Storey Beattie and Elizabeth Jane Beattie, of Hylton, Co. Durham
Row 1, collective grave 6–7
Row 1, collective grave 6–7
Son of John and Elsie McCollum, of Toronto
Row 3, Grave 4
Loches-sur-Ource
Gabriel Gloux, the village carpenter at Loches-sur-Ource, made the coffins. On the morning of Sunday 16 July the mayor of Essoyes brought Bill from Essoyes in his truck, and at three in the afternoon the seven were buried together. The whole village turned out, the children carrying flowers, the fire brigade in their helmets, the tricolour carried at the head of the procession.
Raymond Jeanvoine tells one more thing about that day. Two German airmen from the base at Saint-Dizier came to lay a wreath on the coffins as they stood on the truck in front of the church. Up in the bell tower, young men of the local Maquis had them in their sights. One dead German officer could mean ten villagers shot, and the mayor of Loches, Mr Gaudet, talked them out of it.
The grave
Bill lies in Loches-sur-Ource Communal Cemetery, Row 3, Grave 4, in the same row as Raymond Linklater and Stanley Kozlowski. The other four lie together in a collective grave in Row 1. The village granted the plot in perpetuity. Raymond Jeanvoine still visits him. His headstone carries the words chosen by his family:
HE DIED THE HELPLESS TO DEFEND A FAITHFUL AIRMAN’S NOBLE END
In Toronto, the McCollum family stone, shared with his parents, grandparents and brothers and sisters, carries his name too, with three words underneath: Interred in France.
Sources and thanks
- Operations Record Books, Nos. 550 and 576 Squadrons, The National Archives, Kew: AIR 27/2037 and AIR 27/2047.
- RCAF record-of-service cards for R/118907.
- Commonwealth War Graves Commission records for all seven crew.
- Register of deaths of the commune of Essoyes, 1943–1950, entry 13, transcribed by Raymond Jeanvoine, March 2026.
- The testimony of Rolland Jeanvoine, and the research of his son Raymond Jeanvoine since 1982, including his conversations with Dr Claude Poisson and Gabriel Gloux.
- Aerial photographs and orthophotos: IGN (Institut national de l’information géographique et forestière), France.
- The Drünkler claim as recorded in the Kracker Luftwaffe Archive.
With thanks to Raymond Jeanvoine of Loches-sur-Ource, to Janet Maddocks for years of family research, and to Michael McCollum, who started this work with his father, Bill’s brother Bob, before there was an internet to help.
Commonwealth War Graves Commission · Canadian Virtual War Memorial