Nephew of WWII vet pays respects to Dannevirke veteran

Graham Booker takes a quiet moment to reflect on the legacy of Phil Lamason, who died in 2012. Photo / Leanne Warr

Stanley Booker is probably the last surviving member of a number of Allied men imprisoned at Buchenwald in 1944.

But it was through the leadership of a Kiwi airman that the England-based veteran was able to survive at all, according to his nephew Graham Booker.

Graham, along with his wife Su, was on holiday in New Zealand from the UK and made a special trip to Dannevirke to pay his respects at the gravesite of Phil Lamason, to whom he felt his uncle owed his life.

Graham Booker lays a ceramic poppy beside Phil Lamason's headstone. Photo / Leanne Warr

The story of how 168 Allied airmen ended up in a concentration camp for two months between August and October 1944 has been told in several books, including Lamason’s own story, I Would Not Step Back.

Flight Sergeant Phil Lamason beside a Stirling bomber at RAF No. 218 Squadron in 1942. Photo / Phil Lamason Heritage Trust

It was also part of a documentary, The Lost Airmen of Buchenwald, which will be screening at the Regent in Dannevirke in April.

Lamason died in 2012, aged 93, leaving behind the legacy of his experience in World War II.

But he chose not to share that experience until very late in life, and it was a story that was not well-known, even by his family.

Stanley Booker in 2019.

Other perspectives of the story had also come out through anecdotes from others including Stanley, who Graham said would often tell funny stories of things that happened, including one story of him being in a bath in a house in France when the residents of the house burst in waving a bottle of champagne, telling him the “invasion” (D-Day) had happened.

There were times when Stanley would talk about the horrors he faced as well.

Stanley Booker in 1944.

“The two months in Buchenwald were dreadful,” Phil Lamason Heritage Trust chairman Mike Harold said of the Nazi concentration camp.

He said Lamason had spoken of it in a documentary, stating that the Germans had expected their prisoners to become a rabble straight away - “every man for himself”.

“But Phil said, ‘We are military people, we must stick together, united we can be a force’. I think they believed that.“

The men adopted a mantra of refusing to work for their captors and hinged their non-violent struggle on that.

“It was very empowering and, in the end, they prevailed,” Harold said.

Stanley, who would be celebrating his 101st birthday on April 25, now lives in assisted care.

Graham said his uncle was determined to live until 104.

“At 104, financially, he is even with the British government, because all that time they were in the concentration camp and not in a prisoner-of-war camp, they weren’t paid, because they weren’t on the Red Cross register.”

Harold said many of the men were not treated well upon their return from the war, to the point that many denied those two months in Buchenwald ever happened.

Graham Booker, Mike Harold and John Lamason in the cemetery. Photo / Leanne Warr

It was injustice, John Lamason, Phil’s son, said.

“There’s been no justice or recognition of, particularly, this case. I’m quite keen to see justice. Even for those in America who were denied.”

Harold said he believed Lamason had some correspondence from Stanley, along with others, highlighting issues around post-war care and support.

“Because their story had been denied for so long.”

He said Stanley was a strong advocate for the airmen who were in Buchenwald, going on to collaborate with an author of the book 168 Jump into Hell.

“He documented the facts that were being disputed, that his men were ever in that camp,” he said.

Stanley would even do some investigating himself, and according to an article published around his 100th birthday, went to visit the site of the concentration camp to look for the records.

“They found the Germans were very good record-keepers, and all these guys’ names were there,” Harold said.

Those records even included the dates of admission and the date they were transferred to a Stalag.

“One of the things my uncle said was, even when Germany was collapsing at the end of the war, their records were still so perfect,” Graham said.

Many of the group who gathered at the grave at Mangatera Cemetery felt the story needed to continue to be told so that there would finally be some recognition, not only of Phil Lamason’s leadership, but of what they faced.

“They were a generation that we will not see again,” Harold said. “Let’s hope they continue to inspire people beyond our time.”