HEAT OF CONFLICT: An intimate and moving story of a young couple’s fears, hopes and dreams for the future in wartime York has been discovered. Lucy Oates reports.

You must help me darling. I need you... Life is so bad. Oh baby! I would like you near me at this moment. I feel so crushed and so useless...”

This anguished cry still has the power to rend the heart nearly 70 years after it was written by a French flyer, Francis Uzay, to his sweetheart Barbara Rigby.

A collection of correspondence sent by this young Frenchman to his English girlfriend has been tracked down along with other fragments to try and piece together the lives of some of the 2,500 French airmen who were based at RAF Elvington near York.

The most detailed picture of a relationship is revealed through more than 2,000 pages of love letters, telegrams and postcards which were sent from Francis, an educated young man from a village near Marseille, to the 19-year-old Barbara Rigby.

Francis had been called up at 18 and joined the French Air Force’s heavy bomber groups in North Africa. When France collapsed, the airmen were retrained in Britain and formed the 346 Guyenne Squadron and 347 Tunisie Squadron, flying Halifax bombers from RAF Elvington. Their wartime base is now the Yorkshire Air Museum and the personal letters only came to light when a photograph discovered there started a trail that led to Francis’s Uzay’s wartime sweetheart. Ian Reed, the museum’s director, says: “In 2009, Geneviève Monneris, a French author, and I were searching for documents and photographs for a film she was making about Sergeant Henri Martin, who was based at Elvington during the war.

“I found a photograph of Henri and his wife, Pat, with two other young men – their close friends Jacques Leclercq and Francis Uzay. Evidently, the four of them were a very tight group and enjoyed going out in York together.

“There was a note with the photograph, dated 1995, with the address of a woman in Western Australia. I wrote to her and was astonished when just a week later, I received a reply. The lady was Mrs Barbara Harper-Nelson – formerly Barbara Rigby.” As a result of this contact with Barbara, her link with Francis Uzay was revealed.

Barbara had kept every letter that Francis had sent to her in the original envelopes. She generously gifted the entire collection to the museum and also shared excerpts from the diaries that she kept during those years.

The photograph carrying Barbara’s address that began this detective work shows Francis with his best friends Henri, Pat and Jacques on one of their many evenings out in York together. On October 3,1944, Francis was in high spirits when he wrote to Barbara about the evening the photograph was taken.

“We again arrived in York, and went to look for Pat, who, naturally, was not ready, and then we went to have a photo taken together – all four of us. Here was another comic episode. I absolutely wanted the photograph of the group, but three boys with one girl was just not right. So, I took Jacques’ hand, looking tenderly into his eyes, whilst Pat and Henri laughed. The young girl photographer burst into laughter, pressed the camera button then had to do it all over again. After 45 minutes, we succeeded, but we also kept the photograph of us laughing. I think we were very funny.”

He goes on to recall another night out with the same group of friends: “Last night ‘the famous quartet’ was seen walking in Old York’s streets, singing and dancing in front of astounded and curious onlookers. It was a magnificent night, it missed only you...”

Francis was a mid-upper gunner and flew on many missions. On attacks on the heavily-defended Ruhr valley the French squadrons lost half their aircrews in a few months.

On November 5, 1944, little more than a month after that happy photograph of the foursome in York had been taken, Francis wrote to Barbara: “I am very upset tonight and I don’t really want to have to tell you, but I am going to... Henri is missing. He didn’t come back yesterday. We have no news and we think the worst has happened.

“I found out only this morning and I phoned Pat immediately. Poor Pat, she was very brave, magnificent. But not all is lost and we all still hope. Maybe I am a little cowardly, but I didn’t dare to tell Pat anything specific. It is true; I don’t want to think about the worst before I know more. But I am so desolate my darling; he is my best friend and Pat seemed to me so detached that I am afraid.

“Write to her, Cherie, console her, because I feel very inadequate for a thing like this. You must help me darling. I need you... Life is so bad and Pat will have a baby in a few months...I will keep close to Pat, because if I leave her alone, she will become crazy. Oh baby! I would like you near me at this moment. I feel so crushed and so useless when I speak with Pat. We forced her to take a sleeping pill tonight, but what will tomorrow be for her?”

Worse was to follow a couple of months later. A telegram to Barbara in January 1945 informed her that the aircraft in which Francis and Jacques were flying on a mission was missing. She was unable to get out of bed for two days. A second telegram told her that Francis had crashed but was alive and seriously injured in hospital in France.

One of Francis’ closest friends, rear gunner Antoine Morel, who was based in the south of England, came up to reassure Barbara that her young love had survived. Later, Francis told Barbara that in the immediate aftermath of the crash, he remembered hearing Jacques ask, ‘Is Francis all right?’ and had assumed that Jacques was a survivor too. It turned out, as Francis discovered when he became fully conscious, that these were his dear friend’s final words.

In her diary, Barbara writes how Francis is keen to be transferred to an English hospital as soon as possible. She recalls that when he finally arrived at her home, “he said hello to each piece of furniture because he was so happy to see them again”.

Francis found walking difficult after the crash. In her diary, Barbara notes his difficulties when out dancing and this “made him sad as he’d been an excellent dancer before”. She recalls how Francis had once told her she danced “like a nail”.

On Victory in Europe (VE) Day, May 8, 1945, Francis was still recuperating in hospital. He wrote to Barbara: “It is done! But I feel nothing. I do not have the feeling that the war is over. Of course it is not finished. The suffering of millions of people are finished. That makes me happy, but I have no enthusiasm. I must cry and sing and I had only two tears at the Victory announcement.

“It is the truth. I never dreamt of having Victory Day in hospital. Since the beginning of the war, I dreamt of flying over the Arc de Triomphe on the day of Victory. But I must remember that our soldiers in the Far East are in a worse position than I. Some died yesterday and will continue to die tomorrow, just as before. They will never see their country again, and me? I have just a hope to see it again. But I admit to you, I feel melancholy and hope to see my village with lots of lights and to hear songs and shouts coming to me...”

A few days later, he mused: “I used to think only to eliminate Germans and that it was luck that England was not invaded. We had to prevent England from knowing what invasion meant. But I have not the right for your gratitude, because my first thought had been to avenge France and to liberate it. And now, in the end I feel a little more English.”

On October 9, 1945, Barbara (a fluent French speaker) wrote in her diary that she was “lucky to have found such a lover”.

She records her last meeting with Francis in 1946, when she visited him at Berre L’Etang in France. One day they bought miniature models of the Saints of Provence. Barbara still puts them out at her home each Christmas. In 1947, she received a Christmas card from Francis saying that he would never forget her and that he would always love her.

Francis’s letters, written between 1944 and 1947, have now been presented to the French National Archive in Paris and are being translated to form the basis of a novel and an academic publication. They are the largest single collection of wartime correspondence in France.

As the only French heavy bomber squadrons within RAF Command, the stories of these airmen are little known, despite the fact that more than half of the young aircrews lost their lives. So Francis’s letters also offer a unique glimpse at the day-to-day lives of the young Frenchmen stationed here in Yorkshire.

After the war, Francis went on to marry and had two children. He worked at Shell in Paris for many years and died in 1996. Barbara, who is now 85 years old, moved to Australia with her husband in 1962.

Ian Reed said: “The story of their love and friendship is marked by historic wartime events, the loss, often in horrific circumstances, of their close friends and the help and support they gave one another through very difficult times. Each letters helps paint an often humorous picture of two young people’s journey during wartime and details everyday occurrences, along with their fears and hopes in fun times and sad times, in an endearing and highly readable way.

“Two of their closest friends, Henri and Jacques, were killed in action and Francis spent months in various hospitals. He endured painful surgery and yet still attempted to look after Henri’s widow, Pat, and her baby son.

“As a love story, Francis’s letters and Barbara’s diary, gathered together after 67 years, are very emotional. Francis was heartbroken when they separated, although we don’t really know what happened. As a social history document they are highly significant.”

Author Geneviève Monneris said: “We are very lucky that Barbara noted all her personal experiences and treasured Francis’ letters until now. She made us a wonderful gift donating all this collection to the Yorkshire Air Museum. I am very grateful to her and glad that this story can now be told.”

* The 346 Guyenne Squadron and 347 Tunisie Squadron will be honoured when a French war memorial is unveiled in York Minster on Thursday, October 20 as part of French in York Week. It will be the first French war memorial in an English cathedral. French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Prime Minister Francois Fillon are the dignitaries invited to attend.

* For information about activities happening during French in York Week, visit: http://www.yorkshire airmuseum.org

FAVOURITE HAUNTS OF THE FRENCH AIRMEN

Many of the French airmen based at Elvington during the Second World War dated and went on to marry young women from the York area.

Some of their favourite haunts still exist and include the De Grey Rooms where they enjoyed dancing, and the Railway Hotel, now the Royal York Hotel.

One of the most popular venues not only of Lieutenant Vigouroux but many others was Betty’s in St Helen’s Square, where the art deco interior remains. Some of the young men of 346 Guyenne Squadron and 347 Tunisie Squadron engraved their names on a mirror, which is still on display there today.