EAST ANGLIA
In August 2024, our Special Interest Group (East Anglia Documentary) embarked on a project to commemorate the anniversary of Victory in Europe. We aimed to explore real stories beyond the stereotypical historic images of parades, bunting, and politicians. We joined a Battlefield Tour of Germany, which provided transport and a pre-published itinerary, and given the final destination of Berlin via other military waypoints, we could easily integrate our images into the final project.
Our focus was on the long-forgotten RAF Wendling and the Mighty Eighth, the Night Intruders of 25 Squadron with the Berlin diversionary of Operation Hydra, and the ultra-secret RAF Tempsford, which the Luftwaffe knew about; but could never find. This secrecy ended tragically for some involved in the Special Operations Executive and, of course, the Train of Life. We invite you to view these photographs with an open mind, to touch history, and perhaps see what you might not have seen before.
The photographic team on this journey was also able to 'feel' the locations (something we cannot convey in this medium), delving into the 'then and now' scenarios. We have added relevant comments where appropriate.
Richard Jefferies, Group Lead, September 2025
The Road begins
After leaving blighty, it started not with a monument, or a battlefield, but with a quiet hotel in Utrecht.
The morning light filtered through the station platforms and along the dyke, bicycles everywhere; ordinary, unremarkable and yet .. somehow perfect.
This was the threshold of our journey: a place of pause before the plunge into memory.
Travelling by coach offered a kind of narrative continuity, No fragmented transfers or logistical acrobaticsjust a steady, door-to-door rhythm that allowed the story to unfold organically.
From Dover’s white cliffs to Holland’s flat calm, the coach became our companion: a place to rest, reflect, and ready ourselves.
Camera gear safely stowed overhead and luggage below, we could snooze between stops, sketch impressions, develop story lines, or simply slip into creative thought as Europe passed by in layers, covering distances to the Baltic forests and our first ‘target for tonight’ moment.
THE BALTIC
GREIFSWALD SQUARE
This was our first, long awaited, trip to the Northeast of Germany and it did not disappoint.
The purpose behind our trip was to obtain images and clips which would form the basis of our first real venture into the media world of a ‘ zine ‘, a medium much favoured by The Royal Photographic Society.
A zine (pronounced "zeen") is a small, self-published booklet, usually handmade, and inexpensively produced. It serves as a creative outlet for individuals or groups outside of traditional media. Zines can cover any topic, from personal journals and span fiction to politics and art.
They are often characterized by their DIY aesthetic, limited circulation, and a spirit of independent expression…pretty much our raison d’etre given the YouTube channel we run and our sporadic contributions to the RPS
Photography is not merely the act of seeing- it’s the act of choosing. And that choice, to me, is always personal.
Take this image of the station café in Stralsund. There’s nothing overtly dramatic about it – no grand architecture, no historical plaque, but I saw an echo of Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks.
That same sense of suspended time, of life intersecting briefly in the hush of transit. Hopper understood that stillness could be cinematic and that solitude could be shared .. even by the girl seated at the table trying to be ‘not there’. Anonymity.
Like Kings Lynn in Norfolk, Stralsund carries the imprint of Hanseatic ambition.
The town arrived quietly in our itinerary- its name unfamiliar, its location on the Strelasund unknown to us - until we stood beside it.
This narrow sound, separating the mainland from the island of Rugen, has long been a threshold: a place of passage, of trade, of transition.
Both ports once thrived on the pulse of Baltic trade, their quays echoing with the language of merchants and mariners
Stralsund’s railway, threading across the Ziegelgraben and Strelasund bridges was more than infrastructure- it was a lifeline. It connected Berlin to Stockholm, Rugen to the mainland, and ultimately history to the present.
The causeway itself feels like a stitched seam between eras. In the late 19th century, trains even boarded ferries here to cross the sound before the fixed links were built.
Like King’s Lynn, Stralsund is a town of quiet endurance. Both ports once stood at the crossroads of empires.
One of the stops on the tour was to Prora, a disused complex but once Architecture of Ambition. This complex does not whisper its history-it looms!
Stretching nearly 4.5 kilometers along the Baltic coast, this colossal structure was born of the Nazi regime’s ‘Strength Through Joy’ (KdF) programme, intended to house 20,000 holidaymakers in a utopian seaside retreat. But war intervened and the dream collapsed into something else entirely.
The Colossus of Prora was envisaged to be a German version of the Butlins resorts in Britain.
During WW2 the complex served as a shelter for refugees and Luftwaffe auxiliaries. Later, under East German control, it became a military basehome to elite parachute battalions and construction units for conscientious objectors.
Its vast corridors resonated not with leisure but with discipline and duty.
And yet, Prora endures today; its bones being reimagined. What was once a propaganda project is now a canvas for reinvention.
High-end flats, as seen here, boutique hotels, and Germany’s largest youth hostel breathe new life into Klotz’s austere geometry.
OPERATION HYDRA
AND THE BERLIN DIVERSION
‘C’ FLIGHT
25 SQUADRON 1945
THE NIGHT INTRUDERS
On the night of 17-18 August 1943, the skies over Usedom ignited. Operation Hydra, the first major Allied strike against the Nazi V-weapons program, targeted the Peenemunde Army Research Centre – a secretive and remote Baltic facility where Wernher von Braun and his team were developing the V-2 rocket. These weapons, if left unchecked, threatened to reshape the war’s trajectory.
The Night Intruders ‘mocked’ a bomber attack on Berlin to keep the night fighters occupied over the capital … which kind of worked for the first wave…
Then it did not !
DOOR TO SECRETS
LANCASTER WINGTIP FROM DV202 (44SQN)
THE LOX PLANT
THE POWER STATION
THE ARENA (LAUNCHPAD)
The operation inflicted significant damage, some key facilities were hit, two scientists were killed, and rocket development delayed by crucial months.
Yet the cost was steep – over 40 Allied aircraft lost, and hundreds of enslaved workers in nearby Trassenheide perished. Hydra was both a strategic blow and a moral reckoning, exposing the human toll behind technological ambition.
Today, Peenemunde stands as a paradox: a cradle of space exploration and a monument to wartime suffering.
HARBOURSIDE
ONE OF THE GIRLS
‘LOUISE’
GIBRALTAR FARM BARN
From the Barn of Hope to the Camp of the Dead
Before we joined the expedition into Germany, we had made a quiet detour to RAF Tempsford, the most secret of Britain’s secret airfields. Hidden in the Bedfordshire countryside, camouflaged by illusionists and cloaked in silence.
Tempsford was the launchpad for some of the most daring missions of the Second World War. On nights of the full moon, agents of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) flew into occupied Europe on aircraft similar to those preserved at the Shuttleworth Collectionclose by.
Standing in the barn at Tempsford, where agents received their final briefings and equipment, we listened to the stillness. The walls bear inscriptions and photographs now – tributes to the men and womenwho flew into darkness. It is a place of reverence, of quiet pride, and we calledit thebarn of hope.
But Ravensbrück was something else entirely.
It is not a place of pilgrimage, but of reckoning. Gibraltar Farm barn invites remembrance; Ravensbrück demands it.
As documentary photographers it is in our nature to capture images which reflect reality and here, eighty years after the liberation of the camp by the Red Army on 30th April 1945, a day which Berlin was marked down in the annals of history, we were somewhat conflicted about our direction.
This place, whilst hugely important in the telling of the Third Reich story, both then and now, is not a nice place… and we felt it.
B E R L I N
Berlin – A City of the Dead ?
And so, to Berlin …. which after some thought we would put down as a city of ghosts, of unresolved memory, and of brutal contrasts.
We have been here before, some 40 years ago, but that was only for a day, and that was to the Zoo.
This time around we had three days in the city. We walked, and we talked, we looked and we stared, and indeed sometimes scratched our heads. It’s a city that doesn’t explain itself easily. It demands attention but offers very few answers, if any.
For a Battlefield Tour, it’s a map of trauma – layered, fractured and unflinching in the name of National Socialism.
Everywhere you look there are pockmarked buildings, remnants still of shellfire and sorrow. Streets that once divided lives now carry trams and tourists. Deportation plaques glint from pavements. Memorials rise from silence. And beneath it all, the question: what happened here, and how?
On 29th April 1944, the Eight Air Force launched a massive raid on Berlin, with Friedrichstrasse station as a primary target. This is where the official military narrative and the physical aftermath don’t quite align.
Over 750 B-17s and B-24s were dispatched, together with a significant number of fighter escorts, in a ‘ concentrated effort’ to cripple Berlin’s passenger rail system with Friedrichstrasse identified as a vital hub where East-West and North-South lines intersect.
The American post-mission reports claimed ‘ fair to good ‘ results, with 1,400 tons of bombs dropped across Berlin. From their perspective, the raid was a strategic success. We had to go check this out ourselves as Wiki and Deutsche Reichsbahn claim relatively minor damage during the war. It remained operational and was even used by civilians and military personnel throughout much of the conflict.
The station’s survival may reflect the difficulty of precision bombing in urban environments, especially under cloud cover and heavy flak. For us, standing on its platforms decades later, the station felt less like a ruin and more like a survivor. It’s a reminder that history is often contestednot just in archives, but in architecture. What was meant to be destroyed became a symbol of continuity.
•From Norfolk’s quiet fields to Europe’s scarred soil, we travel not to conquer history—but to listen to its silence.
29 APRIL 1944
18 SHIPS OUT : 8 LOST
KIA,
FRIEDRICHSTRASSE
THE TARGET
The ‘target’ was a patch of land some 500 metres by 100 metres and was a new direction by 8th Air Force as the plan was to destroy a major transport hub in a city of 4 million people; hopefully causing serious disruption to the management of war work.
The reality was that the station escaped major damage during the Second World War; thus the raid in 1944 was somewhat ineffective.
Nevertheless, it is undoubtedly an important historical building in its own right and deserves a further visit if one is doing Cold War stories and adventures.
RIVER SPREE
ONE OF THE BOYS
FLIGHT LIEUTENANT D.O.STREET, MiD
A NAME AMONGST THE FIFTY
In the quiet rows of the Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery in Berlin. One name stands out.
His headstone, like the others, is simple. But the story it holds is anything but.
Flt.Lt Street flew from RAF Langar, a Nottinghamshire airfield which 207 Squadron called home, and from which Lancaster Mark 1 W4931 began its final mission- one that would end not in the skies at the hands of a Luftwaffe night fighter ace, but in captivity, escape and execution.
Captured on the Baltic Coast and held at Stalag Luft III, he became part of the legendary ‘ Great Escape ‘ – a daring breakout on the night of 24-25 March 1944, when 76 Allied airmen tunneled out of the camp at Zagan, only to be recaptured reportedly near Reichenberg.
RAF LANGAR, 2025
What is clear is this: Street was one of the 50 executed by the Gestapo on Hitler’s direct orders. These murders were carried out under the pretense of escape attempts, but they were extrajudicial killings – war crimes that shocked the world. Street’s remains were cremated and later interred in Berlin, far from the fields of Langar where his journey began.
Standing at Langar, watching the parachutists using the silk for pleasure, one can only reflect on the wartime use of the canopies for survival.
We came to visit you … and we stood on his memory
With its windswept runways, and repurposed control tower, the contrast is stark with the quietness and solemnity of the British War Cemetery in Berlin.
One site site speaks of potential, the other, of sacrifice. But both are part of the same story – a story of defiance, dignity, and the cost of freedom.
BORN 04JUL1890 IN ALLENSTEIN, DE
TRAINS TO LIFE – TRAINS TO DEATH
In 1933,Berlin was home to approximately 160,000 German Citizens of the Jewish Faith – nearly a third of Germany’s Jewish population. By 1939, that number had fallen to around 80,000 as persecution, emigration, and fear reshaped the city’s soul.
What followed was systematic deportation: over 60,000 Berliners were sent eastward to ghettos and camps. Few returned.
Outside Friedrichstrasse station stands a haunting memorial: Trains to Life – Trains to Death.
Sculpted by Frank Meisler, himself a child rescued by the Kindertransport, it depicts two groups of children. One pair strides forward, hopeful, suitcase in hand; symbols of those saved. The other group stands in shadow, hesitant, their belongings broken, their futures stolen. It is a visual reckoning with fate.
The first Train of Life departed on 30th November 1938 and hats off to the British Embassy for the speed and compassion in issuing visas for the some 10,000 travelers over the period it operated.
Friedrichstraße Bahnhof
Züge in das Leben
Züge in den Tod
The train to death is the other story.
From 1941 onward, Berlin’s Jews were deported in waves – first to the ghettos in Łódź Theresienstadt, then to extermination camps like Auschwitz-Birkenau.
The trains left from Grunewald and Anhalter stations, often in silence, often at night.
These were not journeys – they were erasures
To stand at Friedrichstrasse today is to feel both stories pressing against each other.
The bronze children do not speak, but they ask. They ask what we remember, what we honor, and what we choose to carry forward.
FROM TWAIN TO TEMPELHOF
A WALK THROUGH LAYERS
We began in Tiergarten, not far from where Mark twain once stayed – Kornerstrasse 7, a modest address tucked between rail lines and leafy avenues.
Twain arrived in Berlin in 1891, escaping debts and seeking inspiration. He found a city both bewildering and brilliant, an impression pretty much what we found ourselves almost 125 years later.
He called it ‘ the European Chicago’ for its ambition and speed. But he also felt lostconfounded by street names, bureaucracy, and the ‘awful German language’. Still, he stayed.
And in that staying, he became part of Berlin’s story.
Our own walk began at Pohlstrasse, a quiet street with its own secrets.
Ottilie Pohl, an elected politician, fell foul of the Nazis .
On 19 November 1942 she was arrested by the Gestapo; her possessions were seized; and she was deported to Theresienstadt, where she died the following year.
• From there, we passed through Gleisdreieck,once a tangled junction of rail lines, now a park of reclaimed steel and silence. The name means ‘railway triangle’ and it still carries the hum of movement. Freight once thundered through here; now cyclists and skaters trace gentler paths. But the hosts of industry remain, tucked beneth graffiti and wild grass. We too spent time together with the hip and trendy and this became the base of of evening catering.
And then, Tempelhof. The airfield that fed the city during the blockade. Kites rising where aircraft once did. With beer in hand, it was a moment of pause: between history and nowbetween Twain’s bewilderment and our quiet contentment. Berlin doesn’t offer easy answers; but if offers layers. And in walking them, we found our own.
I guess you cannot go to Berlin without seeing The Wall, or indeed the internal border museum which we stopped at on our return.
A wall that witnessed silence. This surviving section of the Berlin Wall stands besides the ruins of the Gestapo headquarters on Niederkirchnerstrasse – unadorned and unflinching.
It marks not just a border, but a boundary between memory and forgetting.
THE INTERNAL BORDER
DIVISION
At Hötensleben, the border still stands. Not as a division, but as a witness. The preserved fortifications- barbed wire, signal fences, watchtowers – stretch across the landscape like a scar that refuses to fade.
Here, the Iron Curtain was not metaphor but material: concrete, steel, silence. And yet, behind the wall, chickens wander and goat’s and horses graze.
This was our final stop before heading West. A place where history was not curated through glass but exposed to weather and time.
We crossed borders, literal and emotional. From R.A.F. Langar’s wind blown concrete runways to Berlin’s fractured streets, from the silence of Ravensbrück to the open skies of Tempelhof and the Flensburg Pilsner we so enjoyed, from the rocketeers in Peenemünde to, and possibly including, the criminals. Each step and each mile was a reckoning. Not just with history, but how we choose to carry it, document it and post it online.
We met the dead - named and unnamed - and we traced their paths through stations, camps and cemeteries. We shook hands with the ghosts of people we never knew existed from street signs to brass plaques in the pavements.
We walked with the shadows of agents, airmen, and children. We could have danced on ‘the’ car park in Berlin; but chose instead to shed a tear for the nation; not the tyrant.
And thus, in these eight days of August 2025, we did not just document – we bore witness; and our ‘Eyes of China’ (DJI Pocket 2, DJI Pocket 3, Honor 90 Lite 100MP, Honor 90 Magic 5G 200 MP ) … caught it all.
This project is not the conclusion we seek, as we will advance a decade in time next year and look at the Deutsche Democratic Republic in the period between 1945 and 1960. Keep an eye out for Leipzig ’26 in late May.
I must acknowledge the huge support from Microsoft Copilot whose scripts, historical insights, and philosophical provocations helped me to refine the emotional texture of this work. It was a thoughtful companion on an iPad sitting next to me in STUDIOTWO of ….. docea@rps.org
