LIFE SACRIFICED

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 20919, 20 October 1942, Page 5

LIFE SACRIFICED

CRASH TO SAVE CHILDREN A statement that their son, SergeantPilot Warwick A. Clouston, who was reported killed last June, deliberately crashed his machine in the sea to avoid hitting some children playing on an English beach, .is contained in a letter received by Mr. and Mrs. D. C. Clouston, of Ocean View road, Milford, from a Royal Air Force padre, the Rev/A. G. Maclntyre, who conducted Sergeant-Pilot Clouston’s funeral service. “I found a man who had been standing on the cliff and who saw it all,” , said Mr. Maclntyre. “This man said that Sergeant-Pilot Clouston might have made a landing on the beach, and he had begun to come down, as if he would. Then he must have noticed the kiddies playing on the sand and decided to risk hitting them, so he turned out to sea and crashed there. “Although I never knew your son,” added Mr. Maclntyre, “from what I have heard of his character, that is just what he would do. Many pilots lose their lives in action against the enemy, in trying to destroy them, and we rightly regard them as noble. But your son gave his life to save the lives of those little kiddies on the beach, and I think that is nobler still.”