One of a series of stories and place-based sketches exploring locations that sit at the edges of the narrative told in The Écrivélo Book.
This is me with my great friend Dan, over from Australia, at the memorial for the crash of the Admiral Prune, 4 February 1943. It’s good to have a detective on the team. His research turned up something worth correcting. 🧵
Before we delve into that, let’s correct the plaque. Admittedly, it is getting a little shabby, which is disappointing. However, you can see from the photo I took a few years ago that the date of the incident on the plaque is incorrect.
The Admiral Prune was one of 188 aircraft that left England en route to Turin, Italy. They took off at 18:05, 4 February 1943. Before midnight, four crew members were dead, three seriously injured, and one, luckily, uninjured.
Who was and wasn't Injured
A 2024 report in Valsonne magazine claimed rear gunner John Picken escaped the crash uninjured and was helped at the scene. A German POW medical card tells a different story: Picken was admitted with a fractured rib and fractures to his left leg.
Picken was one of several crew hospitalised after the crash, later held as a POW. After the war he settled in North Arm Cove, Australia. He died there on 1 October 2003. No children. His relatives have shared photographs — they’ll appear properly in Écrivélo.
