D-Day pilot honoured at Australian War Memorial

The Australian War Memorial in Canberra will be commemorating the service and sacrifice of Pilot Officer Colin Douglas Bell at the Last Post Ceremony on Wednesday 5 June, on the eve of the 80th anniversary of D-Day.

Nicknamed “Dinger”, Bell was one of more than 3,000 Australian service personnel who took part in the D-Day invasion of Normandy on 6 June 1944, which he survived.

“Born in Sydney on 5 October 1918, Colin Bell enlisted in the Royal Australian Air Force on 6 January 1941,” Australian War Memorial historian Meghan Adams said.

Following initial training in Australia, Bell continued pilot training in Canada, where he was involved in filming for an American war movie, Captains of the Clouds.

After qualifying as a pilot, Bell arrived in England in October 1941, and began his first major missions with No. 263 Squadron in raids over enemy-occupied France in January 1942. He served in the Persian Gulf, Egypt, Palestine and the eastern Mediterranean until April 1944 when his squadron returned to England in preparation for the invasion of Normandy.

“Based out of North Weald, Bell flew with No. 127 Squadron, equipped with Spitfire IXs, to support the D-Day landings, flying sweeps over the beaches, escorting bombers and dive bombing specific targets,” Ms Adams said.

“In August 1944, the squadron moved to the continent, where they continued flying fighter-bomber missions from airfields in France, Holland and Belgium.”

On 11 September 1944, Bell took off in his Spitfire for a raid on enemy shipping near Flushing, Holland. Encountering heavy flak as they pulled away from their target, Pilot Officer Colin Bell failed to return to base and was listed as missing. He was 25 years old.

His body washed ashore on the coast of Belgium four weeks later, on 10 October.

Today, Colin Bell lies at Oostende New Communal Cemetery and his name is listed on the Roll of Honour at the Australian War Memorial, among almost 40,000 Australians who died while serving in the Second World War.

The Last Post ceremony is held at 4.30 pm every day except Christmas Day in the Commemorative area of the Australian War Memorial.

Each ceremony shares the story behind one of 103,000 names on the Roll of Honour. To date, the Memorial has delivered more than 3,300 ceremonies, each featuring individual stories of service from colonial to recent conflicts. It would take more than 280 years to read the story behind each of the 103,000 names listed on the Roll of Honour.

“The Last Post Ceremony is our commitment to remembering and honouring the legacy of Australian service,” Memorial Director Matt Anderson said.

“Through our daily Last Post Ceremony, we not only acknowledge where and how these men and women died. We also tell the stories of who they were when they were alive, and of the families who loved and, in so many cases, still mourn for them.

 “The Last Post is now associated with remembrance but originally it was a bugle call to sound the end of the day’s activities in the military. It is a fitting way to end each day at the Memorial.”

The Last Post Ceremony honouring the service of Pilot Officer Colin Douglas Bell will be live streamed to the Australian War Memorial’s YouTube page; https://www.youtube.com/c/awmlastpost.

The stories told at the Last Post Ceremony are researched and written by the Memorial’s military historians, who begin the process by looking at nominal rolls, attestation papers and enlistment records before building profiles that include personal milestones and military experiences.