Downed flying ace remembered in St Ouen

Thursday 15 June 2017

A Jerseyman has been remembering the day, exactly 73 years ago, when a highly decorated fighter pilot was shot down over St Ouen, crashing into his family home.

Yesterday marked the exact anniversary of that day, and Bernie Morel has been keeping the memory of Henri Gonay alive ever since.

“I can remember that crash site very vividly,” said Mr Morel. 

“It was a Wednesday in 1944, the 14^th of June, that the aircraft crashed into the house where we actually lived.”

When describing the crash site, Mr Morel, who was five at the time said: “It was just the walls left standing. The aircraft had crashed on the side of the house and caught fire with fuel on board and lots of ammunition.”

“We actually weren’t in the house. My dad was working in St Helier and had left for work with it being a Wednesday and my mum had gone to her sister’s in St Mary bringing me along with her obviously, being five. All I can remember is coming back to actually see the house itself completely ruined.”

 He said times were “pretty hard” as his family recovered from the damage.  

“Mum and Dad just had to rebuild the house from scratch,” said Mr Morel, but he added that: “This was war-time. Everybody helped each other out, I had toys from all over the place.”

Mr Morel’s Occupation experience is memorable, and he has gone the extra mile in recent years to honour the memory of Squadron Leader Henri Gonay who lost his life when his plane crashed into Mr Morel’s house.

In 2014, to mark the 70^th anniversary of the crash, a Jersey road was named after Henri Gonay following a proposal from Mr Morel himself.

The name of the road in question came up for debate in a St Ouen’s Parish Hall meeting, as it was unnamed at the time, and Mr Morel insisted that there was only one suitable option for the unnamed road near the 70 year old crash site.

“I said there is only one name for that [road] and two years later it was done.,” said Mr Morel.

But whilst he might summarise the process as easily as that, Mr Morel went to great lengths to research the fighter pilot who had lost his life when Mr Morel lost his home.

It took him a year of research to build his proposal for naming the road in Henri Gonay’s honour; “I did quite a lot of research on him to present my case,” said Mr Morel.

His proposal was obviously successful and since 2014, the road at the northern end of Route de Grantez, St Ouen, which was unnamed, has been called Rue Henri Gonay- commemorating a decorated pilot who during his career he flew 138 missions and was awarded the RAF’s Distinguished Flying Cross, the French Croix de Guerre and Belgian’s Oorlogskruis.

An unveiling ceremony took place at the time with representatives of the RAF, the Baliff, Belgium delegates, Mr Gonay’s grandchildren and, of course, Mr Morel.