wrote on December 6, 2010
Dear Roger
I came across this site and your entries about Ralph Van den Bok after googling his name. My own particular interest is in 214 Sqn (with whom, as you say, he later flew RCM Fortresses) and I have contributed various bits and pieces to the 214 Sqn website.
I have somewhere a copy of Van den Bok\'s Escape & Evasion Report which I found recently while on a research trip up to Kew. As you say, at that time he was a W/Op / Gunner not a pilot, in a 408 Sqn Hampden and managed to get back to the UK after coming down on the continent in 1942 (I think it may have been France, from memory). Would you like me to send you a copy? I have also compiled a full list of 214\'s wartime sorties so he appears in there too. I think he flew something like 17 Fortress ops with 214. If I recall correctly there\'s a picture of him and his crew in \"Even when the Sparrows are Walking\" by Laurie Brettingham, a book that came out a few years ago now, about 100 Group (thus including 214 Sqn).
If the E&E Report might be of interest send me an e-mail. My address is ian.hunt29ATbtinternetDOTCOM; do the usual changes for \'AT\' and \'DOTCOM\'.
Regards
Ian
ps For anyone else who might see this, I am currently researching the Lubeck raid of 28-29/3/1942 upon which 408 sent 6 Hampdens. Would anyone know please the first names - or initials only would do - of 3 of those pilots: P/O Williams, Sgt Craig and Sgt Johnstone? (The others were, I think, Sgt J W Markle, Sgt A McClintock, and Sgt H J Copeman - but please correct me if I\'m wrong). Many thanks.
pps A very nice site. Congratulations and good luck for its future.