Roll of Honour 2023

P AGE 133

W ORLD W AR II

S T . E DWARD ’ S S CHOOL , O XFORD R OLL OF H ONOUR

Name ARTHUR BANKS (Sgt/Pilot)

Lef SES 1942

Roll Number 3203 Died 20:12:1944

Set / House E

Arrive SES 1937

Where RIVER PO, ITALY Serving with 112 SQD, FIGHTER COMMD, R.A.F.V.R.

Age 21

Buried Aregenta Gar War Cemetery, Italy Remembered Llanddulas War Memorial and The St. Edward’s WW2 Memorial

Born in 1923 in Llanddulas, North Wales, the son of a distinguished Great War pilot. Banks was a popular and well remembered pupil of the SES community who was a School Prefect and member of the School Rowing VIII 1940-2 (Captain of Boats 1942), 2nd Rugby Football XV, a Scholar, School Choir, School Play, and the Classical VIth. He joined the RAFVR in 1942 and by 1942 was a Leading Aircraftsman in Fighter Command. By 1944 he was a qualified pilot with 112 Squadron. While on a reconnaissance mission in December 1944, he was shot down by ground fire over Northern Italy. He managed to land safely after which he destroyed his aircraft for which he was mentioned in dispatches posthumously). After some months he was active with local partisans before being betrayed and taken into German hands. In the weeks that followed Banks and other members of his group were tortured horrifically and continually by both the Germans and their Italian allies. Banks never gave away any information and was eventually thrown into the River Po, weighed down with weights and expected to drown. Amazingly this resilient man, in terrible physical shape managed to swim to the bank where he was seen by members of the Brigade Nere the worst of the Italian Fascists who promptly executed him and left him on the local dung heap. Later local partisans moved the body to the Argenta Gap Cemetery. A post-war trial of his tormentors was held and the perpetrators held to account. Banks was awarded the George Cross after the war as well as the Italy Star.