Not Forgotten, 38423 Pilot Officer Peter Colin EDWARDS, Royal Australian Air Force, World War 2

Peter Edwards was born 8 November 1922, the son of Norman and Hilda Edwards who I believe ran the of Minnivale store at one point. Peter was born in Perth on 8 November 1922 and enlisted in the RAAF on 15 April 1941, into No. 10 Squadron (RAF) based at RAF Melbourne in Yorkshire from August 1942. From December 1941 No. 10 Squadron flew the Handley Page Halifax.
On 26 December 1944 at 1250 hours, Halifax NR 246 left RAF Melbourne in Yorkshire with Peter Edwards then aged 22 on board, on his thirty-fourth and what was to be his last mission. Peter Edwards was a wireless operator on one of three planes of No. 10 Squadron ordered to bomb a target near St Vith in Belgium, near the German border in support of the Ardennes Counte roffensive, better known as the Battle of the Bulge. It was believed the bombs were dropped but the plane was hit and that over the English Channel the tail fell off the plane. No debris was found and the body of Peter Edwards was never recovered.
The other personnel were all R.A.F. personnel. No debris was found but the body of Flight Sergeant P Mansell RAFVR, the Flight Engineer, was washed ashore at Broadstairs on the English south coast and buried at St Faith Churchyard in King’s Lynn; the body of Flight Sergeant T. Murphy RAFVR, an Air Gunner, was also washed ashore on the English coast and buried in the Liverpool Roman Catholic Cemetery; the body of Flight Sergeant Dennis Addyman RAFVR, an Air Gunner, was washed ashore and buried in St Nicholas Churchyard at Thames Ditton in Surrey. The bodies of Pilot Officer Jack Gower, Pilot Officer William MacLeod and Flying Officer Bernard Yates were also never recovered.
Peter Edwards is remembered on the Dowerin War Memorial, the Minnivale Roll of Honour, on the International Bomber Command Centre Memorial at Canwick Hill in Lincoln, at Runnymede Air Forces Memorial for men and women from air forces of the British Empire who were lost during World War 2 with no known grave as well as the Australian War Memorial in Canberra and the State War Memorial in Kings Park.