Jack Greenfield was the eldest of the three sons of Ernest and Florence Greenfield. He was born on the 2nd March 1923 in Poole. At some point the family moved to Blandford but sources of information are scarce. Ernest was a Postman and in 1939 the family were living at 35 Salisbury Road. Thanks to the kind assistance of Jack’s son, Michael we now have photographs and a greater understanding of Jack’s life.
Jack appears to have done well at school and won prizes at both the 1933 and 1934 Speech days.
As his father was a Postman it is perhaps unsurprising that Jack went to work at Blandford Post Office. In February 1940 he was appointed a Sorting Clerk with the official announcement made in the London Gazette;
His main RAF records are still to be released but we know he enlisted at Oxford some time after 1940 and trained as a Pilot before being posted to 196 Squadron flying Vickers Wellington X’s some time in early 1943.
Jack flew his first two operational flights as a second ‘Dickie’ pilot with 460 Squadron, his first being on 21st January 1943 with Sgt King and his crew in Wellington HE164 to bomb Lorient and his second on 26th January 1943 with Sgt Tozer and his crew in Wellington HE150 to lay mines. Around these dates many 196 Squadron pilots flew as second pilots with 460 Squadron captains and their crews.
On 21st March 1943 Jack was flying Wellington HE181 on what is believed to be a training flight when it swung on take off at Leconfield airfield at 01.45hr, hit heap of gravel and the undercarriage collapsed. The aircraft was badly damaged and later written off.
Wellington cockpit (Greenfield family photograph)
F/Sgt Greenfield was posted as missing on 13th May 1943 while flying Ops to Duisburg in Wellington HE398 when his plane was attacked by a Bf110 Night Fighter some 19 miles west of Callantsoog in the Netherlands.
In the early 2000’s the Dorset ‘Online Parish Clerk’ project invited reminisces of men on the school memorial. The entry for Jack read:
‘I was five years of age at the outbreak of the Second World War and Jack Greenfield was my hero. He was the eldest of three brothers (Jack, Roy and Peter) and became a bomber pilot in the R.A.F . My parents and his were family friends, having previously been next door neighbours at St Leonard’s Terrace, Blandford, before the Greenfields moved to live in Salisbury Road. On Jack’s leaves before being lost in action he used to bring me models of bomber aircraft which colleagues of his had carved from odd bits of wood. He married a girl called Eunice, who I believe was in the WRAF, and who came from Kidderminster – I think she remarried after the war. There used to be regular radio broadcasts during the war listing all those known to be prisoners of war, and after Jack went missing in action, his parents listened to all such broadcasts desperately hoping to hear his name, but it never was.’
Jack’s Sergeant stripes, 1939-45 Star, Aircrew Europe Star, and War Medal 1939-45.
(courtesy the Greenfield family)
Jack was just twenty years old and is commemorated not only on the Blandford School memorial but also on on the Runnymede Memorial to the missing. 
The Post Office obviously still considered Jack to be one of their own and his name is recorded in the Post Office Memorial Book:
Jack and his mother at 35 Salisbury Road Blandford
Jack (L) and his wife, Eunice Richardson, possibly a photo from their wedding on 5th September 1942
The rest of his crew were:
Sgt Kenneth Bell Wireless Operator/Gunner (aged 26)
F/Sgt Robert Burridge Navigator (aged 22)
Sgt William Eddington Air Gunner (aged 20)
Sgt William O’Neill Bomb Aimer (aged 21)
Blandford Schools' Combined War Memorials 