Honoured pilot always a hero to sister
13 JANUARY 2001
By JULIE CLOTHIER
A Wellington pilot will be honoured in France later this month for sacrificing his life during the Second World War, but to his younger sister, he's always been a hero.
Pilot Officer James K Stellin, of Lower Hutt, died on August 19, 1944, when his Hawker-Typhoon plane crashed in eastern Normandy.
The 22-year-old was hailed a hero in the tiny French town of St-Maclou-la-Briere for diverting the doomed aircraft from crashing into a school.
Fifty-six years later, a memorial to Plt Off Stellin will be unveiled in the village on January 28.
His sister, 76-year-old Betty Nicolle, of central Wellington, learned about the planned memorial from The Evening Post yesterday.
She and her sister, Marie, 79, who lives on Great Barrier Island near Auckland, often talked about Jim and his bravery but she didn't realise he was considered such a hero in the French village.
"I suppose he was a hero to them. He was probably thinking at the time he didn't want the plane to come down on the school," she said. "If he had crashed down on the school he would have killed a lot of kiddies."
The Stellin family didn't hear about Jim's death for a year, tillwhen a satchel belonging to him was sent home.
Mrs Nicolle still has the satchel and said she occasionally looked at its contents.
She said her brother, a former Scots College student, had always wanted to be an Air Force pilot.
She didn't know what had prompted the village memorial.
Plt Off Stellin was posthumously awarded France's top honour, the Croix de Guerre avec palme, for placing the lives of those in the school above his own.
St-Maclou-la-Briere mayor Pierre Lambert approached the New Zealand defence attache to France, Brigadier Rick Ottaway, because he wanted to invite relatives of Plt Off Stellin to attend the ceremony.
The Air Force could not confirm yesterday if Mrs Nicolle would be invited to the unveiling.
Mrs Nicolle said she visited her brother's grave in St-Maclou-la-Briere in 1982.
She said she would like to attend the service later this month but at such short notice she didn't know if she could.
Stellin Memorial Park, in Northland, is named after Plt Off Stellin.
