大象传媒

This story was added to the People's War website by a volunteer from Radio Newcastle on behalf of Thomas Jones. Mr Jones fully understands the site's terms and conditions and the story has been added to the site with his permission

Every year, Thomas Jones visits Eden Camp museum in Yorkshire, to lay a bunch of flowers with a small card with the names of three Danes: Lars P Larsen, Hans P Hansen and Olga Hansen. Those three Danes helped amongst others Thomas Jones and Frank Fuller to hide from the Germans after they, on 27th April 1945, had to make a forced landing with a British bomber in Plouglund Mose towards the end of the second world war. A brave effort from the Danes who risked their lives by helping the English. Thomas' gratitude to the three Danes and their families is enormous.

It was the middle of the night on April 27th 1945. A British bomber was on its way across Jutland to Funen with weapons for the Danish resistance movement. The six men crew could not see any light which would tell them where to drop the weapons; when the bomber reached the dropping zone. They therefore started their return to England. When the bombed reached Vejle, things went wrong. The German anti-aircraft guns had seen the bomber and fired at it. The bomber's left engine caught fire and the crew saw no other way than to force land the bomber. The forced landing was in Plougslund Mose and at first all six crew members were alive; one person was so badly injured that he died a few days later. The crew ran away in different directions from the bomber so as not to be caught by the Germans. The crew was able to remain hidden until the end of the war on 4 May 1945 thanks to the brave Danes.

Thomas' story...
I was the navigator of a MK 1V Stirling aircraft shot down by the Germans when returning from a SOE drop in Denmark early in 1945, at a place called Plouglund Mose, near Billund, the present home of Lego.

With the help of some very brave Danish people I managed to evade capture by the Germans. In 1995 the local people of Grene Sogn, a village adjacent to Billund erected a memorial to the aircraft and its crew at Plougland Mose. I, along with my radio operator, was invited to attend a ceremony to unveil the memorial.

10 years later on the 60th anniversary of the date the aircraft was shot down I was again invited to attend a ceremony at Plougsland Mose organised by "The Localhistorisk for Grene Sogn." At this ceremony I was presented with a part of my aircraft which had lain in a museum in Billund for 60 years. Initially the museum was extremely reluctant to part with the item on the basis that once it becomes the property of a museum it remains so for ever. However, the son in law of my helper's daughter, Ketty Jensen, offered a slightly damaged propeller from the aircraft, once the property of a local farmer, now deceased, which could be erected at the memorial site if they would give me that part of the aircraft in the museum. After much discussion agreement was reached and a certificate of authenticity was prepared by the museum to enable me to get it through security at the airport.

I had great pleasure in presenting the item in question to the Eden Camp together with the certificate.

Thomas Jones, AFES, ELMS, SOE navigator 295 Sqdn RAF

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