A story of great heroism

Today at U3A one of our members and her daughter gave a talk about her husbands exploits in WW2. He was the engineer in a Lancaster  and was shot down over the middle of France and bailed out by parachute,  landing in a tree . French Resistance found him and took him to their hideout in the woods which was discovered by the Nazis who killed or captured most and shot Marjorie's husband, the bullet lodging in his brain. He was taken to hospital where the bullet was removed. He was saved as they saw his dog tag.

To cut a long story short, after the operation and before being sent to Germany he was rescued from the hospital by Resistance and sympathetic French hospital staff, sitting on a bike with one pushing and one pulling it through a town packed with Germans as D Day was just happening. He was then passed from person to person, staying in places from small houses and farms to an aristocrat's chateau. He arrived back in England where he lived until his death in the '70s, war disabled but alive.

The bravery of those people was unbelievable as they would have been tortured and/or shot for helping. 

His family have been tracking down those helped him escape (over 100 in all) and have a collection of artifacts and photos including boxes of pieces of the actual plane in which he flew.

My mother was really looking forward to the talk as her brother was killed in a Lancaster that crashed, also in 1944, they were in the same squadron. Sadly she died before Christmas - she would have really enjoyed it!

The photo is of the couple that gave the talk plus some of their collection of memorabilia.