The crew

His turret failed over Hannover and Johnson sent him forward to the nose. Over Liège he was hit in the knee. He landed in a field north of Liège, right beside a German battery that kept firing, and lay a full night under a hedge in freezing fog. Ghislaine Toussaint, walking her dog along the lane, took him home and hid him for twelve days. Via Brussels, Bavay, Paris, the Pyrenees and Gibraltar he reached England on 17 January 1944 — his 28th operation. He served on as an air traffic controller and died on 22 December 1958, only 36 years old.

“I went up to her and said: ‘I'm an Englishman.’ She embraced and kissed me and took me to her house.”