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I also spent time with the Pay & Accounts people to review my finances. There whre a few entries in the statements that I didn't understand. For example, I was given an allowance for Middle East clothing and I was never near that part of the world. Adding to the confusion I had never received a nickel of officers pay during the February to June period before I went missing. Overall I was satisfied and my accumulated pay represented a nice bundle of cash. One final item ‐I was still shown on the personnel records as 'missing' with the rank of Flying Officer. By this time I had been an officer on paper for nearly three years and should by now have been automatically promoted to Flights Lieutenaant. This was rectified at RCAF Headquarters and I was authorized to wear the extra ring on my uiform.

After a week in Bournemouth, Parky and I decided we would like to spend a few days with a family somewhere in Britain preferably in the country. Through a volunteer agency in London we were given the name of a family on the south coast that was highly recommended. The address was The Parsonage, Udimore, near Rye, Sussex, England. We wondered about the name of the residence since we had visions of morning and evening prayers at a vicarage. We decided to go anyway and by arrangement were met at the Rye train station by a tall slim English lady who introduced herself as Freda Holmes. We piled into her car then roared out into the country over the narrowest of roads. We pulled up in front of a very large country home and it was obvious that this was not the home of a Clergyman. We were ushered inside and a distinguished gentleman in a tweed sports jacket greeted us warmly. We knew him only as AK and took to him immediately. He had been a Conservative Member of Parliment, had rowed for Cambridge in his university days and now supervised the operation of his 450 acre farm. The Holmes family had suffered grievously in the war losing one son in Normandy and another in the Royal Navy. They had a daughter Bridget in the WRENS and a fourteen year old son at boarding school.

During the day we enjoyed the farm ‐I felt right at home and Parky liked the green, open spaces after the squalor of our last prison camp. I remember him saying how dreadful it would have been if the Germans had overrun this beautiful land. In the mornings we helped with cherry picking from the tallest trees I have ever seen. During our stay a bushel of fresh cherries was delivered to Winston Churchill from the Holmes' family with a note saying how they were picked by two visiting Canadian airmen. On the farm they also had hundreds of pure bred sheep cared for by hired help. We spent some time in the historic town of Rye, one of the original Cinque Ports and also visited Hastings a few miles away, site of the famous battle of 1066.

We soon learned that AK and Freda were avid bridge players and Parky and I were glad to accommodate them almost every evening. And so it went. When the time came to say goodbye we were sorry to leave this hospitable family. Our stay in the country in such lovely surroundings had done us a world of good and made us realize how fortunate we were to be alive. I corresponded with the Holmes family every Christmas and in the 1950s Parky and I met Mrs. Holmes in downtown Toronto for dinner. She was on her way to the NorthWest Territories. In 1977 Enid and I visited Udimore and spent a pleasant few hours with Mrs. Holmes. She was by then a widow and was living in a smaller house on the property. She passed away some years later and I still have her obituary telling of her courageous work as a Fire Warden during the Blitz.

Back at Bournemouth we spent time on the beach, saw a lot of movies, went to dances and generally had a good time. I met a young school marm who was good company. She lived with her widowed mother whose only son was missing in action after serving with the RAF in the Far East. Bournemouth was a repatriation depot and I was continually running into guys I had trained with. It was always a happy reunion but sometimes tempered by news of a fallen comrade. It was good to see George Sweanor again and his wife Joan and young daughter Barbara too. His new family would be joining George in Canada later on. Lorne White, my cousin, had completed his tour of operations on Coastal Command and spent a few days at Bournemouth. He was able to fill me in on all the family news and I was relieved to know that my folks were okay since I hadn't received word from them since the previous October.

As the weeks went by, ships were leaving for Canada but our turned had not yet come up. We were having a good time but everybody wanted to go home. A few of the guys became increasingly impatient and decided to do something about it. One evening in a bar Kingsley Brown, George Harsh and some others dreamed up the idea of flying home and concocted a plan to liberate a Sunderland flying boat that was based at Poole nearby. The story gets better with the telling but as I understand it they bribed a guy to row them out to the four engine Sunderland which was mooredin the harbour. Kingsley had previously flown only twin engine bombers and George Harsh was an air gunner of all things. Apparently the kriegies got one engine going which alerted a guard on shore. He notified the military police and harbour authorities who sped out to the Sunderland to see what was going on. They caught Kingsley and George in the act of trying to steal one of His Majesty's aircraft. The culprits were hustled off to the slammer where they spent the night. Next morning the news of the escapade spread and Hank Dow and Chuck Willis, both of whom were Wing Commanders and ex-POWs, hurried to the jail to see what could be done. I don't know the details but they convinced the authorities that it was a harmless caper by a couple of guys who had been behind barbed wires for very long time and simply wanted to go home. Brown and Harsh were released with a stern warning. George Harsh should have known better. He was the same George Harsh was in charge of security on the Great Escape at Sagan and prior to his enlistment in the RCAF, spent 10 years on a Georgia chain gang.

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