In this same locality my mother was picking hops one day (as a 15 year-old) and watched as a burning Heinkel III came down for a forced landing in a nearby field, at Meopham Bank.

Here is an account published by the local historical society; she lived at 'Garlands' in Hildenborough throughout the war.

https://hildenboroughhistorysociety....enborough.html

I recently persuaded my mother to relate the event as she saw it for posterity, which testimony I'll post here shortly...

My mother's account:
 

"I've been reading accounts of the 1940s Heinkel crash landing near 'The Old Barn' in Hildenborough... one account from a man picking hops at Meopham Bank. I was also picking hops there at the time (I was fifteen).

I remember glancing up and seeing the plane, its underside all alight, gliding along in front of me. The strange thing is, I don't remember hearing any noise from the plane or seeing any markings on it. But I do remember thinking "It's going to crash". But I can't remember any noise... even the hop garden seemed silent. It crash-landed in a field near The Old Barn, so it must have come down only seconds after I saw it. I couldn't see the wings, so it must have been quite far away; thinking about it years later, I realise that it must've been further eaway from me than I'd thought. I spoke to my younger brother some months ago, asking if he remembered it, which he said he did... he ran with some other boys and people from the hop garden towards it but they were turned back by the soldiers.

I never saw the plane when it was parked at 'The Half Moon' in Hildenborough".

Spitfire crashes into Hildenborough pub
 

My mother also remembers this happening in 1940 and the Half Moon pub is not at all far from the crash site of the Heinkel HeIII detailed above; I pass the pub whenever I go to visit her, but for some reason I've never been in there for a pint.

https://hildenboroughhistorysociety....ire-pilot.html

https://i.imgur.com/sYQ8f0C.jpg

My dad in Germany 1945, B.A.O.R.
 

https://i.imgur.com/WT1Spq6.jpg

This photo was sent to me yesterday by a kind soul in Pwllheli, North Wales, whose family loved my old dad (Pwllheli was his home town)

He was in the BAOR's Civilian Control Commission in Germany in 1945, and it seems that the VW Beetle was installed as their transportation of preference

I never saw this photo before, so I was thrilled to bits to see this new image of my father from so long, long ago

Hitler did not get him!

https://i.imgur.com/h7TxFJx.png 'Bump!'

Quite a story there E, looking at the VW, it certainly hadn't changed much over the years. I am almost 70 so you must be around the same age (old fart). :D

No I'm not nearly 70, so you are still the old fart

https://i.imgur.com/EoWZmW6.jpg

Here's the photo after I cleaned it up on the pc

My grandfather- I'm his great-grandson- served in the US Army in WWII and he fought in the Battle of the Bulge. He was a Technician 5th Grade. He was definitely the old man at the time as he was 31 when he saw combat since the average American GI was around 18-23 years old. He said that they were in a town in Belgium and they had only 2 days worth of food and ammunition or else they would have to surrender to the Germans. Then the weather cleared up and the Air Corps took out the Germans.
He made his way into Germany, and he even brought back a Nazi flag that was littered with bullet holes.
His name was Gilbert DeVries. He was born in 1913 and died in 1989.

My grandpa remembered him having a box full of medals. But sadly these were all destroyed by my grandpa's mentally ill brother. All we have of him are two photos of his wartime experience. One of them is the photo taken after he graduated training and the other is a picture of him and his brother fishing in a pond in Belgium. He actually met his brother on the front-lines!

I wish I could've met him.

Well, as my family's historian/geneologist, head for Monee, Will County, Illinois and leave some flowers and a small American flag.. at 1 foot from marker. https://api.army.mil/e2/c/images/201...5236/size0.jpg:Kaleun_Salute: https://images.findagrave.com/photos...3424303812.jpg As for replacing the lost medals: https://www.military.com/benefits/records-and-forms/military-awards-medals-decorations.html (one of many sites) Good luck and good hunting.

OH MY GOD, how did you find his headstone? Man, I got goosebumps looking at that!
Wow, wait till my grandfather hears this!

And thank you for the link, I will try to get his records so we can look at the medals and awards he had, as my grandpa is his only biological next of kin. He has a daughter that is still alive, but she isn't his biological daughter.

That's tough. You have the stories hopefully that have been passed down. It's been said that if you remember the deceased, they are truly not gone. That was a time when there were men of substance and men were men.


:salute: To your grandfather's memory and his sacrifices.


@ Aktung can find anything. :D

I will pass them down for my children as well. I have many other grandparents who served during WWII, but none of them are alive. The last one died in 2018 at the age of 101. He is also the only one that I know of who saw action.
I really wish that he was still alive and healthy. My grandpa said it was very hard to get him to talk about the war too.

Part of my reason for wanting to serve in the Navy is because of him.

True enough; pouring over Real Estate appraisal data for 15yrs and as a history major grad: I was also a bulldog 'skip tracer' for a sleazy loan company... and occasionally helped my DA wife find disappeared deadbeat-dads in her county Child-Support capacity. Generally, if your poopin' or using a Social Security number, I can find you- always after a lot of dead trails. Currently I track down old classmates for other classmates-unfortunately at the 50 year mark, (class of'69:o that's getting depressing). In The Beast's case: I went first with "Gilbert DeVries born 1913'' and up she popped: Marker FOTO on my tablet but not my computer; and then I couldn't regain the tablet source; but fortunately it had given me the town, county and cemetery so i looked up the cemetery and Voila! a search by name restored the picture. I then found out that a tech 5th class is referred to as a 'corporal' and figured "there can't be two corporals with the same birth and death year":hmmm: so I opted to give The Beast goosebumps... ever fearful of raising his young hopes in so delicate a matter! But he sounds like he's his family genealogist-in-the-making too!:yeah::arrgh!:

Ha. Well, old farts like you got some really good stories to tell since you are so old and you got a lot of experience under your belt.
Tracking down classmates or ex-girlfriends or just people I interacted with is what I want to be able to do.

I hope that in Heaven, you can go to like this registry for people in both Hell and Heaven so you can take a deep look into their lives.

my grandfather Theodoros was born in 1912.
He fought with a submarine Papanikolis in the Mediterranean, an Averoff ship in the Indian Ocean and small ship destroyer sfendoni
In the destroyer they passed 3 torpedoes but none of them exploded because from what they said they had the wrong deep regulation.
the submarine that dropped them was Italian in the Mediterranean.
They had a dog on the ship when it had big waves and it kept slipping left and right.n the submarine they had small Indian pigs when they went crazy and made circles around themselves they had to go to the surface to clean the air