Aftermath (according to information received in 2004)


 
Jim Janes: was transferred to a department which operated the radar system known as Oboe, which enabled Mosquito aircraft to mark targets with great accuracy.   He did  fly anymore operations. He is still in good health.

 

 
George Darling: after his return to England he got married and emigrated to Canada. He passed away in 2002.

 


 

Tom Lane:
Lane returned to Canada, got married and became became a Professor of Soils at the University of Agriculture in Guelph, Canada. He is still in good health.

 

 

 
Donald Alexander: returned to his job as an accountant with Port Lines, a shipping company.  He passed away in 1983.

 


 

Jim Rogers: Rogers stayed in the Air Force until he retired. He passed away in 1990.
 
 

 

 
Peter Jackson: Jackson worked for a Market Research company. His health is now rather frail after having a stroke.
 

 
Peter Balson:

His parents came from Dorset in the United Kingdom.  Ralph Balson, Peter's father,  was a well known Australian Abstract artist.

When Balson returned from the war he became a commercial photographer, then an art teacher, he was in advertising, and then eventually worked for the A.B.C. the equivalent of  the B.B.C in Australia and remained there until he retired. 

In free time he is a painter and great admirer of Vincent van Gogh. He copied some of his paintings.

 

 
Peter Balson with one of his paintings Ralph Balson
   
The last years of his life Balson lived in a retirement village in Shoal Bay (Port Stephens), Australia. He passed away, aged 87, January 22nd, 2007.
 

 

Roy Macdonald:
after a short time as a salesman, he joined the Ordnance Survey which is the Government Mapping Agency, and became a surveyor. He is still in good health and visited Dreumel in
1955, 2000 en in 2004.
 

 
1983
In 1983, 40 years after the crash, Roy Macdonald organised a reunion. As Peter Balson was not able to come over, he was replaced by Jim Rogers.
 

Reunion in 1983: L-R: George Darling, Roy Macdonald, Tom Lane, Peter Jackson, Jim Janes, Donald Alexander, Jim Rogers

 

 
20003
Ian Darling, nephew of George Darling, is a journalist in Canada. November 6, 2003 het published an article about the story of the crew of Halifax HR-685. It is called: A leap into the clutches of the Nazis
 

 
2000 and 2004
 

Wednesday afternoon March 29, 2000 he suddenly was there. Out of the blue. He introduced himself as Roy Macdonald. He told me that he had bailed out an airplane in june 1943 and ended up in Dreumel.

Now he visited Dreumel for the third time. (he already payed a visit to our village in 1955) He was loking for the police station and the mayor of Dreumel. He and his wife didn't know were to start and decided to choose my house for a start. Speaking of coincidences!

This meeting was the introduction to an investigation of the last mission of Halifax HR – 685 TL-X. In the years afterwards Roy started to send me all kinds of information relating to the crewmembers.

With Frans van Ooijen from Wamel I made an attempt to reconstruct the events after the crash.

A planned visit of Jenny Marshal, Peter Balson's daughter, to Wamel and a meeting there with Roy Macdonald was reason enough to publish an article in the local newspaper to ask the inhabitants in the area to comment on the crash of the Halifax.

 
De Gelderlander, March 25, 2004 - part 1 De Gelderlander, March 25, 2004 - part 2
 

translation newspaper article

 
The reactions were overwhelmed. There were personal accounts from local people living in Dreumel, Wamel and Beneden - Leeuwen. (The area where the plane crashed and the crewmembers landed) 

 

Reconstruction crash- and landingzone (in Dutch)

 
Thanks to these reactions Frans and Oijen and I could show Jenny Marshall and Roy Macdonald a number of locations and a very accurate account of the events that took place after the crash of the Halifax.
 
L-R: Gary and Jenny Marshal, Flora and Roy, Frans van Ooijen meeting each other at the Ferryhouse in Wamel. Flora, Roy, Gary en Jenny listening to a story of Frans
   
Jenny and Gary in Beneden - Leeuwen Roy, Gary, Flora, Frans and Jenny at the Weteringstraat in Beneden - Leeuwen near the pasture where  Peter Balson landed.
   

Special thanks to:

All crewmembers, Jenny Marshal, Ian Darling, Frans van Ooijen, Ruud van Dinter