Post by Dave Homewood on Feb 29, 2024 15:48:58 GMT 12
From The Press, 15 February 1957
Wartime Pilot Traced By French Benefactors
(New Zealand Press Association)
WELLINGTON, February 14.
A French couple have succeeded in their search for “Lieutenant Aviateur James Away,” a New Zealand airman they sheltered in their Pyrenees home during the war. He is Mr Frank Greenaway, a Lower Hutt public accountant.
The couple, Monsieur and Madame Fleury, tried to trace their war-time guest through the Royal New Zealand Air Force's London headquarters, but their memory of his name was rather dim. They thought it was “Lieutenant Aviateur James ’Away” and that his family lived in Wellington.
Mr Greenaway said today that he had written to his benefactors, the Fleurys, in 1945 but had had no reply and feared they might have fallen foul of the Germans.
Mr Greenaway was the pilot of a Mosquito bomber that crash-landed near the Somme estuary in January, 1944. and was a prisoner of war for three and a half days. While being taken later to Aris, he escaped by jumping off the back of a lorry and after being sheltered by an abbot travelled first-class on the Paris-Toulouse express to Lourdes.
He had to play the part of a deaf mute going to take the waters at Lourdes, and an elderly woman companion travelled with him. At Lourdes, he was the guest of the local chief of police for a fortnight.
From Lourdes, he went to Olorn St. Marie, where he was sheltered by the Fleurys on their farm for a fortnight. Then, one night, he and a dozen other Allied servicemen crossed the Pyrenees to Spain.
Wartime Pilot Traced By French Benefactors
(New Zealand Press Association)
WELLINGTON, February 14.
A French couple have succeeded in their search for “Lieutenant Aviateur James Away,” a New Zealand airman they sheltered in their Pyrenees home during the war. He is Mr Frank Greenaway, a Lower Hutt public accountant.
The couple, Monsieur and Madame Fleury, tried to trace their war-time guest through the Royal New Zealand Air Force's London headquarters, but their memory of his name was rather dim. They thought it was “Lieutenant Aviateur James ’Away” and that his family lived in Wellington.
Mr Greenaway said today that he had written to his benefactors, the Fleurys, in 1945 but had had no reply and feared they might have fallen foul of the Germans.
Mr Greenaway was the pilot of a Mosquito bomber that crash-landed near the Somme estuary in January, 1944. and was a prisoner of war for three and a half days. While being taken later to Aris, he escaped by jumping off the back of a lorry and after being sheltered by an abbot travelled first-class on the Paris-Toulouse express to Lourdes.
He had to play the part of a deaf mute going to take the waters at Lourdes, and an elderly woman companion travelled with him. At Lourdes, he was the guest of the local chief of police for a fortnight.
From Lourdes, he went to Olorn St. Marie, where he was sheltered by the Fleurys on their farm for a fortnight. Then, one night, he and a dozen other Allied servicemen crossed the Pyrenees to Spain.
