Hello robsuth,

As so often happens with appeals of this type, you seeing the appeal from last year has by a strange quirk of fate come at the ’right time’!

After a spell of nearly ten months last weekend I received further communication from the Netherlands in relation to this request – and only yesterday I sent off a good old fashioned letter to the Association Secretary to repeat the appeal.

To best explain I will quote the main content of the email that I received last weekend from a lady in the Netherlands; I know that she will not mind:

“Now I have a question for you: do you know or can you tell me how to contact the family members of the men mentioned on the graves of the attached picture (the 8 names of the 4 graves on the left) This is the crew of PB 405 of 619 squadron that crashed on 19th or 20th September 1944 in Heythuysen-Roggel The Netherlands.

We are preparing a bicycle tour next to all the crash sites of our municipality and this is one of them. In 2014 (date not yet known) a plaque will be placed close to the crash site and we will have a booklet printed and will put information on a website. I would really love to get in touch with the family of these crew members to let them know this and if possible, to find out more about those brave men. I would very much appreciate your help. Could you please let me know if you can help me with this? Thanks in advance.”

If you send me your email address via Private Message (PM); with your permission I will forward it on to the Netherlands; I will also send you a photograph of the grave and headstones.

Thank you for joining the forum (welcome by the way) and good luck with your investigations into your cousin’s service career!