F/O. John (Jack) Craven was the navigator of Lancaster LL840 that crashed at Oenerbroek near Oene in the early morning of June 2nd, 1944. He bailed out in time and once on the ground, soon found fellow crewmember, P/O. Eric ‘Ernie’ Blakemore (E0570). After they got in touch with the Dutch resistance they were taken to the house of the parents of J.C. ‘Bub’ De Vries in the Frisolaan 5 in Apeldoorn. After a while they were joined there by F/O. Kenneth C. Parsons (E0613). Three days later it was decided that three airmen in the house was one too many. The next day, Parsons moved to the house of doctor Stigter and his wife at the Frisolaan 7 and he stayed there for 2,5 months. Mid July F/Sgt. George Palamountain (E540) arrived at the De Vries family. Narda van Terwisga had collected the seriously ill airman from an address in Harfsen in order to recover in Apeldoorn.
At the end of September everything changed when De Vries and his daughter didn’t come home before curfew. Two hours later daughter Nancy arrived and told that her father was arrested when the Narda resistance group was rounded up by the German SD. Craven and Blakemore immediately leftthe De Vries family and joined Parsons in the house of doctor Stigter. The next day, a quiet Sunday morning, the three airmen left the house of the Stigter couple and cycled to the outskirts of Apeldoorn. Here they boarded a fire truck that took them to the fire station in the Hoofdstraat in Epe. They changed cars there and were brought to the ‘De Schar’ hut in the ‘Pas Op’-camp in the woods near Vierhouten. Palamountain was still to weak to travel and moved to the house of Dr. Stigter after the other three had left.
Early in the evening of October 26, all refugees were transferred to a larger refugee camp near Oldebroek. After three days there, Craven, Blakemore and Parsons were on the move again and ended up on the farm of widow Bakker-Van Essen at the Verlengde Schietweg, not far from the labour camp. Here the group was split and Craven and Blakemore were taken to a farm near Elburg. Some time later they joined Parsons and Capt. Charles B. Noble (1st Airborne Division) at the farm of H.J. van den Brink at the shore of the Zuiderzee, west of Elburg.
In the evening of November 17, they joined a group of evaders that assembled in the barn of the van Norel family at the Stoopschaarweg in Doornspijk. The plan was that they would be picked up by a truck there but the truck didn’t turn up. Craven, Noble, Blakemore and Parsons were taken to a farm nearby. However, the next evening the truck did arrive and the four airmen returned in a hurry to board the truck. After an adventurous ride of about an hour the truck stopped and a man escorted the group to an assembling point for the Pegasus II escape operation. At dusk of November 18, the evaders left as last party for the last stage in this escape operation. While on their way, they heard machine gun fire from up front. An advance party had run into a German sentry and a firefight had started. The guides of the resistance ordered the party into a thick forest to wait there. In the afternoon after a night in the cold, a farmer turned up with stew and Dutch gin (jenever). In the evening a horse drawn cart appeared as promised and took them to a barn on the land of J. van Essen at the Westerhuisweg in Harskamp. The group split up here and was taken to different addresses while waiting for another escape attempt. By mid December, 1944, Craven was staying at the 'Valkenhoef' farm of the van ’t Klooster family in Hoogland together with P/O. V.B. Christie (E0733), F/O. R.A. Stoner (E0909), 2/Lt C.A. Stearns (E0536) and F/Sgt. F.E. Fuller (E0734).
On February 19, Craven left the farm together with Christie, Stoner and Stearns while Fuller went to stay at another hiding address. The four airmen and two guides cycled southward and at De Glind, a hamlet to the east of Amersfoort, they met 2/Lt. J.M. Geary (E0917) and F/O. Carl Ellement (E0929) who had arrived from Nijkerk to join them. Near Scherpenzeel the men were halted by a German patrol but quite miraculously, they were let through. Somehow, they then lost their way but eventually reached Leersum where they found a hiding place at the house of Berend Esveld (a.k.a. ‘Flip’) and family at the Rijksstraatweg A12 in this village.
It was probably at this address, that they joined the group of evaders that should have left the day before. They were F/O. Paul D’Albenas (E1006), F/O. Mike Tapson (E0836), 2/Lt. Jack A. Murrell (E0722), 2/Lt. A. Ray Kubly (E0851) and Corp. John Sjursen of the 1st Canadian Army Corps. About an hour after their arrival at 6 o’clock in the morning, there was a warning for a razzia in Leersum. The eleven men group was promptly evacuated to a nearby forest where they hid till 8 o’clock in the evening. They were then taken to the so called ‘Kippenhok’ (e: chicken coop) on the estate of the Loudon family. On February 24, Stearns, Christie, Craven, Stoner, Geary and Ellement left while the other five men stayed for another three days.
The six men group was then brought to Amerongen where they split up to different hiding addresses to wait for the 'right moon' before they could cross the Lek River. Where Craven and Stoner stayed in this period is (not) known but eventually they cycled to the farm of H. Rijneveld at the Tiendweg in Willige-Langerak where either they or Cristie and Ellement were joined by Norwegian 2/Lt. Carl Jacob Stousland and Belgian SAS Commandos Debefve, Heylen, Levau, Demoor and Siffert. This six men group was brought to the farm by Map Dogterom. According to one source there were then 8 evaders at the farm waiting to cross the Lek River. And while the Commandos were waiting, they cleaned and toyed with their pistols. A shot rang out, narrowly missing widow Merrigje Rijneveld, the bullet embedding itself in the living room wall. From that moment on, firearms were no longer allowed within the farm.
The group was then brought to the river where the members of the ‘Lekgroep’, a local resistance group led by Klaas Heijboer, had their inflatable dinghy ready. Arriving at the other bank, the dinghy was deflated and the evaders were then taken to hiding addresses around Groot-Ammers. The next day or so they cycled to the house of the van Woerkom family at the Rivierdijk in Sliedrecht, the departure point for the Biesbosch Crossing. Either Craven and Stoner or Christie and Ellement arrived there as well and all 10 evaders then set of for the crossing in the evening of March 16. From the back garden of this house, they crossed the Merwede and entered a canal passing the Helsluis lock. At the end of the creek, they crossed a dike arriving at the Nieuwe Merwede boarding another boat. Sailing down this river, they reached the junction with the Hollands Diep, then turned left and crossed to the liberated south bank of this wide river. At a quarter past midnight on March 17, 1945, Craven and his fellow evaders arrived in Lage Zwaluwe where Allied troops were waiting for them. |
