Studiegroep Luchtoorlog 1939-1945

						2/Lt. Richard Carl (Dick) Vogel was the pilot of B-24 Liberator 42-95138. Due to mechanical problems the bomber had to return early from a bombing mission to Magdeburg in Germany. A P-51, supplying fighter cover, collided with the bomber, making it necessary for the crew to bail out. Vogel landed near Ommen. He was unconscious when he arrived on the ground and was woken up by some Dutchmen who also gave him first aid. Vogel had several injuries. His throat was cut from a cable in the aircraft. He had a hole in his chin. His arm, back and one of his legs were 'messed up'. He was carried on a ladder, that was used as a stretcher, into the woods where he was kept and treated for three days in a tent (from 11 to 13 September). He then moved to a farm near Vilsteren for three days ( between 14 and 16 September) where 'a mayor' was living. From here he was escorted to a hide-out in the woods. Here he met his co-pilot, 2/Lt. Leslie Monroe Sellers, again. There were also about a dozen people, among them two young women. They all belonged to a resistance group and carried weapons. 

On 9 October they had to move out, when German troops entered the area. The group got dispersed and Sellers and Vogels hid for one night at the farm Hendrik Grootenhuis, before they moved to the farm of his son, also named Hendrikus Grootenhuis, at the Brandweg in Lemelerveld. Sellers tells in his book a different version. Here Sellers and Vogel first hid a few days on a farm in an ingenious hide out under a manure pile, before moving to another farm where they hid in the pigpen for a couple of days before moving to the farm of Grootenhuis. They would hide here from 10 October until 23 December 1944. Only at the end of November they sheltered at another farm nearby. Shortly before Christmas the two airmen moved to the house of doctor Willem R. ten Veldhuys and his wife Sophia 'Fietje' Cornelia Bouman-Kingma in Lemelerveld. Fietje had been looking for another hiding address for Sellers and Vogel but hadn’t succeeded in finding one. She and her husband then decided to take Sellers and Vogel into their house where already two Jewish people were hiding. The two would hide here from 24 December until April 1945. During the night they slept with the Jewish couple in a small hole in the cellar. On 8 April fietje took Sellers by bicycle through the German lines to Eerde-Ommen where they contacted the advancing Allied troops. She left Sellers there and returned home. Vogel was liberated in Lemelerveld on 10 April 1945.