A DUTCH woman has spent 45 years caring for the grave of a British airman she never knew.

Tiny Claessen, 79, has weeded it and cleaned the headstone out of respect for the fallen hero who died in a Second World War bombing raid over Holland. Tiny then returned every week to leave flowers, plants and candles at the grave in her village of Beesel, near the German border.

“He gave his life so people like me could live free and happy. It was the right thing that he should be respected and remembered. It felt like he became a member of my family, like a brother.

It began in the early 1960s when she was helping her mother tend her father’s grave. She asked her daughter to promise to look after the grave when she was dead and gone, a promise Tiny made willingly. Then her mother showed her another grave, overgrown and neglected. “Tend that one as well for he has nobody here to do it for him.”

It was the grave of Flight Sergeant Henry” Harry” Hiscox, the tail gunner of a RAF Lancaster bomber shot down over Beesel in July 1944. Having been in the Home Guard and Fire Service, he answered newspaper advert asking for volunteers for the RAF. He put his name down and after training was posted to 75 ‘New Zealand’ Sqn. RAF.

By 1944 he was 35 years old, the “old man” of a crew who were mostly in their early twenties. He had flown as rear gunner on 35 sorties over Germany so at that point he need not have flown any more, indeed he should have become an instructor. He would have gone on training younger men and possibly being commissioned but preferred to “do the job himself”.

Harry had been thrown from the plane when it crashed into a field. His body was found by local children and German soldiers placed him in a coffin and brought his body to the Town Hall where they allowed the locals to pay their respects. But on the day when his remains were buried in the local cemetery, probably on the orders of the SS, no villager except the gravediggers were allowed to attend or even place flowers on the grave.

Later that night, however, they threw flowers over the graveyard wall and later placed this poem, written by a local Dutch Resistance leader on Harry’s grave.

English airman, we stand around this grave of yours in this foreign place.
Your valuable life you gave in forfeit so that we can live in freedom.
Now you lay here quietly to sleep while people in your homeland wait,
Your child maybe asks his Mother why she can’t laugh with him anymore.
You arrived here in our midst, fighting for a beautiful ideal.
The enemy have buried you without honour, without glory
English airman, we will surround your grave with respect and flowers and ask with thanks, our good God for your happiness in the everlasting life.

Tiny, who felt it was her duty to remember the airman for the “price he paid for my freedom”, has now received a letter of thanks from the RAF.
And Henry’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren have told Wales On Sunday of their gratitude.
The family have already met Tiny after the lifelong wish of Henry’s daughter, Thelma, to visit her father’s grave was fulfilled four years ago

Every year students from the local school play a leading role in a remembrance ceremony on the 4th of May at Harry’s graveside for, to the people of Beesel his grave is the focal point of the Dutch Remembrance day.

Thelma was nine when he died. She knew her dad was buried in Holland, but didn’t find out the exact location until 2006.
During that emotional visit, Thelma, her children and grandchildren were overwhelmed to meet Tiny, who joined them in an annual Remembrance Day ceremony on May 4. Sadly, Thelma died last year.
But since the meeting in 2006, both families have remained close friends.
Henry’s grandson, Paul Lewis, 60, of Caldicot, said: “She sends us birthday cards and writes in Dutch. She’s a lovely lady.”
Of the ceremony in Beesel, he said: “It was absolutely unbelievable. The people couldn’t possibly have done any more for us.

Harry Hiscox and millions like him paid for our freedom with blood and bone. The least we can do is, like this gentle Dutch lady, honour that debt in our hearts….