MEMBERS of Carterton Lions Club were among a delegation from Oxfordshire who combined an annual trip to mark the Netherlands’ Remembrance Day with a ceremony to honour a “lost” RAF airman who was buried in a Dutch graveyard in 1941.

Don Rouse, 75, from Bampton, who is the deputy president of the Oxford-Leiden twin city link and president of Carterton Lions, said: “This year, I’m celebrating 50 years’ personal involvement in Oxford-Dutch twinning, so I invited a party of Carterton Lions to come along and take part in Dutch Remembrance Day.

“The Lions’ vice president, Mike Lowe, told me the amazing story of his Uncle Budge. He was believed to have been shot down over the North Sea during the Second World War, but had actually been found and buried in a Dutch churchyard.

“We decided our trip would be the perfect opportunity to visit his and his fellow crewmen’s graves and give them a proper service of remembrance.”

Members of the Oxford-Leiden Link visit the university city in South Holland every May to attend the Remembrance Day ceremony on May 4 and Liberation Day the following day, when the Netherlands marks the surrender of German occupation forces at the end of the Second World War.

This year, the party also travelled to the village of Gorredijk, in northern Holland, where the six airmen are buried.

Mike Lowe, of Carterton, said: “When I was a boy, my grandmother told me that we could not see Walter Basil Lowe – my Uncle Budge – who came from Lancashire, because he had been shot down over the North Sea and killed.

“But, in 2001, we received a letter from Mr Lieuwe Boonstra, from The Nether-lands, revealing the truth about what had happened to Budge and his crew.”

Mr Boonstra’s research found that Flight Sergeant Lowe, a 28-year-old navigator, was on his 41st mission when his Wellington bomber was shot down over Gorredijk on September 8, 1941.

The plane was on its way back to RAF Honington in Suffolk when it was attacked by a German night-fighter.

The villagers secretly buried the men under the noses of the Germans and tended their graves until the War Graves Commission was able to take over at the end of the Second World War.

Mr Lowe added: “The whole occasion at Opsterland was amazing.

“We were met at the cemetery by the Burgomeister (Mayor) Francisca Ravestein and local dignitaries, who were so kind and welcoming.

“We laid wreaths on all the graves and a Dutch bugler played the Last Post before one of our members, Don Deaney, read the exhortation.

“It really was incredibly moving.”