Sister of Tasmanian soldier saw her brothers grave for the first time Søster til tasmansk soldat så sin brors gravsted for første gang
By Poul Borup, NORDJYSKE, 24 May 2005

Caption: On Sunday afternoon Judith Lewis laid flowers on her brother’s grave in Hune Churchyard.

Hune: After 60 years of uncertainty 85-year-old Judith Lewis of Tasmania finally saw her brother’s grave yesterday.

What went before is a long and tortuous story till she and her son finally on Sunday afternoon saw the grave in Hune Churchyard. Judith Lewis had two brothers who both joined the Royal Australian Air Force during World War 2. One brother was shot down in a fight over Heligoland and later buried in the Hanover War Cemetery in Germany. The other brother, Henry James Brock, then only 23, was hit over Skagen on a mission in February 1945.

The two members of the crew decided to bail out. One crew member was rescued and later flown to Scotland. The other, Henry James Brock, died in the cold water. On a summer day in July 1945 he was washed ashore on the coast between Rødhus and Blokhus. He was buried in Hune Churchyard on 6 July.

The church records state that the grave was opened 1½ years later for an identification. Here it was established that  it was Henry James Brock who was washed ashore.

Before the wedding of the Crown Prince Couple last year the Australian Embassy held a dinner at Fredensborg where wine from the native farm of Henry James Brock in Tasmania was served. Elly Jensen, an employee of the embassy, had heard of the grave in Hune, because a small ceremony was held at Hune Church in connection with the wedding. She took an interest in the story and searched in Australia. The contact to Judith Lewis was established and a year later, 60 years after her brother’s death, she finally stood at his grave in Hune Churchyard together with her son who was named after the deceased soldier Henry James Brock.

Judith Lewis is from a family that owned more than 40,000 hectars of land in Tasmania. The two brothers were to take over the area after the war, but as both of them perished a great part of the land was parcelled out and given to surviving soldiers of the war.

Yesterday the stay in North Jutland of the two relatives from Tasmania ended with a small ceremony at the City Hall with Mayor Flemming Jensen and later a small visit to the beach  where the pilot was washed ashore.