Vragdelen blev et kors - - -     in English

More about the cross

A piece of wreckage became a cross
at the graves of airmen

Article by Knud Erik Nielsen in the Holstebro Dagblad,
Friday 14 June 1985.

Caption for the photo in the original version in Danish:
“The cross was hidden in the leaves” the hymn says. Whether the piece of wreckage is from the bomb rack of the plane or it
is a spar from a wing is not known. Experts of the Jydske Dragonregiment are studying the case.

For 22 years a piece of wreckage, 5 metres long, stood in the
Engholm Bog as a monument over the air crash in which 7 Allied airmen perished on 15 October 1944, see photo. Later the piece
of wreckage lay at the bottom of the brook that runs through the Engholm Bog.

But now it stands at the graves of the airmen in Idom – created
anew as a cross. Tomorrow a small group of people gather at 2 p.m.
to mark the erection of the cross and the 40^th Anniversary of the re-burial of 6 Canadian airmen and their fellow Irish crew member who were killed in the air crash when their four-engined Halifax bomber of the Royal Canadian Air Force had been hit by gunfire from a German
night fighter. For 9 months the earthly remains of the deceased
airmen lay in the field dam at the crash site. Here the piece of wreckage was a kind of gravestone to the 7 airmen until it was pulled out of the silt during a regulation of the brook in 1966-67 and laid on
the bank of the brook – later dumped into the brook.

On 2 May this year the piece of wreckage, 5 metres long, was pulled
up from the brook by people from the Jydske Dragonregiment. The rusty and twisted piece of wreckage was placed at the entrance to
the Idom Churchyard where residents of the area in the days around
5 May could have a closer look at it.

At the same time Vicar A. Lundby circularized the members of the parochial council giving open suggestions as to what had to be done with “the pole.”  After a suggestion from the chairman of the parochial council, principal Carlo Arvin, (ret.), the council approved the transformation of the piece of wreckage into a memorial cross, after sandblasting, rust prevention and painting -  without any attempts to straighten the twists and bends from the crash.

As Carlo Arvin said, the twisted cross symbolizes the horrifying
minutes of horror, desperation, despair and suffering that must have filled the hearts of the young airmen from the moment they were attacked till the crash in a blazing inferno.

We have erected the cross painted in black behind the 7 white gravestones. With a line from no. 58 in the hymn-book a kind of
“The cross was hidden in the remote leaves” as the Christian symbol
of victory over the horror of death and to witness resurrection and eternal life.

Article from Evald Sønderby. About the cross in Idom Churchyard.