The Hornet's Sting_ The Amazing Untold Story of World War II Spy Thomas Sneum - Mark Ryan [162]
The white towel and broomstick that Kjeld had thrust through the plexiglas roof of the Hornet Moth on that midsummer’s night in Odense in 1941 remained on a wall at RAF Acklington for as long as the air base existed. The British flyers liked to stare at the filthy towel—two meters long when Tommy and Kjeld took off from Elseminde, but only ten centimeters by the time they landed at Bullock Hall Farm over six hours later. The RAF boys stationed in the north-east of England often thought of what those Danish pilots must have been through while that towel was being ripped to shreds. Any newcomer who spotted it would ask for an explanation. So the Acklington pilots had the perfect excuse to tell their favorite tale time and again.
Epilogue
THE HORNET’S STING
THE BRITISH SECRET SERVICE, for whom Tommy had risked his life, were not overly appreciative in the aftermath of the war. It was 1948 before anyone in British officialdom decided that he was worthy of some small recognition for his efforts. On 19 April of that year, R. Dunbar of the Foreign Office wrote to Alec Randall, the British Ambassador in Copenhagen, with the following news:
Sir,
With reference to your dispatch No. 30 (G.35/17/48) of the 27 January 1948, I have to inform Your Excellency that The King has been pleased to approve the award of the King’s Medal for Courage in the Cause of Freedom to Flight Lieutenant Christian Thomas Sneum, Danish Naval Reserve Forces, in recognition of valuable services of a special nature to the Allied Cause during the war.
Owing to difficulties of supply and manufacture, the actual medal has not yet been struck. In the meantime, however, I enclose a piece of the appropriate ribbon and, in accordance with His Majesty’s Commands, I request that you take such steps as you may consider proper to ensure its delivery, with due formality, to Flight Lieutenant Sneum. The medal will be forwarded to Your Excellency as soon as circumstances permit.
Tommy’s view of the British hardly improved when he realized that they couldn’t even present him with the medal he had been awarded. It was the following January before the Treaty Department of the Foreign Office saw fit to send Sneum’s medal to Copenhagen, along with fifty-two others. There was another familiar name on the list of Danish recipients of the KMC that year: Birgit Valentin. Partly thanks to Tommy, she had survived the war without being compromised by the Nazis. It was a credit to her that she had been judged by the British to have been as courageous as Sneum himself, for her contribution to the Allied effort in Nazi-occupied territory.
However, the romance between the two was not rekindled at the medal ceremony, even though Tommy was officially single again by then, and still only thirty-one. Deep down, Sneum felt that his original exploits, in gathering Freya radar intelligence, had alone warranted a far higher recognition of his bravery. Much as he liked Birgit, he didn’t see her as his equal when it came to spying. Yet now she was deemed by the British to possess the same warrior spirit as he did. Right or wrong, that assessment seemed faintly absurd in his eyes.
Sneum knew that the British had never been fully convinced of his loyalty, even though they readily acknowledged the contributions of many of the resistance figures with whom he had worked. Emmy Valentin received an MBE, as did Lorens Arne Duus Hansen. Much more controversially for Sneum, so did Hans Lunding, his chief detractor among the Princes of Danish Intelligence. Lunding was arrested by the Germans in August 1943, as they tried to quell widespread unrest in Denmark. He later claimed to have been close to execution when saved by the Allies’ advance across Europe. Sneum’s brother-in-law, Niels-Richard Bertelsen, was arrested in the same clampdown in Denmark. He endured