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At this point some of the pilots in the congregation began to look at each other quizzically. I had forgotten to mention Kjeld Pedersen when I recounted the story of the Hornet Moth flight to Reverend Lee, and of course the RAF men were now wondering how on earth Tommy could have kept the plane steady with no one at the controls, and poured fuel into the tank with no protection from the high winds. I hope this moment would have amused Tommy, though I felt a fool for not having been more thorough in my briefing. Nevertheless, Reverend Lee continued:

He flew to this country and he was hired—to put it bluntly—by MI6 and asked to go back to his country and be a spy. So he went to spy, and when he was discovered, he and another colleague walked across the frozen sea from his Danish island to Sweden.

He died on Friday and the funeral service took place yesterday. Because they knew that this service was taking place, the Danish people asked us to pray for him. A man you never knew, who did marvellous things for peace and freedom. You will never meet him, but in this church he is remembered today.

What a send-off. What a tribute. Tommy would have loved the idea of being remembered by airmen, and along with so many other pilots, at such a distinguished RAF gathering. I hoped he was listening somewhere in the clouds, as he had finally been given center stage by the British, for whom he had risked his life so many times.

It was interesting to hear Tommy Sneum described as a man ‘who did marvellous things for peace and freedom.’ I had never regarded him as a man of peace, though he was certainly a freedom-fighter. In a way he was the very embodiment of freedom. He loved life, even though his personal happiness was sometimes spoilt by bouts of bitterness over his treatment during the war, a state of mind he readily acknowledged. Tommy lived life to the full regardless, and hit extraordinary heights as he pursued and embraced that freedom. He refused to be grounded by the Danes, the Germans, the Swedes or the British. His spirit was a force of nature nothing could contain, and it allowed him to soar above and beyond the horizons of the average human being, to tease and outwit those who sought to bring him down.

Just before Christmas 2007, Christian Sneum, a commercial pilot, flew his plane and passengers to London City Airport, bringing with him some papers he had found as he went through his father’s personal effects. I was not expecting to see anything new, because Tommy had always assured me that he had shown me everything of relevance to his story.

But when I laid eyes on one particular document it rendered me speechless, and not just because it had been written on the very day I was born. Marked ‘Confidential’, it was from Major General R.E. Lloyd, CB, CBE, DSO, Director of Military Intelligence, The War Office, Whitehall, London SW1. Dated 5 January 1962, it read:

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN

This is to certify that:

Captain Thomas Christian SNEUM a Danish National, presently resident in Switzerland at Arosastrasse 127, Zurich 8, rendered valuable and loyal assistance to the Allied Cause during the late war.

In the early months of the war Captain SNEUM, who was at that time serving in the Royal Danish Air Force, escaped from Denmark to England, bringing with him information of the greatest value to the Air Ministry.

Captain SNEUM then volunteered to return clandestinely to Denmark in order to obtain further information. After a course of training, he parachuted back to Denmark.

Captain SNEUM fulfilled his mission with considerable energy and when he could no longer continue to operate, he made a most gallant escape from Denmark across the ice to Sweden, arriving there early in 1942. Soon afterwards he was evacuated to England.

Unfortunately, certain remarks attributed to Captain SNEUM had preceded his arrival and as these appeared to cast some doubt on his loyalty, he was interned in Brixton Prison whilst investigations were