Fus Joseph Ball, No4 Cdo

Thanks guys. We'll talk about it in FW which will be in a bit more than seven weeks from now.

I received an email from Julia Thorn, nee Ball, which started with: "that's absolutely incredible!"

This evening I phoned the man who lives in Wissenkerke and who is known as the walking archive. His name is Tonnie Kramer and he is nearly 72 years of age and he knows exactly who lived in Wissenkerke starting from the year 1850! He has known the people on the photo so he at once recognised them. He said that the woman on the right is not called De Smit, but that her name is Tona Smit.

The parent who phoned the headmaster is a woman called Barbara. Believe it or not, but her mother is British and lives with her husband next to Tonnie. Barbara's granddad was a British soldier who fought to liberate Bergen op Zoom in October 1944, the town where Joseph Ball lost his life seven months later. Mind boggling this!

As said, Capt Alastair Thorburn (and not ThorNburn as I wrongly wrote earlier) and Joseph Ball were billeted with the Van der Maas family. I asked how Jo Kramer could have know Joseph if he wasn't billeted with her family. It turned out that the families lived across the street of each other so they saw each other nearly every day.

More to follow I think!