"MASONS IN JUTLAND"
by  V.W. Bro. Ted Morris

The hand of friendship was extended across the Atlantic via a series of e-mails. We were seeking family closure and I had asked for help in Denmark. Knowing no one there, I had sent a message to the closest Masonic Lodge: within eight hours the offer for assistance had come back.

“We know where the airplane crashed, and the place where the crew is buried is famous,” responded Kresten Skovfoged. “We’d be happy to show you. When are you coming?” Kresten is the Worshipful Master of Concordia Lodge No. 43 in Skjern, a regional centre in Jutland.

A BIT OF ANCIENT HISTORY
History students will remember lessons about the invasion of England by fierce tribes of warriors, the Jutes, Angles, and Saxons. Skjern was one of the places where those fearsome invaders were recruited. Their home was on a peninsula that is now part of Denmark called Jutland (or Jutes’ Land), then as now, peaceful farming country. When the country got crowded, longboats took the young men offshore for conquest and resettlement.

We met Kresten and his lodge treasurer Ovi Andersen on a long. Danish summer evening. Despite dwindling light, we headed into the farmlands to look at the lodge building. It was classic Danish rural, with stucco exterior, gables, and red tiled roof.

The many large windows gave a hint to its previous incarnation, a country school. Until 1930 children from the surrounding area had been educated in its classrooms. Living quarters were on the premises for teaching staff. With the well-tended lawns and mature trees, it looks more like a country club than a lodge.

MORE RECENT HISTORY
During the Nazi occupation of the 1940’s the school sat idle. So did all the Masonic lodges. Werner Best, the Reich Commissioner in Denmark, linked Masons and Jews together and in 1943 he came up with a solution. All 6,00 Jews in Denmark were to be rounded up and put to work in Copenhagen. (The figure included women and children.) As for the Masons, Best acknowledged that part of the problem was that leading personalities in the country were members. He recommended arrest of the leaders, confiscation of all Masonic property, and the banning of the fraternity.

Those mass arrests never came about because they would have interrupted productivity and the Third Reich wanted Danish produce. But lodges stopped meeting (officially), their property was confiscated (except for regalia and records hidden by the Danes), and select leaders were arrested.

The Grand Lodge headquarters in Copenhagen became a German army headquarters, but the decorators who converted the building to military use protected much of the artwork and detail. When the army went home, the interior walls were torn down and objectionable coverings were removed. Records and regalia were brought to light. The lodge buildings were returned to their proper usage with little structural damage. Let there be light.

MOST RECENT HISTORY
Concordia Lodge is 18 years old, young in Masonic circles. It is heir to, but was not part of, the struggle during the Occupation. Its membership is small and local, but monthly meetings are not enough. Every Friday the brethren gather for a coffee clutch. And on a regular basis they work with their hands.

Kresten turned down the lights in the lodge and, behold, the ceiling had points of light duplicating the constellations in the firmament. Kresten is an electrician. Ovi, a brick mason and construction contractor, lent his hands, back, and expertise to operative masonry. As for the roof, many hands assured that the lodge was properly tiled. The kitchen is being expanded and modernized to accommodate the banquet hall., and the parking lot is next. (There is no hurry, because it is all being done within budget.)

“Come again,” I was told,” when we can sit together in lodge. We don’t meet in the summer.”

(If any of the story above is slightly inaccurate apologize. It’s because we were operating the three languages, Danish, English, and sign.)

WHY WERE WE IN DENMARK?
This story opened with my calling to Denmark for help.
The village of Djebjerg recovered the crew of an RAF/RCAF Lancaster and gave them funeral honors, an act more dangerous then it sounds. My wife’s uncle was a member of that crew. We wanted to thank the congregation and to honor the family member who never returned. Kresten and Ovi made so much of this possible, and opened new paths to us. Thank you, my brethren.

The following story is how the above came about...
OF KINDNESS AND COURAGE

August 30, 1944. An RAF Lancaster was returning from a successful raid on industrial Germany. The North Sea was just ahead and Denmark below. Two hours from safety. But a Luftwaffe night fighter intercepted it and shot it down. The German records show that seven Canadian and British airmen were recovered from the charred wreckage and buried between the rail line and a power line

Hans Pedersen, the pastor from the Lutheran Church at nearby Djebjerg arrived at the crash site and requested permission to give the crew Christian burials. It was, he explained, the way things are done in Jutland. Permission was curtly refused. Soldiers dug a trench and covered the crew with four feet of earth

By cover of dark, many nights later, Pastor Pedersen returned with members of his flock and disinterred the bodies. They placed them in coffins, and took them to the Djebjerg Church Yard. In a funeral the following day around 500 Danes from the village and nearby farms attended the Christian burial, all bearing flowers.

RETALIATION
Of course, the occupiers couldn’t tolerate this kind of disobedience, even in peaceful farm country. Pastor Pedersen and a few of his members are jailed, but for a brief period because the war was ending and the invaders knew it. .

After the armistice, a huge stone was pulled from the crash site and hauled to the churchyard. I suppose men and horses dragged it, because a note from Pastor Pedersen remarked that no machinery was available. It became the first marker in the designated plot. Later, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission placed four tablets in front of the native stone and the local congregation tends the graves.

OLD PRACTICES
The tower of the Djebjerg church has cast its shadow over the same ground since 1200 The cemetery is a series of small gardens, family plots the size of a single car garage. You can appreciate that in 1,205 years, a lot of burials have taken place, and land for the living is precious. So the tenure of the departed in the average Danish cemetery is 25 years. The family can negotiate a further 25-year lease, but eventually the headstones become part of the cemetery wall and new arrivals are committed to the sanctified land.

Shakespeare noted this practice in his play “Hamlet, Prince of Denmark”. Recall Hamlet holding a skull turned up by the gravediggers “Alas poor Yorik, I knew him, Horatio.” Sensitive to the burial customs of the Canadians, the Djebjerg congregation dedicated this particular plot to the airmen-------- in perpetuity.

This story is very personal to us. The bombardier was Samuel MacKenzie my wife’s uncle. She had met him once when she was four years old when he was travelling from his home in Vancouver to active duty with the RCAF in England. Her father’s papers have letters from “Sam” that helped us get to know him. They end with a telegram to Sam’s mother expressing “regrets”. Sam would not be coming home. Ever.

My wife’s generation knew Sam as one of five children of John and Elizabeth MacKenzie of Vancouver. He had gone to war, was shot down, and lay in an unmarked grave. The family thought Sam was lost in the North Sea. Then, through a letter from a writer in Edmonton, we discovered the story I’ve just related. Sam and his fellow crewmembers had been laid to rest in consecrated ground.

THE VISIT
No one from the family had even seen the grave. We made it our mission to go to Denmark, to visit the grave to pay tribute to a young member of the family (Sam will be young forever) and to express our thanks to the congregation in Djebjerg for their courage and their kindness to the MacKenzie family.

Brother Ovi Andersen from Concordia Lodge in the town of Skjern was our friend and guide.. He was born across the street from the Djebjerg Church and had spent most of his life there. His grandfather had shown him where the plane had crashed. He knew the new current Pastor, coincidentally named Pedersen but not related to the old Pastor.

We wrapped the flowers in the MacKenzie tartan and fastned it with a Legion poppy saved from last year’s service in Wilberforce, Ontario. At graveside, the Pastor commented that this was the second floral tribute. The MacKenzie family had sent a wreath in August of 2004, just a year ago. They were not any MacKenzies we knew. So Pastor Pedersen went back to his study and returned with a file.

LOVE IN TIME OF WAR
In his many visits to the MacKenzies in Glasgow, Sam and a distant cousin named Alice had met and fallen in love. When he was first missing in action and later declared dead, she was heartbroken. The squadron commander, when packing up Sam’s effects, had wrapped his photo in tissue and sent it to Alice. She treasured it for the rest of her life. And she did not keep it a secret. Alice married, had children, and then grandchildren, and they all learned of her young sweetheart, the one that hadn’t come home.

Sam! Oh Sam! Why did you have to volunteer for that last mission? You had filled your commitment and were entitled to leave. You had done your duty.

Alice died in 2004. Her children honored her request that, on her death, flowers be placed on Sam’s grave.

NO HISTORICAL MARKER
The crash site in Denmark has no official marker. So many planes came down and so many young men lost their lives. Where the four propellers of the Lancaster died, now stands a wind farm facing the North Sea. Hundreds of giant propellers slowly spin the turbines that provide ten percent of Denmark’s electricity

We made our way to the North Sea and walked along the beaches. German bunkers stretched for a hundred kilometers along the coast, protecting Hitler’s Fortress Europe and keeping the Allies bottled up in Britain. Now the guns are gone. Sand drifts in and out of the derelicts. Danish children use pails and shovels to make sand castles: they are playing with the children of German tourists.

Both are more satisfying than any historical marker.

THE POPPIES
Our red poppies are a reminder of sacrifice. The phrase, “Lest we forget” is repeated so often that sometimes it’s impact is blunted.
In French the translation is “N’oublier pas,” or “Do not forget”. It’s a command. The English word “Lest” brings another imperative---it means “For fear”

For fear that we forget.

We cannot forget the Danish minister standing up to the German military. Pastor Pedersen could have been shot. Other Danish clergymen were murdered. But he did what he knew was right. And he knew the risk.

We can’t forget that congregation, actively resisting wrong and, to this day tending the resting places of young men they never knew, giving some comfort to the families who had lost them. “I was a stranger and you took me in.”

We can’t forget all those other soldiers, sailors, airmen, and civilians who made the supreme sacrifice, or those who knew the price and were willing to serve.

ANSWER FROM THE WRONG ADDRESS
I sent a letter to my host in Denmark but, being inept with computers, I had a dot in the wrong place so it went to a total stranger, not to Djeberg but to Elsinor. The following day the stranger replied.

“I must admit that I am a little puzzled over your e-mail to me. I believe you might have the wrong e-mail address. I am able to deduct that you had relative aboard a Lancaster Bomber that crashed in Denmark following a raid in Germany. I am sorry for your loss and I would like to thank you and your country for the contribution to liberate Europe 50 years ago. Klaus Kesje

Gratitude has no expiry date.
Lest We Forget.

-30-