This wedding ring engraved with "Joyce & John" belonged to British flight engineer Sergeant John Thompson, who lost his life 70 years ago when his plane crashed in the mountains of Albania during WWII. Kept safe by a local who had passed it down to his son, it was finally returned to his sister Dorothy Webster, at a ceremony held at the Ministry of Defence, in Tirana, in honour of his services during the war.
A wedding ring found in 1944 emerges out of safekeeping to reveal a poignant WWII chronicle of love, tragedy and gratitude.
Of 14 sorties flown by British World War Two pilots supplying anti-fascist fighters in Albania on Oct 29, 1944, 12 returned to base in Italy, one failed to discharge its load and “the other is missing and assumed to have crashed”, according to military records.
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