remembering oe, John george llewellyn thomas on ve day
A special VE Day Assembly took place earlier this week to honour the efforts, sacrifices and memories of all those that lost their lives during World War II.
Reflecting on the impact that the war had on the school community, the Headmaster shared the story of John George Llewellyn Thomas, or ‘Johnny’ as he was known, who was captain of rugby and cricket in his final year at KES, and a crack shot in the Officers’ Training Corps (OTC). Along with his brother, David, a fellow pupil at KES, Johnny lived at No 1, The Crescent in Bath, where his parents ran a guest house.
Johnny left school in 1938 and was one of the first to enlist on 2 May 1939, a day after his 20th birthday. Joining the Royal Engineers, Johnny quickly rose through ranks. After the Royal Engineers was incorporated into the 1st Airbourne Division, Johnny gained experience of gliders. From here he was to volunteer for a top secret and dangerous mission behind enemy lines known as Operation Freshman.
Operation Freshman was a daring mission to destroy the Norsk hydro-electric power plant at Vemork in Norway. The plant was vital to Germany’s plan to increase the production of heavy water, a component for the development of an atomic bomb. Gliders, towed from the UK by Halifax bombers would land on frozen ground and from there men would advance on foot to sabotage the plant. However, on the way over bad weather intervened; the ropes towing the gliders were damaged by ice and snow, and both crashed in Southern Norway. Glider ‘B’ containing Johnny, lost its pilot and co-pilot and further members of the crew were injured. A long way from their original target, or Sweden they concluded that there was no alternative but to surrender, expecting to be taken as prisoners of war.
Captured by the Germans they were photographed and interrogated but what happened next would have been a complete shock. Only one month before, Hitler had passed a secret order called the Führerbefehl or ‘Commando Order’ that stated that all captured Allied Commandos should be executed without trial within 24 hours, even if they had surrendered or were in army uniforms. This was entirely contrary to the Geneva Convention, which stated that they should have become prisoners of war. Instead, Johnny and the other soldiers were taken by the Gestapo to a remote piece of ground and executed by firing squad. He was just 23 years old. His family and old school friends didn’t learn his fate until after the war, when the awful truth of what had happened to him and the other young men who had died in Operation Freshman finally came to light.
Although the operation itself had been a failure, the knowledge and information that emerged from it proved invaluable; it demonstrated the range, flexibility and possibilities of airborne forces and glider operations, and also highlighted equipment issues that were rectified, including helping to develop a new homing device system that would be used in later, successful operations. These included Operation Gunnerside in February 1943, which saw a team of Norwegian commandos, several of whom had been involved in the earlier operation, finally destroy the entire inventory of heavy water produced at the Norsk Hydro plant under the German occupation, over
The bodies of Johnny Thomas and his fellow glider crew were found after the war when a Norwegian civilian came forward to say that he had seen the burial site. The bodies were exhumed and re-buried with full military honours in the Commonwealth War Graves section in Eiganes Cemetery, Stavanger, Norway. There are memorial ceremonies held at the graves twice a year on Norway’s National Day in May and on Remembrance Sunday in November. Johnny and the other men’s heroic service is also remembered at a new monument at RAF Skitten in Scotland unveiled in April 2025 and of course on the KES WWII Memorial.
On VE Day 80 years ago, nobody at the time knew the fate that had befallen John George Llewellyn Thomas. Old Edwardian, House Captain, Captain of Rugby and Cricket and recipient of the Lawrence Cook Prize for Endeavour just a few years earlier. None there knew the story of his courage and sacrifice, of his contribution to the victory and ultimately the freedom that they were celebrating. But now the current KES community do know. They know Johnny’s story. It is one of many, just as his death was one of many, but it is also a story of one of our own, a KES boy, a connection to the past and a reminder of what – and why – we will be commemorating on VE Day today.
Johnny is pictured in a school team photo below, centre, front row.
