Translated from French newspaper

Newspaper article:   A Pilot from the Landing at Beaumais, Sunday

  A PATRIOT SAVED BY THE CALVADOS

  On the 18^th of June, 1944, the battle of Normandy is raging.  Returning from his mission aboard his Spitfire MK 622, a Canadian pilot, Barry Needham, is hit by German DCA, above the community of Bons-Tassilly.  His airplane catches fire.  Seriously burned on his hands and face, he has time to parachute and lands three hundred metres from his airplane which had crashed.  Witness to this drama, an inhabitant of the community, Guy Oriot, about 20 years of age, runs to his aid but is captured by some SS.  As soon as they were stopped, the two men are driven to the Chateau de Beaumais, then occupied by the SS.

  

   Informed by some neighbours, Mr. & Mrs. Hoste intercede through a German colonel who is staying with them.  Due to their pleas in favour of the young man, and without doubt, in recognition of the quality of the Calvados from the Hoste vineyard, that he particularly appreciated, he consents to intervene with the SS of Beaumais.  Guy Oriot would be freed the same evening.  As for the pilot, after having been cared for by the Germans, he would be released at the time of the ‘liberation’ in the month of August.

  Upon the involvement of Michel Rainfroy and Jean-Claude Clouet, Barry Needham, accompanied by four members of his family, would return to Beaumais, Sunday afternoon in order to see once again the castle that he has never forgotten, nor the French person, since disappeared, who had risked death while wanting to hide him.  The next day he must attend the organized searches at Bons-Tassilly in order to recover his Spitfire.