Dorothy Webster received the ring from Albanian man Xhemil Cala at a special service in the Albanian capital Tirana yesterday, along with a box of debris from her brother’s fateful flight that went down in 1944.
Webster said: “Seventy years we've waited. We can't believe that we're here today celebrating this after all this time.”
Derbyshire-born Flight Sergeant John Thompson’s Halifax bomber plane crashed north-east of Tirana in October 1944, as he and his seven-member crew transported assistance to local anti-Nazi fighters.
Nearly 16 years later, the ring and debris were discovered by Jaho Cala while he was walking in the area near the Sinoi Mountain, north-east of Tirana.
He kept his find secret for over a decade, worried that the communist authorities who governed Albania at the time would take it from him.
On his son Xhemil’s wedding day in 1971, he handed the ring over and said, “This is not mine and is certainly not yours; it has a rightful owner, who you will have to find in due course.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/wedding-ring-of-world-war-ii-pilot-reunited-with-sister-72-years-after-he-was-killed-10097319.html
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