WHEN Australian Georgie Levy was asked to say a few words during Stamfordham’s Remembrance Day ceremony, she could hardly speak, so emotional was she at having ‘found’ the uncle she never knew.

As she lay the wreath in his honour, she felt she’d “completed the journey” – one that had begun 10,000 miles away with a Hexham Courant article I wrote in 2015.

When Georgie Googled ‘Theo Gilson Ross’ a few weeks ago at home in Brisbane, the search produced that and not much else.

“It came up right at the top and that was the first time I learned anything about my uncle,” she said.

“He died in 1943 and I wasn’t born until ‘53.

“My mother (Theo’s sister) never ever mentioned him and as a child you never asked.

“My brother was named Gilson – mum couldn’t bring herself to call him Theo – but other than that, she dismissed the subject.

“My dad was an aviator who was never captured. He came out of Paris with the Liberation, so maybe the fact one came back was enough.”

As a result, all Georgie knew was her uncle’s name, until she read my article about the booklet written by Brian Redford following his research into the 14 war graves in St Mary’s churchyard.

She now knew who to speak to and where to look and, what with this year’s centenaries of both the First World War Armistice and the founding of the RAF her uncle had served in, the Qantas long-haul flight assistant reacted – and booked her own flight to England.

“Theo died in the Second World War, but I thought if I’m going to do it, this is the year,” she said.

Flight Sergeant Theo Gilson Ross, of the Royal Australian Air Force, took off in a Mk1 Spitfire from RAF Eshott, near Morpeth, at 8am on April 9,1943. He was three days off his 21st birthday.

The cause of the subsequent crash, just 50 minutes later, was never established.

“They queried pilot error and mechanical failure,” said Georgie.

“That particular aircraft had crashed so many times previously, and been put back together, that you wonder...”

Brian Redford first learned about Theo Ross during a Remembrance Sunday service several years ago, when he met one Colin Wilkinson.

As Brian said in that 2015 article: “Colin was working at the National Coal Board open cast site near Whittonstall in 1980, when he and his workmates unearthed the remains of a Spitfire which was embedded about three metres into the ground.

“The farmer there, Mr Metcalfe, told him he clearly remembered the day of the crash in 1943 – he was having his breakfast when he heard a terrific screaming noise followed by a mighty explosion.

“The excavation of the site proceeded and amongst the wreckage they found the cockpit clock showing 8.50am, the time the plane crashed.

They also found a boot containing the remains of a foot and a map.

“It was common practice then for fighter pilots to stuff the map in their boots so they only had to reach down and pull it out to check their position.”

Theo was buried in St Mary’s churchyard in Stamfordham soon after the crash, on April 24, 1943.

His epitaph reads simply ‘Loved by all’. After the coroner and the Commonwealth War Graves Commission were consulted, the foot was cremated and the ashes scattered on his grave.

On Remembrance Sunday, the epitaph Georgie read out was the famous one, ‘When you go home, tell them of us and say/ For your tomorrow, we gave our today.”