for the last time: Gas-masks, rifles, ammunition, shaving kit, iron rations - everything was OK. Some of us were presented with an extra gift - mine was a big and heavy bag containing a dozen or so Mills bombs! Just before sunset we had to fall in for a final parade. Then supper - and at 10pm we were again fighting our way through the throng on the Amiens - Roye road.' Thomas's sister, the famous Danish author Karen, (whom he, and most of their Danish friends, called "Tanne") later wrote that her brother's bravery, and the recognition from the British Crown, in some measure saved her own reputation in the community of British colonials among whom she lived in British East Africa. According to Blixen, she had inadvertently alienated many of her neighbors by helping to buy horses for a German officer she met on board ship while sailing to Kenya for the first time. Only months later this officer, General Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck, was named commander of the German forces in East Africa, and waged an effective campaign against Blixen's English neighbors. Blixen commented that the suspicion and resentment this aroused in her fellow colonists only subsided after her brother won the VC. Life after the war In 1918, Thomas Dinesen moved to British East Africa to help his sister manage her coffee farm in the Ngong hills southwest of Nairobi. He was his mercurial sister's most reliable confidant. He designed and largely built the farm's coffee-roasting plant (which later burned down). Early in 1923, Thomas left the colonial life and returned to Denmark. In his later years he took up writing, and wrote a number of books in Danish. The best known is Tanne, about his famous sister. In 1929 he published the book No man's land: En dansker med canadierne ved vestfronten. It was translated into English in 1930 under the title Merry Hell!: A Dane with the Canadians. The book describes his troublesome way to the Western Front as well as the events that won him the VC. He died in 1979. He is buried in Hørsholm Churchyard, Hørsholm, Denmark. His VC and other medals are held in the Lord Ashcroft VC collection in the Imperial War Museum. Notes External links Veteran Affairs Canada Canadian forces biography Canadian Great War Project The Danish Victoria Cross holders Legion Magazine 1892 births 1979 deaths Burials in