“The raid was from the air but if I remember rightly, Tom and a few other guys physically went back into that water facility and blew up what was left of it and got captured again.” To which Lloyd adds, “At some stage during that raid Tom’s aircraft crashed. He was captured and ended up in a German hospital. It was winter and the snow came up above the windows. “About four Norwegian army blokes came on a rescue mission, so Tom slid out of the window. That’s when he went to Norway and joined the resistance.” A sequence of sabotage missions between 1940 and 1944 ensured the destruction of the heavy water (deuterium oxide) facility. This effectively stopped Germany’s efforts to develop nuclear weapons. While memories and memorabilia lay claim to Thomas Moodie’s role in these historic events, being a recipient of ‘The War Cross’ speaks for itself. This medal carries the highest rank of all Norwegian decorations. Des Aston, who is the custodian of Tom’s medals showed me the framed honours. Sealed in the back of the frame is a letter dated 7 July 1942 from the Royal High School, Edinburgh, Tom’s former school. It reads in part:
“Tom had a bottle of bourbon for the Yankee guy and he had a bottle of scotch for Tom. Quite a feat as there were no computers back then…it was all done by calculations.” Tom and Betty moved to Maleny in 1979. It was then that Lloyd Larney first met the couple. Des’s association began ten years earlier in Buderim. “Tom was a down-to-earth fellow, easy to talk to. He was in for anything. I helped him out on several building projects and in his eulogy referred to him as ‘Tom the builder’. “He helped out with the buildings at the Maleny showgrounds, the drain down the back in Willow Lane and the bridge across the creek at the showgrounds. He designed and organised the concreting of it,” said Lloyd. Des added, “He was retired, all this was voluntary. He was mates with the engineer at the council so they worked together.” There seems to be no end to the stories that create Tom Moodie’s life: a posting to the north-west frontier India in 1935 and later the seaport of Mersa Matruth, Egypt. After the war, he sourced Caribou transport planes for the RAAF and for reasons that are unbeknown to Des and Lloyd, was awarded a medal from the Canadian Mounted Police. Another story springs to mind as Des recalls, “After the war, Tom designed quite a few air strips in Persia and other Arab countries. Before the Vietnam war broke out, the US Congress sub-contracted him to identify where some those air strips were in Indo-China. “He and Betty would arrive by private plane with about six body guards and three or four American big-wigs, to identify some of these air strips.” It seems that the adventures of Tom Moodie will certainly live on through the storytellers. However, the presentation of his medals to the Queensland Air Museum where he was a founding member and held office as president, will preserve his memory. It will serve as a reminder of Thomas Boyd Moodie, the war hero, Tom the builder and a man who was friend to many.
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Dear Moodie, Congratulations on your R. Norwegian Cross… I am sorry to hear about your accident… Tom Moodie’s adventures eventually led him to Australia where, as a civil engineer, he worked on the Snowy Mountains scheme, a hydroelectricity and irrigation complex constructed between 1949 and 1974. Lloyd continues the story. “It was there he met Betty, she was the head on-site secretary. They were married in the early 60s. “Tom told me how they tunnelled through the mountain. Him on one side and an American engineer on the other. So, when they met in the middle, they reckoned they were half an inch out.
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Left: Queensland Air Museum representative Cliff Robinson gratefully accepts Thomas Moodie's medals and wings from his wife Betty Moodie, assisted by Lloyd Larney (back) and Des Aston
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