As Jack neared the town of Domfront, Jack spotted a lone German soldier walking in the opposite direction. The soldier stopped Jack and demanded the bicycle from him. Jack put up a determined argument and luckily a truck came along which the German could catch a ride on. On the other side of the town he was again stopped, this time the Germans wanted directions. Jack pointed and they left him alone. By the afternoon he was nearing the town of Flers. On the outskirts the sound of approaching B-17 bombers filled the air, so he found a spot to sit and watch the show. P-38s, most likely from his own Fighter Group escorted the bombers in as they struck the railroad yards. Once the bombing ceased he climbed back on his bike and made his way through the rubble to the main road on the other side.

      Two older women gave Jack a place to stay in return for some bread coupons and he stayed in their barn for the night before heading to the next town, Conde. The bombers had nearly laid ruin to Conde. After hours of making his way through the rubble, the refugees and many German soldiers he then continued on towards Caen.

Typical bomb damage to a French city like that Ilfrey encountered.

      Arriving in the village of Erecy Jack could here the shells from Allied guns whizzing over head. He stopped to fill his bottle with water from the town well and noted that the whole village was moving at a feverish pace; a sure sign of German occupation. A boy made his way over and asked Jack where he was headed. When he replied "Bayeux." The boy shook his head and said "Yanks and Tommies." Jack decided to risk telling the boy he was hungry and his luck held out again as the boy led him to his house.

      As it turned out the boy's mother spoke some English as she had lived outside of Baltimore, Maryland , earlier in her life. Dinner was prepared and served, and then they quietly celebrated the upcoming victory of the Allies. Jack spent the night, but got little sleep as shells continued to whine and hit throughout the night.

      The next morning he found himself in a no-mans land as shells from both sides continued to fly overhead. The road was narrow and heavily damaged in places so his pace again came to a crawl as he was forced to push the bicycle more than riding it. Just outside of Fotenay he ran head-on into two German soldiers carrying one of their wounded comrades. They spied the bicycle and he knew instantly he would be walking from then onward. He got off and let them have it without any argument, but one of the soldiers frisked him before allowing Jack to leave.

     The soldier reached down Jack's shirt looking for dog tags. Had Ilfrey not have ignored regulations and removed them early into his trek he would most certainly have become a Prisoner of War. However, by doing this he also could be shot as a spy if his true nationality were discovered. Luckily the soldiers had what they wanted and allowed Jack to continue down the road.

      He walked toward Fotenay and began to see more and more enemy personnel, which he surmised was part of a rear guard action. This meant he was nearing Allied territory, but it also put him in the middle of the retreating Germans. He continued on through the heart of town and about a mile or so past came upon an area where the road ran off through a clearing. As he was about to step into the clearing he heard voices to his left and saw the Germans were dug in. Many were motioning for him to get down and he promptly fell to the ground. A solider soon crawled over, motioned jack to follow him and they made their way a few yards to where they were entrenched. They began trying to communicate with him in German and English but Jack acted as if he couldn't understand them.

      Ilfrey finally realized that they were instructing him to take a wounded soldier in a wheelbarrow, which lay in a nearby ditch, and wheel him to a field hospital. Ilfrey dragged the soldier through the high grass, shoved him into the wheelbarrow and started pushing him towards a hospital he remembered passing a few miles back. Before long this became a real chore and after much struggle he deposited the young soldier at the first aid station. Some medical men took the man into the tent and Jack turned to walk away.

      Someone suddenly yelled "Hey!" and Jack froze. He turned towards the tent and saw a medic motioning him to come back. Jack made his way back, sure that his luck was at an end when the medic pulled two cigarettes and a candy bar out of his jacket and handed them to him. Jack thanked him in his best French and took off towards the village square.

     Turning west from the square he made his way back out of town and continued on without incident. Two farm boys gave him directions towards the Allied lines and he continued on through the French countryside. Reaching an intersection he turned north again and a quarter mile down the road he suddenly heard, "What the Bloody hell is a French civilian doing out there?!" Then he saw British soldiers.

     Their reaction was not exactly what Jack expected. They strip searched him and finally he was taken to a large room where he was questioned. The last remaining bit of his luck appeared in the form of an American Major from Texas. When the Major asked Ilfrey questions only a Texan could answer and all were answered correctly a bottle of Scotch was brought out and a small celebration ensued.

      The Major later drove Jack to a newly established airfield and after they tired themselves of laughing at his clothes and his story they arranged a flight back to England for him on a hospital plane. After the wounded were delivered to a base in England the crew flew Jack back to his home base, King's Cliffe. Normally evaders were not allowed to return to combat in the same operational theater, but somehow Ilfrey's luck again held and this regualtion was somehow overlooked.

      In 1983 Ilfrey returned to the area where he was shot down and was reunited with many of the people who had helped him to evade. Ilfrey first met with Jean Vileau and was amazed to discover Jean was a professor at a university in Angers, had been married many years and had named a son Jack after the pilot he had helped during the war. Jack lives and works in Paris and has visited Ilfrey on occasion in the United States.

     A trip through the Loire River valley was arranged and Ilfrey visited the farmhouse he had bounced off of nearly four decades earlier. Three children of the family still resided there and the armor plating from behind Jack's P-38's seat had been placed in the fireplace and had been radiating heat since soon after the crash. Soon other people who remembered Jack came around, one of them a man who had been on the train Jack had destroyed moments before being shot down.

      Receptions were held for Jack in Andigne and Angers and this was followed by an interview for French television where Jack was reunited with Odette, who had given Jack her bicycle. The last surprise of the trip came when Jean produced the watch and gloves Ilfrey had been wearing that day, along with the Fountain pen and maps he had been carrying the day he had been shot down.

      "The full impact hit as to just what he had done for me back as a 17 year-old kid in June '44," Ilfrey wrote in his autobiography. "Without his help I could very well not have been standing there that day."