LAC Arnold Sigfred Christensen
(1917 - 2004)
Profile
Arnold S. Christensen MBE worked in an exchange position as assistant farmer in Warwickshire, when the war broke out. He volunteered and served, briefly due to tuberculoses in the Royal Air Force as an airframe fitter. He became a highly successful, innovative and influential farmer in the UK after the war.
Arnold Sigfred Christensen was born on 5 August 1917 on the small island of Avernakø, to farmer Christen Thomsen Christensen and Inger Kirstine Christensen (née Clausen).[1]
In May 1939, Christensen was working at a farm on Avernakø, when was offered an exchange position in England. [2] As the war broke out in September 1939, therefore, he was an assistant farmer at Broom Court Farm in Warwickshire.[3]
Christensen tried to volunteer for the Royal Navy, but was rejected because of Denmark’s status as a neutral country. Following the German occupation of Denmark, he applied and was turned down for service in the Army. [4] In the end he was accepted for service in the Royal Air Force in late 1940/early 1941 (1199528), where he served as a an airframe fitter.[5]
Following a few months in service, however, he contracted tuberculosis and pleurisy. He was, therefore, discharged as medically unfit in December 1941.
Having left service, he advertised for a farm position and, due to the shortage of manpower on farms, he could pick a choose among newly 600 replies. At his first farm management position at a 600 acres farm in Sussex he was left in sole charge, when the landowner went off to war a an Army chaplain. After the war he was offered the management position at the Buckhurst Estate near Withyham in Sussex by the Earl de la Warr. He retired from this position following a succesfull career around 1971.
He became involved in different agricultural societies and instrumental in setting up the Surrey Grasland Society. For his services he became a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (Civil Division) in 1963.[7]
He was naturalised in the United Kingdom on 12 January 1957. [8] Christensen died in England on 28 August 2004.[9]
Endnotes
[1] DNA: Parish register, Avernakø sogn. Fathers name spelled differently in various sources (Kristen/Christen and Kristensen/Christensen).
[2] Obituary for Arnold Christensen, The Times, 7 September 2004, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/arnold-christensen-5gfs05bmfh9.
[3] Ancestry: 19939 Register for England and Wales.
[4] Obituary for Arnold Christensen, ibid.
[5] DNA: 10194, 0180-037, Det danske Råd i London; Pk. 19, Medlemslister for Frie Danske (A - E).
[6] Obituary for Arnold Christensen, ibid.
[7] The London Gazette, 28 December 1962, 42870, p. 16, https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/42870/supplement/16.
[8] NA: HO 334/403/44467.
[9] Obituary for Arnold Christensen, ibid.