SYLVAN LUCIER MEMORIAL TRIP
Sylvan Lucier, my deceased glider pilot uncle, was the reason for this amazing journey of ours in June of 2008, to the World War II commemorative sites in France, Holland and England.
When I designed a new graveside monument in Sylvan's home town of Fargo N.D. I put an etching of a Waco glider and under it the words “Africa, Sicily, Normandy, Holland”. It did not seem proper at the time to include England with the former war zones that my uncle endured. England must have been much like home to the aviators. It was made more clear to me on my trip how like family the English can be. My future posts to this blog will describe the war zones using information from interviews and squadron histories. But Sylvan also lived a somewhat normal life for eight months in a more comfortable place, England. And when he died in the glider accident, it was in a country where his death was viewed with great dismay by local people as well as by his troop carrier group.
On our trip, 64 years after the accident, my husband and I experienced the most amazing friendship and generosity from English people familiar with my uncle's story. Sylvan must also have had warm relationships with the British people when he lived there with the 316 Troop Carrier Group. I have read that there were parties for the children, food shared on family visits, dances at the officer’s club and eventually some weddings. This is well described in the book: Friendly Invasion, Memories of Operation Bolero, The America Occupation of Britain 1942-1945, by Henry Buckton. The major source of my information about the 316th Group in England is Mike Ingrisano's book, Valor Without Arms.
Instant friendship and assistance was also the case in Holland and France as we visited the historic sites. But in England I met some people who felt great sorrow over my uncle’s glider accident 64 years ago and who today still remember Sylvan’s awful death. The English villagers who witnessed the glider crash in1944 were more involved than his family! With all the English, they were aware of the U.S. sacrifices to guard their nation, but they also had to witness three shocking deaths, not on a battlefield but in the autumn meadows where they labored.
Today there are many British citizens, children of the war years who, after receiving the testimony of their elder countrymen, build the museums, visit the graves of American war dead, write the books, answer the emails, host the visiters, and search continually for more historic details. I am in debt to a number of English citizens for their many hours put into finding the site of the glider crash, gathering the accounts of witnesses, and shepherding us about the countryside.
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A GLIDER TRAGEDY IN STORY TELLING FORM
By Anne Nephew
Editing help from my daughter, Julia and our host in Tiffield, England, Rae Spencer.
As I looked over that beautiful field of yellow flowers, not yet mowed that June day, my thoughts were that it was a very peaceful place to die, if one must die. It could not have been any different on that thirteenth day of October, 1944. The site has been unknown to all but a few.
The village in the English midlands had only about 100 inhabitants at the time. There was no destruction from bombs there. However, a strong reminder of the war was the many, many planes overhead, flying daily between air-bases. A colorful note is that during the war a circus was camped at one end of the village and elephants walked through down Hight Street every day to the village green when they drank water from the village stream.
Facing the field where Sylvan Lucier, Derwood Basham and Irving Krohn died was a line of homes built during the Renaissance, including a church and a school. It was called “High Street” not because it was on a hill but because it was the main street and the only street to run through the village. A second row of houses, a tavern and a village green edged the other side of the street. At the time of the crash, many citizens were absent; mostly children and old people stayed in the village. Women in the “Land Army” worked the fields.
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On that fateful day, an elderly man whose son was in the British Air Force in Egypt was working in his backyard garden. It was nearly midday. He didn’t look up at the planes because they were so common, but he heard a terrible sound that day and he knew what it meant. He was one of the first, or perhaps the first to go to the scene. It was profoundly disturbing to this man to view the wrecked glider with its three occupants. As a father with a son also far away fighting the war, he could immediately identify with the parents of these deceased young men.
Later someone gave this elderly gentleman a lovely, graceful and intact wooden piece of the wrecked glider. It must have been some comfort to him, a talisman that reminded him of the sacrifices others had made for his country. He kept this smooth, elongated “stick” hanging on the wall over his living room fireplace to remind him and his family of that sad day. He passed on the story of the terrible glider accident to his son who returned home safe from the war. The family decided that the stick should hang in that spot for the family to remember the event of that October day. The gentleman told his son, “That stick is a piece of history. Don’t ever take it away!” And so the piece of honed wood remained above the fireplace. It was a remembrance of those three American men who could not return home to farm, to attend school, and to start a family.
Long after the gentleman's death, and a year after that of his son, two visiters from America came to visit the postcard cottage of the granddaughter of the elderly gentleman. Flowers in profusion greeted them on the pathway. She offered them some cookies picked up on her way home from work. She had returned recently from a trip to a dude ranch in Texas and was delighted to show the visiters her pictures. She loved to travel and the United States was such an interesting place to her. The Americans were charmed! One of the visitors was the niece of one of the men who died in that field.
Before long she brought out her grandfather’s glider stick from its place on the wall. She handled it like a religious object and spoke lovingly of its story. How could she follow her father and grandfather’s wishes to keep it forever since she had no children herself? It occurred to her, even before the visitors' arrival, that the stick should belong to the family of one of the glider pilots, where it would also be cherished. But first she would remove the string wrapped around one end in order to suspend it on the wall, so she could keep it to remind her of the many years she had looked at it while her grandfather and father recounted the events of that day. One of the visitors gently untied that knot made so long ago. Her guests accepted the glider stick with gratitude and a feeling of reverence, not just because of the origin of the stick, but because of the amazing love surrounding that stick for 64 years.
The stick had been between the two pilots in the front of the glider. It supported the leather case for a slide rule which was used to figure the load balance. The glider pilot, uncle to one of the visitors, had no doubt touched the stick many times in its proper place, near his thigh, just under the glider’s panel of four instruments. A glider is very lightweight and must be loaded with great care! In the crash the nose of the glider was badly damaged. The tail section was high in the hedge that bisected the field, with completely wrecked elevators. Yet this delicate stick of wood was spared!
It is not known who found the graceful glider stick and gave it to the gentleman. Its apparent frailty must have elicited sympathy and amazement. Someone knew that the older gentleman who rushed to the scene that day would cherish it.
Over the years no one in the family or the village knew the important function the stick had in the glider. A glider was mostly a steel tubing and cloth covering. However, seats, a floor, wing ribs and spar, and below the pilot's plexiglas windows, a “chin”, were made of wood. And threaded between between the pilot and co-pilot seats, were some slender sticks designed by an unknown engineer. From there came the delicate piece that survived the impact that instantly killed three young men.
In the grand design of things people have always kept souvenirs of places they have seen and people they have loved. An object kept in memory of a horrible event, such as a glider crash behind your garden, may give solace. But if it is placed over your fireplace, the center of the daily family gathering, it may be because you don’t want to forget, or have others forget, that great sacrifices were made for your safety and your freedom from tyranny.
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In the same village, on the very farm where the glider crashed, lives another gentleman today who was only a small boy during the war, living in London. He was only aged seven, but his mother would send him to the near-by subway station each evening. He went on his own carrying a suitcase and he would go down the long stairways to find a place deep underground on a platform in the station where he would join everyone from the local area as they huddled together and slept to shelter from the incessant bombing. In his suitcase was a blanket and he would open the suitcase and lie inside it wrapped in his blanket. One night he was huddled on the floor in his suitcase. A huge bomb made a direct hit and the blast was terrible! Several hundred of the people on the platform were killed but he was saved by the protection of his suitcase. The protective hand of God that saved him that night bestowed more trials, trials and traumas that a child should never have, the legacy of the horrors of that night.
The visitors had a mission that day, to find the site of the fatal crash. Someone in the village, it could have been a farmer's son returned at war’s end, would remove the hedge where the glider crashed. It turned two small fields into a larger than average field that produced crops to feed the cattle grazing beyond the gate.
The survivor of the London bombing understood the visitors’ purpose in visiting his back field. In this flower-filled field, away from road or even footpath, nothing remained from that awful event to mar the serenity. The sky gave its blessing of sun and small clouds. It could have been a garden in heaven. Or so the visitors thought.
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The autumn day of the crash, 1944, a teenage boy was working in a field near the village where he could see various other workers. At fifteen a boy could not be a child, nor could he be a man and go to war. He knew that soon the workers would all be breaking for the midday meal, cooked by grandmothers for the Land Army of women, the boys and any soldiers on leave, who were bringing in the harvest.
Airplanes fascinated this boy. He anticipated being able to help his country if needed in a few years and maybe it would be as a member of the Royal Air Force. When the flight of planes towing double gliders took his attention from his work, he had looked up and was instantly aware that something was terribly wrong with one group. One glider was directly under the other glider instead of in the V formation. The three aircrafts were much lower than usual and soon there were only two connected. The released glider did not have the altitude, the time or apparently the ability to land properly. The consequence was apparent and the boy knew exactly where he would find it.
Now, 64 years later, the man who had grown from the 15 year old who saw the gliders in trouble, was most eager to meet the American visiters. After the war was over he was able to serve his country, but not in the Royal Air Force. Later he lived elsewhere, away from the distressing accident site. But he responded to an appeal for information about the glider crash.
He wanted to describe the glider that he saw in serious trouble before it was released. He wanted to walk once more to the field he walked to years ago, a young boy who would leave his childhood there forever. He wanted to describe what the glider looked like in repose. He knew they had crashed at exactly 12:20. He knew from a watch that one of the crew was wearing which stopped at exactly that time. He could relate that the pilots were still strapped in and one body was on the ground. When asked if he wanted to describe any more details, he declined. He said it was too shocking to him then and still makes him unhappy to remember it. He said, “I do know that they all died immediately.”
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Everything he said was comforting to the visiters. Because of his experience, this gentlemen was closer to the glider pilot uncle who died than the visiters from America. It was his tragedy more than theirs! By his presence with them at the field of the crash, a connection was made beyond the present. The three young men who died there belonged to something larger than family or country. They were part of a story of a people who took thousands of America’s sons and cared for them and still have the deepest regard for them. The visiters would also feel this at the American chapel behind the high altar of St. Paul’s cathedral, at the beautiful Cambridge Cemetery commemorating thousands of Americans killed in action and in the line of duty, and at the Assault Guider Trust which educates all British citizens but particularly the schoolchildren that visit to see actual gliders displayed, and learn about the role of gliders and their pilots in the war. While a WWII memorial trip to Europe is a rare experience for Americans, it is part of the national identity of Europeans.
The two American visitors were born early in the war and both had been spared having parents in the military. For them the war had been a childhood game played with Army surplus items, following the content of comic books and Reader’s Digest stories. The woman was two years old when her uncle died, flying his glider on an ordinary freight trip from one air-base to another. He was one of twenty glider pilots, with co-pilots seated on their right, perhaps a mechanic aboard each glider, bringing new gliders to their base to replace those lost in Holland a few weeks earlier. After surviving numerous missions behind enemy lines in Nazi-occupied Africa, Sicily, Normandy and Holland, these three men ironically lost their lives in a routine transfer trip. By tragically crashing in an idyllic English field, they left behind sad memories for the people they helped, a single delicate souvenir, and witnesses who have told their stories.
The deaths of the three young men brought the war home to those English people and their sacrifice has not been forgotten:
F/O Sylvan R. Lucier, F/O Irving W. Krohn, Mechanic Derwood M. Basham.
Few descendants of glider pilots who were lost in the war will ever know exactly where their family member died, but this field in the English countryside will remain a hidden shrine to all those men who loved to fly and gave their lives to free Europe. We can be certain it will always be remembered and deeply respected.
