Showing posts with label WWII Memorials and Cemetaries. Show all posts
Showing posts with label WWII Memorials and Cemetaries. Show all posts
Thursday, January 06, 2011
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Five Star Mother Flag
This small flag placed in my grandmother's window makes me thing the small pin
with blue stars, previously displayed, was worn by Sylvan because there were four brothers serving. Normally, the gold star, indicating a son killed in the war, would be placed over a blue star. In this case, Sylvan's youngest brother, still in high school, joined the army, so she placed the gold star to one side.
His brothers, Bernard, Lanny, Delphis, in the service at the time of his death, send letters home which are printed in this blog. Their service records are noted.
Monday, December 15, 2008
June Trip to Normandy and Holland
NORMANDY & HOLLAND MEMORIAL TRIP, 2008
17 Days and Four Sites, June 5 – June 21
Introduction:
Our first destination was the D-Day celebration at Ste Mere Eglise, the town near the field where Sylvan Lucier landed his Horsa glider June 6, 1944. We arrived one day in advance to scout the area and plan our visits to various events. My husband emailed our five adult children the details of our four days in Normandy. The edited contents follow:
We arrived in France, on Thursday June 5th and drove to St. Lo, which, by the way, was pretty well flattened in the war because it is a key crossroads. After they were chased out of here many of the Germans escaped to the east through what is called the Falaise pocket because Montgomery wasn't able to close the trap there. The Germans had to leave just about everything behind, including tanks, artillery, vehicles, ammo, but they got out and lived to fight another day. One museum has a blurb about this that points out that after 25 German generals had to surrender at Stalingrad, Hitler looked bad to his own people, speculating that a similar total defeat at Normandy could have meant the end of Hitler's hold on power. Too bad they couldn't close the Falaise pocket.
STE MERE EGLISE ON D-DAY 2008
Friday, June 6 we went straight to Ste. Mere Eglise and spent the day there having found a parking spot right in the middle of things. We took photos and video and appreciated the glider museum there with its CG4-A, photographed the statement by the German soldier who thought John Steele was dead as he hung in his parachute harness having gotten caught on one of the points sticking up from the base of the steeple at the top of the main part of the church. John showed that playing possum can be just as important in life as showing up sometimes (you probably know the saying that 90% of success in life is due to just showing up).
We took many photographs and videotaped as we walked around the square and the encampment where French reinactors were performing drills and enjoyed showing their US military vintage clothing and machinery. It seemed strange to see hundreds of GI uniformed French together and not find even one American participant. Our veterans wear civilian clothes and blend into the crowd. If you want to meet the real participants of that fateful day, attend a WWII reunion in the US! After a wreath laying ceremony the French National Anthem was sung and looking at the faces of young and old French citizens, we knew what this June 6 celebration is all about. It was their day, not ours.
Late in the afternoon we went to Utah Beach where a ceremony was taking place. Time was too limited to enter the museum. In the gift shop Anne bought a French and English book about gliders, Les Planeurs Americains du Jour J, and an ETO medal to go with Sylvan Lucier's incomplete medal collection. The following September we would meet the French author, Philippe Esvelin, at the Glider Pilot Reunion in Dayton, Ohio.
After the ceremony we walked on that vast beach in the twilight and felt humbled to be there on the stage of such significant events 64 years ago. Anne collected a few slipper shells of which there were a vast amount, for her school children who would hear her stories about this hallowed ground.
Later in these pages are comments about food, housing and language experiences in France.
MERVEILLE BATTERY, UNVEILING OF THE C-47, “SNAFU SPECIAL”
Saturday the 7th we got going kind of late and didn't get to the ceremony at the Omaha Beach cemetery, but just after it. We spent quite a bit of time there looking up names of glider pilots who died in the invasion and then photographing their grave markers, then made our way to Merveille and to the Merveille Battery, where the ceremony was held to unveil the C-47 that flew paratroopers into Normandy.
The Merveille Battery, had been a German gun emplacement that was part of the “Atlantic Wall” that Hitler had had constructed, for the C-47 ceremony, which was very interesting especially because a C-47 in authentic colors from WWII came flying over and some parachutests jumped out in reenactor gear. They evidently had a lot of fun, and so did the crowd.
The C-47 that was to be unveiled survived the war, having been in many actions, then was bought by the Czechoslovakian air line where it carried passengers for many years, then was bought by the French air force, then sold to the Jugoslav air force where it received some damage when parked at Sarajavo during the Jugoslavian war and there it sat. It was discovered in 2007 by some folks who were looking for a C-47 and they were pleased to find out that this one was the “SNAFU SPECIAL,” with its illustrious career in the war.
In case you don't know, SNAFU is a term thought up by the typically irreverent American soldier and as I learned when I was a kid, means “Situation Normal—All Fouled Up.” When I was 12 I won a trophy at a free flight contest in Spokane flying a plane with another irreverent name—FUBAR, which I learned means “Fouled Up Beyond All Recognition.” Speaking of Spokane, I noted from one of the maps at one of the museums that the routes the C-47s flew as they approached Normandy and when they went back to England had city names from the US. For instance you would be told to follow route Chicago in and Spokane out. This was to minimize midair collisions, always a looming problem when you have lots of planes in the are in a relatively small area and less developed air traffic control than we have in the world nowadays.
After the ceremony a C-47 in WWII invasion colors and stripes flew over and after a few passes started dropping parachutists. This was very entertaining. We got photos and video, and Mom met a guy with the Glider Museum in Texas and they had a great sharing of information. (At a troop carrier reunion held in Fayetteville NC the following October we were delighted to meet a pilot of the Snafu Special. We gave him a video of the unveiling ceremony in which he was an important participant. We also met the mayor of the nearby village who attended the reunion with her young son. Al had a great time helping him fly the flight simulator set up in the hospitality room by the local air base who hosted the reunion.)
AMERICAN AND BRITISH CEMETERIES IN NORMANDY
Sunday, June 8, before we left to drove to Paris, we visited a Liberation Museum in Bayeux and the Bayeux Tapestry Museum shop. At the British Normandy Cemetery, where we found the grave of English Glider Pilot W.K. Marfleet, who died June 6th at the age of 24. Marfleet is the uncle of author Stephen Wright, author of “The Last Drop, Operation Varsity” who contacted Mom through her website. We photographed the cross with the uncle's name on it and the surroundings and the monuments and so on and she will email the photos to him. He was a British glider pilot and his nephew had evidently not been able to get over to visit his grave. There were French families at that cemetery, too, along with a large contingent of British people who came on buses and some of whom were obviously veterans of WWII. French families and school children as well as Dutch ones adopt graves of people in the Allied armies who died in the war and are buried in their country. Incidentally, we found out at the US cemetery at Omaha Beach (Colleville sur Mer) that only the US has a policy of returning the bodies of dead service people to their hometown or area if the relatives request it. Most US families have requested it. At Bayeux there were also hundreds of German graves, most of them with names unknown.
At the Colleville sur Mer (Normandy American Cemetery is its official name) cemetery the day before, near Omaha Beach, we had looked up all the names of US glider pilots who had died in Normandy on or soon after D-Day. There is a computer at the cemetery that makes this easy. You can find out where anyone who is buried in any US military cemetery anywhere in the world (and there are a lot of them) is buried. Of the 44 Glider Pilot names we had, 14 were buried in the Normandy Am. Cemetery, and Mom photographed their grave markers, crosses for all but two and Stars of David for those two. We also took photos of various other aspects of the cemetery, which is very impressively designed, kept up, and staffed. Mom will share the photos with the glider people she knows, including the Silent Wings museum in Texas.
ADVICE FOR AMERICANS MAKING A MEMORIAL TRIP TO EUROPE
1. TRAVEL BY TRAINS IN EUROPE
Monday, June 9
This is being written on the train from Roosendaal to Nijmegen (pr. nyemegen), Holland, where we will get off and then make our way somehow to Ooij (pr. “oy”), where we have a hotel from which we will tour the interesting places in the area, many of them having to do with the glider scene in WWII. Enthusiasts here have evidently located the exact landing spots of all the gliders, along with lots of other important information, and one Jan Bos, who will be showing us around, is one of the enthusiasts, having written a book about the planes that towed the gliders and brought the paratroopers.
An aside: a kid just got up and left the train wearing a T-shirt that said some brand name and the legend “Destroyed Jeans since 1986,” and under that “Revolution.” Incidentally, this train does not provide announcements in English the way the two previous ones did, but this one is headed for the Dutch provinces, where they don't suppose many English or French speakers go. The TGV had all announcements in French, Dutch, German and English, in that order, then the train from Brussels to Amsterdam had them in French, Dutch and English. By the way, the TGV doesn't seem to be going so fast until you parallel a freeway (or tollway) and realize that you are going at least twice as fast as the fastest car on that road, even when there is fairly open traffic. We have encountered an American woman on this train who is from Milwaukee and is here for some work in Nijmegen.
2. TRAVEL BY CAR IN FRANCE
On Thursday June 5, we arrived in good order, got our car and drove to St. Lo, an interesting drive. The French autoroutes, which are toll roads, have two speed limits, depending on if it is raining or not. If it is the limit is 110 kph = about 65mph, but if not it is 130 kph, or about 77 mph. Quite a few people drive 140, or about 83, and some very few even faster than that, but only occasionally because the right lane moves at about 110, the left at 120-130, and there aren't many open spaces between cars to go faster for very long. There are lots of rest areas called “aires” with toilets and other essentials. The toilets are the “hole on the floor” type at these rest areas, but all the other toilets we have encountered have been very nice, with most of them having two buttons for flushing, one for a small flush.
3. OUR NORMANDY RESIDENCE, JUNE 5-9,
Lots is being done in France for saving energy and resources, including plenty of recycling and our first hotel, Best Hotel (actually like a US motel), on the outskirts of St. Lo, had a slot in the wall just inside the door for the plastic card room key to enable the lights in the room to work. Thus, when you leave the room and take the key, the lights and the TV go off, but not the outlets, so your batteries will continue to charge. This was helpful to us because we were charging batteries a lot, using the adapter we bought at the G2G (Gadgets to Go) store on the center mall at MSP. All our chargers take 110 to 240 volts, so the higher voltage in Europe doesn't blow them. The motel also has motion detecting lights in the halls, which go on when you walk into the hall—otherwise there is a very low level of lighting in the hall. This motel is a new one, with heated floor and an interesting shower. If you turn the right knob on only, nothing comes out, but it controls the temperature of the left knob, which otherwise is full hot. The room has two little sub-rooms, one for the toilet only (the WC), the other for the sink (lavatory) and the shower. There are no screens on the windows, but they do open. The motel provides a nice breakfast for 6.90 euros, about $11. There is a flat screen TV on the wall that always turns on to a station with what looks like soap operas on it when we return and put the card on the wall slot if the maid was the last person in the room. There are only French stations on the TV, sometimes showing American movies dubbed in French, and they have a French version of “I want to be a Millionaire,” with the same music as the American one.
4. EATING IN EUROPE
Food at restaurants here is costly, as everything is, because of the low dollar. Today at the railroad station in Brussels we went to the Mr. Quick, which names everything in English, and had a King Fish burger thing plus fries and a drink for 5.50 apiece = $8.80. Last evening we went to the only place open in the area near our hotel near Paris of the same brand as the one in St. Lo (Best Hotel), and paid about 20 \ = $32 for each entree (using the US meaning of that term, but it means appetizer or starter in the French usage—we didn't have any starters). The place was a sort of disco joint with continuous loud dancing music, lots of dancing, drinking (but no one seemed drunk), everyone friendly and the place open to 3 AM Wed. through Sun. nights.
5. GETTING ALONG WITH THE FRENCH LANGUAGE
Quite a few, mostly younger, people in France speak a bit of English, but we have only encountered a couple of French people who speak much of it, and those were a translator with a strong British accent at Ste. Mere Eglise dressed as a reenactor (a woman named Catherine), and a girl behind the desk at the American cemetery at near Omaha Beach. Most French who speak any English have an American accent rather than a British one (you can often choose what accent you want when you sign up to study English in France, and most people choose American, I've heard). You run into quite a few younger people who are behind desks or are servers at restaurants (including the Buffalo Grill near our St. Lo motel), who know a bit of English, but only a bit. When you try them out further you have to quickly go to French because they seem only to know English numbers and such words as “what would you like” and “would you like your bill” and “thank you.” As far as explaining things such as what the dishes are or how to get somewhere, they are not very often much help in English.
The fun thing about knowing a bit of French, however, is that you are immediately loved by all French people we have encountered ever. They will go the extra 5 miles for you if you ask their assistance at anything. I have been surrounded by French people helping me with a map and directions to places or one young guy who spent at least 15 minutes with me, though he was also interested in where I was from and spoke a smattering of English (but not enough to get the giving-directions job done).
The other evening we were looking for evidence of glider-remembrance monuments or plaques near Landing Zone W, where Uncle Sylvan landed his glider, and stopped at a village called Chef du Pont and went into a hotel-bar-restaurant for something to drink and to ask questions. The owner and his wife, whom he fetched from their room in the place (she spoke English quite well, but we had to use a lot of French too—he didn't speak any English, and he spent most of the evening with us), were very interested in talking with us and we found out a lot from them. They didn't know (nor did anyone else in the bar) anyone in the area named Neveu or Lucier (or Lussier), but they said there was a family down the road named Leneveu (one word), which would mean “The Nephew.”
A GLIDER PILOT STORY ABOUT NORMANDY LANDING
I have been unable to find the Interrogation Report given by my glider pilot uncle who was on temporary assignment with the 88th squadron to fly a Horsa glider on D-Day with the Elmira section of that great airbourne armada. It perhaps does not exist, and since Sylvan died four months later, he never told his story unless it was in letters to his brothers or friends. At some point I will have to reconstruct it from books I have read.
We got a story some years ago from a guy in Texas named Ike Abernathy at the Glider Museum there, about how his glider pilot buddy who was night blind (Ike took the eye tests in his place) thought on D-Day a chateau was a field and flew his glider smack into the first floor (second floor to us), right through the wall, without hurting anyone in the glider. 15 American soldiers in Rommel's headquarters, but Rommel in Germany for his anniversary or something like that, not having expected an invasion at that time. All his guard of 30 men were drunk and sprawled around the ground floor as Ike found out when he entered the place through the front door after he had landed his glider successfully between a row of Rommel's Asparagus poles, what with having great night vision himself, and helping the three guy he had in his glider roll out the artillery piece they had brought. He went upstairs and told the guys up there to take the men downstairs prisioner, which they did, and he and his buddy went up to the next floor to find Rommel's aide waiting for someone to come and get him and send him to a POW camp. Then Ike and his buddy went to tell someone is authority about the treasure trove of papers in Rommel's office, and went on for further adventures.
HOLLAND MEMORIAL VISIT: TRAVEL ARRANGEMENTS DURING BUS STRIKE
Tuesday, June 10, 2008.
Monday we took a cab from the train station to the wrong hotel. I had called our hotel to ask them how to get there and was told cab and I asked what company and she said Hoffman so I asked her if she would order up a cab to take us there and she said sure, so a cab showed up in due time and we got in and he took us to a hotel with a name that begins with Ooij, but longer, but everyone calls it the Ooij. Well how could I know this and why didn't the woman at the desk tell them which hotel? There is a printed item on her desk specifying the Hoffman cab company, and no doubt they get a kickback, so what's up? Anyway he had to come back and get us and take us to the right place.
If the buses weren't on strike we would be able to go everywhere, and I mean everywhere on either bus or train, and the rest of the Dutch ride bikes. There are thousands of bikes parked across the street from the train station and lots of them parked lots of other places and lots of people riding bikes everywhere. You have to watch out if you're on foot for your own safety, for bikes are silent and fast, and there are special bike lanes on just about every busier road, so you have to keep your wits about you. Tomorrow Mom wants to rent bikes (our hotel rents them) and ride around here, which is a lovely area, with farms and dikes and cows and sheep and water, including ponds and creeks and rivers, and geese and swans and hawks. But tomorrow it will rain, they say. So far we have had nothing but sunny, just about perfect weather the whole trip, and no rain except for a few seconds while driving from Paris to Normandy.
GETTING AROUND NIJMEGEN IN A “TUXI”-A KIND OF RICKSHAW
Today we got up relatively early, had a fine breakfast here at the hotel in Ooij, and wondered how to get into town, what with the high cost of cabs and the bus drivers on strike. On a table at the entrance to the breakfast room was a card advertising a Tuxidrive.nl outfit, and we wondered what it was—the card was in Dutch and not very clear anyway. So I phoned. Of course the guy spoke good English and we arranged for him to come and get us. He goes around and picks up people who want to go places and takes them there, but he doesn't have a van, he has a little, three-wheeled rickshaw-like thing powered by a noisy little engine and a pair of handlebars for driving. It's brand new and blue and white and kind of a hoot. Open in the passenger seat, it's like the tuktuks he had seen in Thailand, or heard about. Originally they come from Italy and now are made in India, but Italy too, which is where he gets his. His business started a week ago and it going great guns already.
After we got back from out train trip today I tried to phone him from the pay phone in the train station, but it wouldn't let his number be contacted—I still don't understand why, though he had some reason I guess—so we went into the train ticket office to ask the woman there, who didn't have any customers, if she could explain it. She couldn't, but phoned him for me, and after I had ordered him up to get us and he said he'd be there in 15 minutes, she wanted to know what it was about, and we told her, and she had been to Thailand and loved the tuktuks and rode them all over Bangkok, and had seen one of his a few days ago and now knew what it was and took down his phone number so she could tell train riding arrivals and others about this alternative to the taxis, which she allowed were awfully expensive. It was lots of fun talking with her.
The guy with the Tuxi told us that NL has gone to a private medical insurance system from a single payer system run by the government.They were unhappy with that previous system and wanted more efficiency and lower costs due to competition, he said. He himself pays about 300\ a month for his family of himself, his wife and their 2.7 kids, and the government pays the premiums for poor people (of which there can't be too many in the NL, rich a country as it is—my guess). He also said that the vast number of Nederlanders are for Obama and do not like Bush and didn't from the beginning. Everyone here is intensely interested in the US elections, as usual, perhaps even more this time.
CROSSING THE BRIDGE TOO FAR
So earlier today we had bought train tickets to Oosterbeek and took the train there (actually two since we had to change trains at Arnhem) to see the Airborne Museum. It is really touching to see how much the Dutch and all Nederlanders appreciate being saved from the Nazis, whom they refer to simply as the Germans (and get along with them really well now, of course). Over 150,000 Nederlanders were killed during the occupation, and more in the war that chased the Germans out, but they don't hold anything against their savers, just the occupiers, unlike the Hungarians, who beat to death American pilots who parachuted from their stricken planes for killing some of them and destroying houses, etc., in the process of getting the Germans out. Ingrates. Meanwhile the Dutch and other Nederlanders, like the guy we met 27 years ago in the campground in Friesland, sheltered Allied soliders and aircrews at the risk of their own lives, for if the Germans caught you doing that they executed you and your whole family. Also, the Dutch rioted before the war in at least two cities against German restrictions and atrocities against the Jews, and put up a strong resistance to German treatment of Jews, including moving them to ghettos, making them wear yellow stars of David, etc., and shipping them off to evident death. The Germans came down hard on the Dutch when they put on these demonstrations, and of course eventually put them down, and a stop to them. Then the Dutch starved during the war. We met a couple on the train who were about our age and the man was not well able to walk. Mom wondered if he had suffered maldevelopment because of starvation during the war as our friend Klaus Jankovski had in eastern Germany. So we spent many hours at the museum and Mom got lots of photos of stuff connected with gliders and bought several books and a shoulder patch Uncle Sylvan would have worn. But we still haven't found an Air Medal such as he was given for his service as a flyer. In due time we will find one.
TRAINS, TRAINS EVERYWHERE
The train trip cost us 8\ apiece and it was fun to ride the trains. Trains run every half hour between these cities and most or all the cities of these countries and many between countries (a TGV from Paris Nord to Brussels every hour, for instance, all of them, evidently full, at least in second class. On one of the legs of our trip from Charles de Gaulle Airport to Nijmegen we got on the first class car of one train, the first one after the TGV. It had a #1 on it, but that meant nothing to me, since I supposed all the cars had different numbers or whatever. It was nice, but I didn't recognize that because I didn't know the difference between first and second class. I did notice that there weren't many passengers on it, but that didn't mean anything either. Then along came the conductor, a nice woman with very good English (this in in Belgium, but the train is headed for Amsterdam, though we were to get off fairly soon in the Netherlands to switch to another train to Nijmegen). When we give her our tickets she tells us that we are in the first class car but have paid for second class. We can move or pay the difference. Mom wants to move, but I don't want to move all that luggage, and anyway I like it in first class, and it only costs 7\ each, so I gave the guy she summoned a credit card and he did the charge right there. On the international trains or long distance trains they checked tickets, but they never did today. We could have gotten on and ridden for free, though of course there are conductors on them checking and punching tickets, but they don't get to everyone, especially those on for only five or 20 minutes as we were. The intercity trains are electric, quiet, fast, comfortable, convenient. But there are 14 million Nederlanders in the space of, I think, St. Louis county or so—so they can finance such a train system.
June 11, 2008, Ooij (pr. "oy"), Holland, the Netherlands. This town is 7 km = 4 miles E of Nijmegen (pr. "nye-maygen," with the g coughed instead of a hard g), and about 3 km west of the German border. In 104 AD the Roman emperor Tragan granted Nijmegen the first market rights in what is now Holland, making Noviomagus the first township on Dutch soil.
A MODERN DUTCH VILLAGE SHOWS WARTIME WOUNDS
June 11, 2008, Ooij (pr. "oy"), Holland, the Netherlands. This town where we stayed for four nights is 7 km = 4 miles E of Nijmegen (pr. "nye-maygen," with the g coughed instead of a hard g), and about 3 km west of the German border. In 104 AD the Roman emperor Tragan granted Nijmegen the first market rights in what is now Holland, making Noviomagus the first township on Dutch soil.
Wednesday, June 11
Today in Ooij we went for a walk. Early on we stopped at the Spar grocery store and found some items we were interested in getting on our return from our walk. We proceeded south on Queen Juliana Street, on which our hotel sits and on which sits the ATM where I found I could mooch off someone's open wifi (lots of protected wifis here and everywhere we've been in this country, so I'm delighted to find an open one). We turned right on Prince William street then turned left on King whatshisname street (all the streets in this town are named after NL royalty, whereas in other towns all the streets are named after composers, for example, authors, artists, etc., including no doubt heavy metal band members, well, checking this out in all Dutch cities would be a worthwhile vacation project in itself. Who wants to be the first to undertake it? First check to see if it has already been done and a book devoted to it.
CIVILIAN DEATHS, SEPT. 9, 1944
Soon we were at the Catholic Church, St. Hubert's. We went by and continued out of town into the countryside on the bike and pedestrian path, always looking out for the bikes, which came by frequently. We saw a friendly horse that came over to the fence to be petted or given an apple, and when I petted it some of its flies migrated to me. I moved away, and as we proceeded, the flies, happily for me, quit me and went back to the horse. We went on to check out a field of some kind of grain that was half ripened. We thought it was wheat and were impressed at the density of the growth and the huge heads of grains that each stem had. In due time we returned by the same route and stopped at the church to notice the pockmarks in the rectory and church from bullets and other missiles in the war, and the memorial built to remember the townspeople who died in the war, 23 of them on one day, 9 Sept 1944. As we were contemplating this we noticed a woman coming out of a house across the street with a little kid in a stroller, so we asked her if she knew what happened. She said she did, and came across the street to talk with us. We talked with her for quite a while, she apologizing for her English, which she said she had studied for five years and now is going to brush up on, but we were impressed with her English. We had to supply a few words, but not many. The people who died, she said, were all in a basement of a cafe in another part of the town when a German bomb went right into the basement and killed 20 of them instantly. Many were members of one family, the Janssens, we noted on the monument, and she pointed out that there was another family there as well as other people.
Then we got interested in her house. It has a thatched roof that looks quite new and her husband is remodeling or developing half of the house which she said used to be the part in which the cows lived, nine of them according to her grandfather who lived in the town all his life (and she was born here and is a nursery school teacher in Nijmegen).
STORIES OF A DUTCH GRANDFATHER
Her grandfather told many stories about the war , she said, including one about the very spot where we were standing. Paratroopers came by (we didn't find out whether they were American or British) and the locals, who spoke no English but knew that there were well-armed Germans lying in wait down the road on the other side of the dike, tried to tell this to the paratroopers, holding up their hands to stop them from going forward and gesturing as best they could, but the paratroopers pushed them aside and continued on and one by one they were all killed. Now all Nederlanders begin learning English at age 10 and are helped by their parents who already know it. Even the cleaning ladies in this hotel speak fluent English, including idioms—I had a great chat with them today.
The woman with the “doitself” (the Dutch term, probably misspelled) husband showed us repaired brickwork on their house required by the damage caused by shells and guns. She said when they bought the house its roof was in bad shape and the government required that they replace it with thatch, not tile, and gave them some money to help with the cost. There are laws requiring the preservation of old building now. Their house is quite beautiful indeed. She said the rafters and other large wooden members in it have bullet holes in them, and pieces torn out by shell fragments and bullets. No doubt there are many bullets still in the beams and rafters, but these members survived.
Before she came out a man on a bike rode by headed out of town, then turned around and came back and asked us in Dutch how to get to the hotel we are living in. I was amazed I could interpret what he was asking, recognizing the name of our hotel and the street it is on. He had no English, evidently. I pointed out how to get there with arm motions and he thanked me in Dutch and rode on. We didn't see him again. He is probably still lost, poor guy.
Another story she told was about her grandfather telling that they had to take care of the milk cows, which means hazing them into the barn twice a day for milking with planes roaring around and bombings and guns firing. They put milk cans over their heads when they went into the field thinking that would give them some protection, but realized later that that wasn't going to be much help, actually.
At one point all the people of the village, smaller then than it is now, but it isn't very big now, about 100 people, packed into the basement of the church. No bombs entered, so they all survived that.
After these stories we went back to the Spar store and bought some food for dinner, including some tortilla chips and some salsa. MMMM, good. Also some wine and chicken and bread and salad and so on, and we came back to our room and ate it.
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TOUR OF NIJIMEGEN, GROESBEEK AND SURROUNDING AREA AREA BY JAN BOS AND JEANE MELCHER
On Thursday we were shown around the area by museum volunteers Jan Bos, and Jeanne Melchers. We visited the National Liberation Museum 1944-1945 at Groesbeek (Nationaal Bevrijdingsmuseum 1944-1945). Jan Bos has published meticulous research on the American airbourne and distributes information almost daily to numerous people over the internet. He was one of my first contacts in my research into Sylvan Lucier's glider mission in Holland. I could not have made this trip without his help and much of my research on my uncle's role as a glider pilot came through following his leads.
Al writes: June 12. Rainy day. First rain on our trip. Jan Bos picked us up in his Peugeot. We went into Nijmegen to the traffic circle up the hill from the car bridge. He told us about the difficult resistance the Germans had put up at the Nijmegen end of the bridge, which the US and British paratroopers had taken after some days of fighting. Jeanne told us in the evening that when the paras (as they call them here) had taken the bridge and eliminated all the resistance and were relaxing in the late evening along the sidewalk on the hill at the bottom of some stairs that ascended to a big house that had been burning when they arrived, so they thought no one would be in it, the Germans who had been in the house but had survived the fire in the basement, walked down the stairs with their helmets under their arms and right past the paratroopers and under the archway under the end of the bridge and gone, greeting the paratroopers in English as they went by. They caused no notice because it was almost dark and the color of their uniforms was indistinguishable, and the curved lips of their helmets were against their bodies. She said their captain got an award for inventing this ploy and carrying it off.
PARATROOPER AND GLIDER LANDING ZONES
But with Jan we didn't stop in Nijmegen but continued south past the castle that Charlemagne had constructed around 800, and out into the countryside. Along the way past a significant forest that is a forest preserve, there was a big house in it at one point that he said had been the HQ for Gen. Gavin, though Jeanne said that Gavin never used a building in the Nijmegen area, at least during the fighting, but lived and worked in tents or portable shelters of some sort. Turning right we somehow got to the south side of the Maas-Waal Canal, which in 1944 had been crossed by a lock bridge, a bridge over some locks that are still there and in one of which was a large boat we videotaped a little later. Then we went by the “weak bridge” that was declared too weak for tanks to cross by the British engineers (sappers) (it had been damaged by a German shell). The tanks and thus the main body of military traveling north toward Nijmegen had to detour SE to cross the lockbridge.
Then we proceeded toward Grave, near which Jan thinks Sylvan must have landed partly because the distance is correct from the appointed landing zone and partly because in his after-action report Sylvan mentions B-24s drawing anti-aircraft fire that had previously been directed at the gliders and towplanes and had caused the towplanes to veer away from the appointed LZ to a different one. This latter was significant because B-24s came over only once that day and during the period of days in questions and they came right over Grave to drop supplies to the paratroopers that were landing near there. We went around this location a bit and viewed it from several angles seeing the fields where Sylvan might have landed. Then we drove toward Grave.
Approaching Grave we spent some time at the landing fields at Klein America (Little America), not far from Groesbeek. There is a triangular piece of woods near these fields that served as a locating point for Gavin, and he landed his paratroopers and gliders here in the large fields. All the gliders landed well except for one that hit the roof of a barn, said Jan. There was little resistance, and the troopers who went over to the Richtswald forest just over the border in Germany to see about the tanks and artillery that had been reported, perhaps by local farmers, to be there, found only a couple of hundred German soldiers, and dealt with them (don't know how). So the force formed up and proceeded to head for Nijmegen, securing what areas they could or needed to on the way.
Meanwhile, Sylvan and his fellow glider pilots hiked through the night to get to, probably, Groesbeek, or wherever the command post he mentioned hiking to was. Afer that Gen. Gavin made use of the 300 or more glider pilots he found to be there with no orders but to find their way back to England. He sent them to the front lines to be soldiers there, guard prisoners, and otherwise help. Then Sylvan and some of his fellow glider pilots headed out to find their way to the rear and England. He said that on this trip they were delayed on what must have been Hell's Highway by enemy action up ahead, but he got back to England on Sept 29.
THE NATIONAL LIBERATION MUSEUM AT GROESBEEK
Jan dropped us at the Groesbeek Museum called the National Liberation Museum 1944-1945. As we were getting out Jan's car in front of the front door, another car drove up driven by Jeanne. She had an American vet and his English girlfriend with her and was showing them around. There were introductions all around, and Jeanne said that she had to go somewhere, but that she would be seeing us around the museum's closing time. Jan said that she would be driving us to our hotel, but it wasn't clear at the time that she was looking forward to showing us the area from her point of view. That became evident later.
We looked at displays in the museum for about 20 minutes while Jan went to get something connected with his daughter's wedding that is coming up soon, and when he got back we went to lunch in Groesbeek, where we had sandwiches, soup, etc. He had to leave us at one PM so he could get ready for work, and he dropped us off at the museum, where we were very entertained right to closing time at five. It is a very impressive museum with three sections, color coded, dealing with first the red section devoted to the occupation before the Allies arrived, second the blue section devoted to the fight and the liberation, and finally the brown section devoted to the time after the liberation. There was a whole room devoted to the mistaken bombing of Nijmegen by the USAAF in 1942 in which a lot of the center of the city was destroyed and 750 people killed. The bomber crews thought they were bombing a German city not far away, but the weather was bad and they had drifted with the strong winds making navigation difficult over the clouds, evidently.
When we were in the center of Nijmegen with Jeanne she pointed out how the buildings on one side of the original Roman EW street in that part were very old, the ones on the other side new since the war. The huge church, St. Stephens, I think, besides having parts that dated back to the year 1000 or so, some dating to the 1500s and 1700s, the tower was recently repaired because it was hit by a bomb, and at the time there were people in it ringing the bells to warn of an air raid. No trace was found of those people.
The museum also has a kind of modernistic parachute-like addition that contains the names of all the military who died in the fighting in the area, and outside it has a British version of the Sherman tank and an anti-tank gun.
Inside there is the nose/cockpit section of a CG4-A glider. This item had been used as a cover for firewood at a nearby farm and was repaired a bit and set up in a little room devoted to the gliders. In a case there was a good-as-new Load Distributor along with its good-as-new leather case stamped with that information. We took photos and videos of this heretofore elusive item. Above the glider nose/cockpit was hung a big model of a C-47 towing a CG4-A. Nicely done models.
The museum prides itself in being not just a collection but also having a philosophy. It wants to show the sociological/political/philosophical aspects of the times. For instance, it is blunt about Dutch anti-Jewish sentiment, political differences and conflicts, etc., and has a board that poses ethical questions and asks you how you would respond to them. One example is of the owner of a factory which employees some Dutch people. If these people didn't have jobs in Holland they would be likely to be taken by the Germans into Germany to work as slaves there in the war production industry making bombs, planes, etc. So along comes the Germans demanding that the factory made some items for them. If this is done, they are also contributing to the war effort. But does that make them collaborators? Such issues causes the museum visiter to think about the complexity of occupation.
POSTSCRIPT
From Holland we took a train to Brussels where our friends and their daughters hosted us through the weekend and showed us the many sights of Bruge. On Monday we took the Eurostar train (Chunnel train) to London. The round trip ticket was cheaper than one way! It was easy to find the train to Northhamptom and from there, after a short wait, we took the bus and reached our lodging near Tiffield, England.
Some of our experiences in our five days in England, such as the stories of eyewitnesses to my uncle's death, have been posted earlier. More will follow.
The trip arrangements we had made from the states were the Best Hotel in St. Lo, Normandy; Fletcher Rest De Geldeerse Port, Ouij, NL; and the Globe Hotel near Northhampton, UK. For our last night in England our friend Ray Spencer helped us get a reasonable room in London, at the Purple Hotel, at Euston Station near the Tower of London. We used buses, cabs and the underground to get around in London. On a longer visit, we were advised we could take in many sights taking the river boat. We did visit the Cathedral of St. Paul before flying home from Heathrow airport. To visit the American Chapel which commemorates the Americans who died fighting for Britain, it is important to arrive in the morning because it is behind the high altar and services are held in late afternoon, closing access. It is a majestic church of great significance to England, that suffered great damage in the bombing of London.
In a gilded book in that chapel we saw the Honor Roll with the names of Sylvan Lucier, Irving Krohn, and Derwood Basham, the three young men who died together in the glider accident October 13, 1944. Our commemorative trip to honor my glider pilot uncle was over.
17 Days and Four Sites, June 5 – June 21
Introduction:
Our first destination was the D-Day celebration at Ste Mere Eglise, the town near the field where Sylvan Lucier landed his Horsa glider June 6, 1944. We arrived one day in advance to scout the area and plan our visits to various events. My husband emailed our five adult children the details of our four days in Normandy. The edited contents follow:
We arrived in France, on Thursday June 5th and drove to St. Lo, which, by the way, was pretty well flattened in the war because it is a key crossroads. After they were chased out of here many of the Germans escaped to the east through what is called the Falaise pocket because Montgomery wasn't able to close the trap there. The Germans had to leave just about everything behind, including tanks, artillery, vehicles, ammo, but they got out and lived to fight another day. One museum has a blurb about this that points out that after 25 German generals had to surrender at Stalingrad, Hitler looked bad to his own people, speculating that a similar total defeat at Normandy could have meant the end of Hitler's hold on power. Too bad they couldn't close the Falaise pocket.
STE MERE EGLISE ON D-DAY 2008
Friday, June 6 we went straight to Ste. Mere Eglise and spent the day there having found a parking spot right in the middle of things. We took photos and video and appreciated the glider museum there with its CG4-A, photographed the statement by the German soldier who thought John Steele was dead as he hung in his parachute harness having gotten caught on one of the points sticking up from the base of the steeple at the top of the main part of the church. John showed that playing possum can be just as important in life as showing up sometimes (you probably know the saying that 90% of success in life is due to just showing up).
We took many photographs and videotaped as we walked around the square and the encampment where French reinactors were performing drills and enjoyed showing their US military vintage clothing and machinery. It seemed strange to see hundreds of GI uniformed French together and not find even one American participant. Our veterans wear civilian clothes and blend into the crowd. If you want to meet the real participants of that fateful day, attend a WWII reunion in the US! After a wreath laying ceremony the French National Anthem was sung and looking at the faces of young and old French citizens, we knew what this June 6 celebration is all about. It was their day, not ours.
Late in the afternoon we went to Utah Beach where a ceremony was taking place. Time was too limited to enter the museum. In the gift shop Anne bought a French and English book about gliders, Les Planeurs Americains du Jour J, and an ETO medal to go with Sylvan Lucier's incomplete medal collection. The following September we would meet the French author, Philippe Esvelin, at the Glider Pilot Reunion in Dayton, Ohio.
After the ceremony we walked on that vast beach in the twilight and felt humbled to be there on the stage of such significant events 64 years ago. Anne collected a few slipper shells of which there were a vast amount, for her school children who would hear her stories about this hallowed ground.
Later in these pages are comments about food, housing and language experiences in France.
MERVEILLE BATTERY, UNVEILING OF THE C-47, “SNAFU SPECIAL”
Saturday the 7th we got going kind of late and didn't get to the ceremony at the Omaha Beach cemetery, but just after it. We spent quite a bit of time there looking up names of glider pilots who died in the invasion and then photographing their grave markers, then made our way to Merveille and to the Merveille Battery, where the ceremony was held to unveil the C-47 that flew paratroopers into Normandy.
The Merveille Battery, had been a German gun emplacement that was part of the “Atlantic Wall” that Hitler had had constructed, for the C-47 ceremony, which was very interesting especially because a C-47 in authentic colors from WWII came flying over and some parachutests jumped out in reenactor gear. They evidently had a lot of fun, and so did the crowd.
The C-47 that was to be unveiled survived the war, having been in many actions, then was bought by the Czechoslovakian air line where it carried passengers for many years, then was bought by the French air force, then sold to the Jugoslav air force where it received some damage when parked at Sarajavo during the Jugoslavian war and there it sat. It was discovered in 2007 by some folks who were looking for a C-47 and they were pleased to find out that this one was the “SNAFU SPECIAL,” with its illustrious career in the war.
In case you don't know, SNAFU is a term thought up by the typically irreverent American soldier and as I learned when I was a kid, means “Situation Normal—All Fouled Up.” When I was 12 I won a trophy at a free flight contest in Spokane flying a plane with another irreverent name—FUBAR, which I learned means “Fouled Up Beyond All Recognition.” Speaking of Spokane, I noted from one of the maps at one of the museums that the routes the C-47s flew as they approached Normandy and when they went back to England had city names from the US. For instance you would be told to follow route Chicago in and Spokane out. This was to minimize midair collisions, always a looming problem when you have lots of planes in the are in a relatively small area and less developed air traffic control than we have in the world nowadays.
After the ceremony a C-47 in WWII invasion colors and stripes flew over and after a few passes started dropping parachutists. This was very entertaining. We got photos and video, and Mom met a guy with the Glider Museum in Texas and they had a great sharing of information. (At a troop carrier reunion held in Fayetteville NC the following October we were delighted to meet a pilot of the Snafu Special. We gave him a video of the unveiling ceremony in which he was an important participant. We also met the mayor of the nearby village who attended the reunion with her young son. Al had a great time helping him fly the flight simulator set up in the hospitality room by the local air base who hosted the reunion.)
AMERICAN AND BRITISH CEMETERIES IN NORMANDY
Sunday, June 8, before we left to drove to Paris, we visited a Liberation Museum in Bayeux and the Bayeux Tapestry Museum shop. At the British Normandy Cemetery, where we found the grave of English Glider Pilot W.K. Marfleet, who died June 6th at the age of 24. Marfleet is the uncle of author Stephen Wright, author of “The Last Drop, Operation Varsity” who contacted Mom through her website. We photographed the cross with the uncle's name on it and the surroundings and the monuments and so on and she will email the photos to him. He was a British glider pilot and his nephew had evidently not been able to get over to visit his grave. There were French families at that cemetery, too, along with a large contingent of British people who came on buses and some of whom were obviously veterans of WWII. French families and school children as well as Dutch ones adopt graves of people in the Allied armies who died in the war and are buried in their country. Incidentally, we found out at the US cemetery at Omaha Beach (Colleville sur Mer) that only the US has a policy of returning the bodies of dead service people to their hometown or area if the relatives request it. Most US families have requested it. At Bayeux there were also hundreds of German graves, most of them with names unknown.
At the Colleville sur Mer (Normandy American Cemetery is its official name) cemetery the day before, near Omaha Beach, we had looked up all the names of US glider pilots who had died in Normandy on or soon after D-Day. There is a computer at the cemetery that makes this easy. You can find out where anyone who is buried in any US military cemetery anywhere in the world (and there are a lot of them) is buried. Of the 44 Glider Pilot names we had, 14 were buried in the Normandy Am. Cemetery, and Mom photographed their grave markers, crosses for all but two and Stars of David for those two. We also took photos of various other aspects of the cemetery, which is very impressively designed, kept up, and staffed. Mom will share the photos with the glider people she knows, including the Silent Wings museum in Texas.
ADVICE FOR AMERICANS MAKING A MEMORIAL TRIP TO EUROPE
1. TRAVEL BY TRAINS IN EUROPE
Monday, June 9
This is being written on the train from Roosendaal to Nijmegen (pr. nyemegen), Holland, where we will get off and then make our way somehow to Ooij (pr. “oy”), where we have a hotel from which we will tour the interesting places in the area, many of them having to do with the glider scene in WWII. Enthusiasts here have evidently located the exact landing spots of all the gliders, along with lots of other important information, and one Jan Bos, who will be showing us around, is one of the enthusiasts, having written a book about the planes that towed the gliders and brought the paratroopers.
An aside: a kid just got up and left the train wearing a T-shirt that said some brand name and the legend “Destroyed Jeans since 1986,” and under that “Revolution.” Incidentally, this train does not provide announcements in English the way the two previous ones did, but this one is headed for the Dutch provinces, where they don't suppose many English or French speakers go. The TGV had all announcements in French, Dutch, German and English, in that order, then the train from Brussels to Amsterdam had them in French, Dutch and English. By the way, the TGV doesn't seem to be going so fast until you parallel a freeway (or tollway) and realize that you are going at least twice as fast as the fastest car on that road, even when there is fairly open traffic. We have encountered an American woman on this train who is from Milwaukee and is here for some work in Nijmegen.
2. TRAVEL BY CAR IN FRANCE
On Thursday June 5, we arrived in good order, got our car and drove to St. Lo, an interesting drive. The French autoroutes, which are toll roads, have two speed limits, depending on if it is raining or not. If it is the limit is 110 kph = about 65mph, but if not it is 130 kph, or about 77 mph. Quite a few people drive 140, or about 83, and some very few even faster than that, but only occasionally because the right lane moves at about 110, the left at 120-130, and there aren't many open spaces between cars to go faster for very long. There are lots of rest areas called “aires” with toilets and other essentials. The toilets are the “hole on the floor” type at these rest areas, but all the other toilets we have encountered have been very nice, with most of them having two buttons for flushing, one for a small flush.
3. OUR NORMANDY RESIDENCE, JUNE 5-9,
Lots is being done in France for saving energy and resources, including plenty of recycling and our first hotel, Best Hotel (actually like a US motel), on the outskirts of St. Lo, had a slot in the wall just inside the door for the plastic card room key to enable the lights in the room to work. Thus, when you leave the room and take the key, the lights and the TV go off, but not the outlets, so your batteries will continue to charge. This was helpful to us because we were charging batteries a lot, using the adapter we bought at the G2G (Gadgets to Go) store on the center mall at MSP. All our chargers take 110 to 240 volts, so the higher voltage in Europe doesn't blow them. The motel also has motion detecting lights in the halls, which go on when you walk into the hall—otherwise there is a very low level of lighting in the hall. This motel is a new one, with heated floor and an interesting shower. If you turn the right knob on only, nothing comes out, but it controls the temperature of the left knob, which otherwise is full hot. The room has two little sub-rooms, one for the toilet only (the WC), the other for the sink (lavatory) and the shower. There are no screens on the windows, but they do open. The motel provides a nice breakfast for 6.90 euros, about $11. There is a flat screen TV on the wall that always turns on to a station with what looks like soap operas on it when we return and put the card on the wall slot if the maid was the last person in the room. There are only French stations on the TV, sometimes showing American movies dubbed in French, and they have a French version of “I want to be a Millionaire,” with the same music as the American one.
4. EATING IN EUROPE
Food at restaurants here is costly, as everything is, because of the low dollar. Today at the railroad station in Brussels we went to the Mr. Quick, which names everything in English, and had a King Fish burger thing plus fries and a drink for 5.50 apiece = $8.80. Last evening we went to the only place open in the area near our hotel near Paris of the same brand as the one in St. Lo (Best Hotel), and paid about 20 \ = $32 for each entree (using the US meaning of that term, but it means appetizer or starter in the French usage—we didn't have any starters). The place was a sort of disco joint with continuous loud dancing music, lots of dancing, drinking (but no one seemed drunk), everyone friendly and the place open to 3 AM Wed. through Sun. nights.
5. GETTING ALONG WITH THE FRENCH LANGUAGE
Quite a few, mostly younger, people in France speak a bit of English, but we have only encountered a couple of French people who speak much of it, and those were a translator with a strong British accent at Ste. Mere Eglise dressed as a reenactor (a woman named Catherine), and a girl behind the desk at the American cemetery at near Omaha Beach. Most French who speak any English have an American accent rather than a British one (you can often choose what accent you want when you sign up to study English in France, and most people choose American, I've heard). You run into quite a few younger people who are behind desks or are servers at restaurants (including the Buffalo Grill near our St. Lo motel), who know a bit of English, but only a bit. When you try them out further you have to quickly go to French because they seem only to know English numbers and such words as “what would you like” and “would you like your bill” and “thank you.” As far as explaining things such as what the dishes are or how to get somewhere, they are not very often much help in English.
The fun thing about knowing a bit of French, however, is that you are immediately loved by all French people we have encountered ever. They will go the extra 5 miles for you if you ask their assistance at anything. I have been surrounded by French people helping me with a map and directions to places or one young guy who spent at least 15 minutes with me, though he was also interested in where I was from and spoke a smattering of English (but not enough to get the giving-directions job done).
The other evening we were looking for evidence of glider-remembrance monuments or plaques near Landing Zone W, where Uncle Sylvan landed his glider, and stopped at a village called Chef du Pont and went into a hotel-bar-restaurant for something to drink and to ask questions. The owner and his wife, whom he fetched from their room in the place (she spoke English quite well, but we had to use a lot of French too—he didn't speak any English, and he spent most of the evening with us), were very interested in talking with us and we found out a lot from them. They didn't know (nor did anyone else in the bar) anyone in the area named Neveu or Lucier (or Lussier), but they said there was a family down the road named Leneveu (one word), which would mean “The Nephew.”
A GLIDER PILOT STORY ABOUT NORMANDY LANDING
I have been unable to find the Interrogation Report given by my glider pilot uncle who was on temporary assignment with the 88th squadron to fly a Horsa glider on D-Day with the Elmira section of that great airbourne armada. It perhaps does not exist, and since Sylvan died four months later, he never told his story unless it was in letters to his brothers or friends. At some point I will have to reconstruct it from books I have read.
We got a story some years ago from a guy in Texas named Ike Abernathy at the Glider Museum there, about how his glider pilot buddy who was night blind (Ike took the eye tests in his place) thought on D-Day a chateau was a field and flew his glider smack into the first floor (second floor to us), right through the wall, without hurting anyone in the glider. 15 American soldiers in Rommel's headquarters, but Rommel in Germany for his anniversary or something like that, not having expected an invasion at that time. All his guard of 30 men were drunk and sprawled around the ground floor as Ike found out when he entered the place through the front door after he had landed his glider successfully between a row of Rommel's Asparagus poles, what with having great night vision himself, and helping the three guy he had in his glider roll out the artillery piece they had brought. He went upstairs and told the guys up there to take the men downstairs prisioner, which they did, and he and his buddy went up to the next floor to find Rommel's aide waiting for someone to come and get him and send him to a POW camp. Then Ike and his buddy went to tell someone is authority about the treasure trove of papers in Rommel's office, and went on for further adventures.
HOLLAND MEMORIAL VISIT: TRAVEL ARRANGEMENTS DURING BUS STRIKE
Tuesday, June 10, 2008.
Monday we took a cab from the train station to the wrong hotel. I had called our hotel to ask them how to get there and was told cab and I asked what company and she said Hoffman so I asked her if she would order up a cab to take us there and she said sure, so a cab showed up in due time and we got in and he took us to a hotel with a name that begins with Ooij, but longer, but everyone calls it the Ooij. Well how could I know this and why didn't the woman at the desk tell them which hotel? There is a printed item on her desk specifying the Hoffman cab company, and no doubt they get a kickback, so what's up? Anyway he had to come back and get us and take us to the right place.
If the buses weren't on strike we would be able to go everywhere, and I mean everywhere on either bus or train, and the rest of the Dutch ride bikes. There are thousands of bikes parked across the street from the train station and lots of them parked lots of other places and lots of people riding bikes everywhere. You have to watch out if you're on foot for your own safety, for bikes are silent and fast, and there are special bike lanes on just about every busier road, so you have to keep your wits about you. Tomorrow Mom wants to rent bikes (our hotel rents them) and ride around here, which is a lovely area, with farms and dikes and cows and sheep and water, including ponds and creeks and rivers, and geese and swans and hawks. But tomorrow it will rain, they say. So far we have had nothing but sunny, just about perfect weather the whole trip, and no rain except for a few seconds while driving from Paris to Normandy.
GETTING AROUND NIJMEGEN IN A “TUXI”-A KIND OF RICKSHAW
Today we got up relatively early, had a fine breakfast here at the hotel in Ooij, and wondered how to get into town, what with the high cost of cabs and the bus drivers on strike. On a table at the entrance to the breakfast room was a card advertising a Tuxidrive.nl outfit, and we wondered what it was—the card was in Dutch and not very clear anyway. So I phoned. Of course the guy spoke good English and we arranged for him to come and get us. He goes around and picks up people who want to go places and takes them there, but he doesn't have a van, he has a little, three-wheeled rickshaw-like thing powered by a noisy little engine and a pair of handlebars for driving. It's brand new and blue and white and kind of a hoot. Open in the passenger seat, it's like the tuktuks he had seen in Thailand, or heard about. Originally they come from Italy and now are made in India, but Italy too, which is where he gets his. His business started a week ago and it going great guns already.
After we got back from out train trip today I tried to phone him from the pay phone in the train station, but it wouldn't let his number be contacted—I still don't understand why, though he had some reason I guess—so we went into the train ticket office to ask the woman there, who didn't have any customers, if she could explain it. She couldn't, but phoned him for me, and after I had ordered him up to get us and he said he'd be there in 15 minutes, she wanted to know what it was about, and we told her, and she had been to Thailand and loved the tuktuks and rode them all over Bangkok, and had seen one of his a few days ago and now knew what it was and took down his phone number so she could tell train riding arrivals and others about this alternative to the taxis, which she allowed were awfully expensive. It was lots of fun talking with her.
The guy with the Tuxi told us that NL has gone to a private medical insurance system from a single payer system run by the government.They were unhappy with that previous system and wanted more efficiency and lower costs due to competition, he said. He himself pays about 300\ a month for his family of himself, his wife and their 2.7 kids, and the government pays the premiums for poor people (of which there can't be too many in the NL, rich a country as it is—my guess). He also said that the vast number of Nederlanders are for Obama and do not like Bush and didn't from the beginning. Everyone here is intensely interested in the US elections, as usual, perhaps even more this time.
CROSSING THE BRIDGE TOO FAR
So earlier today we had bought train tickets to Oosterbeek and took the train there (actually two since we had to change trains at Arnhem) to see the Airborne Museum. It is really touching to see how much the Dutch and all Nederlanders appreciate being saved from the Nazis, whom they refer to simply as the Germans (and get along with them really well now, of course). Over 150,000 Nederlanders were killed during the occupation, and more in the war that chased the Germans out, but they don't hold anything against their savers, just the occupiers, unlike the Hungarians, who beat to death American pilots who parachuted from their stricken planes for killing some of them and destroying houses, etc., in the process of getting the Germans out. Ingrates. Meanwhile the Dutch and other Nederlanders, like the guy we met 27 years ago in the campground in Friesland, sheltered Allied soliders and aircrews at the risk of their own lives, for if the Germans caught you doing that they executed you and your whole family. Also, the Dutch rioted before the war in at least two cities against German restrictions and atrocities against the Jews, and put up a strong resistance to German treatment of Jews, including moving them to ghettos, making them wear yellow stars of David, etc., and shipping them off to evident death. The Germans came down hard on the Dutch when they put on these demonstrations, and of course eventually put them down, and a stop to them. Then the Dutch starved during the war. We met a couple on the train who were about our age and the man was not well able to walk. Mom wondered if he had suffered maldevelopment because of starvation during the war as our friend Klaus Jankovski had in eastern Germany. So we spent many hours at the museum and Mom got lots of photos of stuff connected with gliders and bought several books and a shoulder patch Uncle Sylvan would have worn. But we still haven't found an Air Medal such as he was given for his service as a flyer. In due time we will find one.
TRAINS, TRAINS EVERYWHERE
The train trip cost us 8\ apiece and it was fun to ride the trains. Trains run every half hour between these cities and most or all the cities of these countries and many between countries (a TGV from Paris Nord to Brussels every hour, for instance, all of them, evidently full, at least in second class. On one of the legs of our trip from Charles de Gaulle Airport to Nijmegen we got on the first class car of one train, the first one after the TGV. It had a #1 on it, but that meant nothing to me, since I supposed all the cars had different numbers or whatever. It was nice, but I didn't recognize that because I didn't know the difference between first and second class. I did notice that there weren't many passengers on it, but that didn't mean anything either. Then along came the conductor, a nice woman with very good English (this in in Belgium, but the train is headed for Amsterdam, though we were to get off fairly soon in the Netherlands to switch to another train to Nijmegen). When we give her our tickets she tells us that we are in the first class car but have paid for second class. We can move or pay the difference. Mom wants to move, but I don't want to move all that luggage, and anyway I like it in first class, and it only costs 7\ each, so I gave the guy she summoned a credit card and he did the charge right there. On the international trains or long distance trains they checked tickets, but they never did today. We could have gotten on and ridden for free, though of course there are conductors on them checking and punching tickets, but they don't get to everyone, especially those on for only five or 20 minutes as we were. The intercity trains are electric, quiet, fast, comfortable, convenient. But there are 14 million Nederlanders in the space of, I think, St. Louis county or so—so they can finance such a train system.
June 11, 2008, Ooij (pr. "oy"), Holland, the Netherlands. This town is 7 km = 4 miles E of Nijmegen (pr. "nye-maygen," with the g coughed instead of a hard g), and about 3 km west of the German border. In 104 AD the Roman emperor Tragan granted Nijmegen the first market rights in what is now Holland, making Noviomagus the first township on Dutch soil.
A MODERN DUTCH VILLAGE SHOWS WARTIME WOUNDS
June 11, 2008, Ooij (pr. "oy"), Holland, the Netherlands. This town where we stayed for four nights is 7 km = 4 miles E of Nijmegen (pr. "nye-maygen," with the g coughed instead of a hard g), and about 3 km west of the German border. In 104 AD the Roman emperor Tragan granted Nijmegen the first market rights in what is now Holland, making Noviomagus the first township on Dutch soil.
Wednesday, June 11
Today in Ooij we went for a walk. Early on we stopped at the Spar grocery store and found some items we were interested in getting on our return from our walk. We proceeded south on Queen Juliana Street, on which our hotel sits and on which sits the ATM where I found I could mooch off someone's open wifi (lots of protected wifis here and everywhere we've been in this country, so I'm delighted to find an open one). We turned right on Prince William street then turned left on King whatshisname street (all the streets in this town are named after NL royalty, whereas in other towns all the streets are named after composers, for example, authors, artists, etc., including no doubt heavy metal band members, well, checking this out in all Dutch cities would be a worthwhile vacation project in itself. Who wants to be the first to undertake it? First check to see if it has already been done and a book devoted to it.
CIVILIAN DEATHS, SEPT. 9, 1944
Soon we were at the Catholic Church, St. Hubert's. We went by and continued out of town into the countryside on the bike and pedestrian path, always looking out for the bikes, which came by frequently. We saw a friendly horse that came over to the fence to be petted or given an apple, and when I petted it some of its flies migrated to me. I moved away, and as we proceeded, the flies, happily for me, quit me and went back to the horse. We went on to check out a field of some kind of grain that was half ripened. We thought it was wheat and were impressed at the density of the growth and the huge heads of grains that each stem had. In due time we returned by the same route and stopped at the church to notice the pockmarks in the rectory and church from bullets and other missiles in the war, and the memorial built to remember the townspeople who died in the war, 23 of them on one day, 9 Sept 1944. As we were contemplating this we noticed a woman coming out of a house across the street with a little kid in a stroller, so we asked her if she knew what happened. She said she did, and came across the street to talk with us. We talked with her for quite a while, she apologizing for her English, which she said she had studied for five years and now is going to brush up on, but we were impressed with her English. We had to supply a few words, but not many. The people who died, she said, were all in a basement of a cafe in another part of the town when a German bomb went right into the basement and killed 20 of them instantly. Many were members of one family, the Janssens, we noted on the monument, and she pointed out that there was another family there as well as other people.
Then we got interested in her house. It has a thatched roof that looks quite new and her husband is remodeling or developing half of the house which she said used to be the part in which the cows lived, nine of them according to her grandfather who lived in the town all his life (and she was born here and is a nursery school teacher in Nijmegen).
STORIES OF A DUTCH GRANDFATHER
Her grandfather told many stories about the war , she said, including one about the very spot where we were standing. Paratroopers came by (we didn't find out whether they were American or British) and the locals, who spoke no English but knew that there were well-armed Germans lying in wait down the road on the other side of the dike, tried to tell this to the paratroopers, holding up their hands to stop them from going forward and gesturing as best they could, but the paratroopers pushed them aside and continued on and one by one they were all killed. Now all Nederlanders begin learning English at age 10 and are helped by their parents who already know it. Even the cleaning ladies in this hotel speak fluent English, including idioms—I had a great chat with them today.
The woman with the “doitself” (the Dutch term, probably misspelled) husband showed us repaired brickwork on their house required by the damage caused by shells and guns. She said when they bought the house its roof was in bad shape and the government required that they replace it with thatch, not tile, and gave them some money to help with the cost. There are laws requiring the preservation of old building now. Their house is quite beautiful indeed. She said the rafters and other large wooden members in it have bullet holes in them, and pieces torn out by shell fragments and bullets. No doubt there are many bullets still in the beams and rafters, but these members survived.
Before she came out a man on a bike rode by headed out of town, then turned around and came back and asked us in Dutch how to get to the hotel we are living in. I was amazed I could interpret what he was asking, recognizing the name of our hotel and the street it is on. He had no English, evidently. I pointed out how to get there with arm motions and he thanked me in Dutch and rode on. We didn't see him again. He is probably still lost, poor guy.
Another story she told was about her grandfather telling that they had to take care of the milk cows, which means hazing them into the barn twice a day for milking with planes roaring around and bombings and guns firing. They put milk cans over their heads when they went into the field thinking that would give them some protection, but realized later that that wasn't going to be much help, actually.
At one point all the people of the village, smaller then than it is now, but it isn't very big now, about 100 people, packed into the basement of the church. No bombs entered, so they all survived that.
After these stories we went back to the Spar store and bought some food for dinner, including some tortilla chips and some salsa. MMMM, good. Also some wine and chicken and bread and salad and so on, and we came back to our room and ate it.
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TOUR OF NIJIMEGEN, GROESBEEK AND SURROUNDING AREA AREA BY JAN BOS AND JEANE MELCHER
On Thursday we were shown around the area by museum volunteers Jan Bos, and Jeanne Melchers. We visited the National Liberation Museum 1944-1945 at Groesbeek (Nationaal Bevrijdingsmuseum 1944-1945). Jan Bos has published meticulous research on the American airbourne and distributes information almost daily to numerous people over the internet. He was one of my first contacts in my research into Sylvan Lucier's glider mission in Holland. I could not have made this trip without his help and much of my research on my uncle's role as a glider pilot came through following his leads.
Al writes: June 12. Rainy day. First rain on our trip. Jan Bos picked us up in his Peugeot. We went into Nijmegen to the traffic circle up the hill from the car bridge. He told us about the difficult resistance the Germans had put up at the Nijmegen end of the bridge, which the US and British paratroopers had taken after some days of fighting. Jeanne told us in the evening that when the paras (as they call them here) had taken the bridge and eliminated all the resistance and were relaxing in the late evening along the sidewalk on the hill at the bottom of some stairs that ascended to a big house that had been burning when they arrived, so they thought no one would be in it, the Germans who had been in the house but had survived the fire in the basement, walked down the stairs with their helmets under their arms and right past the paratroopers and under the archway under the end of the bridge and gone, greeting the paratroopers in English as they went by. They caused no notice because it was almost dark and the color of their uniforms was indistinguishable, and the curved lips of their helmets were against their bodies. She said their captain got an award for inventing this ploy and carrying it off.
PARATROOPER AND GLIDER LANDING ZONES
But with Jan we didn't stop in Nijmegen but continued south past the castle that Charlemagne had constructed around 800, and out into the countryside. Along the way past a significant forest that is a forest preserve, there was a big house in it at one point that he said had been the HQ for Gen. Gavin, though Jeanne said that Gavin never used a building in the Nijmegen area, at least during the fighting, but lived and worked in tents or portable shelters of some sort. Turning right we somehow got to the south side of the Maas-Waal Canal, which in 1944 had been crossed by a lock bridge, a bridge over some locks that are still there and in one of which was a large boat we videotaped a little later. Then we went by the “weak bridge” that was declared too weak for tanks to cross by the British engineers (sappers) (it had been damaged by a German shell). The tanks and thus the main body of military traveling north toward Nijmegen had to detour SE to cross the lockbridge.
Then we proceeded toward Grave, near which Jan thinks Sylvan must have landed partly because the distance is correct from the appointed landing zone and partly because in his after-action report Sylvan mentions B-24s drawing anti-aircraft fire that had previously been directed at the gliders and towplanes and had caused the towplanes to veer away from the appointed LZ to a different one. This latter was significant because B-24s came over only once that day and during the period of days in questions and they came right over Grave to drop supplies to the paratroopers that were landing near there. We went around this location a bit and viewed it from several angles seeing the fields where Sylvan might have landed. Then we drove toward Grave.
Approaching Grave we spent some time at the landing fields at Klein America (Little America), not far from Groesbeek. There is a triangular piece of woods near these fields that served as a locating point for Gavin, and he landed his paratroopers and gliders here in the large fields. All the gliders landed well except for one that hit the roof of a barn, said Jan. There was little resistance, and the troopers who went over to the Richtswald forest just over the border in Germany to see about the tanks and artillery that had been reported, perhaps by local farmers, to be there, found only a couple of hundred German soldiers, and dealt with them (don't know how). So the force formed up and proceeded to head for Nijmegen, securing what areas they could or needed to on the way.
Meanwhile, Sylvan and his fellow glider pilots hiked through the night to get to, probably, Groesbeek, or wherever the command post he mentioned hiking to was. Afer that Gen. Gavin made use of the 300 or more glider pilots he found to be there with no orders but to find their way back to England. He sent them to the front lines to be soldiers there, guard prisoners, and otherwise help. Then Sylvan and some of his fellow glider pilots headed out to find their way to the rear and England. He said that on this trip they were delayed on what must have been Hell's Highway by enemy action up ahead, but he got back to England on Sept 29.
THE NATIONAL LIBERATION MUSEUM AT GROESBEEK
Jan dropped us at the Groesbeek Museum called the National Liberation Museum 1944-1945. As we were getting out Jan's car in front of the front door, another car drove up driven by Jeanne. She had an American vet and his English girlfriend with her and was showing them around. There were introductions all around, and Jeanne said that she had to go somewhere, but that she would be seeing us around the museum's closing time. Jan said that she would be driving us to our hotel, but it wasn't clear at the time that she was looking forward to showing us the area from her point of view. That became evident later.
We looked at displays in the museum for about 20 minutes while Jan went to get something connected with his daughter's wedding that is coming up soon, and when he got back we went to lunch in Groesbeek, where we had sandwiches, soup, etc. He had to leave us at one PM so he could get ready for work, and he dropped us off at the museum, where we were very entertained right to closing time at five. It is a very impressive museum with three sections, color coded, dealing with first the red section devoted to the occupation before the Allies arrived, second the blue section devoted to the fight and the liberation, and finally the brown section devoted to the time after the liberation. There was a whole room devoted to the mistaken bombing of Nijmegen by the USAAF in 1942 in which a lot of the center of the city was destroyed and 750 people killed. The bomber crews thought they were bombing a German city not far away, but the weather was bad and they had drifted with the strong winds making navigation difficult over the clouds, evidently.
When we were in the center of Nijmegen with Jeanne she pointed out how the buildings on one side of the original Roman EW street in that part were very old, the ones on the other side new since the war. The huge church, St. Stephens, I think, besides having parts that dated back to the year 1000 or so, some dating to the 1500s and 1700s, the tower was recently repaired because it was hit by a bomb, and at the time there were people in it ringing the bells to warn of an air raid. No trace was found of those people.
The museum also has a kind of modernistic parachute-like addition that contains the names of all the military who died in the fighting in the area, and outside it has a British version of the Sherman tank and an anti-tank gun.
Inside there is the nose/cockpit section of a CG4-A glider. This item had been used as a cover for firewood at a nearby farm and was repaired a bit and set up in a little room devoted to the gliders. In a case there was a good-as-new Load Distributor along with its good-as-new leather case stamped with that information. We took photos and videos of this heretofore elusive item. Above the glider nose/cockpit was hung a big model of a C-47 towing a CG4-A. Nicely done models.
The museum prides itself in being not just a collection but also having a philosophy. It wants to show the sociological/political/philosophical aspects of the times. For instance, it is blunt about Dutch anti-Jewish sentiment, political differences and conflicts, etc., and has a board that poses ethical questions and asks you how you would respond to them. One example is of the owner of a factory which employees some Dutch people. If these people didn't have jobs in Holland they would be likely to be taken by the Germans into Germany to work as slaves there in the war production industry making bombs, planes, etc. So along comes the Germans demanding that the factory made some items for them. If this is done, they are also contributing to the war effort. But does that make them collaborators? Such issues causes the museum visiter to think about the complexity of occupation.
POSTSCRIPT
From Holland we took a train to Brussels where our friends and their daughters hosted us through the weekend and showed us the many sights of Bruge. On Monday we took the Eurostar train (Chunnel train) to London. The round trip ticket was cheaper than one way! It was easy to find the train to Northhamptom and from there, after a short wait, we took the bus and reached our lodging near Tiffield, England.
Some of our experiences in our five days in England, such as the stories of eyewitnesses to my uncle's death, have been posted earlier. More will follow.
The trip arrangements we had made from the states were the Best Hotel in St. Lo, Normandy; Fletcher Rest De Geldeerse Port, Ouij, NL; and the Globe Hotel near Northhampton, UK. For our last night in England our friend Ray Spencer helped us get a reasonable room in London, at the Purple Hotel, at Euston Station near the Tower of London. We used buses, cabs and the underground to get around in London. On a longer visit, we were advised we could take in many sights taking the river boat. We did visit the Cathedral of St. Paul before flying home from Heathrow airport. To visit the American Chapel which commemorates the Americans who died fighting for Britain, it is important to arrive in the morning because it is behind the high altar and services are held in late afternoon, closing access. It is a majestic church of great significance to England, that suffered great damage in the bombing of London.
In a gilded book in that chapel we saw the Honor Roll with the names of Sylvan Lucier, Irving Krohn, and Derwood Basham, the three young men who died together in the glider accident October 13, 1944. Our commemorative trip to honor my glider pilot uncle was over.
Sunday, September 07, 2008
Sylvan Lucier Memorial Trip
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.
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.
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
To Fly On Eagle's Wings
Sylvan Ralph Lucier, to whom this blog is dedicated, was in the first or second class of pilots to earn the wings of a glider pilot in August of 1942. The first class was not large, and the program was just being developed. His wings have the G (for glider, but some will say for guts) attached instead of part of the mold.
As a man of 26 years, with a college business degree when he joined , Sylvan probably felt fortunate to be able join the Army Air Force where he could become an aviator. He had a fascination for airplanes and seems to have enjoyed soaring as much as the enthusiasts today.
Although he later flew much less graceful gliders in missions (the CG 4A & the British Horsa) I know his early training was something he enjoyed sharing with his folks at home. For a few months, he was "on eagles wings"all over the south west. A time line of his training, following the pictures, shows the many locations where he flew.
Monday, February 05, 2007
Monument Design/Brief History
The monument for the grave site of Sylvan R. Lucier and his parents, Eva and Delphis Lucier,was installed in Holy Cross Cemetery, Fargo, North Dakota in June 2006. The design was chosen by Sylvan's niece, Anne Hilber Nephew, with the blessing of Tom Lucier, the remaining sibling of Sylvan, and another niece, Virginia (Barbara) Deibert, who lovingly cares for the grave sites.
The front of the monument has a rosary on the top left. According to Sylvan's brother, Lannie, Eva Lucier gave each of her sons a black rosary when they left for the army. On the top right side is a red flag with five stars which was displayed in the Lucier's front window. Sylvan was the fourth son in his family to enlist (he would not have been drafted), which explains the four blue stars. If a soldier died a gold star was fixed over the blue star. In Sylvan's case the gold star was pinned to one side because after his death the fifth son graduated from high school and enlisted.
On the back of the monument is etched the WACO CG 4A glider ( tail number 43-41701) that he flew in the Market Garden mission to liberate Holland. The Waco Air Museum sent me photographs to guide our art work.
The places Sylvan served are printed across the base. In February 1943 Sylvan left Laurinberg/Maxton Air Base where he was with the 374 Troup Carrier Group to join the 313 TCG, 49th Squadron to served in Africa and Sicily.
In April, 1944, he was assigned to the 316 TCG, 36th SQ for invasion preparations in England. As a glider pilot trainer he also flew the British Horsa glider and thus was given a temporary assignment in th 438 TCG, 88th SQ to bring men and equipment into Normandy on June 6. His drop zone was the Ste Mere-Eglise area.
On September 18, Sylvan flew a CG 4A glider, without a co-pilot, that landed near Groesbeek, Holland. Less than a month later he and two others died in an accident flying double tow near Tiffield, Northamptonshire, England.
More details, documents and photographs will be posted in the future, as well as details of his year training in the US.
Anne Hilber Nephew
eanephew@aol.com
The front of the monument has a rosary on the top left. According to Sylvan's brother, Lannie, Eva Lucier gave each of her sons a black rosary when they left for the army. On the top right side is a red flag with five stars which was displayed in the Lucier's front window. Sylvan was the fourth son in his family to enlist (he would not have been drafted), which explains the four blue stars. If a soldier died a gold star was fixed over the blue star. In Sylvan's case the gold star was pinned to one side because after his death the fifth son graduated from high school and enlisted.
On the back of the monument is etched the WACO CG 4A glider ( tail number 43-41701) that he flew in the Market Garden mission to liberate Holland. The Waco Air Museum sent me photographs to guide our art work.
The places Sylvan served are printed across the base. In February 1943 Sylvan left Laurinberg/Maxton Air Base where he was with the 374 Troup Carrier Group to join the 313 TCG, 49th Squadron to served in Africa and Sicily.
In April, 1944, he was assigned to the 316 TCG, 36th SQ for invasion preparations in England. As a glider pilot trainer he also flew the British Horsa glider and thus was given a temporary assignment in th 438 TCG, 88th SQ to bring men and equipment into Normandy on June 6. His drop zone was the Ste Mere-Eglise area.
On September 18, Sylvan flew a CG 4A glider, without a co-pilot, that landed near Groesbeek, Holland. Less than a month later he and two others died in an accident flying double tow near Tiffield, Northamptonshire, England.
More details, documents and photographs will be posted in the future, as well as details of his year training in the US.
Anne Hilber Nephew
eanephew@aol.com
Saturday, January 20, 2007
Statement of Purpose:
I would like to correspond with anyone (including familly or descendents) who know Flight Officer Sylvan R. Lucier, T-120666, Army Air Corp. I will soon be posting a detailed time line of Sylvan's training as a glider pilot and the locations his mail came from in Europe as well as details of his death in the line of duty in England. As I develop each stage of his career, I will have pictures and documents as well. I will be especially interested in corresponding with decendents of the pilots in photographs and mentioned on official reports I will post here. Your information would greatly enrich this commemorative blog.
I have many family stories that need verification. One is that Sylvan flew a demonstration glider over New York or Washington DC to encourage congress to manufacture gliders for the war. Another is that Sylvan's co-pilot was killed in a mission when they were shot down. Also, I am most ignorant of what Sylvan was doing in Africa and Sicily when he was with the 49th Squadron. Hopefully, as I organize and publish the information I have, more will appear.
I also hope my work on this blog will encourage my generation, ( Born nine months after Pearl Harbor I am the earliest of the Baby Boomers) to learn whatever they can about the conditions during and following the war that affected our upbringing. As a niece of a deceased glider pilot, growing up in a non military family, I have had to learned everything from books I purchased in recent years about the glider missions. The taped interviews of Sylvan's friends and family, the glider museum visits and the correspondence with troop carrier historians has awakened in me a passion for the past and the challenges of preserving a fully human perspective of history. Today with the internet, the resources are closer than our doorstep.
In 1995, on the 50th anniversity of the end of World War II in Europe, in reply to my inquiry about my uncle's death, my mother passed on the scrapbook made by her mother. My own mother had never before allowed herself to peruse this collection of memoriabilia. The pain was still too much for her 50 years later! As I began my research I began to know the person my uncle was before he joined the service. He died single but with many, many cousins, nieces and nephews and now hundreds of their descendents. Perhaps he can have a kind of life beyond his 28 years, if I can restore some of the past with the help of others.
Anne Hilber Nephew
I would like to correspond with anyone (including familly or descendents) who know Flight Officer Sylvan R. Lucier, T-120666, Army Air Corp. I will soon be posting a detailed time line of Sylvan's training as a glider pilot and the locations his mail came from in Europe as well as details of his death in the line of duty in England. As I develop each stage of his career, I will have pictures and documents as well. I will be especially interested in corresponding with decendents of the pilots in photographs and mentioned on official reports I will post here. Your information would greatly enrich this commemorative blog.
I have many family stories that need verification. One is that Sylvan flew a demonstration glider over New York or Washington DC to encourage congress to manufacture gliders for the war. Another is that Sylvan's co-pilot was killed in a mission when they were shot down. Also, I am most ignorant of what Sylvan was doing in Africa and Sicily when he was with the 49th Squadron. Hopefully, as I organize and publish the information I have, more will appear.
I also hope my work on this blog will encourage my generation, ( Born nine months after Pearl Harbor I am the earliest of the Baby Boomers) to learn whatever they can about the conditions during and following the war that affected our upbringing. As a niece of a deceased glider pilot, growing up in a non military family, I have had to learned everything from books I purchased in recent years about the glider missions. The taped interviews of Sylvan's friends and family, the glider museum visits and the correspondence with troop carrier historians has awakened in me a passion for the past and the challenges of preserving a fully human perspective of history. Today with the internet, the resources are closer than our doorstep.
In 1995, on the 50th anniversity of the end of World War II in Europe, in reply to my inquiry about my uncle's death, my mother passed on the scrapbook made by her mother. My own mother had never before allowed herself to peruse this collection of memoriabilia. The pain was still too much for her 50 years later! As I began my research I began to know the person my uncle was before he joined the service. He died single but with many, many cousins, nieces and nephews and now hundreds of their descendents. Perhaps he can have a kind of life beyond his 28 years, if I can restore some of the past with the help of others.
Anne Hilber Nephew
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