DURING WORLD WAR II, THOUSANDS OF ALLIED AVIATORS CRASHED OR parachuted into Occupied Europe. A number of escape-and-evasion networks helped to hide them and send them safely back to their bases in England. Thousands of Europeans risked their lives by hiding the airmen in their homes, providing false identity papers, and smuggling them by sea to England or across the Pyrenees to Spain. Between 1942 and 1944, more than three thousand British and American downed flyers successfully evaded capture with the help of an unknown number of ordinary citizens, who risked being shot or sent to a concentration camp.
FLIGHT CREW THE DIRTY LILY
Molesworth Airfield, Station 107, England
303RD BOMB GROUP, B-17G
SQUADRON 124
MISSION TO FRANKFURT, GERMANY
January 31, 1944
Captain LAWRENCE WEBB
Co-pilot MARSHALL STONE
Bombardier AL GRAINGER
Navigator TONY CAMPANELLO
Top-Turret Gunner, JAMES FORD
Flight Engineer
Radio Operator BOB HADLEY
Ball-Turret Gunner BOBBY REDBURN
Left Waist Gunner HOOTIE WILLIAMS
Right Waist Gunner CHICK COCHRAN
Tail Gunner DON STEWART
1.
AS THE LONG FIELD CAME INTO VIEW, MARSHALL STONE FELT HIS breathing quicken, a rush of doves flying from his chest. The landscape was surprisingly familiar, its contours and borders fresh in his memory, even though he had been here only fleetingly thirty-six years ago. Lucien Lombard, who had brought him here today, knew the field intimately, for it had been in his family for generations.
“It was over there beside that tree, monsieur,” Lucien said, pointing toward the center of the field, where an awkward sycamore hovered over a patch of unruly vegetation.
“There was no tree then,” Marshall said.
“That is true.”
They walked through the furrowed field toward the tree, Lucien’s sturdy brown boots mushing the mud, Marshall following in borrowed Wellingtons. He was silent, his memory of the crash landing superimposed on the scene in front of him, as if there were a small movie projector in his mind. The Flying Fortress, the B-17, the heavy bomber the crew called the Dirty Lily, had been returning from a mission to Frankfurt.
“The airplane came down just there,” said Lucien as they neared the tree.
Lucien was elderly—probably in his eighties, Marshall thought—but he had a strong, erect physique, and he walked with a quick, determined step. His hair was thin, nearly white, his face smooth and firm.
“Normally a farmer would not permit a tree to thrive in his field,” he said. “But this tree marks the site.”
Unexpectedly, Marshall Stone began to cry. Embarrassed, he turned his face aside. He was a captain of transatlantic jumbo jets, a man who did not show weakness. He was alarmed by his emotion.
Lucien Lombard nodded. “I know, monsieur,” he said.
In Marshall’s mind, the crumpled B-17 lay before him in the center of the field. He recalled that the plane had been lined up with the neatly plowed furrows.
The deep, rumbling sound of a vast formation of B-17s roared through Marshall’s memory now. The steady, violent, rocking flight toward target. The sight of Focke-Wulf 190s—angry hornets darting crazily. The black bursts of flak floating like tumbleweeds strewn on a western highway. The fuselage flak-peppered. Slipping down into the cloud deck, flying for more than an hour unprotected. Over Belgium, hit again. The nose cone shattering. The pilot panicking.
Marshall, the co-pilot, took the controls and brought the Dirty Lily down. A belly landing on this foreign soil. There was no time to jettison the ball turret. Only as they were coming down did Marshall see that Lawrence Webb, the pilot, was unconscious. The Fort grazed the top of a tall hedgerow and slid in with a jolt, grinding to a hard stop. The crew scrambled out. Marshall and the flight engineer wrestled Webb’s slack body from the plane. The navigator’s face was torn, bloodied. The fuselage was burning. Machine-gun rounds were exploding at the gun stations. Marshall didn’t see the tail gunner anywhere. The left waist gunner lay on the ground, motionless.
Marshall had been just twenty-three years old then. Now he was nearly sixty, and he had come to see this place again at last. He was crying for the kids in the B-17, the youngsters who had staked their lives on their Flying Fortress. He hadn’t known he had pent up such a reservoir of emotion, even though he probably thought about the downing of the B-17 every day. He willed his tears to stop.
Lucien Lombard had seen the plane come down near the village, and he rushed to help the crew, but Marshall didn’t remember him.
Now Lucien said, “It is like yesterday.”
Marshall toed a weed-topped clod of dirt. “The worst day of my life,” he said. “Some bad memories.”