25

The Cold Dawn

On the morning of March 16, 1944, Marie-Thérèse Hipp’s brother, cycling along the road between Hilsenheim and Wittisheim on his way to school, saw the front of EQ-P, still in flames, in the Steydlis’ farm field, after seven o’clock.¹ Marie-Thérèse learned of the crash when she went out to do some shopping and met a neighbour who told her what had happened the night before.² She arrived at the crash site after 8 AM. The German police reached the site about the same time, but some other locals and possibly some people from Wittisheim were already there. By this point the fire was out, but the aircraft was “nearly completely destroyed.”³

Marie-Thérèse noticed two or maybe three bodies lying near the plane outside the fuselage. Their clothing showed “no sign of burning” despite the charred wreckage beside them. She saw one of the Germans opening the coveralls on one body, extracting a wallet of personal documents and revealing to her “a wonderful white sweater with a turtleneck.”⁴

The bodies Marie-Thérèse glimpsed were likely those of Bill and Bob, who may have been thrown from the broken aircraft when it crashed or exploded, as happened in the case of a Liberator where the “explosion threw the crew out in mid-air. Their shattered bodies [lay] beside the smoking remains of the aircraft.”⁵ With the tail end of Lancaster EQ-P open, the intense force of the crash and explosions could easily have ejected the men from the aircraft, whether they had been moving within the plane in an attempt to escape or trying to put out the fire in the fuselage.

Norm, Larry, Jock, and George had died in the front fuselage during the crash, and were all badly burned in the wreckage.⁶

Bud had crashed by the forest at the edge of the nearby village of Wittisheim. The villagers found him entombed in his turret, axe still in hand.⁷

All the townspeople had to leave the crash site after the Germans arrived, and the bodies were later removed.⁸ The following day, March 17, a local living beside the cemetery saw the naked bodies of the crew at the entrance to Hilsenheim Communal Cemetery.⁹ Nothing had been left on the bodies, not even the ring on Bud’s finger, the only effect (other than identity discs belonging to Bill, Bob, Jock, and Bud) known to be found in the wreckage of EQ-P. The German authorities had removed the ring and retained it with the information surrounding the crash.¹⁰

The Germans buried the boys themselves. Bill, Bud, and Bob, each identifiable, occupied individual graves. Norm, Larry, Jock, and George, unable to be separately identified, rested collectively beside them.¹¹ “No ceremony of any kind was permitted by the Germans,” but, undeterred by German commands, the villagers of Hilsenheim “went secretly the following night and placed flowers on the graves, much to the anger of the local German Commandant, who threatened to shoot the villagers. Fortunately, however, he did not carry out his threat.”¹²

It took approximately “three days to load everything with a crane on trucks and to take it away. During this time, the crash place was guarded by the military. They took away every little thing they could find,” and then they left the field.¹³

Unbeknownst to the Germans, a piece of the plane had landed about two hundred metres from the main crash site, in a field belonging to the Steydlis. Rene’s father wanted to prepare the field for sowing, so Rene, his father, and his younger brother, knowing they could get into trouble for not reporting the find, took a horse into the field late one evening and “dug around the place where a cable was visible from the surface.” By the time they had unearthed the part, loaded it onto the wagon, covered it with a tarpaulin, and headed home, it was nearly dark.¹⁴

What they had found turned out to be a propeller hub, cowling, and pitch control motor. They placed the wreckage in their barn and concealed it under hay in hopes that the Germans would not come looking for it.¹⁵ “Except for the family, nobody knew about the aircraft parts until after the war.”¹⁶

Despite the sad outcome, the boys were not neglected or forgotten over the years. After the war, family members and villagers alike continued to place flowers on the graves of the crew. Their full story may have been fractured by time and place, with some knowing their beginnings while others knew their end, but the respect and love for these men never wavered.