Art Kramer

ART KRAMER'S WWII STORIES

The War Had Ended, But The Dying Went On

The war was over. But we had to keep flying to maintain flight proficiency. These missions were of three types; bombing/strafing, navigation or just general flight proficiency time. On May 13 1945 we were flying a navigation mission in a three plane flight. I was in the lead plane and off my right wing was Clyde Whitehead and his crew in loose formation. As we were approaching Heizingen Belgium I noticed that Whitehad was slowly losing altitude and dropping out of formation. I wondered what he was doing since I saw nothing wrong with the plane. Yet he dropped lower and lower and began to slide off to the right. I was now getting concerned and got Paul on the inrercom and reported what was happening. Aa I watched Whitehad got lower and lower finally crashing into the ground and begining to burn. We circled the area and I took some photos of the wreckage and we turned for our base in Florennes and reported the crash when we got back. Let's now fast forward 50 years into the future. We were all sitting aorund at a 344th BG reunion when three civilians entered the room. They moved from group to group and each group pointed to where we were sitting, The three approached us and said that they had heard that we witnessed the crash of Lt Whitehead. We told them we had. They said that he was their uncle and they wanted to know exactly what had happened. I told them all I knew and then remembered the photo that I had taken. I told than that the photo was in my hotel room and if they wanted it I could go and get for them right then. I did. They were very grateful to have this closure to their personal tragedy and I was glad to be helpful. So the incident came to an end 50 years later. This is just one of many cases where the dying went on even though the war had ended.

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