Hillier Air Museum

On June 15,1994 an American pilot flying a P-38 Lightning was shot down near Dreux, France at the little village of Les Corvees.Immediately after the crash the Germans stripped his body of all papers, rings, dog tags and even took his boots and flight jacket. The Germans refused to bury the pilot and forbid the French from doing so for four days. Finally Monsieur Blondeau gained permission to bury him, not in a cemetary, but in the field where he fell and near his crashed plane. The Germans forbid the use of a coffin but secretly the French built a box and buried him. These people knew nothing of the pilot, so all they couldput on his grave was a cross at the head bearing the date of his death. Since that date these kindly peasants have cared for his grave and placed flowers there frequntly. He rests at the edge of a field near a small wooden thicket and by a dim farm road.

On November 11,1944, while about 15 men of the Hq. and Hq.Squadron, 100th. Service Group were taking part in an Armistice Day celebrarion with the French in the village of Vernouillet, the French people told of this lone pilot's grave that afternoon.

That afternoon about 3:30 an impressive procession of French civilians and American soldiers walked about a mile through muddyfields to do homage at the grave of an unknown American pilot. Six elderly French veterans of the World War 1 led the pocession. They were striking in their old, faded uniforms with shining metal helmets, and bearing their regimental colors, the French tri-color and an American flag. Following these colorful veterans marched 11 American soldiers bearing rifles and led by Captain Louis R. Lammie, adjutant; behind these trailed 75 or 100 French civilians, old and young alike, all eager to pay homage to a fallen ally.

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