MYSTERY OF LOST HACKENSACK WORLD WAR II AIRMAN SOLVED Two days before the D-Day invasion, an American B-24 Liberator took off from an airfield 70 miles north of London to join a squadron on its way to bomb German positions in the heart of France. Lt. Raymond Sachtleben of Hackensack was a WWII pilot flying in a mission over the village of Garveston, England, when his plane crashed on June 4, 1944. The entire crew of 10 was killed along with two firemen who responded to the scene. The crash site photo was taken by an Army Air Force photographer KEVIN R. WEXLER/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER Robert Meli holding a photo copy of the Bergen Evening Record from December 8, 1941, with a web site projected in the background that he helped Hackensack High School students create. But as it climbed into the air, the bomber with its pilot and crew of nine men stalled and plummeted upside down through the clouds, crashing near two stone cottages in the English countryside, killing all 10 men onboard. Michael Garrod was 5 when the plane crashed in his village, Garveston, and the memory of that day — the horror and sadness — has never left him. “I always had this picture in my head of a parachute hanging in a tree, and fire and bombs going off,” he said. Yet, for decades the village knew nothing about the men who died. Across the ocean, a Hackensack family puzzled over what happened to 1st Lt. Raymond Sachtleben, his mother poring over newspapers and peering at newsreels for some scrap of detail about the calamity that had claimed her son’s life, finding nothing. Nearly 70 years later, between Garrod’s will to put names and narratives to the lives of the men killed that day, and an unlikely trans-Atlantic correspondence with a group of Hackensack high school students, the truth about Sachtleben and his crew finally is known. And the people of Garveston, population 660, finally have created a monument to what happened on June 4, 1944, the day the plane, during Europe’s darkest days, plunged into the ground in their village. “It’s different to comprehend now, but that became our airplane and our crew basically,” said Garrod, who is 74 and has remained in Garveston his whole life. He wanted to uncover the lives of the Americans killed that day and to honor them permanently. “I thought, I’m getting on in years now, and if I don’t do something about it, the memory of these young men might be lost forever,” he said. He persuaded the local parish council to form a memorial team to raise money for a plaque, research the men’s lives, and track down living relatives. People were generous in their donations, Garrod said, because of their connection with the tragedy and with the U.S., whose soldiers were stationed throughout England during the war. Ken Hamer, a member of the team, said relatives they contacted by phone or email were shocked to learn about the 1944 crash and to hear about the memorial effort. Some of the descendants knew nothing about how and where the men on the plane, their grandfathers or great uncles, had died other than an Army death notification, but they did know the losses had been heartbreaking for their families. The project created emotional bonds with the men aboard the B-24 that day. - See more at: northjersey/community/history/Mystery_of_lost_Hackensack_World_War_II_airman_solved.html#sthash.ni3oWHyn.dpuf
Posted on: Mon, 11 Nov 2013 13:36:37 +0000
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