Reply #8: 60 year anniversary of my great uncles death was last month. [View All]

[Xithras]

Both my grandfather and his brother served in D-Day, my grandfather signed up to become a chaplain, but was bumped into the infantry when they found out that he'd dropped out of the seminary to join. His brother was in the AAC and flew a P-47.

My grandfather told me that he never heard from his brother after they left the U.S., even though they were stationed fairly near each other in England during the buildup to D-Day. Before he climbed into the landing craft to begin the assault, he prayed to God that he be allowed to see the end of the day, and said he prayed that he be allowed to see his brother one more time.

As his landing craft made its way towards the coast, he glanced up and saw a pair of aircraft flying out from the French coast towards England, barely 200 feet off the water and heading right for their boat. The lower 47 was in flames and obviously wasn't going to make it, and the men in his craft watched as the plane slowly lost altitude and finally exploded just as it struck the water a few hundred yards away. There was an Army photographer on board who took several shots of the plane as it went down, and one of the other men in his boat had a small pocket camera and got an image of it. They watched the wreckage quickly slide beneath the surface of the water and waited in vain hoping to see the pilot struggle to the surface. When it became obvious that he hadn't made it, my grandfather said a prayer for the lost man.

Fate can be a quirky thing, because the lost pilot turned out to be his own brother. He was performing fighter sweeps and ground interdiction over the French countryside when his plane was hit by anti-aircraft fire and his fuel tank ignited. The second plane was flown by a good friend of his who was screaming at him over the radio to bail out, but my GU refused...at first because he didn't want to bail over German controlled lands and risk being taken prisoner, and later because the boats were so dense off the French coast that he was afraid the wreckage would take out a landing craft and kill Allied soldiers. His last words to his wingman were "Calm down, I'm almost to open water, I'm about to bail out". The body was never recovered.

The wingman tracked my grandfather down after the war to tell him about his brothers bravery, and the story reminded him of the two planes he'd seen while heading in to Omaha. After a bit of digging he managed to get a couple of the photos that had been snapped from the boat, and the numbers on the planes verified that it was indeed his brothers plane.

My grandfather, a devout Catholic, always cited that as an example of how God answers our prayers. He'd prayed to see his brother one last time, and by some quirky twist of fate, he'd had the opportunity to not only see him, but to be there as he died.