· RUEL SK

Preface
7
My parents remembered vividly the endless
formations of U.S. heavy bombers cruising slowly
over Belgium, looking like small crosses shining in
the sun, but sometimes smoking.
After the war, my father was with the Allied
occupation forces in Germany. Lucien was then a
Sergeant in the Belgian Military Liaison, attached
to the British XXX Corps (Here with his fiancee,
Julienne, my mother, during a leave in Belgium).
In the forest one day, hidden among the
trees, he found the tail of a Flying Fortress. He was
deeply impressed by the overall dimensions of the
thing, which was as big as a fighter!
This began my interest in the history of World War II.
As an 8 year-old, I had adopted unusual boyhood heroes
w
the American bomber
crews. But they seemed as unreachable as Superman was for the other kids, like they were
from some twilight zone and were still fighting a never-ending World Warn. An
unexpected opportunity, more than twenty years later, changed all that and led to my first
trip to the States.
The place was Dayton, Ohio, the date was September 1996, and the subjects of my
visit were the airmen of the 44Sth Bomb Group (Heavy). Finally, this young man from
Belgium had the opportunity to meet his boyhood heroes. Among this group were the
survivors of the most terrible beating a Mighty Eighth Group had ever sustained.
At that time, no book was fully dedicated to this aerial carnage so I decided to make
my modest contribution to saving a piece of history for the generations to come.
I hope you will feel this account to be something more that a mere compilation of 47
Americans telling how they had lived their September 27 th , 1944. Its sometimes laconic
style is caused by the fact that I stuck to the veterans' recollections. Some are more