Cérémonie du Souvenir

In the early hours of 13 July 1944, Lancaster LM388 from 166 Squadron based at RAF Kirmington was hit over Ruvigny near Troyes on the Revigny-sur-Ornain railway bombing raids in northern France.  The aircraft sustained damage too great to make it back to England and, with its engines on fire, crashed into a steep-sided valley in (what is now) the Bois de Vitry in the Aube department to the south of the Champagne-Ardennes region of France, sadly only yards away from a plateau.

Three gentlemen from Eguilly-sous-Bois heard the plane in trouble, and a small boy in Vitry-le-Croisé saw the sky lit up by the flames from the engines as it skimmed the trees, but no-one saw the crash.  Six unexploded bombs carried by the bomber were safely exploded by bomb-disposal crews in 1945.

Five crew members escaped and, with the assistance of villagers in Eguilly, Vitry, the Maquis de Mussy-Grancey, and Résistance in the area, made their way back to Blighty.

Two crew members were lost in the crash; one must have died immediately on impact, the other bled to death, trapped in the wreckage.  Hunters found their remains several days later, and on the 17th, a horse-drawn bier brought them to Vitry, under guard of the Maquis, together with four machine guns; the men and guns taken to the archive room of the Mairie.

This late in the war, the occupying forces were aware that the Allies would soon be upon them, and were fighting a vicious rearguard action; word of the massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane had spread, emphasising that instead of giving up, German forces were fighting tooth and nail to maintain their present position, and more than any time before would punish most harshly those found to be members of the Maquis, Résistance, or harbouring fugitives.

The German army was using the (what is now the D4) road through the village of Vitry for its major troop movements in the area.  The road winds around the churchyard of the village.

On 18 July, luck seemed to be on the side of the angels, and the German forces stayed in Bar-sur-Seine and Bar-sur-Aube (at either end of the D4); the thoughts of the reprisals must have turned hearts cold, being just over a month since Oradour paid the ultimate price.

That day, under those perils, the Maquis organised funerals for the downed airmen from the makeshift chapel in the Mairie, with the Résistance guarding all access roads to the village, attended by all the able-bodied people from all the communes around (more than two thousand people came, most on foot; far more than the church could hold), and in the presence of two of their surviving comrades the fallen were laid to rest in the churchyard of the 12th Century Templar church in Vitry-le-Croisé...

...and for Flight Sergeant R F Scott and Sergeant E Ashton there is a little part of France that will be forever England.

Sgt Ashton, and survivor Mike Walsh

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On 13 July 2014, the village of Vitry-le-Croisé organised a 70th anniversary memorial service in honour of the two Englishmen who would never return home, and in thanks of Allied efforts to free their country; even seventy years later, the gratitude of the villagers was palpable, and touching.

Wreckage from Lancaster LM388, 166 Squ

We have recently had the moving Great War Centenary commemorations in England, and I can appreciate on a cerebral level the loss of 888,246 soldiers' lives during that conflict.  But seeing a propeller from a crashed plane, hearing the Last Post several times at the war memorial in front of the Mairie, again at the War Graves and the memorial to the French dead in the churchyard, and seeing an elderly French gentleman dabbing at his eye has touched me to my core, and I know I wasn't the only person who 'got something in their eye' during the service.

Pompiers providing an honour guard

As pointed out during the D-Day 70th anniversary events, this is probably the last decade-commemoration where a significant number of servicemen and women will still be alive/able-bodied enough to attend services.  An end of an era; I have since contacted a gentleman who maintains records of aircrews, and he told me that there are no longer any survivors of LM388.

Flags dipped for the Last Post for airmen Ashton and Scott

The older villagers had lived their lives under years of occupation [the crash happened day 1481 of the occupation of France], in an area that was strongly Résistant, had had executions nearby of those caught helping foreign airmen, and they were still thanking us for the English efforts.

The organiser and David

The organiser of the ceremony apologised to us for not getting us to lay the flowers [we hadn't known about the service in advance; the mayor of Vitry-le-Croisé (who David knows) had seen us as he was driving past our holiday home which is fairly nearby, and stopped in to invite us to proceedings]; that would have felt so awkward - we had done nothing, other than being English - it was so much more fitting that veterans laid the tributes.  It was an honour to be invited, and I'm still getting a pricking at the back of my throat thinking about the effort that had gone into the day.

Jean-Luc; his grandfather sheltered a crash survivor

Being France, it seemed quite official, but the service was quiet, dignified, typically "French", deeply sincere, and very moving.  And also being France, there were apéritifs afterwards!  I chatted to, among others: a boy who had seen the plane in flames when he was five, someone who had seen the deceased crewmen in the plane when he was ten and a gentleman who had attended the funeral as a twelve-year-old.  Another friend who lives in the village told us his grandfather was one of those villagers who took in an escapee from the crash before he started his journey back to England.

100-youngest Résistance member and chief of Maquis de Mussy-Grancey

I think the greatest honour was meeting the man who had been the leader of the Maquis de Mussy-Grancey at the time - I would love to say we chatted, but I found his accent impenetrable [I do, sadly, with some of the older men in the area] and he was stone deaf, even with his hearing aid - and a gentleman who was one of the 100-youngest Résistance fighters [and had a medal to prove it].  They risked so much and, for me at least, reminded me that we are close neighbours and not just the [usually] joking "frogs" and "ros-bifs" of tabloid headlines.

At the crash site: flag-bearer and boys with fuselage wreckage

A day of dignified remembrance: a sombre and touching ceremony, bitter-sweet time for apéros and reminiscences, a (three to four mile) walk to the crash site where all present threw flowers into the crater (children playing and finding fuselage fragments, a veteran with bowed head holding a regimental flag, and then all heads bowed and another Last Post before we 'laid' the flowers summed up the feeling of the day; sombre/sad and glad-to-be-alive in equal measures), and an abiding feeling of 'warm fuzzies; I'm so glad our visit coincided with that weekend, and that Bernard saw our house opened up on his travels.

I feel truly blessed.