Local family receives heroes welcome in France for derring-do of their father during WWII

ELYRIA — In 1942, a few months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Robert "Wayne" Palmer left his family farm in McCutchenville, Ohio, and joined the Army Air Corps, flying 33 missions out of an airfield 65 miles north of London. On his 30th mission, Palmer, a technical sergeant on a B-17 bomber, crashed in a sheep pasture, just outside of Nully, France. Nine of the 10 crew members survived and Palmer went on to fly three more missions. He returned to McCutchenville and went right back to farming, never talking about his time in the service. But history has a way of talking for some people, especially when their actions impacted generations. Palmer's family learned this firsthand, when they were invited to the town of Nully and received a heroes' welcome. "Growing up, he never talked about these war missions," said Palmer's daughter, Janet Bird. "I never heard any stories from my father until he was in his 70s and my husband started asking him questions. I guess he felt it was time to talk about it." Palmer's plane was the lead plane in a fleet of 50 on a bombing run to an oil refinery in Merseberg, Germany, 100 miles northeast of Berlin. The lead plane would drop the first bomb on the target, then the other planes would follow. On that 30th mission, the bombardier's oxygen mask dislodged and he lost consciousness, causing the plane to miss the target and not drop its bombs. So the planes made a second pass. When they did, they took on fire. Palmer's plane, along with several others, took a lot of damage. "The engine was damaged and the radio operator took a fatal wound," said Bird, who is president of the Elyria Woman's Club. "They started to lose altitude. The other planes thought they were lost because they didn't see any parachutes, but pilot Neil Holbrook steered them into a sheep pasture in France, where they made a belly landing. With some very good maneuvering, they were able to slide across the field until they managed to stop." Although some of the men were injured, there was just one fatality, and Palmer was not hurt. A few days before they crashed, General George S. Patton's Army had liberated the town, sending the Germans east. "They were met at the plane by residents of Nully, who came by horseback and bicycle, or running on foot," Bird said. "The French Resistance secured them in basements for a couple of days, gave them medicine and food and then moved them to Paris; within a week, they were in England." Traveling back in time Bird and her siblings — Carol Castillo, of Texas; Helen Shinn of McCutchenville; and Richard Palmer, of Findlay — traveled to Europe in September, meeting up with the families of other crew members of the B-17 in Nully on Sept. 11, the 81st anniversary of the crash. "Last year, my sister was talking to her stepson, who had recently retired from the Air Force," Bird said. "He was intrigued and did some research, where he found a post from one of Holbrook's children." Another post found the family member of the plane's navigator. Those two families were in contact with Henri and Bernadette Brodier, residents of Nully. Henri Brodier was born shortly after the war ended and heard about the "brave airmen" all of his life. Wreckage from the crash site had been repurposed over the years for roofs, walls, flooring, chicken coop doors and more. The cockpit and fuselage, which were more or less intact, were Henri and his friend's playground. "As an adult, he was determined to find out more about the brave airmen and began collecting parts of the plane that could be recovered," Bird said. "He opened the second floor above his garage as a museum for the crash, set up a website, collected pictures and published a book." Bird and her three siblings decided they needed to make a trip to Nully. In addition to the Palmer family, members of the Holbrook family and Sorensen family, another crew member, made the trip to see Brodier. "It was amazing," Bird said. "They were so incredibly hospitable and welcoming. They were so grateful to us, everyone we met in Nully thanked us for what our fathers did for them. We were just blown away. Three generations later, people in that area were still talking about how much they owe the American airmen." That gratitude was unexpected, but the crash site was more than any of them could have imagined. "The next day at the crash site was a very emotional experience," Bird said. "We just felt so welcomed. We didn't know we were to be honored guests of the U.S. Memory Association, whose sole purpose is to keep alive what the U.S. military did for France." Standing at the edge of the field, where the B-17 went down, Bird saw that someone had placed an American flag. "It was waving in the wind," Bird recalled. "It took my breath away." The ceremony included the U.S. national anthem and France's national anthem and comments about the connection between the two countries. "It was very, very touching," she said. "It brought tears to my eyes." Another ceremony was held at the town hall later that day. "Afterward, my sister said it felt like a family reunion with people we hadn't seen in a long, long time," Bird said. "And it really was." Connecting the past to the present "When I came home, there were two points that kept coming to mind," Bird said. "The last line of the national anthem — land of the free and home of the brave. As Americans, in our 250-year history, we have never known what it is like to have a foreign power take over and live through that oppression. The French lived through that twice in the 20th century. We are fortunate we have never lived that way. "And the home of the brave," Bird continued, "my dad was a simple farmer. He spent three years in the Air Corps, came back and picked up his farm tools again. How did he do that? We take young people into the armed services, give them some training and depend on them to have courage, maturity and intelligence when faced with life-threatening decisions every day. And when their tour is over, they are expected to pick up their lives." The experience brought home how much the United States needs to support its veterans when they return home. "We can't forget them," Bird said. Born in 1916, Palmer joined the military when he was 25 years old. When he returned home from the war in 1945, he married his sweetheart, Edith Bell. The couple raised five children: Bird, Castillo, Shinn, Palmer and the late Ruth Stephens. Palmer died in 2004. Contact Christina Jolliffe at ctnews@chroniclet.com.