Americans, Czechs honor those lost in World War II battle

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. Jeff Hamm
  • 48th Fighter Wing Public Affairs
KOVARSKA, Czech Republic (AFPN) --  While people worldwide paused to remember the events of Sept. 11, 2001, a few hundred residents and visitors here gathered to remember a different air disaster -- one that occurred the early afternoon of Sept. 11, 1944. That was when a particularly fierce and bloody World War II air battle took place in the sky directly over the town.

Four Airmen from the 48th Fighter Wing at Royal Air Force Lakenheath, England, joined representatives from the defense attaché office at the U.S. Embassy in Prague, Czech Republic, to assist in a wreath-laying memorial ceremony here while F-15E Strike Eagles from RAF Lakenheath’s 492nd and 494th Fighter Squadrons flew a four-ship formation overhead.

The annual ceremony, which commemorates this significant event in the town's history, honors the memory of the Airmen, both American and German, who made the ultimate sacrifice in defense of their respective countries.

"It's important to us because this is our heritage, and we have to keep it alive," said Col. Ed Gallagher, air defense attaché from the U.S. Embassy. "The town not only holds this ceremony, but every day, kids come into a school named after an American crewmember from the Second World War."

Indeed, the school is named after an American Airman: a plaque near the front door bears the name of Staff Sgt. John C. Kluttz, a B-17 Flying Fortress tail gunner. How he ended up the namesake of a rural Czech school is now a local legend there.

The battle began when aircraft from the 100th Bomb Group (the predecessor to the 100th Air Refueling Wing now at RAF Mildenhall, England) were attacked by German fighters after they finished a bombing run over a German oil refinery. In heavy aerial combat, the "Bloody Hundredth" lost 14 of the 36 B-17s conducting the mission. Six of those crashed around Kovarska, including Sergeant Kluttz's plane, which fell directly onto the school in the center of town. Although many of the children were outside of the school watching the battle, remarkably, none of them were hurt.

One of the students who witnessed the battle and ensuing crash was then-13-year-old Helmut Kreissel, who said up until that time, the war had kept a certain distance from the village.

"Here, war got a face. We really got to see what war was like," said Mr. Kreissel, now 73. "Here, in the village, you could really see and smell the effects of the war."

Mr. Kreissel said he hoped the horrors of the war he witnessed as a teenager would encourage everyone now to live peacefully.

"This day is a memory to all the terrible things in the war, and you can really understand how important peace is," he said.

It is possible that nobody was closer to those horrors that day than the pilots who flew. Both the United States and Germany suffered heavy losses of Airmen and planes.

"Something like one-third of the planes the German Luftwaffe put up that day were shot down," said George Geise, a former B-17 navigator from Harrisburg, Penn. He was part of the group that took off from the airfield in Thorpe Abbot, England, that fateful September day.

Of the 12 bombers his squadron sent out that day, all were shot down in the battle.

"We lost the works," Mr. Geise said.

Mr. Geise's plane made it to France before crash landing in a field. French Resistance people helped him and his surviving crew escape back to England.

Several remaining survivors of the battle, like Mr. Geise, have made the trip to Kovarska for the memorial ceremony before.

Lew Wallace, a former B-17 co-pilot from Kalispell, Mont., was shot down and captured by German forces. He said memorial ceremonies such as this one are important for both the townspeople and the pilots who endured the war.

"I wanted to remember," Mr. Wallace said. "I was also interested to see where I was incarcerated the first night."

It is important for younger generations to remember, too, said Airman 1st Class Bruce Conat, a crew chief with the 48th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron at RAF Lakenheath, who traveled to Kovarska to assist in the wreath laying.

"It's very important, coming and seeing this," he said, "especially with (the U.S. military) going to Iraq now. It lets us see how we support things there just like (then-U.S. Army Air Force Airmen) used to support the World War."

The Kovarska memorial and memorial service is unique, Colonel Gallagher said, because it honors Airmen from all the forces. This practically ensures that attendees include not only American aircrew members, but German fighter pilots involved in the battle as well.

Nowhere in the town is this reverence for both sides more apparent than in the Museum of the Air Battle over Krushnohori in Kovarska. A homage to the U.S. Army Air Force and German Luftwaffe pilots involved in the battle, the museum has three rooms with displays of wreckage, weapons and military uniforms from the era, and hundreds of documents and photos.

One photo in particular seemed to represent a connection between the horrors witnessed in the sky over Kovarska on Sept. 11, 1944, and the chilling attacks on America exactly 57 years later. It shows the tail of a crashed B-17 jutting out of the roof of the school.

While the event is an annual commemoration of one afternoon during World War II, that this date is now synonymous with an entirely different war, the war on terrorism, was not ignored. Speakers detailed the horrors of war, urged listeners to use the lessons learned in past wars to prevent future atrocities and spoke about the importance of cooperation among nations.

This cooperation has made the Czech Republic, once part of a former Eastern Bloc state and an enemy of the United States during the Cold War, an indispensable partner since the fall of the Soviet Union, Colonel Gallagher said.

"Since the fall of the (Berlin) Wall, in every major operation -- whether it's been in the Balkans, in Bosnia, in Kosovo, in Iraq or in Afghanistan -- in each one of those, the Czech Republic has stepped up to the plate and joined us with combat forces," he said. "There's no place where we've been in the last 10 or 15 years where there hasn't been a Czech flag flying close by." (Courtesy of U.S. Air Forces in Europe News Service)