NEW WAR MEMORIAL HONOURS FALLEN BELLEVILLE AIRMAN

A stone memorial now stands in a German farm field, raised by citizens in memory of Allied airmen who died there.

In a ceremony in September, volunteers of a local historical group unveiled the monument to Belleville's Cpl. Lorne Moreau and 22 other men.

The new monument now stands near an explanatory plaque in the field in which the comrades died in 1944 after a German pilot shot down their transport near Neuleiningen, Germany, months before the end of the Second World War.

Families of the crew and passengers and of the fighter pilot gathered to remember.

Belleville's Doug Moreau, son of Lorne, said Wednesday he was unaware of the service, though he could not have attended.

“I think it's great,” he said.

The event was the culmination of five years of research, excavation and planning by volunteers of the Interessengemeinschaft Heimatforschung Rheinland-Pfalz (Historical Research Community of Rhineland-Palatinate). The German historical group researches wartime crash sites and erects memorials.

Member Erik Wieman, who was born in Holland, was the first of the group to learn of the site and to find remnants of the plane.

The ceremony “was very emotional for many people,” he said in an online interview from his home.

DEDICATED RESEARCH

Wieman was searching a database in 2016 for the location of a different crash when he learned of this one. He contacted a local newspaper about the new find and the resulting story led to 15 witnesses coming forward. Wieman soon visited the site with a few.

“I started finding plane parts,” he said.

“I started to think, `Do their families know they crashed here?'”

They didn't, and he dedicated himself to learning more about the crash and sharing his findings with the fallen men's families. He sought help from media; an Intelligencer reporter located Doug Moreau.

FATEFUL FLIGHT

Cpl. Lorne Hamilton Moreau was born in Almonte, Ont. and later lived on Belleville's Pinnacle Street with his wife, Irene. Their son, Doug, was born in 1941, two years after his father enlisted in Trenton. Family stories and unconfirmed online records indicate Lorne served as a mechanic. Doug said in 2018 he did not really know his father or much about him.

“He wasn't supposed to fly that day,” Doug Moreau said of his father. “I think he took the place of a guy who couldn't make it.”

On Sept. 24, 1944, Lorne Moreau and 22 other men left Pershore, England for an English base in India via Sardinia and the Middle East. In the cockpit were two British aviators and one Australian.

The passengers, all Canadians, were to join the fight against Japan as members Canada's 435 and 436 Squadrons; the latter is now based in Trenton, the former in Winnipeg.

The group was aboard a Douglas C-47 Dakota III transport of the Royal Air Force's 1st Ferry Unit. Piloted by RAF Flight Lt. Ralph Korer, 23, it bore the designation KG653 and was one of 15 Dakotas on the trip.

ALONE AND IN DANGER

Something went wrong after the plane crossed the English Channel. Alone and unarmed, Dakota KG653 strayed over Germany.

Wieman said there must have been a technical problem which forced the crew to head back to England; witnesses said it was headed in that direction. Another account posted online suggests weather may have been a factor.

“They were lost, probably, or very far off the normal route,” Wieman said.

At about 1 p.m., Capt. Julius

Meimberg, a German fighter ace and Battle of Britain veteran, was surprised to discover the Dakota passing before a backdrop of white afternoon clouds. He described the encounter in his 2002 memoir, Feindberührung - Erinnerungen 1939-1945 (Enemy Contact: Memories 1939-1945).

“It is incredibly difficult to stay clean in a war that is getting dirtier and dirtier,” he wrote, adding that day would be “my test.”

Flying a Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter, he pursued the green Dakota, hoping to force it to land. It banked, trying to escape into clouds.

Meimberg wrote he had no intention of shooting it down. He fired a short machine-gun burst into its right engine.

“Suddenly the plane pulls up, turns on its back, and is pulled into a downswing dive,” he recalled.

One wing tore from the fuselage; other parts also began to fall. Meimberg and wingmate Günther Seeger spiraled around the Dakota, watching as it crashed. They saw no parachutes.

“I haven't done anything wrong under international law, and yet: something felt wrong about … the whole incident,” Meimberg wrote, calling it a string of “misfortunes” and acknowledging the 23 dead had left behind their families.

“I am no longer who I was, high up in the sky over France and England in 1940.

“Yes, there might be an excuse for the individual soldier who has to kill in war, like it happened to me, but for war…there is no excuse.”

LITTLE TRACE

Wieman said the German military removed most of the wreckage. Witnesses told him citizens scavenged smaller items, including gold watches, possibly to sell for food money.

The bodies were buried in a local cemetery, then, in 1948, reburied an Allied one in Rheinberg, Germany.

Nature reclaimed the scene. Today it's a wheat field owned by a crash witness.

Wieman and other researchers, all German citizens, recovered small pieces of metal and glass from the plane, plus buttons from uniforms, bone fragments, and a gold-plated silver bracelet marked with the name of Cpl. James Cumming, 32, of Hamilton. Such finds are rare at wartime crash sites, he said.

“The first bones that were investigated were not human,” added Wieman. Analysis of the rest is underway, but Wieman said they were burnt badly and there's no guarantee they will yield any further information.

MULTINATIONAL CEREMONY

The memorial's unveiling happened one day after the crash's 76th anniversary. There were speeches from organizers, relatives of the deceased, and dignitaries from Germany, Canada, Austria and the United Kingdom.

Wieman said it “was really awesome” to conclude the work and meet the families.

He placed the buttons, bracelet, etc. in boxes of sand or other fragments found there and presented them to the men's families.

Other families watched a live video stream by Wieman's daughter, Nadine Wieman, and sent images of themselves. Some watched while sitting next to a portrait of their lost loved one, a candle burning nearby.

German pilot Julius Meimberg died in 2012 and had told his sons, Gerrit and Helmut, of his remorse about the Dakota deaths.

If their father had lived, they said at the site, he would have attended the ceremony.

“They really wanted to come and honour these men,” said Wieman. “For them it was very moving.”

The sons also met with the Allied men's families.

“It was closing the circle for all families,” Wieman said. “It's time for forgiveness now.”

In Wednesday's telephone interview with Doug Moreau, The Intelligencer relayed news of the ceremony and quoted Meimberg's account.

Moreau again marveled at the new information.

“I never intended to investigate it that much, and then this turned up. It gets your interest going,” he said.

“It just keeps painting another picture,” said Moreau. “That's really something.”

He was also impressed by the volunteers' commitment to their work.

“That's a passion.”

To learn more about his father's loss so many years “helps heal,” he said.

Wieman and his colleagues unveil about one memorial per year; this was their fifth. They're working on seven crash sites and have about 30 possible projects.

He downplayed their role in honouring those who died to free Europe from Axis forces.

“What we do is only a small part compared to what they did.”