Funding for this program provided by: On January 12th, 1946, four months and 10 days after the formal Japanese surrender signifying the official end of World War II, thousands of American soldiers marched down 5th Avenue in New York City.

The Victory Parade was America's way of honoring the men and women who sacrificed so much since the United States had been drawn into the war on December 7th, 1941.

Each one of the soldiers, sailors and airmen who went off to war had their own very personal experience.

Each contributed to the most cataclysmic event in world history in their own unique way.

Many returned to the United States and got on with their lives, going back to work and starting families.

Many never did come home and still rest in overseas American cemeteries in places like Normandy, Holland, and Manila.

My father, Bruce Sundlun, was one of the fortunate men who did survive, but how he did is truly an amazing story.

Dad was a B-17 bomber pilot in Europe, and lived one of the most amazing escape stories of World War II.

His incredible story is still lebrated in Belgium today, more than 70 years later, as I personally discovered retracing my father's journey in the war.

Not only was Bruce Sundlun an American bomber pilot, but he was also Jewish.

Two strikes against him if he was ever captured by the Germans, who were exterminating Jews all over Europe and also known for their harsh treatment of Allied air crews who were shot down.

My name is Kara Sundlun House and this is Above and Beyond: The true story of Bruce Sundlun, a Jewish-American B-17 pilot and his incredible escape from Nazi-occupied Europe in World War II.

My father, Bruce Sundlun was born on January 19th, 1920 in Providence, Rhode Island.

The first son of Walter and Jan Zelda Sundlun.

Bruce Sundlun: We grew up in the depression.

Prior to America's entry in World War II and perhaps sensing what lay ahead, my dad earned his pilot's license.

Bruce Sundlun: I was a senior at Williams College.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was president at the time, wanted the United States to be prepared, and he wanted a hundred thousand pilots trained and he put out a program which, provided that, if you could pass a physical examination, the government would teach you how to fly and give you a pilot's license.

I applied.

News Announcer: We interrupt this program to bring you a special news bulletin.

Kara Sundlun: On December 7th, 1941, like all Americans, my father's care free days of college came to sudden stop.

News Announcer: We take you now to Washington.

The attack apparently was made on all naval, and on naval and military activities, on the principal isnd of Oahu.

Kara Sundlun: Flyers like my dad who already had a pilot's license were in great demand the day after the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor and four days later when Adolf Hitler declared war on the United States.

I just packed a bag, climbed into my car, and drove down to Westover Field at Chicopee, Massachusetts, and enlisted in the Army Air Corps, the Aviation Cadet Training program.

My father joined thousands of other American boys in England in 1943, at the height of the air war against Germany.

Because he had that pilot's license before the war, Bruce Sundlun was given command of a B-17 Flying Fortress, the most durable and effective four engine bomber the Allies had.

My dad's plane was named the Damn Yankee, given that nickname because most its crew were boys from the north.

It was based at Grafton Unrwood, one of 25 airfields north of London.

Officially, he and the ten member crew belonged to the 384th Bombardment Group, 545th Bomber Squadron, 1st Air Division of the US 8th Army Air Force.

Bruce Sundlun: If you went to central casting in Hollywood and asked for a typical American crew you couldn't find a more typical: My navigator, Reino Jylkka, a Lithuanian, my bombardier.

I'm going from the front of the airplane to the back: me - the pilot, a Jewish kid, the co-pilot - an Austrian kid from Chicago who played football for Notre Dame, behind him, the top turret gunner and the engineer - a farm boy from Oklahoma.

Behind him, radio operator - a Pennsylvania coal miner, a German, he said.

Next, a Hollywood extra in the ball turt, pretty boy, two waist gunners - one an Italian from Seattle, the other from North Carolina.

And the tail gunner was a Greek from New Jersey.

It all worked.

I mean, we were completely different, but we fought very well as a crew.

Kara Sundlun: On December 1st, 1943, my dad and his crew from "central casting" had 12 missions under their belts.

Unlucky 13 would take them into Hitler's backyard.

The Damn Yankee was one of 293 B-17's assigned the mission of bombing a steel factory in the Germany city of Solingen, located in Germany's Industrial pocket known as the Ruhr Valley.

The B-17 was the workhouse of the 8th Air Force.

The Fortress was known as a tough and dependable bomber that could take a major beating from enemy planes and anti-aircraft guns, but still, often times miraculously, bring her crew home.

On December 1st, amid heavy German flak, the Flying Fortresses of the 384th Bombardment Group dropped their bombs over Solingen.

Once the job was done, the Damn Yankee and the other B-17's turned for home for England.

But they were by no means out of the woods.

With my dad at the controls, a burst of flak hit the plane over Germany and took out one of the Damn Yankee's four engines.

Radio Voice: B-17 in trouble out at 2 o'clock, watch it.

Radio Voice: We've got an engine on fire.

As the Yankee turned west over Belgium, and with her air speed slowing down due to one engine being damaged, she was perfect prey for two German fighter planes who pounced on the wounded bomber; killing my dad's tail gunner.

Radio Voice : There's two more diving through the 94.

Three planes, 9:00, coming around.

Keep your eye on them, boys.

Coming around at 10.

Watch it, Chuck, keep your eyes open.

They're breaking 11, breaking 11.

The crewought off the German fighters for half an hour.

Radio Voice: Check that B-17, Chuck, 3:00.

Motor's smoking.

Fire at 10:30.

Coming around.

But another engine had also been hit, and it was out too.

The Yankee was losing altitude and had dropped from 27 thousand feet to four thousand.

A few minutes later, the B-17 was down to one-thousand feet and in serious trouble.

Bruce Sundlun: B-17 wouldn't stay up with the formation on only two engines, so I became a straggler.

And then we really got jumped by the fighters.

Radio Voice: They're coming around, watch it.

And with two engines out, the only evasive action you can take is down.

Radio Voice: B-17 out of control at 3 o'clock.

You can't hold your altitude, and you certainly can't climb.

Radio Voice: Three planes, 9 o'clock, coming around.

We had a rule, got forced down to 3,000 feet, tell everybody to bail out, because below that you don't have much chance of getting out.

And it didn't take long for the fighters to come after us again, so I gave the order to bail out.

Radio Voice: Come on you guys, get out of that plane, bail out.

There's one, he came out with a bomb bag.

Radio Voice: Yeah, I see him.

Kara Sundlun: In the nine centuries old town of Jabbeke, Belgium, near the northern coast of the country, German occupation had been a way of life for roughly three years now.

With its picturesque farms and pastures, the locals had learned to live with the Germans, because the alternative was more painful.

Many of the men in town had already been sent to work camps.

Others left home to join the local resistance or underground.

Those who were still in the village, roughly 60 miles southeast of Brussels, on December 1st, 1943, were just trying to tend to their farms and feed their families.

They were also waiting desperately for liberation.

There wasn't much to eat.

Everyone got rations, but they were very limited.

Products like butter and milk were very hard to come by.

Kara Sundlun: The sight of the American planes returning from bomb runs to Germany was common.

Luc Packo has lived in Jabbeke his whole life; he was born long after World War II ended, but his interest in that particular day of December 1st, 1943, has been a life-long passion.

In my desire to learn more about my father's incredible World War II story, I arrived in Belgium excited to meet Luc and hear the story first-hand.

My brother Tracy also joined us.

The pull of my dad's war adventure had been tugging at us all these years.

Since he was twelve, Luc Packo has visited this field in Jabbeke too many times to count.

In 1943, turnips grew on this very spot, where just yards away German soldiers stationed in this very home, patrolled the area regularly.

It could be plexiglass.

What Luc has found in this field over the past several decades is the result of what happened next to the Damn Yankee as 23 year old pilot Bruce Sundlun's shot up B-17 continued to lose altitude and hurdle towards earth.

So, your father turned his plane over here, came over that field, and jumped out so, immediately, he get on the ground.

The B-17 make a sharp turn of 180 degrees and turn back over there on that field.

With a loud bang, he crashed.

So, right over here he... Over there, at the end of the field.

The first attack had come right on the tail.

It had taken the combined strength of me and the copilot to hold the plane at a level flying mode because of the damage that had been done to the tail and the control surfaces.

I was the last person to bail out.

When I bailed out, I was falling face down and pulled the ripcord, chute went up, and I reached up to grab the ripcords like you see them do in the movie and my feet hit the ground.

Later, I asked people on the ground who had seen me bail out as to how high I was when my chute opened.

They said about tree top height.

So, I was lucky.

I landed in the same field that the plane crashed in, so I walked over to the wreck to see if there was anything I could do, there wasn't.

Kara Sundlun: The Jabbeke area had become a war-zone.

The German soldiers were on full-alert and local residents were running to the chaotic scene of a huge American Flying Fortress bomber burning in their own backyard.

I saw a very big plane, a Flying Fortress.

It was upside down and only one engine was turning.

We all thought it was heading for the coast.

We also saw the German attackers and the air fight.

The plane turned around and came over there.

I saw a couple of crewmembers jump out and then a third.

Then the plane crashed over there with the nose in that direction.

It was in the center of the field with a lot of fire and explosions.

By the time I got here, a lot of people wanted to see the plane, but the area was all blocked off by the Germans, but we all saw and heard the explosions.

I heard a terrible noise, so, I ran out into the yard and I could see that this big plane was in trouble.

I saw some parachutes, but I didn't see where the pilot jumped out.

I grabbed my bike and hurried over to where the plane crashed and when I first got to the field the wreckage of the plane was on fire.

There was a lot of smoke filling the air and bullets were going off from inside the fire.

There was a loud bang of smoke you can see from the village, so immediately, you can see the smoke from three meters away.

Immediately, all the Germans were here to look at the half a plane and to try to catch the other ones.

They saw the few bodies lying down at the plane.

They didn't know if there were anyone was trying to escape at that moment.

Kara Sundlun: Five of the Damn Yankee's crew were dead, either killed during the German Fighter attack or in the crash.

Four other members of my dad's plane, who were able to parachute out, were immediately rounded up as prisoners by the German garrison across the road.

They were busy to capture the other men, so your father had the time to hide his parachute and to start running.

So they didn't know he was there?

No.

At that moment, not.

My dad tried to hide his parachute in a pile of cow manure so the Germans frantically searching the surrounding area wouldn't know he was nearby.

They came to here, but your father was already gone.

Some residents of Jabbeke had already arrived at the wreckage.

And there was a farmer, about his size, who was plowing the field.

There was a great dugout.

When your father was hiding his parachute, the farmer came to your father and helped him to hide his parachute.

In the dugout?

In the dugout.

A man approached me and he turned out to be the pilot.

He had blood coming down from his lip and was asking for help.

I said, "Does anybody here speak English?"

And a man turned around.

He said, "Yes, I do.

I think I speak it rather well."

That's when another man who was with the resistance arrived and told the pilot to forget about the parachute because it was more important that he hide because the German soldiers were coming.

I said my instructions are to clear the area where I'm shot down as soon as possible, that the Germans would look for me for only a limited period of time.

He said, "Don't worry; the Germans will be here in a few minutes.

You've parachuted down into the middle of a division.

A German division that's up here to protect the continent from an Allied invasion that we think will come along sooner or later."

I said, "Which way are the Germans coming from?"

He said, "That way."

I said, "I'm going this way," and I took off at a dead run.

The soldiers didn't stay at the crash site for very long because it was too dangerous.

They were concerned about all the ammunition that was burning in the fire.

They didn't see the pilot, so they all left.

By this time, my father was the only one in his 10 man crew to not be either dead or a POW.

In daylight, Bruce Sundlun wouldn't have much of a chance on the run as German soldiers were swarming everywhere.

Bruce Sundlun: And then I remembered a book.

I remember he told me that he remembered Edgar Allen Poe's "The Purloined Letter," that you hide in plain sight.

Yes.

So, I figured I gotta hide myself in plain sight, and I was running down a dirt road with plowed fields on both sides and I said if I could get out in the middle of that field and lie down and squirm around in the dirt in one of those ruts, unless you look up that particular row, you'll never see me because my body will be down below the height of the ruts that were plowed.

And that's what I did.

So, he just laid there?

He stayed there until dark falls.

So, as he's laying right over there, there must have been Nazi soldiers looking all around for him.

- Yes, yes.

- Right here.

Here, around the plane.

When he came at the bushes, he hide in the bushes for a while.

Two German soldiers came from over there and went by, just not in time to see him.

The Germans passed on, and then your father saw the place to hide and stayed there for the rest of the day until nightfall.

I found out later the Germans came down that road, looked, didn't see anybody, and kept on moving.

I can't imagine what he would be thinking for all those hours.

You know, just...

I think his whole life is passing through his mind during that time he lay there.

You can't imagine what it felt because you may not forget, Kara, he was a Jew.

Right.

It's a double risk for him to be captured.

They wanted to help him.

They wanted to help him.

And why is that?

Because I think so many people don't understand.

Because our people, Saudi Americans, are liberators.

They were proud that they want to come help us be released from the Germans.

It was a very dangerous thing for any of us to help an American because if we ever got caught we would be executed.

Nobody knew back then how terrible the Prisoner of War camps were.

But still, we would not hesitate to help someone.

The risk of the local people, to us, if they were captured to help an American, they will be shot.

Their father will be taken prisoner for the rest of the war, but they will be shot.

That's for sure.

It was a great risk they took, but, took it.

Thank you for saving him.

Bruce Sundlun: On the first of December it was cold.

I got up, I was muddy.

I was bloody.

I didn't know what to do.

Kara Sundlun: As a bone-chilling night fell and darkness enveloped the Belgian countryside, my father left his hiding spot in plain sight.

He came across two very surprised young brothers pulling a cart full of cut leaves.

Bruce Sundlun: I started walking down the road and I came on two little kids who were pulling a cart of turnips it proved to be.

They were having trouble pulling the cart; it was too heavy for them.

Well, I had one good arm, so I pulled it and helped them.

And every building that we passed I would point at it.

I had already asked them, "You speak English?"

"No."

Kara Sundlun: After handing over some chewing gum and a pocket knife to the young boys to gain their trust, Bruce Sundlun asked them for help in finding a house where English was spoken.

The early search yielded no positive results.

Finally, I pointed to one farmer's, "Speak English?"

And they smiled and nodded affirmatively.

So, I said now... covered my, you know, don't talk, didn't see anything, didn't hear anything.

My father still didn't know if those who lived on this farm would help him or turn him over to the Germans, who were still looking for any Americans who may have survived the B-17 crash hours earlier.

My father didn't know it yet, but a guardian angel was about to appear.

That's the man from the gate who make your father alive.

Awwwwwww.

I'm Bruce's daughter.

English.

English.

Thank you, thank you for helping save my dad.

At the gate of the farm house, a wounded Bruce Sundlun found an ally in local resident Firmin Saelens, a young Belgian salesman who had just finished installing some equipment at the farm.

It was just a coincidence that I was at the gate that night.

I don't live here, but when your father showed up here, I let him in.

I didn't know that he was an American, but when I saw that he was wounded I let him in because I knew that the people who lived here would help him.

I went up to this house, I just walked in.

I didn't ring the bell or anything like that.

I walked in with a Colt 45 in my hand and the front hall was highly polished linoleum.

I hollered, "Is anybody here?"

And a woman came out, she saw me dripping mud and blood and, on her highly polished linoleum and she got angry.

And she went and ran back to the kitchen and got some newspapers and spread it around, pointed at me to get on the newspapers, which I did, and then she cleaned up the floor.

That was her primary concern.

Then she started looking me over and she saw the blood and wound.

He got the chance to wash him up, to eat a little bit, and the farmer's wife saw he was wounded.

She told him to lift his upper body, she cleaned up his wounds, on his right arm, right shoulder, with alcohol and a toothbrush.

Your father told me it was very painful, but well done.

And I can still feel it.

It hurt.

And, but, I didn't say anything.

She cleaned my wounds with the alcohol and a toothbrush, and then she took a pillowcase, ripped it into strips, and soaked it with some bottle of I don't know what and made a bandage out of it.

Whole right side of my body.

And, I never, those wounds never became infected and I recovered from them, and it's all due to whatever that woman did that day, I think.

Your father was taken very good care of here.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Kara Sundlun: Too many German soldiers patrolling the area made staying at the farm impossible for my father.

Then they decided what we going to do with him, but your father insisted he wanted to escape to England.

Not hiding any place, I want to escape.

They wanted him to ju stay and hide?

Yes.

That was the easiest way because there was no one with them, from the resistance.

It was about 25 minutes after I was in the barn, the door opened up, and in came a guy and he looked like a typical Hollywood personification of a German.

Close cropped blonde hair, leather jackets, leather gauntlets, leather knickers, leather boots.

All he needed was a monocle and he qualified.

And I thought, damn that woman, she's turned me over to the Germans, so I shot the pistol off into the ceiling and I hollered at him, because I could see in the dark by that time, and I figured he couldn't in the barn.

"Who are you and what do you want?"

And he came back with a very timid voice and said that he was a man from the city who bought their grain and they had asked him if he would take me to his home in Bruges, Belgium, which was 12 miles away.

Kara Sundlun: In darkness, dressed in typical Belgian clothes, right down to the wooden clogs, B-17 pilot Bruce Sundlun left the wreckage of the Damn Yankee behind.

With five of his crew dead, and four in the hands of the Germans, my father had only one thought: Get back to England and get back in the fight.

He said, "Now I'm gonna go first, you follow me about 50 yards behind.

If I get stopped you keep going.

If you get stopped I'm gonna keep going."

Since he was a young boy, Jabbeke resident Luc Packo has wanted to preserve the sacrifices of my father's crew and the story of the B-17 that crashed in his village.

It's not just about finding pieces of the Damn Yankee, which the rich soil in this field has continually given up for decades, but rather, what my dad's Flying Fortress represented to those under Nazi control in Belgium in World War II.

I have an enormous respect for all those men who did that.

Freedom.

They did it for our freedom.

I have enormous respect.

Kara Sundlun: Instead of heading right for the city of Bruges, a dozen or so miles away, the local underground decided, after leaving the farm, that a stop at this half-way house would be safer for their American guest.

The hideout was perilously close to this building, the local German police headquarters.

About a tenth of a mile from the police station was the headquarters of some German Army officers in this castle.

If caught, my father would have become a prisoner.

His new friends would have been shot.

Later on the night of December 1st, about 9 p.m., Bruce Sundlun was once again escorted by bicycle along the back roads of Belgium, towards the city of Bruge.

My dad's host upon arrival in Bruge wasn't a member of the Belgian Underground and wasn't aware of how to contact any members of the resistance.

That's when my father recalled a lesson a Catholic coach once shared with a young boy of Jewish faith.

When you kids grow up you're gonna be somewhere where you're not gonna know anybody and you're gonna have a real problem.

I don't know what the problem's gonna be, but you're gonna not be able to solve it, and there won't be anybody there from your family or that you know and you're gonna have to get some help and I'll tell you what to do.

You go to the nearest Catholic Church, tell the priest what your problem is, and ask him for help.

He won't be able to solve your problem, but he will know more people in that area than anybody else, any other single individual, and he'll find somebody who knows something about your problem who can help you.

Help indeed came in the form of a Catholic priest in this church in Bruge, which I visited seven decades later and lit a candle thanking whomever that priest was for hiding my dad.

As Bruce Sundlun had learned as a young boy, the local priest did indeed know someone who could help.

That someone was a member of the local resistance who provided my father with fake identity papers.

According to those papers, Bruce Sundlun, Jewish-American B-17 pilot was now a deaf-mute shoemaker by the name of Andre Pierre DeMain.

The Belgian resistance also taught my dad some other tricks that would help him get across Nazi-occupied Europe in 1943 and 1944.

Bruce Sundlun: They taught me how to steal bicycles; I became the best bicycle thief in Europe.

You go to the marketplace early in the morning, the women come in with their bicycles and their string bags and they pick up the food, and the last thing they do is go to the bakery store to get one of those long loaves of French bread.

When they go into the bakery store, you'll find it takes them about 10 minutes to stand in line and get a loaf of bread.

You give them five minutes, they're deep inside, then you go take their bike and push off.

Just look for a tall woman with a big bicycle.

And that's what I did, I stole 159 bicycles.

Kara Sundlun: With help from Europe's vast underground network and priests in other Catholic churches who hid my Jewish-American father without a second thought, Bruce Sundlun's journey took him out of Belgium and into France in early 1944.

Stolen bikes were replaced by faster-moving trains as my dad found his way to other small towns and villages in occupied France.

Eventually, an apartment in Paris served as a safe-house for pilot Bruce Sundlun and another American aviator also on the run.

A Canadian and British soldier were also added to the mix, all hiding under the nose of the Germans, who occupied the city.

After a month in the French capital, it was back on bikes for dad, with the goal of crossing the Pyrenees Mountains into neutral Spain.

I could make about 50 miles a day, and I drove those bicycles all the way from Belgium, across France, down France, tried to cross the Pyrenees Mountains, couldn't do it, snow was too deep.

With Spain no longer an option, my father retreated back into France and back into the bicycle thievery business to get him from here to there.

Catholic churches and sympathetic priests continued to hide my dad in secret hideaways and passages in some of Europe's oldest houses of worship.

My father's destination this time was another neutral country in the war, Switzerland.

But in the spring of 1944, on his way to the Swiss border, Bruce Sundlun, a Jewish-American pilot, somehow landed a job fighting with the French Resistance against the country's German occupiers.

These underground groups attacked the Germans as they moved across southern France, and that's what I turned into.

As soon as they got me involved and they found out I was an American officer who spoke French, because I learned to speak French by that time, they gave me 35 men and that was my unit.

Kara Sundlun: The French Resistance gave him the codename of Salamander.

And we were trying to destroy their transport, particularly their fuel trucks.

And we set the fuel trucks on fire, shoot up the tires and the engines.

The Germans would fight back, but we knew the terrain and the campsite tree by tree and they did not.

So, we had an advantage.

And we were doing very well.

In fact, we were doing too well.

Fighting with the French resistance was risky for an American, especially one of the Jewish religion.

The Germans had turned up the pressure on the underground, killing French civilians every time an attack on their soldiers occurred.

While we were sitting outside the school having our lunch, a guy in a motorcycle drove up, and he said in French, "Where's the American, Sundlun?"

He had my name, rank and serial number.

He came over to me, shifted to English, he said: "My orders are for you.

Your orders are to leave this group immediately.

You're fifteen miles from the Swiss frontier.

Go to Switzerland.

The French are not going to sit back and let the German execute their women and children.

And if it gets to be a choice between you and women and children, French, they're going to decide in favor of the women and children and turn you over."

And the headquarters of the underground had said, "Get out!

Go to Switzerland.

Grab a bicycle.

Take off."

And so, that's what I did.

I slapped him on the back, smiled, and told the guys, "I gotta go to the bathroom."

Went in the school, went to the bathroom, but I went out the other side of the school; and stole a bicycle and made my way down to the Swiss frontier.

Got me a priest, he got me a smuggler.

Smuggler took me across into Switzerland.

In May of 1944, Bruce Sundlun, on the run from the Germans for almost six months now, peddled his way into Switzerland, on yet another stole bicycle.

The reception wasn't what my dad expected.

They said, "Well, we're Swiss police and you're under arrest for illegally entering this country.

You come along with us, you just have to spend," I think it was eighteen or nineteen, "days in jail, quarantined, then you'll be turned over to the Americans."

It was in Switzerland that Bruce Sundlun was recruited to join the Office of Strategic Services, or the OSS.

The forerunner to today's CIA.

The Swiss office was run by American, Allen Dulles.

Dulles liked the fact that my dad knew how to get around Europe.

So, in the summer of 1944, my father entered the world of espionage and was sent back into occupied France.

Dulles assigned my dad the job of communicating with the French Resistance and some German officers who were looking to organize a surrender of German forces in Northern Italy.

My father also helped out by keeping an eye on the invasion of Southern France in August.

Soon after his final mission in August of 1944, my dad was flown back to England.

But B-17 pilot, Bruce Sundlun, had certainly had an amazing run during that time.

International Red Cross sent a cable to my parents telling them that I was alive and well, they'd be hearing from me directly soon, when I got in the hands of American authorities.

And my mother got that cable, if you can believe it, on Mother's Day.

But she said, "Look, I don't know where Bruce is, but he's not dead.

I've never had that feeling for one second since he was missing.

And we'll hear from him eventually."

And she was right.

Belgian Luc Packo has visited the crash site of my father's B-17, the Damn Yankee, more than anyone else alive.

What an incredible experience it was for me to be there as we walked and talked about the crash that occurred here in this very same field so many decades ago.

To say it was emotional is an understatement.

Then we should find something.

Every few steps the Earth seemed to offer bits of my dad's plane to us.

Luc's dedication to my father and his crew isn't just found here on what was once an old turnip field during World War II.

These are all special pieces.

Ammunition I found.

Everything's from his plane?

Everything.

The big pieces of aluminum here.

Boeing?

Boeing, yeah.

These are the bigger pieces of the plane.

That's the light aluminum pieces.

Made in the USA.

That's the box of plexiglass.

This would be part of the windshield, do you think?

The battery of the engine.

Oh!

Seventy years later it still smells like the... Yeah, you can smell it here, here's another piece, smells the same.

Wow.

The true testament of Luc's admiration for my dad and his crew, and what happened here on December 1st, 1943, came into a much clearer focus when my brother Tracy and I visited Luc's home in Jabbeke.

Also a typical green color.

You see?

That's how they keep the pieces together, with that.

That's where we step back into time and began to see for ourselves how one man's desire to preserve history and its lessons of sacrifice, courage, and patriotism, is truly something beyond just a hobby.

That's all the same.

You can see how just destroyed it was in the explosion.

I mean, everything's banged up.

Everything was broken and burned out.

There's so many and you found them just over the years, just keep finding them.

Yes, on the same spot I showed you.

Wow.

American and German bullets, plexiglass from the gun turrets, personal items of my father's ten man crew, belt buckles, coins, even a small piece of my dad's parachute that was hidden from view in that manure pile on that bitter cold December day in 1943.

These are parachute belts, from the parachutes.

That's a piece from your father's parachute.

That's amazing.

Yes.

Oh my god.

And that's the rest of the parachute of your father.

Wow.

You see the typical cuts?

Yeah.

That's the rest.

Bins and bins of aluminum from her fuselage, Bakelite, burned metal, parts of radios.

Even a pocketknife that was once given to that local boy, who with his young brother, helped guide my father to the safety and care of those in a nearby farm after his B-17 crashed just a short distance away.

And is this the pocketknife he gave to the little boy?

That's the pocketknife.

He saved it.

Yes.

He put it all these years in his car, and then he gave it to me.

Wow.

I am very proud of this because it's personal from your father.

Oh my gosh, yeah.

The little boy who he gave the pocketknife to, to be nice, kept it all those years.

Oh my God!

That's amazing!

- U.S.A. - U.S.A.

Burned in the fire.

It's all here.

Every time Luc Packo visits that old turnip field, he finds a little bit more of my father's past.

Nuts and bolts, more bullets...

He preserves all of these artifacts of war, cleans every piece in a workshop in his garage, handles each fragment of the Damn Yankee like it was fine china.

That's how much one man, in one foreign country, wants to preserve the instruments of liberty that helped free his, and all the other nations of Europe.

Oh my gosh.

That's one of the propellers.

And that's a bullet hole from a German during the fight.

And that's the mark your father put on it.

To Luc Packo, with thanks and sincere appreciation for your work in preparing the records of my B-17 bomber, shot down on December 1st, 1943, in Solingen, Belgium.

And for your wonderful records you have maintained ever since.

Bruce Sundlun, Colonel, USA Air Force.

Above written April 25th, 2009, when I visited with Luc and his family, accompanied by my wife Suzie and your five children.

Yeah, I can just feel how grateful he was.

Yup.

That's a piece of the wing flap.

- See?

- Wow.

That's a piece that they use it to go up and to go down.

- See?

- Right.

Some guys who lived at the farm where the German cops were staying pulled it away to get rid of propeller and hide it over there until after the war was over.

Oh, okay.

I made it myself.

As a reminder of my dad's gacy here in Jabbeke, Belgium, Luc presented me with something I will always treasure.

A part of my dad's history and America's too.

Thank you.

Dear Kara, these relics are artifacts of the B-17 Damn Yankee which your father was a pilot commander of.

I found these on the crash site myself and because of my respect to your father and his crew members, I preserved it with the highest care.

With a warm feeling, a gratitude for having the honor of having known your father, I would like to give these to you.

I hope it will grant you a valuable memory to an important period in your father's life.

Luc Packo.

Thank you so much.

On a cold December 1st day in 1990, exactly 47 years after my dad's plane crashed, Luc Packo and the townspeople of Jabbeke, gathered at the field where an American B-17 flew its final mission.

They dedicated a simple memorial to the Damn Yankee and its crew.

My dad would visit the memorial a couple of times, the last visit, coming in 2009, when he was made an honorary citizen of Jabbeke.

thank you.

I thank you for my life.

I thank you for everything that's happened.

He returned a hero, and his story remains the stuff of legend in this part of a free Belgium, handed down from generation to generation.

On this place, the 1st of December '43, an American bomber Boeing crashed and five men died.

They were nose gunner George Hayes, bullet gunnar Harry Cologne, left wing gunnar, Mike Cappelletti, right wing gunnar Chester Snyder and tail gunnar Frank Lekas.

Five young men who died for our freedom.

Bruce Sundlun: I don't think we were heroes, I thinke all did what we thought had to be done at the time.

But we didn't do it to be a hero.

We just did it because, I'm going to help you, but I know you're going to help me.

And between the two of us we're going to get the job done.

Funding for this program provided by: