Epilogue

Henry Newcomer retired from the Air Force as a brigadier general. "I never used form letters when I wrote to the families, and it was very difficult to find the right words after this tragedy," he recalls. “As for Alex Cordes, he was a courageous pilot.”

Alex Cordes (left) and Maury Neher get together 54 years after the tragic midair over Beauvais.

Jim Crumbliss made a career in the military also, and he retired with the rank of colonel. “I was devastated that day; three of my regular crew were on Alex’s plane. It was a long time before I could get through the day after March 18. The pain finally eased but for the past few years, it had become difficult again. I look in the mirror and see a man of 76, but when I think of my crew, I see three very young men, forever in their twenties.”

Although Alex Cordes and Maury Neher live only 20 miles apart, they did not see each other for more than 50 years. In January 1998, the three of us met at Cordes, home on the slope of Camelback Mountain in Scottsdale, Arizona. We did some addition am found that our combined ages totaled 232 years, and we had flown a total of 203 combat missions in the Marauder. I had never met Cordes, but Neher and I were friends of long standing. In November 1943, we graduated from Advanced Training together at Stockton, California, took our initial nine-week training in the B-26 at Laughlin Field in Del Rio, Texas, and flew with our crews at Lake Charles, Louisiana.

During our afternoon of "hangar flying," Neher reminisced about losing three B-26s during his 65-mission tour. On the first, he was flying as copilot: “We landed with no hydraulics, which meant no brakes, and went off the end of the runway at about 100mph. We crossed a big ditch that took the landing gear off, and when we came to a halt, the engineer crawled right up my back to get out the escape hatch. The second time, we lost an engine going home, and I had to ditch in the Channel. They tell you to try to land on the crest of a wave, but coming in at 150, the waves look like ripples. The Plexiglas nose shattered when we hit, and water poured in. We made it to the life raft, pretty cold and wet, but Air Sea Rescue picked us up in about an hour. We lost Bob Davis, our radio man ... never knew what happened to him. He may have jumped before we hit.”

“The last one was the worst - Christmas Day, 1944. I was flying Clark’s Little Pill on its 156th mission. Coming back from Bitburg, we took two direct flak hits in the right engine. The flames were so bad, the guys in the back told me later they couldn’t touch the skin of the plane. I held it level till everybody was gone, then I bailed out at about 1,500 feet. This time, we lost our engineer, Wade Ensminger. It was five days before I got back to the squadron, and by then, my folks had been notified I was missing in action.”

Editor¹s note: for staying with the burning plane until his crew had all hailed out, Neher was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.

Neher reminded me of the B-26 I put into a drainage ditch off the end of the runway at Lake Charles when a run-away prop forced us to abort the takeoff. “Let’s see .... You totaled one, Alex sure got one, and I got three. Put them all together, and we’re an ace for the Luftwaffe. Maybe we should have asked Herman Goring for the Blue Max.”

We can laugh now, but we kept going back to the fateful events of March 18. “I couldn’t go to the funeral service,” Cordes said. “I couldn’t take that. I felt guilty that I was the only guy alive. I’ve dreamed about it often, but I’ve never had any nightmares.” Did the episode have a deep and lasting effect on his life - make him feel that he had been spared for a special role? "No, not really," he said quietly. "I always tried to be nice to people before it happened, and I just stayed the same after." Not really surprising.

In spite of its magnitude, this incident happened with no warning and is now a blurred, kaleidoscopic memory - over in fewer than 30 seconds. Cordes was later promoted to captain and completed 67 missions. He earned the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Purple Heart and the Air Medal with 12 clusters. He went on to a career as a commercial airline pilot and retired from Northwest with over 30,000 hours.

As our mini-reunion came to a close, I recalled that bombardier Wesley Myers had originally been assigned to my crew at Lake Charles. He asked to be traded to Neher’s crew because they knew each other. This change of crews ultimately put Myers in Beauvais, available for Cordes’ crew that day. Happenstance was also responsible for my being sent overseas to a different bomb group from Neher. When we left Lake Charles with our crews, we went to Hunter Field, Georgia, where 24 Marauders were waiting to be flown to England. Assignment was made alphabetically, and Neher and his crew got the 24th B-26. Our crew was number 25, and though I tried everything I could to get us a B-26 to fly across, our dejected bunch went by boat to Africa. We ended up with the 320th Bomb Group on Sardinia. In our tour of duty, we made it home every time, and not one of our crew got a Purple Heart - disappointing at the time. Now, listening to all that had happened to Cordes and Neher, one of my mother¹s sayings came echoing back to me: “Be careful what you wish for; you might get it.”

The author and his dog, Short-timer. At 21, he was C.O. of the 441st Bomb Squadron in the 320th Bomb Group—probably the youngest bomber squadron commander in the ETO. He flew 71 missions, 26 as group or squadron lead or mission commander.

Editors' note: This article was originally published in the Winter 2001 issue of Flight Journal. It is presented here by permission from the author, Charles O'Mahony and the folks at Flight Joural. Back issues are available. Click on the image to link to the Flight Journal website where this issue can be purchased. Click on image to purchase this issue of Flight Journal