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| 1st Lt. Arthur Lewis - US Army Air Force |
It was early morning on
November 10, 1944. A B-17 “Flying Fortress” bomber took off from Rougham Field
just outside of Bury St. Edmonds, England. The plane climbed up to join 235
other bombers and 154 P-51 fighters all being deployed on a mission to disable
the Luftwaffe airfield at Wiesbaden, Germany.
Positioned at the very
front of the plane was a young First Lieutenant by the name of Arthur Lewis. As
the plane approached its target, he peered through his Norden bombsight, lining
up the cross-hairs on the airfield below and pulled the trigger to release his
bomb payload. Just then, however, the plane was hit by flack immediately
setting two of its four engines on fire and puncturing its Plexiglas nose. Some
of the fragments of the clear plastic Plexiglas struck Lewis in the face
blinding his left eye. The pilot immediately put the plane into a steep dive
that succeeded in extinguishing the engine flames but which also left them at
tree-top level, alone and separated from the rest of the squadron.
Running on just two
engines, the crew attempted to get as far as they could back to England but
realized that they would have to abort the mission somewhere over
Belgium—hopefully behind friendly Allied lines. The pilot gave the order for
the crew to “bail out” and one by one the men jumped out of the plane already
at a dangerously low altitude. Lt. Lewis dropped out through the bomb bay and
immediately pulled his ripcord deploying a white, silk parachute. Seconds
later, he was on the ground, landing in the soft dirt of a farmer’s garden.
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| Possible field near where Dad landed with his parachute. Note the remains of a former windmill. |
For the past day here in Belgium, I have been reliving the
events of this B-17 mission as I’ve attempted to relocate and explore the very
places that my father experienced on that fateful day in November 1944. Thanks
to some on-line World War II forums, I learned about the exact location where
Edgar Prigmore and Jack Malahy, the pilot and co-pilot of that B-17 finally
were able to crash land the plane in an open field. I’ve triangulated more or less
where my Dad landed with his parachute and also discovered the house that
belonged to Dr. Vander Schueren, a local village doctor who took care of my dad
for a couple days helping to remove some of the pieces of Plexiglas from his
left eye.
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| Dr. Vander Shueren's former home in St Levins-Houten, Belgium |
Although the plane was scrapped and never returned to service, all of
the crew survived and were soon reunited to fly more missions with the 94th
Bomb Group of the Eighth Air Force. My father completed 34 of 35 missions before
the war finally ended. That led him to feel called to return to Europe as a
missionary and finish out his “tour of duty.”
Standing alone alongside those quiet fields in rural
Belgium, it was pretty amazing to think how much my own life has been impacted
by the events of that fateful day. From my dad surviving a dangerous mission
and parachute drop to my growing up as an MK in Portugal and inheriting his
passion for missions, I am deeply touched by the way God orchestrates the
events of history to shape our lives.
And I hope something similar will be said of me some day
what is written on his tombstone at the Fort Snelling veterans’ cemetery in Minneapolis,
Minnesota: He finished his final mission.
