The Crash

After clearing the trees, Easy dropped hard into the field. The wheels touched first, digging into the soft earth, jolting the aircraft violently. For a split second it almost felt controlled—almost like a landing.

Then the nose wheel collapsed.

The B-24 lurched forward and down, metal screaming as the fuselage tore open beneath them. Everything loose inside the aircraft became airborne. Men were thrown against bulkheads. The cockpit filled with dust and smoke. The world outside vanished in a roar of sound and force.

And then—silence.

Not the peaceful kind. The stunned, ringing quiet that follows something violent and final.

Jack Hummel came to first. Blood ran down the back of his head. Reynolds was conscious too, dazed but alive, his face streaked red where the cockpit structure had torn open beside him. For a moment neither spoke. They simply stared at each other, both silently asking the same question.

Are you alive?

They crawled out through the torn metal of the cockpit, dropping into the field a few yards from the wreckage.

Behind them, movement.

One by one, men emerged from the back of the aircraft. Hollis Powell. Paul Keagle. Herbert Finney. Alive.

Shaken. Bleeding. But alive.

Then Elmer Milchak leaned out of the waist window.

He turned back once, just long enough to speak.

“Powell—are you alright?”

“I’m okay,” Powell answered.

Milchak looked back toward Finney. “Powell’s okay.”

Those were his last words.

A single rifle shot cracked across the field. Milchak slumped forward, struck by a German sniper hidden in the nearby trees. He never made it to the ground.

For a moment, no one moved.

Gunfire snapped around them as German soldiers advanced, weapons raised. Powell—thinking quickly—grabbed a parachute and waved it in the air. The firing slowed. Then stopped.

Only then did the crew begin to take stock.

Names were called. Answered. Called again.

James Deaton did not answer. Neither did Bernard Knudson. Nor Ellis Morse.

They searched the wreckage, moving carefully, expecting fire, expecting the worst. But the bomb bay was empty. The nose was gone. There was no sign of them.

The truth came slowly, painfully.

Deaton had been standing in the bomb bay during the supply drop, waiting to pull the static lines back inside. When the aircraft was hit and began to shudder violently, he never made it back. Somewhere over enemy territory, in smoke and chaos, he had fallen from the open aircraft.