[Horace:] On the twenty fifth of May, nineteen eighty one, the Hundredth Bomb Group Memorial Air Museum located in the former control tower, which is er now completely renovated, was dedicated by Major Horace United States Air Force, retired. Er he er was the former Ground Executive Officer on the base from June nineteen forty three when the Hundredth Bomb Group started daylight operations against Nazi Germany until erm August nineteen forty five.
[speaker002:] Let us pray for all who ha who served on this airfield during the Second World War and the relatives of those who died. [praying] Oh Lord who to see that all the world, we thank thee for those who fought and those who laid down their lives in the cause of righteousness and freedom. Especially we remember those who served on this airfield and we pray that the peace they fought to obtain may not be lost to us, but as we may live and work to bring it to thy world, that Christ the Prince of Peace may reign in the affairs of men. We ask this in the name of him who lived and died for us even Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. Our Father, our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed to be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil for thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever, Amen. [] Our reading is from John, Chapter Fifteen. [reading] Jesus said I love you just as the Father loves me, remain in my love. If you obey my command you will o remain in my love in the same way that I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. This is my command, love one another just as I love you. The greatest love a man can have for his friends is to give his life for them and you are my friends, if you do what I command. I do not call you servants any longer because a servant does not know what his master is doing. Instead I call you friends because I have told you everything I heard from my Father. You did not choose me, I chose you and appointed you to go and bear much fruit, the kind of fruit that endures and the Father will give you whatever you ask of him in my name. This then is what I command you, love one another.
[Horace:] I'm Horace and I bring you greetings today from the Hundredth Bomb Group Association in the United States and particularly to the Hundredth Bomb Group Association in the United Kingdom with which many of you are associated. The two hour speech that I was going to make I, I cut down because of the weather so I think even though the sun is out, I'll continue with the abbreviated version of it. Er I, I do bring you greetings, not only from the Association, but from the many of us who served here during World War Two. Er I myself and many others were here for two and a half years and I submit to you that this is a considerable portion of one's adult lifetime and consequently, the experiences of the last three days have been very meaningful and very moving to those of us who did spend such a portion of our lives here in this place. Er as I think about all of us today, it seems to me that the, that that which endures is human relationships. The instruments of war, the machinery that was necessary to prosecute what I think was, if any war could be just, a truly just war, these implements and machines are tremendously important but they are passing, they are transitory. The things that endure and that matter, I am convinced, are the human relationships and I think as I represent the, the group here today I, I am joined by six other people with associations with the group. Bob and Florence and er John and Rose and Stan and Doreen and the three of them and I are, are just very happy to be here and together to represent the Hundredth Group and what remains of it in the United States. So I think today as we dedicate this magnificently restored control tower and memento to the Hundredth Group that we think about three groups of people. Those who served here and went back to continue to live and serve at home which we represent. Er those known to so many of us who gave their lives here from this base and finally er in honour of those who have done such a tremendous and magnificent job in the restoration of this nerve centre of, of the Hundredth Group and, and as we dedicate this plaque and this building today, we remember, before God and before one another, all of these people who have had a part in what we do here today. As I unveil this plaque to the glory of God and in memory of all those who served in the Hundredth Bomb Group in the cause of freedom from this airfield.
[speaker002:] [clapping] In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, we dedicate this memorial plaque to the glory of God and to the memory of the men of the Hundredth Bomb Group who served in the cause of freedom and through, from this airfield, may we pray. [praying] Now Lord we ask that the peace that you promise that passes our understanding will keep our hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of God and in its Son, your Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ and we ask for the blessing of you, of the Father upon us, as we continue to serve in your name. Amen []. I would just like to say a few, a few things to er especially to Rupert and Mr David er without their help and cooperation we would never have had such er, er nev would never have started this project erm we thank you very much. I'd also like to thank Colonel, Colonel for coming today from er Mildenhall in Lakenheath and also thanks to the Reverend for being here as well. Thank you very much. [clapping] I'm, I'm personally delighted to be here er it's almost er like er page out of the first chapter of er... I think the should be expressed to those of you here and any who are missing er for undertaking this magnificent project. There's nothing that we can say or do here to add the distinction, to add distinction er to what was done here forty years ago. Er certainly the, the people who worked and flew from this field er gather distinction, honour and glory unto themselves for their er.... But what you're doing here I think it is er, er an example of the partnership, a partnership that goes back for many years, certainly during World War Two and I think er it is still strong and er holds firm today the partnership between the United States and Great Britain. Once again, thank you for being invited and thank the people who have the foresight and er tremendous energy to undertake this project. Thank you. [clapping] I hope all of you know or have met this good friend of the Hundred I'm sure that most of you have and he has with him today a guest from Germany, Herr and his charming daughter er and Mr was a member of the and has provided invaluable information here, who as you know is doing a, a comprehensive book on the monster mission and in commemoration of what we have done today, we have a letter addressed to er the Hundredth Bomb Group Memorial Association U K, from the Most Reverend Doctor the Bishop of Munster which I would like to read to you. [reading] Dear ladies and gentlemen, on the occasion of the dedication of the museum and memorial to the fallen service men of the Second World War, both the German and the Allied Forces, here at the former control tower of the airbase in England, I send you my warmest and sincere greetings. All nations are scarred from the terrible aftermath of the Second World War. We cannot overcome the past by forgetting the discord and sorrow which war has brought, but by willingness to reconciliate we can ensure peace for the present. So it pleases me, on this day of the dedication, to represent the bond of friendship between our peoples. May the merciful God hold his hand over us so that we are guided in his way and seek for peace which he has prepared for us. With my sincerest blessings, yours Doctor The Bishop of Munster []. And a copy of this in the German language will be in the er museum. Thank you very much. [clapping] This is a continuation of the er story by er while we were at Thorpe Abbots, as usual, a lot of humorous things happened. I remember the time I came out of the engineering shack and walked over to the gas tank er trucks and, which was on, used by hardstand number two. Hardstand number two was so little that we couldn't get an airplane on there so we parked the gas trucks there. There was a small... young man there and he was really smiling and real happy. He wanted to show me his new washing machine. He'd acquired a gasoline kicker engine from somewhere with an exhaust that run and he had made during picked up from scraps and stuff and made it, so where he had a tub right on top of this gasoline engine. And he come up and he had some dirty coveralls in there and he was washing them. This was fine. The only thing wrong was he was washing them with a hundred octane gasoline, he had a gasoline engine firing exhaust underneath it and he was parked among all our gas trucks. Needless to say I got a little excited and told him to quietly shut the engine down and if he wanted to wash the coveralls tonight in gasoline to go about a hundred and fifty yards over there. But I never wanted to see that gasoline engine washer on this hardstand again with the gas trucks parked around it. Another incident happened up, up on hardstand number thirteen. This was Sergeant. Usually it was cold working on the aeroplane and in, so each tank had a little stove in it. There was no coke, so we got these old... two-piece army stones, army stoves and by putting a brick or two inside it, we had a five gallon bucketful of mixture of engine oil and hundred octane. Sometimes it was pure hundred octane with a gas line coming into the tent with a little valve on it. We don't, we turned the valve off, we take a bunch of newspapers and put it on top of the bricks, then we light the newspaper, then we go back and turn the valve on and let this hundred octane mixture of oil drip on the bricks and it would burn. Well after a while the bricks got hot enough that you could just adjust the valve to where the stove would get almost cherry red and it was a very nice fire. It was a good supply of used engine oil and hundred octane available, so we did it. Well it seemed like the morning of everybody was using it, they use them to cook. I know, I, that and I never said anything about it, but there was many a pheasant which got too close to a tent, wound up in the pot and was cooked by these fellas on these stoves. The same with the potatoes. Some of the local fellas would trade cigarettes to the local farmers for eggs to fry and a lot of other stuff. Well anyway getting back to on hardstand number thirteen, it seemed as if he was filling his, it ran out of supplies, so he was filling his supply tank and one of the flight crew of the airplane bumped into him so he spilled this mixture of gasoline and oil over the stove and naturally the tent caught on fire. Well it so happened that two of the aircrewmen were burnt enough, not real serious, but burned enough that they had to use the ground spare from another squadron, they couldn't go on the mission. Well within two hours after the mission took off there was an edict come down from group, no more stoves in the tents. Period. No, no ifs, ands or buts. Needless to say Sergeant was not in very good, held in any esteem at all by the remainder [LAUGHTER] of the crew chiefs []. In fact he was subject to a lot of dirty digs, cussings and anything else they could get [LAUGHTER] away with []. Er like I said about the, I named all the crew chiefs that were master sergeant at, from hardstand one to thirteen. We had at least seven other buck sergeants and maybe a staff sergeant crewing airplanes which had been returned to us two or three month after the deal and at times we had as high as twenty aircraft in the squadron, that according to the... er roster that you were only supposed to have twelve, but er nobody seemed to say anything about it and we didn't get any extra men, but there was... at least six or seven men doing the work of master sergeants getting paid for, getting buck sergeant and staff sergeant pay for which I'm very grateful. They did a, they did as good a job as the crew chiefs. In our squadron was a man I call an elderly because at the time he was about forty to forty five years old and we were all a bunch of kids. His name was. He was a real sharp, well-built man but he was a good painter. He was responsible for all the painting that was done on our aircraft and er he did a real good job on it. Somewhere they've got a, there's a picture of him and I've named him out of one of the photos I brought over. There was another man by the name of. He was a welder that used to help us make up er special tools and things to break down tyres with and the little four-wheeled trailer with it, B-Seventeen wheels on it that Billy has in was made by him. When we came overseas that metal trailer that we had had heavy wheels on it. As soon as you got that thing off of the runway or a hard surface, it sunk without any kind of a, in the English mud. Excuse the pun but that's what it was. It would sink and we'd have a hell of a time getting out. So I would, I and a couple of the fellas went to pull them to the aeroplane graveyard. We brought back four tail wheel struts complete with the tyres and axles and everything else on them and I got to weld this high-strength steel onto that carbon steel that was on the, the wheel and we wound up with a nice trailer with four B-Seventeen tail wheels on it. This could go across the mud and it easily. The main job of this trailer was to haul parts back and forth. On days when... wing inspection would come around and check our tech supplier for spare parts, we would load this trailer with all the illegal spare parts we weren't supposed to have, cos they, like the couple of it might call it for three starters and we had six, seven or eight. They called for so many generator, we had double of them. We'd leave just what the couple had called for. The excess starters, generators, regulators and anything else that we weren't supposed to have was put on this trailer, was tied neatly to the canvas, we put a man on the tractor and all day long he drove around the perimeter strip with it. When the inspectors left, we'd call him in and we'd put the stuff back in the shelf. We also stored a lot of stuff in Billy 's barn. That was too big to put on the, on er the thing. Tech Sergeant was a Supply Sergeant and he was responsible for getting us spark plugs and other spare parts. Well he was as good as they come, as far as I was concerned, because if it could be had, swiped, stolen, midnight requisition or just purely ordered from some place, when we needed it we got it. He was, he was really good about that. We lost one man from the ground crew during the whole time we were overseas. The fella's name was a Corporal and he was killed in a train wreck at Ipswich while he was going on leave going to London. But that was the only man from our ground crew that we lost. For a short time he was buried at Cambridge at the Military Cemetery, but since then I've checked and he has been sent, his body sent back home. And that's about