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On the east side of the highway just north of Laurel stands a monument to the 17 airmen who were killed when two B-17 bombers collided and crashed to the earth in August 1944. This was not the only crash in Nebraska. All told there were 56 crashes in Nebraska during World War II. The most deadly crash occurred in August, 1944 in Boyd County when 28 men were killed.
The first crash in this area — and the second in the State of Nebraska — occurred on the morning of Sunday, Oct. 4, 1942. The crash occurred about four miles southeast of Wayne.
The plane, a four-engine B-24 “Liberator” bomber, was on a routine training flight out of the Sioux City air base when all four of the engines failed. It was reported that one of the engines went out when the plane was flying over Wayne and the other three went out soon after. Five members of the nineman crew were able to parachute to safety.
When the engines went out, the landing gear also failed. The pilot and three other crew members rode the plane down to a rough belly landing. The pilot and copilot suffered minor injuries. Another crew member was seriously injured and two others in the lower part of the plane were killed. Nearby farmers used axes to try to free the two men trapped in the lower fusilage. One was found dead; the other died soon after being pulled from the wreckage.
‘’The bomber crash near Wayne did more to wake up the people to the fact that there is a war going on than all the newspaper publicity in the world,” said the Advocate. “When you actually see men lose their lives in the service you know what war really means. They have made the supreme sacrifice as surely as though they had been shot down by an enemy.”
This would not be the last tragedy. The big war planes were new and not well tested and the crews were young and inexperienced. One of the two men who died was 23 years old; the other was 26. Another bomber would crash near Wayne in October 1943 killing all six crew members.
And seventeen would die when the two B-17s collided north of Laurel in August 1944. These will be discussed in later articles.
The American public was outraged when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, but few seemed to care when American bombers began dropping high explosives on the capital cities of Croatia, Hungary, Rumania and Bulgaria. Although these Balkan countries were nominally allied with Nazi Germany, none had so much as lit off a firecracker in the United States.
At 12:50 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 9 Laurel’s fire whistle blew. This was the signal to close the businesses and turn the kids loose from school. At 1 p.m., more than 30 trucks, automobiles with trailers, horse drawn carts, and other vehicles headed out of town to hit up the farmers for any pieces of scrap metal overlooked in previous scavenger hunts. Meanwhile, the ladies of the Legion Auxiliary headed for the auditorium to prepare food for the workers when they returned with their loads.
Bill Voss hitched his old white horse to the feed sled from the sale barn and helped gather junk from around town. He was assisted by kids with pony carts and toy wagons. Mark Senor celebrated his 72nd birthday by gathering scrap. Only one casualty marred the afternoon.
Sixteen-year-old Gene Sohler suffered a brain concussion and dislocated shoulder when he fell off of a truck.
When the hunt ended at 5.p.m. an additional 72 tons of scrap had been added to the pile in Mittelstadt’s Lumber Yard. The total now stood at more than 350 tons. “If Adolf Hitler had been in Laurel last Friday he would have died of fright and the war would have been over because he would have witnessed what American teamwork can do,” said the Advocate.
It was all worth it. After all we were fighting for “Truth, Justice, and the American Way.” Wait a minute. I think that was Superman — the so-called Man of Steel.
Anyway, all three would take a hit before the war was over.
By October the American Way was being severely curtailed. “Gas rationing is here. Fuel oil rationing is here. Coffee and meat are now being rationed. If we won’t save our tires on our own accord, we will be made to do it. Small businesses are going out of business. Grocerystores are out of coffee, and a meat shortage is expected,” said the Advocate.
‘’Our way of life is going to be entirely different from now on. We will never live long enough to see a return to the life we have known in the past. No matter how much money we make we are not going to be able to spend it for what we want. The government is going to take it away in taxes, bonds, stamps and other ways. We are going to have enough to live on but we are not going to have the things to which we are accustomed.” Truer words were never written.
