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PERIERS June 24, 2017-Dedication of the P-47 memorial to 1st Lts Bert Espy and Ben KitchensChristian LevaufreElected officials,Mister the superintendent of the US Normandy cemetery,Dear US families, dear US soldiers, dear members of the association and dear friends,Ladies and gentlemen,Good afternoon,Thank you for your attendance. Your presence by itself is enough to testify of the interest that you have for this time of our history and of the strength of the tribute that you wish to pay to those who were the heroes sometimes, but most of the time the casualties only.Close your eyes for a few moments, picture yourself in that same place where we stand today 73 years ago to the day exactly. The center of Périers, over there behind you, is nothing anymore but a field of ruins. The two bombings of June 8 and June 13th have put down centuries of history.The nave of the church has collapsed, only the steeple still stands, by a miracle despite all the efforts of the US artillery.As every day, since the landing of June 6, the sky has been filled with hundreds of planes. A humming sound that rises in the sky and high up can be seen the white trails of condensation of the heavy bombers on their way to somewhere for a mission of destruction. And then from time to time can be heard the furious sound of the engines of the fighters looking for a possible prey. Any movement on the roads is unlikely to escape their permanent ballet.The P-47 Thunderbolt, the biggest of the fighters, the P-51 Mustang with its slender fuselage and ventral air intake, the P-38 Lightning so recognizable with its double fin, as well as the English aircraft, they all are on the alert as soon as the weather enables them to fly, ready to melt on their prey at any troop movement of the Germans, but sometimes also at any movement of French civilians, unfortunately. Doctor Cornier, one of the 2 doctors of Périers will be one of the first to pay for his life. Friend or foe, the young pilots do not always make the difference. If the German planes have almost left the sky, they are afraid of being shot down by light weaponry during their flights in low altitude.This Saturday June 24 is like the other days, people have fled Périers after the 2 bombings that have already killed more than one hundred of its inhabitants. Some, have taken a shelter in the surrounding farms expecting with fear the return of better days, others have left further to the south as far as Brittany or Mayenne.After wandering for a while without knowing too much where to head for, my grandparents and their 4 children, Henri (my father) and my uncles Georges, Michel and Eric have ended with others in a close farm named “La Huche”. The stables and the attics are filled of refugees who endeavour to settle under difficult conditions of promiscuity and lack of food.In the early afternoon of that day, a huge noise raises everyone’s eyes to the sky. Two aircraft have probably just collided. The tail part of one of them, fallen into the garden behind the farm, quickly gives the proof.But I should better ask my father to give his own testimony…Henri LevaufreFollowing the two bombings of Périers on June 8 and 13 that leveled the city, including our family house, since June 18, our family in exodus has shared the straw of the cattle sheds with the almost one hundred refugees who pile up in the farm of “La Huche”. For many of you, the word “Exodus” can evoke far away combats and refugees, but here, in June and July 44 it was our daily life under the bombs and the shrapnel. We were four children and the youngest was three months old. Fortunately our parents were strong.We are on Saturday, June 24, 1944, it is practically 13:30, German official local time. (2 hours in advance to the Universal time - solar hour) (Some documents claim that British Double Summer Time founded in May 1941 corresponded to the German hour in France I thus adapted my translations consequently.) The weather is nice, the sky is almost blue and the many American fighters, because of the lack of enemy planes to put under their tooth, play hunting between them, while waiting for a possible prey. We, the kids, are particularly attentive to their amazing operations. For a few days we have even seen those that we immediately named the “double tails (P38). The quick Spitfires that shave the roofs and the summit of the trees and the Mustangs with the square ends of wings are familiar with us but, of course, we named them differently.The most numerous and the most feared, because omnipresent and quarrelsome, is the enormous P47.We have just swallowed the meal cooked by my mother and are sitting at the long table of the great kitchen of the farm when an enormous deflagration thunders over the top of the house. We rush outside and immediately a very strong smell of gasoline takes us to the throat. The suddenly anxious refugees are in the court and question themselves. It is not a bomb it is certain; we are used to the characteristic noise of its deflagration. We run behind the house and there, about thirty meters from us, lies the impressive empennage of one of the two fighters. For us it is an imposing mass of shining aluminum, an almost intact piece of the tail of a fighter plane fitted with its tail wheel. While all move and talk around the wreck, my brother Georges and me leave discreetly in search of the main part of the plane. We will run through fields, guiding us on the noise of the intermittent explosions in the direction of le Béthelin and there, right in front of us shines a tailless aircraft, lying flat in the center of the way, slowly burning, without any big flame. The bullets of the 8 machine-guns which explode make us keep careful. The campy is open, I look in the cockpit but the pilot is not there anymore. My brother and I decide to wait until that the man, undoubtedly hidden behind a tree or the hedge, will show himself when seeing that we only are children. But nothing moves. I decide to climb up the hedge and give a look before jumping. The pilot is there at my feet, lying on his back, his flying suit is half-opened and papers are scattered on the ground. I go down. His shoes are gone.Today I don’t have the memory of his face anymore; from the papers on the ground we will learn his name and first name that we will never forget. The following day they will be registered on the modest cross that the families Cousin and Desrez will pose on his temporary grave that the Germans will allow them to dig on the spot.Of all this war, Ben Kitchens will be the only American that we will have seen dead. We would have the rest of our life to clear up this accident… This accident was only one episode in the two terrible months of combat which deeply marked the family, Périers and all Normandy and, during years I was going to seek for all the available information about the two pilots, theirs planes, their combat, their life and their death, their families. In July 1966 I will spend my vacation at trying to locate the spot of the crash of Bert Espy’s P-47 that only a few people who were refugees at the close farm of La Bouvière had witnessed in 1944.They also were the ones who had collected the rare remains of the other pilot, Bert Espy, and had buried them by indicating only on the cross the date of the accident, because of the lack of his possible immediate identification.After the collision, Bert Espy’s plane had fallen in dive and was inserted several meters in the ground.In 1966, 22 years after the accident, nothing indicated any more that a plane was there only a few feet under the grass, the ground seemed as intact as the rest of the field; Mother Nature had lived again. Helped most of the time by my oldest son Christian then 12 years old, we manually dug through the entanglement of crumpled aluminum sheets. The first shovels and again the so penetrating smell of the very high octane gas that filled the excavation me had brought back to me the enthusiasm of my 14 years.On August 3rd, 1966, after days of work, our joined together but sorry small family group had to make the decision of stopping to dig the large hole, deep by two meters. My wife Janète wrote a message which she slipped into a bottle of lemonade thrown at the bottom of the hole… and that was found well later again and, for a time we forgot Bert Espy and his plane. At the beginning of 1983, I was then a city councilor, the town of Périers was going to have to increase the size of the garbage dump on a ground where precisely Bert Espy’s plane was buried and that I refused to let stay hidden under the rubble.On Saturday, June 4, 1983, we were on the spot, Claude Ducrey with the shovel of the city, André Vincent, Rene Desrez and me. I had prevented the direction of the American cemetery of Colleville. The grass was high and wet. At the first stroke of the bucket could be heard the squealing of the metal sheets and the odor of the gas became obvious.I know that for a few it was only the extraction of some scrap, but for us it was a moving moment. I knew that the dust of the pilot Bert Espy was still there somewhere among the twisted sheets.The first identifiable piece taken out of the mud was the armor-plate of the back of the pilot seat that you can see up there. The excavation was now deep of more than three meters, at the very bottom a large but formless mass drowned in an oily mud could let guess the shape of the engine. Treated, safeguarded by the company Lenormand, it is now splendid. At almost 4 meters of depth, the last extracted piece was the speed-reduction gear of the propeller which you also have up there.In the evening, we had with regret to embank 40 m3 of ground and mud back into the excavation. It was necessary for me also to fight so that the wreck recovered and cleaned by the firemen does not go back to the garbage. So we took care of it and have watched over it for 33 years.Then came years of research, facilitated at the beginning by faithful experts, Pierre Cornette, Rémy Chuinard then Michel Rainfroy, then the exploration of the Air Force Archives in Alabama, the search for the two families, the meeting with the photographer Hugh Anderson who had returned on the spot as soon as Périers was released and the unforgettable meeting at Longview in 1991 with Bert’s sister Elwyn, Lin Thurmond’s mother who is here today.With our memorial of the Four Braves, this monument, in spite of the years and of the indifference of those who have a short memory, will mark for a long time, I hope, the sacrifice of our liberators. Take good care of it.All this had begun on Saturday, June 24, 1944. 73 years ago today.Christian Levaufre As said Ben Kitchens will be buried next to where he was found by members of the families Cousin and Desrez. He was a young promising pilot who, for a few weeks had carried an ace of spade on his flying jacket for shooting down a German Messerschmitt 109 on previous May 19th.The other aircraft fell less than one kilometer away, almost to the road to Monsurvent. It fell in a dive and was driven several meters under the ground. The remains of the pilot, Bert Espy Jr, were buried by the same family in the garden of their farm, not far away from the spot of the crash.Both belonged to the 404th Fighter Group, 508th Fighter SquadronIt was an accident. During a patrolling mission, when flying almost above the city of Périers, back to their base of Winkton in the south of England, , two of the 4 aircraft in the formation requested their flight leader permission for a strafing pass on German vehicles spotted on the road.But when resourcing to rejoin their place in the formation, the propeller of Espy’s aircraft will get into the tail part of Kitchens’ one.Their wingmen will claim that no parachute was seen. Leo Moon, their squadron leader, will come onto the spot with a French interpreter as soon as the zone is liberated.In spite of a secret hope that they might have survived, he has to go to the evidence, his two pilots are dead and he will send a letter to both families.Being an orphan, Ben Kitchens was reburied later in the US Brittany cemetery of Saint-James, Bert Espy will be brought back to the States and reburied in the family cemetery of Longview, Texas.Both gave up their youth and their life for a country that they were unaware of, so that we can with full freedom speak today about them and about any other subject.It was right to want to pay tribute to them.Thank You for having helped us to.Before continuing the ceremony with a common tribute, we will unveil the memorial. Because of its consequent size, we will unveil only one part of it? (See the possible techniques and covers).Before proceeding to the wreath laying, we will first listen to the following speeches: - That of Major Jason Jarecke, officer of the US Air Force representing the US embassy in Paris Mister Mayor,Elected officials,Dear veterans, dear US families,Ladies and Gentlemen,On behalf of the United States ambassador to France and the Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force, is a great honor and a privilege to be here today to honor the memory of 1st Lts Benjamin Kitchens and Bert Espy Jr. who sacrificed their lives for our two countries. I would like to express my deep appreciation and admiration to all of you who have spent much time and much effort to build this memorial and to preserve their memory with this ceremony. The sacrifices made by these men illustrate the boundless friendship between France and the United States. In the past, our countries have fought together many times to defend freedom and democracy. When we hear the names of La Fayette, Pershing, De Gaulle, Patton and Rochambeau we recall our common values and sacrifices. Today, we add Kitchens and Espy to that long list. And today our two free nations stand side by side in the name of peace and democracy. I am humbled in being here today, to pay tribute to these heroic men. I hope that their sacrifices and your presence here today reinforce our bonds of partnership and our mutual resolve to defend the freedoms we hold so close to our hearts. Let us never forget the sacrifices of those heroes, both French and American, who have further intertwined our histories and added light to the path of our inseparable destinies. Vive la France and God Bless the United States of America!- That of Lin Nancy Thurmond, Bert Espy‘s niece (English + translation)Périers-June 24, 2017- Speech Lin ThurmondI am here today because of the efforts of two determined men.My heartfelt thanks to Christian Levaufre and his good friend, Russell Lemmon who orchestrated an intense search for any remaining family of Bert Espy, Jr. I also owe a great deal of gratitude to Christian’s father, Henri, who began the search for the families of the two pilots, 1st lieutenant Ben Kitchens and my uncle, 1st Lieutenant Bert Espy Jr both fallen 73 years ago today.Growing up, I remember, very acutely, the grief that my mother experienced over the death of Bert Jr, her only and beloved brother. It was with great sadness that she would tell the story of the very early loss of their mother. Thus, my mother and Bert became as close as any two siblings could be. She was so proud of Bert when he chose to become a pilot and join the war to fight for freedom and justice. She was equally terrified that she could lose him too.I was born in 1950 and can remember, even in those young years, the perpetual sadness that prevailed when my mother would talk about Bert. She understood the war and she understood that my uncle Bert died in combat but she could never understand why no one could find his plane and no one could tell her exactly where he crashed. It was this unknown that made the grief even more unbearable. And then sometime in the seventies, she received a phone call that would change her life. It was from Henri Levaufre calling to inform her that he and his son Christian, went looking for the location of the wreck of Uncle Bert’s plane and had found it. She was overjoyed at the news and even more excited that the Levaufre’s were planning a visit to Texas to meet her. Now, my mother’s healing process could begin.I can only imagine her joy at knowing that the engine from Uncle Bert’s aircraft is at the heart of this new memorial dedicated to the memory of these two pilots and the role aviation played in liberating the area during the summer of 1944. I am deeply honored to be standing on this ground as a representative of the Espy and Blackmon families and more proudly in honor of my uncle Bert. I will be eternally grateful to the Historical Association and the city of Périers for making this incredible moment in time possible.- That of Susan Cooper, Ben Kitchens’ cousin (English + translation)Christian LevaufreWe now will proceed to the wreath laying.It will be followed by one minute of silence then by the performance of the national anthems that you are all invited to sing along.For reasons of obstruction wreathes will be laid one after the other. To the call of your name please proceed to the laying of your wreath, then move back by a few steps and wait for the next laying. Wreath Laying:- City of Périers: Marc Fédini, Alain Barré, Guy Parey- The Departmental Council: Dominique Larsonneur Morel, Gabriel Daube, Stephane Travert?- US Embassy: Major Jason Jarecke, Lin Thurmond, Susan Cooper?- Normandy 44: Pierrot Sauvage, Bernard Legrandois, Henri Levaufre- To the dead (Taps)- National Anthems: Star Spangled Banner, the MarseillaiseThe dedication of this new memorial is the result of a long story that has started as soon as 1967 with the search for the spot of the crash of Bert Espy’s aircraft. I was 12 years old and half, I was with him like my brothers and sister.But without this first act we would not be all together here today. He is the one who deserves our first thanks.In 1983, the engine was taken out of the ground with among others the help of Claude Ducrey present today here. Stored during more than 30 years, our association made, 3 years ago, the decision to transform it into a memorial.But this long and difficult transformation would not have been possible without the support of the city of Périers (Thank you Gabriel Daube, Marc Fedini, Alain Barré and Guy Parey) and of its engineering teams (Thank you Raphael Sevaux, Jean Pierre Lord, Olivier Heuzé and Pierrick Pouillé), without the good will of some friends, devoted members of association “Normandy 44-90th US Infantry Division” (Thank you Pierrot Sauvage and Bernard Le Grandois), without the talent, the patience and the comprehension of a team of the Lenormand Properties (Thank you Hubert Lenormand, Sebastien Hélaine, Lo?c Alfred, Ga?l Laisney, Gilbert Louis, Anicet Beausire and Anthony Marie) and without the extraordinary cleaning of the engine made by Metal Protect (Thank you Eric Hays) and also without the daily support of my wife Evelyne. I just wanted to thank them publicly. Thank you also to the local authorities who have taken part into our ceremony and thank you especially to the musicians of the band who performed so well.Lastly, before closing this ceremony and direct us all together towards the drinks offered by the city of Périers I will ask you to applaud at length the family members of Ben Kitchens and Bert Espy.CL 06/19/2017 ................
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