PARIS: A smashed-up veteran of several major World War II battles, including the D-Day landings, could finally find salvation this week if Bosnian authorities at long last sign the necessary release papers.
The veteran in question is a rare Douglas C-47 plane with a remarkable life story, that risks rotting away in Bosnia unless a group of French enthusiasts can rescue it before Dec 1.
“This plane is like a hero for me. She has had an astonishing history and deserves respect. She must not be left to die,” said Beatrice Guillaume, who runs a D-Day museum in Merville, Normandy and wants to restore the plane.
A team of volunteers has been on stand-by for weeks to crate up the plane and truck it out of Bosnia, where it was machine-gunned on an airfield near Sarajevo in 1994 during the Yugoslav civil war to prevent it from ever flying again.
However, a mix of blunders, bureaucracy and pure bad luck have stopped the Bosnian presidency from signing the release order and Guillaume says if they don’t do it as promised on Nov 14, they will miss their final window of opportunity.
Ironically, given its history, the Douglas C-47 will need the help of German troops stationed at the Bosnian airfield to be loaded onto the waiting trucks. Their mission finishes on Dec 1, and they won’t be coming back.
“If the memorandum of understanding is not signed now, it is finished. This is our last chance. We have tried to do everything we can. We are just waiting now,” said Guillaume.
D-DAY SYMBOL
Guillaume and her friends began hunting for a Douglas C-47 years ago, seeing the sturdy transport plane as a potent symbol of the 1944 D-Day landings, when hundreds of thousands of allied troops poured into Normandy to liberate France from the Nazis.
A French soldier heard of her search and told her he had spotted one such plane while serving as a peacekeeper in Bosnia in the 1990s.
A plane enthusiast, he had negotiated a one hour ceasefire to see the plane up close and in safety.
A check of its registration numbers revealed that it had taken part in the Normandy landings, as well as the disastrous Arnhem ‘Market Garden’ operation, the siege of Bastogne and the last parachute drop of the war in Europe in March 1945.
It was seriously damaged by enemy fire on June 6, 1944, the start of D-Day, again at Arnhem and later, on Dec 27, 1944, when its main tyres were shot off, the wings shredded and holes punched in the propeller blades.
Each time it was repaired and put back in the skies. After the war, it was sold to Czech Airlines, then to the French Air Force and finally in 1972 to Yugoslavia.
After tracking its history, Guillaume’s team began hunting down its crews, finding just two survivors in the United States, plus many relatives of the airmen, including Sally Harper, the daughter of the D-Day pilot, Lieutenant James Harper.
“I was shocked when they contacted me. I had no idea what my dad did. He rarely talked about his war experiences,” Sally Harper said from her home in northern California.
Her father died in 2005, but she said it was important for the plane to be brought to France and refurbished.
“It’s insane to think such a unique plane might not be rescued because of missing paper work. Saving it would be an amazing tribute to my father and to all the GIs who were there.”
—Reuters
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