jamieooh
05-28-2012, 10:11 PM
http://www.buffalonews.com/incoming/article835540.ece/BINARY/w620/z_Memorial_Day_WWII_Vet_3.jpg
Long search leads to hero
American WWII pilot revered in French village had WNY roots and is buried in Forest Lawn
Updated: May 28, 2012, 10:23 AM
He died a hero, and an enigma.
When the American pilot at the controls of a P-47 fighter plane crashed to earth near a small French village in September 1944, the villagers who pulled him from the burning wreckage of his aircraft knew just one thing.
He had given his life — for them.
And so they buried him in a rural churchyard, beneath a cross and ribbon that bore the words "Our Liberator."
Across the ocean in Buffalo, Donald Arthur Wilhelm was mourned privately by those who knew him best, including his devasted parents and his only brother.
Over the next 68 years, he was largely forgotten by the rest of the world.
Now, all that is changing.
This spring, people from the little French village where Wilhelm died on the morning of Sept. 1, 1944, as a fighter-pilot of the World War II front in Europe are reaching out to Western New York.
These French citizens want to learn more about the young man whose death — a few weeks shy of his 25th birthday — they still consider a moment of bravery and sacrifice, nearly seven decades later.
Here in Buffalo, this quest has turned into a detective story of sorts, with local folks trying to sift through the clues left by history to answer a decades-old question:
Who was Don Wilhelm?
And does his death mean that this long-ago flier from Buffalo was actually an unknown hero of the war in Europe?
The answer to the second question seems to be yes. As for the first question, that's a bit trickier to uncover.
Here, at last, is Wilhelm's story — for Memorial Day, and for the first time.
***
Detective work to uncover the identity of Donald Wilhelm began in March.
That's when an email from Brussels arrived at the Erie County Sheriff's Office administrative headquarters in Buffalo.
The email was from Pierre Ruault, a Frenchman who had grown up in a place known as Is-en-Bassigny, a village in the Haute Marne area of northeastern France. Ruault now lives in Brussels, where he works as an engineer.
Ruault wrote that he was working to help his home village — population about 560, according to recent estimates — learn more about the American pilot who had crashed in the region in September 1944.
Ruault had a personal connection to the crash: His father, Jean Ruault, had been one of the villagers who had pulled the body of the pilot from the burning plane on that memorable morning.
The idea behind the request, Ruault stated, was to possibly honor the pilot — believed to be a Donald Wilhelm — for his actions, with a marker or memorial.
"Today, young people don't know this story," Ruault wrote, to The Buffalo News.
Ruault approached the Sheriff's Office because he wasn't sure where to turn for help. At the Erie County office, the email was turned over to the department's aviation expert, Kevin Caffery, captain of the Erie County Sheriff's Aviation Unit.
"All [the French] knew about Wilhelm was that he was now buried someplace in Erie County, New York," Caffery said. "They didn't know where his body was. They said, 'Maybe you can help, we have no other place to turn.'"
The villagers were right about the location of Wilhelm's body. Shortly after the war, Wilhelm's remains had been returned from France to his family in the United States.
In 1948, the pilot's body was buried in Buffalo.
***
But finding out where that grave was located, after 68 years, could have been a frustrating task.
In that pursuit, Caffery got lucky. His first phone call on the case was to Forest Lawn in Buffalo. "I knew they had a pretty good veterans section," the pilot said.
From the staff at Forest Lawn, Caffery learned that Wilhelm was, in fact, buried there — in a veterans section in the rolling, historic cemetery. Wilhelm's simple headstone reads: "World War II / Donald A. Wilhelm / A.A.F. / 1919 — 1944."
"I was thrilled when I found that out," said Caffery, who went to the grave site to take a photo of Wilhelm's marker. "We owe a lot to our veterans. This poor guy was killed protecting our freedoms. It struck a note with me — I thought, I have to help out somehow."
Caffery emailed Ruault to tell him he had located the gravestone of the long-ago pilot.
Then, Caffery did more. He began to research Wilhelm's family — to see what had happened to the rest of the Wilhelms after Donald died. "I like history," Caffery explained.
***
Looking up the Wilhelm name, Caffery found that a man named Robert Wilhelm still lived in Western New York.
Bob Wilhelm, as he is known, is now 90 years old. He has been married to his wife, Marian, for 62 years. The couple lives in Sanborn, on a sprawling 17-acre property replete with fruit and nut trees and a garden patch that Bob has cherished over the years.
Though much has changed over the years for the elms, as their children have grown up and grandchildren been born, their memories of Bob's only brother, Don, remain crystal clear.
Don, said Bob, was a character. A funny guy, outgoing, with a big personality.
"He was more outgoing than I was," Bob Wilhelm recalled. "He was just — normal. He wasn't a comedian, but he had a lot of friends.
In school, Don was "an average student," his younger brother remembered.
"He wasn't any brain," Bob said. "He was more interested in athletics than studying."
Don enjoyed many sports, but his real passion was hockey, Bob Wilhelm said. At Bennett High School, where both brothers studied, Don was on the school's hockey team.
And he liked to swim when the Wilhelm family — residents of the Parkside area of the city — went to a summer cottage at Crystal Beach. It was at Crystal Beach one summer that Don met a young woman whom he fell head over heels for, his brother recalled.
***
In the early 1940s, Don made a fateful decision. He decided to drop out of Bennett High School and follow the girl he admired to New York City, where she was working on the stage in a Broadway show.
Her name was Audrey. Later, Don painted that name, in looping letters, on the side of his P-47 Thunderbolt.
"She was in 'Panama Hattie,' that was a popular show then," Bob Wilhelm recalled. "He followed her down there."
Don didn't have a job when he left Buffalo, but when he got to Manhattan, he soon put his hometown skills to use.
Don became an ice skater on Broadway, using his hockey playing skills to pirouette and glide over theater stages in shows including "Stars on Ice." In one sketch, known as "The Three Rookies," Don and two other skaters wore Army garb and skated a silly routine to a military-themed number.
In New York, he even changed his name, temporarily.
"He went as 'Donald Arthur' on Broadway," said Bob Wilhelm. " 'Wilhelm' didn't fit — so he just took his middle name as his last name."
Life in New York was good, for a while.
But, soon after the war started, Don Wilhelm signed up to serve in the Army. Though he hadn't finished high school, be went through training and became a pilot in the Army Air Forces.
"He enjoyed it," his brother recalled.
Bob Wilhelm, too, joined the service. He was a cadet in the Army Air Forces while his brother was in England, flying missions over France.
As for the relationship between Don and Audrey, it didn't last.
***
On Don's fateful day, Sept. 1, 1944, he undertook a morning mission to check out the movements of Nazi-controlled trains and trucks in the French countryside.
The Wilhelm family later heard some bare details of the day.
"A pilot friend saw him killed," said Bob Wilhelm, sitting in an armchair in the wood-paneled den of his Sanborn home.
Bob recalled that his brother was on a strafing mission when he crashed his plane.
In Army Air Forces records kept about the incident, another pilot, Lt. Donald B. Slep, testified that Don Wilhelm was flying near him over the French countryside when the two pilots spotted a truck and moved in to strafe it. They flew low to the ground.
As Lt. Slep approached the truck to shoot at it, he saw the tail section of Wilhelm's plane hit the ground. Then the left wing hit.
Then Wilhelm's plane spun around, and the engine and tail section were ripped off, Lt. Slep stated.
There was little left of Wilhelm's plane, the Thunderbolt Audrey, which lay burning on the ground.
"We circled the wreckage," Lt. Slep stated in the report, "but saw no signs of life except some Frenchmen running to the wreckage."
Villagers pulled the pilot's body out and buried it in a simple churchyard grave, which they decorated with streamers reading "Our Liberator" — at great personal risk to themselves, the Wilhelms noted, given the Nazi presence in the region.
Back home, the effect on the Wilhelm family was deep and lasting.
"I was shocked," Bob Wilhelm said. "I had heard that as a sole surviving son, I would have been able to get out [of the service] — but I didn't want to. I stayed in."
His parents — as with so many others who went through losses — were never really the same.
"My father was awfully proud," Bob Wilhelm said, "and my mother was shocked. She just felt terrible."
***
The Wilhelm family was fortunate in one respect: They got Don's body back. He was returned to the family, and, after a simple ceremony in 1948, interred at Forest Lawn.
From that point to this one, said Bob and Marian Wilhelm, who married in 1950, the story of the long-gone brother they lost — the ice skater and funny character, the talented flier and proud American — has been largely forgotten by everyone but the Wilhelm family.
Now, with the efforts in Is-en-Bassigny to commemorate his sacrifice, that may change.
Bob Wilhelm said that he and Marian, at 90, will be unable to attend any ceremonies they may have in France for his brother, which would likely not happen until 2014.
But, he said, the family feels honored — and proud.
"Don would be amazed," said his brother. "He'd probably think it was funny, people making such a big fuss."
He sighed, and smiled.
"That's a lot of years ago," he said. "We're just glad we got him home."
cvogel@buffnews.com
http://www.buffalonews.com/incoming/article876318.ece
Long search leads to hero
American WWII pilot revered in French village had WNY roots and is buried in Forest Lawn
Updated: May 28, 2012, 10:23 AM
He died a hero, and an enigma.
When the American pilot at the controls of a P-47 fighter plane crashed to earth near a small French village in September 1944, the villagers who pulled him from the burning wreckage of his aircraft knew just one thing.
He had given his life — for them.
And so they buried him in a rural churchyard, beneath a cross and ribbon that bore the words "Our Liberator."
Across the ocean in Buffalo, Donald Arthur Wilhelm was mourned privately by those who knew him best, including his devasted parents and his only brother.
Over the next 68 years, he was largely forgotten by the rest of the world.
Now, all that is changing.
This spring, people from the little French village where Wilhelm died on the morning of Sept. 1, 1944, as a fighter-pilot of the World War II front in Europe are reaching out to Western New York.
These French citizens want to learn more about the young man whose death — a few weeks shy of his 25th birthday — they still consider a moment of bravery and sacrifice, nearly seven decades later.
Here in Buffalo, this quest has turned into a detective story of sorts, with local folks trying to sift through the clues left by history to answer a decades-old question:
Who was Don Wilhelm?
And does his death mean that this long-ago flier from Buffalo was actually an unknown hero of the war in Europe?
The answer to the second question seems to be yes. As for the first question, that's a bit trickier to uncover.
Here, at last, is Wilhelm's story — for Memorial Day, and for the first time.
***
Detective work to uncover the identity of Donald Wilhelm began in March.
That's when an email from Brussels arrived at the Erie County Sheriff's Office administrative headquarters in Buffalo.
The email was from Pierre Ruault, a Frenchman who had grown up in a place known as Is-en-Bassigny, a village in the Haute Marne area of northeastern France. Ruault now lives in Brussels, where he works as an engineer.
Ruault wrote that he was working to help his home village — population about 560, according to recent estimates — learn more about the American pilot who had crashed in the region in September 1944.
Ruault had a personal connection to the crash: His father, Jean Ruault, had been one of the villagers who had pulled the body of the pilot from the burning plane on that memorable morning.
The idea behind the request, Ruault stated, was to possibly honor the pilot — believed to be a Donald Wilhelm — for his actions, with a marker or memorial.
"Today, young people don't know this story," Ruault wrote, to The Buffalo News.
Ruault approached the Sheriff's Office because he wasn't sure where to turn for help. At the Erie County office, the email was turned over to the department's aviation expert, Kevin Caffery, captain of the Erie County Sheriff's Aviation Unit.
"All [the French] knew about Wilhelm was that he was now buried someplace in Erie County, New York," Caffery said. "They didn't know where his body was. They said, 'Maybe you can help, we have no other place to turn.'"
The villagers were right about the location of Wilhelm's body. Shortly after the war, Wilhelm's remains had been returned from France to his family in the United States.
In 1948, the pilot's body was buried in Buffalo.
***
But finding out where that grave was located, after 68 years, could have been a frustrating task.
In that pursuit, Caffery got lucky. His first phone call on the case was to Forest Lawn in Buffalo. "I knew they had a pretty good veterans section," the pilot said.
From the staff at Forest Lawn, Caffery learned that Wilhelm was, in fact, buried there — in a veterans section in the rolling, historic cemetery. Wilhelm's simple headstone reads: "World War II / Donald A. Wilhelm / A.A.F. / 1919 — 1944."
"I was thrilled when I found that out," said Caffery, who went to the grave site to take a photo of Wilhelm's marker. "We owe a lot to our veterans. This poor guy was killed protecting our freedoms. It struck a note with me — I thought, I have to help out somehow."
Caffery emailed Ruault to tell him he had located the gravestone of the long-ago pilot.
Then, Caffery did more. He began to research Wilhelm's family — to see what had happened to the rest of the Wilhelms after Donald died. "I like history," Caffery explained.
***
Looking up the Wilhelm name, Caffery found that a man named Robert Wilhelm still lived in Western New York.
Bob Wilhelm, as he is known, is now 90 years old. He has been married to his wife, Marian, for 62 years. The couple lives in Sanborn, on a sprawling 17-acre property replete with fruit and nut trees and a garden patch that Bob has cherished over the years.
Though much has changed over the years for the elms, as their children have grown up and grandchildren been born, their memories of Bob's only brother, Don, remain crystal clear.
Don, said Bob, was a character. A funny guy, outgoing, with a big personality.
"He was more outgoing than I was," Bob Wilhelm recalled. "He was just — normal. He wasn't a comedian, but he had a lot of friends.
In school, Don was "an average student," his younger brother remembered.
"He wasn't any brain," Bob said. "He was more interested in athletics than studying."
Don enjoyed many sports, but his real passion was hockey, Bob Wilhelm said. At Bennett High School, where both brothers studied, Don was on the school's hockey team.
And he liked to swim when the Wilhelm family — residents of the Parkside area of the city — went to a summer cottage at Crystal Beach. It was at Crystal Beach one summer that Don met a young woman whom he fell head over heels for, his brother recalled.
***
In the early 1940s, Don made a fateful decision. He decided to drop out of Bennett High School and follow the girl he admired to New York City, where she was working on the stage in a Broadway show.
Her name was Audrey. Later, Don painted that name, in looping letters, on the side of his P-47 Thunderbolt.
"She was in 'Panama Hattie,' that was a popular show then," Bob Wilhelm recalled. "He followed her down there."
Don didn't have a job when he left Buffalo, but when he got to Manhattan, he soon put his hometown skills to use.
Don became an ice skater on Broadway, using his hockey playing skills to pirouette and glide over theater stages in shows including "Stars on Ice." In one sketch, known as "The Three Rookies," Don and two other skaters wore Army garb and skated a silly routine to a military-themed number.
In New York, he even changed his name, temporarily.
"He went as 'Donald Arthur' on Broadway," said Bob Wilhelm. " 'Wilhelm' didn't fit — so he just took his middle name as his last name."
Life in New York was good, for a while.
But, soon after the war started, Don Wilhelm signed up to serve in the Army. Though he hadn't finished high school, be went through training and became a pilot in the Army Air Forces.
"He enjoyed it," his brother recalled.
Bob Wilhelm, too, joined the service. He was a cadet in the Army Air Forces while his brother was in England, flying missions over France.
As for the relationship between Don and Audrey, it didn't last.
***
On Don's fateful day, Sept. 1, 1944, he undertook a morning mission to check out the movements of Nazi-controlled trains and trucks in the French countryside.
The Wilhelm family later heard some bare details of the day.
"A pilot friend saw him killed," said Bob Wilhelm, sitting in an armchair in the wood-paneled den of his Sanborn home.
Bob recalled that his brother was on a strafing mission when he crashed his plane.
In Army Air Forces records kept about the incident, another pilot, Lt. Donald B. Slep, testified that Don Wilhelm was flying near him over the French countryside when the two pilots spotted a truck and moved in to strafe it. They flew low to the ground.
As Lt. Slep approached the truck to shoot at it, he saw the tail section of Wilhelm's plane hit the ground. Then the left wing hit.
Then Wilhelm's plane spun around, and the engine and tail section were ripped off, Lt. Slep stated.
There was little left of Wilhelm's plane, the Thunderbolt Audrey, which lay burning on the ground.
"We circled the wreckage," Lt. Slep stated in the report, "but saw no signs of life except some Frenchmen running to the wreckage."
Villagers pulled the pilot's body out and buried it in a simple churchyard grave, which they decorated with streamers reading "Our Liberator" — at great personal risk to themselves, the Wilhelms noted, given the Nazi presence in the region.
Back home, the effect on the Wilhelm family was deep and lasting.
"I was shocked," Bob Wilhelm said. "I had heard that as a sole surviving son, I would have been able to get out [of the service] — but I didn't want to. I stayed in."
His parents — as with so many others who went through losses — were never really the same.
"My father was awfully proud," Bob Wilhelm said, "and my mother was shocked. She just felt terrible."
***
The Wilhelm family was fortunate in one respect: They got Don's body back. He was returned to the family, and, after a simple ceremony in 1948, interred at Forest Lawn.
From that point to this one, said Bob and Marian Wilhelm, who married in 1950, the story of the long-gone brother they lost — the ice skater and funny character, the talented flier and proud American — has been largely forgotten by everyone but the Wilhelm family.
Now, with the efforts in Is-en-Bassigny to commemorate his sacrifice, that may change.
Bob Wilhelm said that he and Marian, at 90, will be unable to attend any ceremonies they may have in France for his brother, which would likely not happen until 2014.
But, he said, the family feels honored — and proud.
"Don would be amazed," said his brother. "He'd probably think it was funny, people making such a big fuss."
He sighed, and smiled.
"That's a lot of years ago," he said. "We're just glad we got him home."
cvogel@buffnews.com
http://www.buffalonews.com/incoming/article876318.ece