Amazing story......
94 year old WWII B-17 gunner revisits England where he dies while touring at the Battle of Britain Bunker......
U.S. Air Force Master Sgt. Melvin Rector long carried England in his heart after he helped defend it during World War II, but 70 years passed without him stepping foot back in the country.... finally decided to leave his home in Fla., to visit Britain earlier this month. ....."He planned it for like the last six months," Rector's stepdaughter stated... "He couldn't wait to go."
On May 6, Rector stepped foot on British soil for the first time in 71 years. ......... Rector toured 'Battle of Britain Bunker', an underground command center where fighter airplane operations were directed during D-Day. .....After climbing back into the sunlight, he told Jowers he felt dizzy. ....She grabbed one of his arms, and a stranger grabbed the other.
....There, just outside the bunker where Winston Churchill famously said,.. "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few," ......Rector died quietly......."He couldn't have asked for a better way to go," she stated "It was quick and painless."
"He walked out of that bunker like his tour was done," ...Mission accomplished!
Before repatriating his remains to the United States, a small service for the fallen hero was planned in Britain. It did not remain a small
service............................word of Rector's war record reached the American and British Armed Forces. The American Embassy donated a
flag to drape over his coffin, and the room filled with servicemen and women and London historians who had never met Rector but
wanted to pay their respects to their spiritual brother in arms.
Rector's five other children, will have the opportunity to pay their respects on June 9 at First Baptist Church of Barefoot Bay. Rector's
remains were repatriated to the U.S. on Tuesday.
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One of the aircraft on which he served as a gunner was the Memphis Belle, the first heavy bomber to complete its tour by flying 25 missions with its crew intact.
It went on to have a post-war career raising morale and money for the U.S. Army. Writes historian John Buescher of the warplane:
"After both crew and plane completed their respective 25th mission, the crew received the Air Medal with three Oak Leaf Clusters and the Distinguished Flying Cross. They were then ordered in June to fly the Memphis Belle back to the United States for a cross-country tour, the aim of which was to increase morale back home and to sell War Bonds. . . . When the Memphis Belle completed its tour (the first heavy bomber to do so), it was a joyful event, not only for the crew, but also for the entire air command and the American public."
The B-17 Flying Fortress garnered such attention that not one but two films were made about it: a documentary in 1944 and an eponymously titled drama in 1990, starring John Lithgow, Matthew Modine and Harry Connick, Jr.
