Post by Jaga on Oct 5, 2007 17:30:15 GMT -7
Frankly, I would almost swear that somebody posted this message before but I just do not see it:
afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iAqabEJbYC6BuvPMKHrN43Ea9yvA
WARSAW (AFP) — Seven Canadian and British airmen who died when their bomber was shot down by the Nazis during World War II were honoured Thursday at a ceremony in southern Poland.
During a service attended by relatives, Canadian and British diplomats and military representatives, as well as Polish officials, the flyers' six-decade-old graves were re-dedicated at the Rakowicki cemetery in the city of Krakow, Poland's PAP news agency reported.
The crew, who were stationed in Brindisi in Italy, died on August 5, 1944, when their Halifax bomber was shot down near the village of Dabrowa Tarnowska, east of Krakow, during a raid on Nazi-occupied Poland.
At the time, the Allies were stepping up attacks on German forces in an effort to support an unsuccesful two-month uprising launched by Polish resistance fighters in Warsaw on August 1.
The men's bodies were recovered by villagers and buried in secret in a single plot, before being exhumed three years after the war and reburied at the Rakowicki cemetery.
Thursday's ceremony was organised because Polish researchers discovered what they believed were additional remains of the crew when they excavated the crash site last year.
DNA tests on living relatives recently enabled the remains to be identified, opening the way for their burial in the men's existing graves.
Five of the seven men were Canadian: pilot Arnold Blynn, 26, radio operator Harold Brown, 20, navigator George Chapman, 24, gunner Arthur Liddell, 31, and bombardier Charles Wylie, 20.
The two British crewmen were gunner Kenneth Ashmore, whose age is not listed in the cemetery records, and 21-year-old flight engineer Frederick Wenham.
The men lie alongside 476 other Allied troops in a section of the Rakowicki cemetery tended by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, a British-based organisation which looks after sites around the world.
afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iAqabEJbYC6BuvPMKHrN43Ea9yvA
WARSAW (AFP) — Seven Canadian and British airmen who died when their bomber was shot down by the Nazis during World War II were honoured Thursday at a ceremony in southern Poland.
During a service attended by relatives, Canadian and British diplomats and military representatives, as well as Polish officials, the flyers' six-decade-old graves were re-dedicated at the Rakowicki cemetery in the city of Krakow, Poland's PAP news agency reported.
The crew, who were stationed in Brindisi in Italy, died on August 5, 1944, when their Halifax bomber was shot down near the village of Dabrowa Tarnowska, east of Krakow, during a raid on Nazi-occupied Poland.
At the time, the Allies were stepping up attacks on German forces in an effort to support an unsuccesful two-month uprising launched by Polish resistance fighters in Warsaw on August 1.
The men's bodies were recovered by villagers and buried in secret in a single plot, before being exhumed three years after the war and reburied at the Rakowicki cemetery.
Thursday's ceremony was organised because Polish researchers discovered what they believed were additional remains of the crew when they excavated the crash site last year.
DNA tests on living relatives recently enabled the remains to be identified, opening the way for their burial in the men's existing graves.
Five of the seven men were Canadian: pilot Arnold Blynn, 26, radio operator Harold Brown, 20, navigator George Chapman, 24, gunner Arthur Liddell, 31, and bombardier Charles Wylie, 20.
The two British crewmen were gunner Kenneth Ashmore, whose age is not listed in the cemetery records, and 21-year-old flight engineer Frederick Wenham.
The men lie alongside 476 other Allied troops in a section of the Rakowicki cemetery tended by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, a British-based organisation which looks after sites around the world.