Eighty years ago today, on April 1, 1944, yet another wave of American B-24 bombers took off from a British airbase in the east of England, bound for the continent. Their target was Ludwigshafen, a city of chemical plants in the German Rhineland that produced lots of oil and explosives for the Nazi war effort.
This was just a routine part of World War II. What made this mission something other than routine was a secondary mission that one of those B-24s had on the return flight. For this flight, a photographer was on board, because the plane known as “Jackass Male” was assigned to fly over Siracourt, France, a small village of interest because it was home to the main German missile site for the dreaded V1 “vengeance weapons” that were raining down on London and elsewhere.
The Allies had spotted the Siracourt missile almost as soon as construction had begun in 1943, and responded with a ferocious bombing campaign — by acre, it’s said to be the most intensely bombed part of Europe in the whole war — but the Germans repeatedly repaired the damage. This side mission for Jackass Male was to assess the current status of the Siracourt V1 missile facility, just months before the long-awaited D-Day campaign to land an Allied army in France.
With the addition of the photographer, there were 11 men on the plane that day, including two from Virginia. The pilot was William Knowles of Georgia, the co-pilot was Randolph Peale of Roanoke and the flight engineer was George Agee Jr. of Patrick County.
As the plane flew over Siracourt, Germans spotted it and opened fire. Jackass Male took two direct hits and was done for. Navigator Clemens Gramling Jr. of Ohio and bombardier Jack Slaughter of Louisiana were killed right away, according to military after-action reports. Peale, the co-pilot from Roanoke, was also hit. With the aircraft burning and spiraling downwards, Agee, the flight engineer from Patrick County, began handing out parachutes. It’s unclear how many men were actually able to evacuate the plane before it crashed. We do know that only three survived: Agee, Knowles and waist gunner Victor Byrd of Mississippi.
Byrd was rescued by a member of the French Resistance and hidden until the British army arrived in Siracourt that September. Agee and Knowles were not so lucky, although Agee was lucky to some extent. His parachute was on fire, and it wasn’t properly attached — it had just one strap over one shoulder.
Seeing the burning parachute, German soldiers opened fire with machine guns. Those bullets missed Agee, but some tore through his parachute. He landed in a tree — injuring his ankle in a way that never healed — and was promptly apprehended by a Hitler Youth Patrol. A post-war military interview with Agee reported: “He believes the only reason that they didn’t kill him was because he landed in a group of French workers.”
Agee was loaded into a truck and eventually driven off to a prisoner of war camp, where he was finally liberated by American forces in the spring of 1945 as they rolled into Germany. By June 17, 1945, he was back home in Patrick County — and got married on that date at the Stuart Baptist Church. The honeymoon did not last long; he was soon sent to Florida to train for the invasion of Japan that never came.
Afterward, he wound up in Roanoke as an accountant. Like many World War II veterans, he rarely spoke about his wartime service. He retired in 1986 and died in 2001.
This story does not end there, though, because memories of the war are long on both sides of the Atlantic.
Agee’s son is Steve Agee, whose name you might recognize as that of a former state legislator from Salem, a former Virginia Supreme Court justice and now a federal judge on the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, just one level below the U.S. Supreme Court.
Like many children of World War II veterans, he began researching his father’s military service. Unlike others, his digging led to an unusual result.
In 2022, Agee and his wife, Nancy (CEO of Carilion Clinic), toured Siracourt, a town of 277 people, to see some of the wartime sites. While there, they met the town’s mayor, Andre Genelle, who told them of a project he was promoting to do more to recognize the town’s World War II history. The Agees’ visit merited coverage in the local newspaper, including two photos. Steve Agee and the French mayor stayed in touch, with the mayor sending periodic updates on his history project and an invitation for Agee to attend the dedication ceremony in March 2023.
The nature and extent of the mayor’s project did not become clear until just before the Agees left for their return visit. The mayor sent pictures of three monuments, already standing in front of the village church. “I realized then what the commemoration would be and it exceeded all expectations,” Agee wrote in a memoir of the event.
What followed was an outpouring of French pride to dedicate the monuments — one to the local members of the French Resistance who died during the war, one to the local citizens for their sacrifices during the war, and one to the multiple Allied air crews who perished in the region, with particular attention called to the Jackass Male crew.
The mayor wanted Agee to help lay the wreath in front of that monument — stelè, in French — and also deliver some remarks. (It helps that Agee speaks French.) This was all part of an elaborate ceremony that involved a formal procession to the monument site, a marching band playing a military cadence, people in military uniform and various local officials wearing their formal sashes of office.
So, yes, today in a small town in France there’s a monument that mentions the names of two World War II service members from Roanoke and Patrick County.
We, as Americans, often suffer from only having short-term memories. That is not a problem that afflicts much of the world. You can argue that some places might be better off if they could forget a few things and move on, but in the case of France, this is a country that has not forgotten the role that Americans played in rescuing the country during World War II. The presence at the ceremony of the son of a World War II aviator who crashed in the area was a special moment for the town, said Paul Mello, a French guide who specializes in wartime sites in that part of the country. “Their presence is important for the community,” Mello said. “The people were very grateful to Mr. Agee for that opportunity. I think the majority of the population was there, plus relatives, which is normal because all those areas were affected by the war — the people always participate and the memory is still there.”
Eighty years on is a long time for any one of us but not particularly long in the course of human history. Mello suggests that French memory of America’s role in World War II is in no danger of fading. “I think it will be welcomed forever.”
