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Omaha Steve

(99,060 posts)
Sun Jun 15, 2014, 05:19 AM Jun 2014

Sons make pilgrimage to WWII airfield (466TH BOMBARDMENT GROUP)


http://www.omaha.com/news/metro/sons-make-pilgrimage-to-wwii-airfield/article_d9fa3c8e-6a35-54a1-8ce1-85d3e32f170c.html




Harold K. “Ken” Jordon, second from right, with fellow service members, from left, Paul E. Kauffman, Herman B. Young, Vincent E. Palmer and John Belanger. Jordon was part of a crew that flew 30 missions between October 1944 and April 1945 out of Attlebridge, England.


By Steve Jordon / World-Herald staff writer
See also: When the Americans were there
* * *
ATTLEBRIDGE, England — A steady wind blew down Runway 27 into the faces of Ken Jordon’s three sons, as it did 70 years ago to help lift the B-24s he flew into the sky toward the European continent.

The concrete has cracked and worn since our father came here in 1944, but you can see the whole 2,000 yards stretching into the distance. Turkey sheds line a section of the runway, awaiting this year’s crop of Christmas birds. Giant wind turbines grind away in the grassy areas between the paved air strips.

Bernard Mathews Farms’ poultry operation uses the former control tower as an office, with the third-floor glass observation deck removed. The headquarters building, where our father learned the names of the German cities he would bomb, is home to a chemical company.

“I was here when they were here,” said Peter Woodcock, a 10-year-old at the time our father, Harold K. “Ken” Jordon, was a 21-year-old co-pilot with Capt. John C. Welch’s crew during World War II.
Now 80, Woodcock tells of the servicemen who befriended him. He didn’t meet any of the flight crews, who took off early in the morning and were hungry and exhausted when they returned and who left after only a few months — if they survived.

FULL story and more at link.

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