Christmas Eve 1944, and the airfield near the tiny Suffolk village of Lavenham shook with the noise of bombers from the 487th Bomb Group, part of the 8th US Army Air Force. The commanding officer, leading more than 2,000 aircraft from various airfields, was brigadier general Frederick Walker Castle, and today was to be his 30th and final mission. Over Allied-held territory in Belgium, Castle’s B-17 Flying Fortress developed engine trouble. Dropping back from the bomber stream so as not to slow it down, he refused to jettison his bomb load on the Allied troops below. He was a sitting duck.
After repeated fighter attacks, his plane on fire and in a tailspin, Castle ordered his crewmen to bail out. Castle stayed in the cockpit and kept the plane in the air to give them time to escape. He died at the controls when he crashed near Hods in Belgium. He was awarded the Medal of Honor, and his remains are interred at the Henri-Chapelle American Cemetery near Hombourg in Belgium. You can find him at Row 133, Plot D. Five crewmen survived as a result of his heroism. His is just one among many stories still remembered in this quiet English backwater.
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