On a Quest to find Tales from The Grave

Hey there. I am on a little fact finding adventure and its getting kind of interesting!

Last week I headed over to the cemetery to take pictures of Hank Williams grave/memorial . I was thinking about making Hank the "H" for my Montgomery Daily Photo ABC's of Montgomery Blog.

Anyway-so I get over there and notice to the right of Hank's Memorial, are two neat, long rows of headstones all the same size and style. They have the cutest flowers all perfectly manicured in front of them. I'm wondering if these are new grave markers, because I have never seen them before. I walk over to take a closer look and see that they are marking the graves of young men who were members of the French Air Force. And most of them died on 13th of November 1941.

Now I'm really interested. What happened to cause the death of all these French men on the same date, or shortly thereafter? And why are they buried in Montgomery, AL, so far from their homes? So far from their parents , who left messages to their brave sons, engraved on headstones.

I walk down a little further and there , the names start to look a little different, and I notice that these are graves of members of the Royal Air Force. With almost all the dates of death showing as the 13th of November, 1941.

I really need to find out the story of these people and why they are buried here!

I headed back to my computer and started doing a search, but could not come up with anything. I looked up information on the cemetery and found out that the main part is maintained by the city of Montgomery, but the annex, where these graves are located, is privately owned a department of the State of Alabama. I decided to go ahead and e-mail the contact person shown for the main part of the cemetery to see if he could point me in the right direction.

This morning I got an e-mail from him giving me the name , address, and phone number of a gentleman, whom he said could help me with this information. This man has a French sounding name. And he lives close by Montgomery.

I was feeling a little hesitant about calling someone I don't know, but certainly want to find out the information. Not long after I received my contact information, a customer walked in, who I know lives on the same road as this man with the French sounding accent. I asked the customer if he knew of this man and he did! They live across the street from each other!!

I was able to find out that this man was about 80 years old. He is from France and was a navigator on bomber planes that flew missions over Germany during WWII. He came to the U.S. to teach Navigation at Craig Air Force Base in Selma, AL.

So, now I all I have to do is get up the nerve to make the phone call!