For the 80th anniversary of the downing of Allied planes in 1944, a special ceremony took place to commemorate May 8, 1945.
The celebration of the victory of May 8, 1945 over Nazi Germany will have a special flavor in Bayard-sur-Marne. The year 2024 marks 80 years since the Liberation of the country and the events that preceded it to achieve it. This will be the case in the three municipalities of Gourzon, Prez-sur-Marne and Laneuville-à-Bayard which today form Bayard-sur-Marne. More precisely, it will be a question of commemorating the fall of Allied planes in the three communes. A monument in front of the fire station remembers these tragic events.
“Some were rescued by residents”
The town of Chevillon is also associated with the ceremony. Indeed, on July 12, 1944, taking off around 9:20 p.m. from Kirmington in England, for a mission to bomb the railway installations at Revigny-sur-Ornain (Meuse), a Royal Air Force Lancaster was shot down by a fighter. German night watch on July 13, 1944. The scenario was repeated three days later.
It was the History and Heritage association which had the idea of this commemoration. It had already celebrated fifty years, in 1994, with the arrival of the three sisters of an English pilot, Ernest Hatch, shot down aboard his Lancaster on April 27, 1944 above Bayard.
A special day
Some 112 allied airmen died in Haute-Marne between 1942-1944. “Some were rescued by locals,” indicates Marie-Claire Gaspard, president of History and Heritage. And to cite the case of the English aviator Roy Bradley who after being collected and treated was arrested in Chaumont. He was made an honorary citizen by the commune of Bayard-sur-Marne. So we pulled out all the stops for this 80e birthday.
It all started in Gourzon at 9 a.m. then Chevillon at 10 a.m., Prez-sur-Marne at 11 a.m. and Laneuville-à-Bayard at 11:30 a.m. The soldiers’ graves will be decorated with flowers in the presence of Jean Sally Mc Culley-Hatch, one of the sisters of a downed pilot. An exhibition will also be visible on May 8 and 9. “A piece of plane was preserved”, announces the volunteer. The children from the Bayard-sur-Marne daycare made and painted pebbles which were placed on the graves of the aviators buried in the three cemeteries of Chevillon, Prez-sur-Marne and Laneuville in Bayard as well as on the stele.
To discover A fairly comprehensive site (aerosteles.net/departement-fr-52) lists the places and names of the aviators who fell in Haute-Marne during the Second World War.
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