Melvin Rector passes

Lars sends us the news that Melvin Rector has passed on. He was one of the millions of Americans who spent their youth battling the evil in Europe in the early 1940s. Melvin was a radio operator and gunner with the 96th Bomb Group in 1945 on a B-17 Flying Fortress bomber, flying eight combat missions over Germany during the spring of the war’s final year. He had always regretted that he’d never returned to England after his war. However this year, he had an opportunity to go back with the National World War II Museum in New Orleans’ travel program and he took it.

On May 6, Rector stepped foot on British soil for the first time in 71 years. The group first visited RAF Uxbridge in the London borough of Hillingdon.

Rector toured Battle of Britain Bunker, an underground command center where fighter airplane operations were directed during D-Day. After climbing back into the sunlight, he told [his guardian, Susan Jowers that] he felt dizzy. She grabbed one of his arms, and a stranger grabbed the other.

There, just outside the bunker where Winston Churchill famously said, “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few,”

Rector died quietly.

“He walked out of that bunker like his tour was done,” Jowers said.

Apparently, his hosts, the British, were appreciative of his service in their defense;

Before repatriating his remains to the United States, a small service for the fallen hero was planned in Britain. It did not remain a small service.

“They just wanted something very simple. And when I found a little bit of background out about Melvin, there was no way we were going to just give him a very simple service,” Neil Sherry, the British funeral director in charge of Rector’s service, told ITV London News. “I wanted it to be as special as possible.”

Though Jowers expected no more than four people, word of Rector’s war record reached the American and British armed forces. The U.S. Embassy donated a flag to drape over his coffin, and the room filled with servicemen and women and London historians who had never met Rector but wanted to pay their respects to their spiritual brother in arms.

Active duty service members recognized Melvin’s sacrifice, having served their country in his shadow;

Speaking to the congregation, one U.S. serviceman said, “I do know of his sacrifice and his family’s sacrifice, so you do him and his family a great honor by being here today.”

Melvin’s final farewell is scheduled for June 9th in Barefoot Bay, Florida.