Fred was born in St Louis, MO and served in the WW2 after graduating from the University of Missouri. His plane was shot down on August 13, 1944 and he landed by the side of a pond in Fontnay, France. He sustained a broken back, serious leg, and terrible ankle injuries when he landed. German soldiers were there immediately to instruct the local farmers to put him into a horse drawn cart to take him away. Ultimately, when the allies moved into the area, the Germans abandoned him in the middle of a street in the course of a tank battle according to what Fred later told his plane's pilot. He was permanently disabled from his ankle injuries but went on to work for a pharmaceutical company, sell cars, and retired from teaching school for many years.



Everyone in the crew survived despite the fact that three were captured by the Germans and suffered great hardships for the remainder of the war. Six of the men experienced harrowing adventures while evading capture by the Germans but were helped and rescued by a number of wonderful and brave French people in the area.



The entire crew of the "Holiday Inn" held a reunion in St. Louis, Missouri about 15 year later and kept in touch by varying degrees for the rest of their lives.



In 1994, Claude Goupil, from the community of Mannevillette near the crash site wrote a small book about the shoot down of the plane and and its aftermath to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the event. He told me that it was something that everyone in the area had talked about for years and as his retirement project he took on the task of getting all of the information together so that when the people who shared the actual experience of the day were gone, it would not be forgotten. A local newspaper heard about his project and helped him by funding an investigator to tack down any surviving members of the crew. Only three were still alive. Dr. Jerry Rock, the pilot, was contacted and supplied Claude with a lot of information and visited the area for the 50th anniversary of the war. Dr. Rock was given an extremely warm welcome and celebration by the community.