After finishing his studies, Kenneth Kingsland was employed as an assembler at the Pratt & Whitney United Aircraft Corporation's engine factory in East Hartford, Connecticut. Married to Dorothy, he decided to volunteer like younger men and enlisted in the Air Corps. After training, he was sent overseas as a member of the 491st Bomber Group / 854th Bomber Squadron.

An Engineer / Top Turret gunner, he was crushed under the weight of the Top Turret that had come loose on impact when his Liberator B-24 # 42-51195 "Belle Ringer" crash-landed in a field near Florée, Belgium on 14 March 1945.

Ken Kingsland's body protected, and saved the life of, Navigator F/O Seymour Eisenstat lying wounded under him inside the fuselage of the plane. One of the first to arrive on the spot was Doctor Camille Bothy, who was visiting patients in Florée. He gave first aid to all the wounded, injecting morphine to calm the pain.

According to Marcel Lamy, who was 17 at the time of the crash, a crew member ran to the house of his parents nearby to ask for a pillow to put under Kingsland’s head. USAAF member Roland Harper, a Sergent in the 5SAD (5th Strategic Air Depot) salvage unit crew that was living nearby and who had been working on the débris of a B-17 shot down a few days before in the area, came on the site and reported that he saw a crew member whose head was gently resting in the lap of a young unidentified Belgian woman. It was the body of Ken Kingsland who had been taken out of the crashed airplane and had just died of his wounds, the sole casualty. His eight other comrades, safe and rather dazed, some of them wounded, were quickly driven to a small hospital in the nearby village of Florée.

At the initiative of Raphaël Marchal, whose family adopted Kenneth’s grave in Belgium, a plaque in honor of Sgt Kingsland and the crew of the “Belle Ringer” was inaugurated on the wall of a chapel (the Chapelle de la Salette) on private land near the crash location in Florée on 12 March 2016. From the start, the local authorities had lent their support to the project and the owner of the land on which the chapel stands, Count Joseph van der Stegen, had immediately agreed when asked for permission.

Marcel Dauwen, a member of the APPEL association in Assesse, who had taken all the official contacts, organized the ceremony with other volunteers. Among those, Frédéric Hermant cared for putting up panels and glass cases for an adjoining 3-day exhibition about the plane, its crew and the sad fate of Sgt Kenneth Kingsland. With more than 200 people attending, speeches were made explaining the events of 71 years before almost to the day.

The plaque was unveiled by Mr Dauwen and Ms Pamela Kemp, niece of Sgt Kingsland, who had made the trip from the United States with her husband Randy. Wreaths were laid by Mr Pierre Tasiaux, Burgomaster of Assesse (an entity of seven villages, including Florée); Colonel Scott Shepard, USAF, Air Attaché, representing the United States Embassy in Brussels; Mr Michael S. Yasenchak, Superintendent of the Ardennes American Cemetery in Neuville-en-Condroz, near Liège, Belgium (where Sgt Kingsland is buried) and Mr Raphael Dyckmans, a member of the Dutch association Stichting Verenigde Adoptanten Amerikaanse Oorlogsgraven which oversees the adoptions of the graves of US war dead in the Netherlands and in Belgium, together with the Belgian association “Le Briscard” and the American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC).

A band played both the American and the Belgian national anthems. A group of local schoolchildren recited a poem they had composed with the help of their teacher in honor of "the fallen angel". After the ceremony proper, many local people exchanged their recollections, some of watching the plane coming slowly down before it crashed, others telling they had later come to the crash scene, many evoking stories about the locals scavenging parts of the plane, recuperating pieces of parachutes, etc.

Marcel Lamy attended the ceremony as well as Jean-Marie Bothy, who was 7 at the time, the son of the doctor who administered to the wounded. A lady, Ms Vause, aged 12 in 1945, told how she too had seen the crashed Liberator and proudly showed a medallion made from parts of the B-24’s Plexiglass cockpit.

A reception was offered by the municipality at the Salle Magimpré in Florée, a few hundred meters away from the crash location. In a friendly atmosphere, people visited the exhibition and could enjoy a short music show by a trio of women in vintage uniforms who performed excellent renditions of popular wartime songs. Photos of the ceremony are included in the series of pictures on this page.

Service

Events

Event	Location	Date
Born	Middletown, Middlesex County, Connecticut, United States	29 May 1917
the son of Harold C. and Lucy (Koch) Kingsland
Lived in	Glastonbury, Hartford County, Connecticut, United States	1942
Enlisted		1944
in the Air Corps
Killed In Action	Florée, Belgium	14 March 1945
Severely wounded in the crash-landing of B-24 #42-51195 "Belle Ringer", he died shortly afterwards in the field where the Liberator ended its course.
Buried
Kenneth Kingsland rests at the Ardennes Cemetery, Plot B, Row 34, Grave 4.