Chester "Chick" Mark Durham was the fourth surviving son of cotton share croppers, Cornelious Jordan Durham and Anita Melvina (Stephens) Durham. He was a talented wood worker and musician. He loved to laugh, kick up his heels, and have a good time. In the early 1930s, after the boll weevil devastated southern cotton crops and the cotton market bottomed out, Chick moved with his extended family to the agriculturally rich San Joaquin Valley of California. There, the family and their extended kin found work in local Kern County agriculture. Chick aspired however to greater things. He soon moved to Los Angeles and began a new chapter in his life as a tool and dye man in an aircraft factory. He met, settled down, and married Betty, mother of his only child, Sharon. This marriage unfortunately ended in divorce.



He enlisted in the US Army Air Corps on 16 Sep 1942. He received basic and flight training at Luke Field near Glendale, AZ, where he soon met his future bride. He married for the second time in August 1943, while he was stationed at Lincoln Army Air Corps Base, Lincoln, NE. After his duty in Lincoln ended, he was assigned to Avon Park, FL, at the Bombing Test run. Then,he joined the 379th Heavy Bombardment Squadron at Hunter Army Airfield, Savannah, GA, before his deployment overseas to Kimbolton, England, in July 1944.



Between 29 July and 29 November 1944, Chick flew thirty-three successful missions over Europe "doing every crew job they had on these buckets," the B-17Gs, as he reported in a letter to his brother back home. On 30 November 1944, he flew with 1st Lt Gilbert J Schlesinger's crew as a replacement Nose Gunner. Because B-17G crew members were required in the fall of 1945 to fly thirty-five missions before stateside leave or reassignment to a duty station back home, this mission was Chick's 'next to the last' before going home.



On this mission, the B-17G, #446140 'Miss Lace' encountered heavy flak over the target, the Brabag Synthetic Oil Plant located just northeast of Zeitz, Germany. After one near explosion of flak, the plane lost its right wing and entered a vertical spiral while ablaze. It broke into two sections: the tail/waist section, which landed near Threna, Germany, and the nose section, which crashed into District 7 of the Oberholz Forest near Großpösna, Germany. About two minutes after the nose hit the forest, an explosion, most probably from 'hung' ordinance blew the nose section high into the bows of the pine trees.



German citizens recovered partial and complete human remains and military identification tags for Chick and other crew members seated in the nose section of the plane at the forest crash site. The citizens of Großpösna placed five sets of remains in individual coffins, which were buried in their town cemetery. The US Army exhumed these sets of remains in late June 1945. Remains for Chester M Durham were not identified from the remains recovered at that time. His death was confirmed solely with the German recovery of his military identification tag. The US Government has retained that ID tag as a part of Box 303, "Captured Enemy Documents," KU-3401, the National Archives, College Park Maryland. The current status of Chick's remains continue to be listed as "unrecoverable."



Killed in Action -- 30 Nov 1944