S.B. Dale Jr. of Columbia gave his life for the cause of freedom during World War II, and the people of the tiny village in France where the Army pilot died have never forgotten.
Residents of Le Mesnil-Fuguet shared their memories and hospitality with two of his nieces during a ceremony last year where they unveiled a plaque in Dale’s honor. A Madame Cozigou attended his funeral in 1944 and insisted upon going to the ceremony 74 years later, despite advanced age and ill health.
A Madame Portier recalled, at 12, seeing Dale’s body lying in the floor of the town hall after villagers accepted it from the Germans and later gave him a proper burial. It left an imprint on her mind that has never faded.
They were some of the many French people who expressed their thanks to Barbara Broome of Baton Rouge, La., and Margaret Chance of Forest during their visit last year. The two sisters, who are Columbia natives, visited France on behalf of their family. They are nieces of S.B. Dale Jr., a 25-year-old decorated Army Air Corps pilot who died on July 4, 1944, after his plane was shot down by Nazi forces.
Chance presented a slideshow Tuesday to the Columbia Rotary Club sharing the history.
Dale had left Columbia High School to join the Civilian Conservation Corps in Reno, Nevada. When World War II broke out, he signed up. Dale was a daring pilot, based on military records. In his P-47 Thunderbolt, he once flew 10 feet above the ground at 475 mph chasing a German fighter.
During his final mission, he was shot down by a German fighter pilot, who wrote an account of what happened, and his body fell in a field while the plane flew about a mile and a quarter further before crashing in another field.
Two French men were working in the field baling hay while the firefight took place above them and saw the crash. They waited about an hour for the Germans to come declare the pilot dead, take his effects and then turn his body over to the French.
Chance said they were kind and compassionate French men, one of whom was the village’s mayor, who took Dale’s body to the town hall. They requested a coffin to be made, paid for it and brought his body on a hitched cart to a little Catholic church where they held a funeral mass. They then buried him in the church cemetery (the body was later moved and in 1956 found its final resting place in the Normandy American Cemetery near Omaha Beach).
Chance said her grandparents and mother did not know much of that history. All they were told is that he was originally declared missing in action in July 1944, and then it was September before they got the telegram saying he had actually died.
“They had honored him for 74 years as their very own hero there, and we never knew any of that,” Chance said.
That changed last year. A French policeman and amateur historian, Loic Lemarchand, emailed Broome, which eventually led to their visit to France. The village’s mayor, Michel Dulondel, invited them to come for a bronze plaque unveiling at the town hall.
“They told us if we would come that they would transport us back and forth from the airport in Paris to their little village. They would put us up in their homes there. They would feed us, and they would tour us around the Normandy area and they would take us to the cemetery where S.B. was buried,” Chance said. “So it was just a deal we really could not refuse.”
Keltoum Rowland, an honorary consul of France who teaches French at the University of Southern Mississippi, accompanied them on the trip, serving as their translator. About 100 people attended the ceremony, despite a cold, misty November day, and cheered the unveiling.
They later visited the Normandy American Cemetery, where 9,387 U.S. soldiers are buried underneath white crosses.
“It’s a very moving place. It’s very hushed, very quiet,” Chance said. “We realized that our story was just a drop in the bucket. It was our story and important to us, but when we looked out there, there were 10,000 other stories of sacrifice equally as important as ours.”
Pictured Above: Barbara Broome, left, and Margaret Chance, right, on Tuesday present a copy of a book about their uncle, World War II fighter pilot S.B. Dale Jr., to Mona Swayze, branch manager of the library in Columbia. It will go into the library’s genealogy room. The two sisters, who grew up in Columbia and whose maiden name is Rochinski, spoke to the Columbia Rotary Club earlier that day. | Photo by Charlie Smith
