France honors ‘lost and found’ US WWII fighter pilot FEATURE 08/24/2010

France honors ‘lost and found’ US WWII fighter pilot

FEATURE 08/24/2010 TOULOUSE — When US World War II fighter pilot Roy Simmons received France’s Legion d’Honneur on Sunday it marked the culmination of one man’s quest to resurrect a chapter of forgotten history. Lt. Colonel Simmons, 87, returned for the first time to Larzac, in the south of France, 66 years to the day since a Nazi column shot down his wingman’s Mustang and killed 23 French resistance fighters in a train raid. France commemorates the dead fighters and two American pilots, including the late Richard Francis Hoy, every year but Simmons had no idea of the honour until he was contacted by US Vietnam veteran Donald Bohler in 2009. A phone call from Bohler shortly before Christmas came “out of the blue.” “He says: were you flying in southern France on the 22nd day of August 1944. And I said: ‘yes,’ because the fact that I lost my wing man there and he got killed is stuck in my mind.” Colonel Bohler, who is married to a Frenchwoman and lives between the southern French city of Montpellier and Florida, attended the commemoration at La Pezade in 2006 and saw the dead American’s name on the memorial. His interest piqued, Bohler began to search the web and the local newspaper archive for details of previous commemorations. “I looked at the pictures and wondered why I did not see any American faces, it’s fairly easy to spot them,” Bohler told AFP.... MORE Source:  The Daily Tribune URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20100824com7.html

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