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Murder and the seeds of love
by Margaret Duggan
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A MOVING ceremony recently took place in St Peter’s, Llanbedr, in Bangor diocese, when a plaque was unveiled by the Lutheran pastor of Huchenfeld, Herr Pfarrer Jorg Geisler, in memory of five British airmen who were murdered in the German village of Huchenfeld in March 1945. Eight crew had baled out of a Flying Fortress bomber, and five were captured in Huchenfeld. They were murdered by a mob of youths in revenge for the bombing of Pforzheim, where 17,000 Germans had been killed. |
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| The pilot, Flt. Lt. John Wynne (above, right, with Herr Geisler), managed to get the badly damaged aircraft back to Britain, but did not know what had happened to his crew. The murdered airmen (who had taken no part in the Pforzheim bombing) had been buried by the French, and the atrocity had been hidden by the people of Huchenfeld until a retired pastor, a former German Army officer, came to the village and determined — against opposition — to put up a plaque to them. At its dedication, one of the murderers sobbed a confession, and the widow of one of the crew publicly forgave him. When John Wynne DFC, by this time a hill farmer back in his village of Llanbedr, heard about it, he commissioned a wooden rocking-horse to be made for the kindergarten in Huchenfeld in 1994, and since then schoolchildren from the two villages have been exchanging visits each year. Now has come the final act of reconciliation. Herr Geisler unveiled the memorial plaque in Llanbedr church in the presence of the Mayor of Huchenfeld and members of both communities. Both plaques bear the words: “Father forgive”. |
