Sometimes the questions we asked our parents as a child do not get fully answered until many years after they are gone.

 

In the Foreword of my book Between the Fire and the Rain on page three I talked about the time my father told me how I got the middle name Lynn. He said that Lynn was a good friend of his who died during World War II when his plane went down in the English Channel. Later, when I told my mother what my father had said, that I was named after a war hero named Lynn, my mother said it was not true. Mom said she didn’t know of anyone named Lynn that I was named after. I did not pursue the matter with my father any further, and it never came up again. When sisters Billie Jean Sweeney and Jackie Palacio read that in my book, they were heartbroken, for it was their Uncle Lynn that I was named after.

 

My parents were married on November 6, 1943. Lynn Oliver died days later, on November 11, 1943. Apparently, my father never mentioned this to my mother, or if he did, she forgot about it. My father had been friends with the Oliver family in California for several years prior to my parents' marriage.

 

Lynn Monroe Oliver was born in Texas on June 2, 1921. On April 13, 1942 Lynn joined the Army Air Corps* in San Francisco and was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant. Lynn became a co-pilot on the B-17 and by some time in 1943 was assigned to England.

 

On the afternoon of November 11, 1943, after a bombing run over Munster, Germany, Lynn’s B-17, tail number 42-39855, was making its way back to England. The plane came under attack by a German Focke Wulf FW 190 fighter out of France. Lynn was hit by a round in the shoulder and had made his way back to the bomb bay doors, where he found fellow crewmember Milo King struggling with his parachute. Lynn dropped his own chute to help Milo then pushed Milo out of the plane. But before Lynn could put his chute back on, the plane went into a spin and crashed. Milo and six others survived and were taken prisoner by the Germans. Lynn, the pilot, and a bomb-aimer, who was also seated in the front of the aircraft, all perished. The plane crashed near Fijnaart, in the Netherlands, southeast of Rotterdam. Lynn is buried at the American cemetery at Margraten, Netherlands.

 

Ironically, I was stationed in the Netherlands for two years while I, myself, was in the Air Force, and I have been back several times to visit. Had I known about Lynn then, I most certainly would have made my way to Margraten to find his grave and pay my respects. I hope that in the next year or two I can make another trip to the Netherlands so I can complete the story of my connection to a war hero named Lynn Oliver.

 

*The United States Air Force became its own separate branch of the military on July 26, 1947. Prior to that the Army had multiple commands responsible for air warfare, including the Army Air Corps and the Army Air Forces. The two names were frequently used interchangeably, with a distinction that had little difference overall. Various sources on the internet mentioning Lynn Oliver had him serving in one or the other, with no clarity if Lynn was in the Air Corps command or Air Forces command.