26,000 flags grace garden of National Museum of Mighty Eighth Air Force
Row after row of small American flags waved in the breeze as a young girl walked along the sidewalk touching the top of each wooden flagpole she passed. Over the course of three days, a team of volunteers placed each of the 26,000 48-star flags throughout the garden at the National Museum of the Mighty Eighth Air Force. Each one of the flags honors an airman who was lost during WWII.
The sacrifice of war
Maj. John “Lucky” Luckadoo was one of three veterans from the 100th Bomb Group in attendance for the 3rd annual Flags for the Fallen event. “It is a humbling honor to walk among those flags and realize that each and every flag represents a face.”
The Eighth Air Force was founded on Jan. 28, 1942, in what is now the American Legion Post 135, 1108 Bull St. The Mighty Eighth was the largest air force of its kind with 48 bomber groups ― mostly flying B-17s ― and 21 fighter groups, each comprised of multiple squadrons. At its peak, nearly 200,000 officers and enlisted personnel served out of the U.S. Army Air Forces' headquarters in England. According to Donald Miller's seminal account of the the Mighty Eighth, by 1943, "an American bomber crewman stood only a one-in-five chance of surviving his tour of duty, twenty-five missions. The Eighth Air Force lost more men in the war than the U.S. Marine Corps."
Luckadoo was joined at the ceremony by fellow WWII veterans TSgt Gordon Fenwick and Lt. James Rasmussen as they placed the final three flags into the ground on Friday morning.
“In the war, we never have an opportunity to grieve our loses when they occur," Luckadoo said. "They are just simply gone… There are no memorials. There are no funerals. There’s simply empty bunks, and that’s rather sobering. You realize the fragility of lives that are sacrificed in war.”
Say their names
Following the opening ceremony, guests strolled through the garden pausing at monuments and snapping photos. As they moved throughout the garden, a deep voice reverberated softly across seven speakers, reading the names: "John O Whittaker, 100th Bomb Group, August 17, 1943." According to Project Manager Greg Kindred, it took 84 hours of audio to record the names, dates and bomb groups for all 26,000. “It personalizes each flag,” said Kindred. So, people understand that that’s the losses of one unit from one war.”
This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Memorial Day: 26,000 flags planted in honor of Mighty Eighth Air Force
