“We felt this beckoning ... this calling to go,” said Herzog, who was born 11 years after the crash but grew up hearing hushed tales of it.
He recalls as a child modeling clay and drawing pictures of the crash after being told of it by his father, Jim, who could not bring himself to look at the drawings.
Not until he was a freshman in high school did Herzog learn more details.
He called the days leading up to the dedication “very emotional” and said the family took as a confirmation they should attend the seeming coincidence that his sister Catherine in Michigan had booked herself on the same flight to Nebraska that he had.
In addition to the Oct. 25, 1943, midair crash that killed their uncle and 16 others, the markers memorialized airmen lost in the May 10, 1944, collision of a BT-13B Valiant and a P47-D Thunderbolt; and the Sept. 8, 1944 crash of a Flying Fortress and a Thunderbolt.
Attended by Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman, the daylong event was supported by the Milligan American Legion post and organized by the Milligan Memorial Committee, seven village residents who in the past year finished the project after a challenge from Jerry Penry, author of “The Fatal Nebraska Air Crashes of World War II.”
“He did such a good job” in urging them forward in a library presentation, said committee member Dorothy Novak, “Naive us, we said, ‘We can do that.’ ”
The project cost $15,000. For details, visit www.milli- ganne.org/WWIICrashes.
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