25 June 1944, in the aftermath of D-Day, is special to Wincanton. Old Faithful, an damaged American B17 aircraft, was limping back towards the airfield at Stourhead, following a sortie over Toulouse, France. She didn’t make it: she came down at Snag Farm, just south of our town: all the crew were killed.
Since 1954 an annual memorial has taken place to remember these young lives, so close to safety, so far from home. This year, 80 years after the event, a child of that time, Jill Carswell, gives us her recollections of an event that brought the war so much closer to everyone here.
