William Penn Life, 2014 (49. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
2014-08-01 / 8. szám
The Saga of the White SiikfDress by Mária Aczél Schauer This photo of the Schauer family was taken a few years after WWII. Both Erzsi (far left) and Annushka (front row, third from left) are wearing silk dresses made from the parachute. Frank is in the back row, furthest to the right. Recently, in June to be exact, my husband Frank and I traveled to New Jersey for a family gathering at the home of his sister Annushka, her husband István and their children and grandchildren. That was on June 6th, when the nation celebrated D-Day. It jogged Frank's memory of an event that took place during the war in the spring of 1944. It is the story of a white silk dress made out of the parachute of an American soldier who had made an emergency jump over his village of Gyarmat. Frank and his dad, known as "Papa" to the family, were on the outskirts of the village planting oats, using their brand new shiny grain drill. All the while, they heard bombs exploding in the city of Győr, located about 20 miles north of the village. They saw smoke rising from various parts of the city and heard the fearful sound of the sirens. Suddenly, they heard a plane flying in their direction. Not knowing whether it was friend or foe, and well aware that shiny items attracted enemy fire, Papa and Frank quickly pushed the shiny grain drill under a tree, and the two of them hid in the nearby bushes. As the plane came into view, they saw it was engulfed in flames with parts falling off of it as it disintegrated. They figured the plane was among those bombing Győr and had been hit by German artillery. They counted six soldiers jumping out with their parachutes. The pilot skillfully maneuvered the plane over and past the homes of the village before it crashed in an open field close to Frank's house, killing the pilot and six other crew members, one of them a female soldier. As the plane burned, the sound of exploding ammunition was heard all over the village. Soon, the Hungarian military appeared, surrounded the smoldering plane and captured the parachute jumpers. The captured soldiers were turned over to the German military—remember, Hungary was an ally of Germany during WWII—and the deceased were laid out near the plane wreckage. The next day, Frank and his mother visited the crash site. They saw the bodies of the dead covered with blankets, who were buried the following day at the outskirts of the village cemetery. At a later date, after the war had ended, they were exhumed and taken back to their homeland, America. A few weeks later, a German tank convoy heading to Budapest to fight the Russians halted in front of Frank's house because one tank's engine had caught on fire. As the tank was loaded with ammunition and could possibly explode, Frank's family had to move to the underground bunker behind their house. It was a law that households had to have their own 16 0 August 2014 0 William Penn Life
