ESCANABA — A WWII Lieutenant from Delta County was honored in France last month.

Second Lt. Allen Osterberg, a former Delta County resident, specifically of Rock, was honored with a memorial dedication for him and his crew in Épagne-Épagnette, France.

Osterberg was a bombardier in a B-17 crew during WWII. On June 22, 1944, his plane was shot down over Abbeville, France by an 88 MM Flak — an anti-aircraft and anti-tank artillery gun.   

The nine-member crew operated the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress was known as “Spare Charlie.” Spare Charlie belonged to the 534th Bomber Squadron of the 381st American Bomber Group, a group from the U.S. Army Air Forces (USAAF). The group was based out of the Ridgewell Airfield in the United Kingdom.

On the 80th anniversary of the crash, Osterberg and the rest of his nine-member crew were honored near the crash, which left all but one of the crew members dead.

The memorial was made possible by a passionate former student at George Washington University, Camille Noel.

Noel had an assignment to write a biography on a soldier from her hometown and she chose 2nd Lt. John “Jack” Keith Lundberg from Val Verda, Utah. Lundberg was a part of the crew as one of their navigators.

After the completion of the assignment, Noel still wanted to know more about Lundberg.

She reached out to a newspaper in France to get more information, who put her in touch with a Frenchman well-versed in WWII history, Emmanuel Berle. With Berle’s help, Noel began to uncover more about the crew.

“p4″>”I started reaching out to the families of the crew; actually Allen’s family is the first family I contacted, and as I was talking with the families that led to me deciding to write my thesis on the crew,” Noel said.

She found out about each member’s life and even provided biographical information for each member, including Osterberg.

According to her thesis, Osterberg was born in 1916 in Delta County to Erick Osterberg and Hannah Elkman Osterberg. He grew up in Delta County and attended and graduated from Rock High School in 1935. He found himself living in California, before coming back to Delta County and working as a self-employed radio technician.

In March of 1942, Osterberg enlisted in the Army Air Corps and left for Milwaukee, Wis.

From there, Osterberg was assigned to Santa Ana for training, where it was determined he would serve as a bombardier.

Osterberg would serve in the Spare Charlie crew until their last mission in June of 1944.

According to Noel, the crew’s last mission was to take part in a raid on switch and power stations in Abbeville.

“The men participating in the mission believed it was going to be a milk run — an easy mission where minimal resistance from the enemy was expected. It was to also be a short mission, only about four hours,” Noel said.

This, unfortunately, would not be the case as the crew would be shot down moments after dropping the bombs.

Noel said that the survivor of the crash, Waist Gunner Dick Oberlin, heard Osterberg say his final words, “bombs away” before the plane was downed.

The bodies laid in the marsh for three days until they were recovered by civilians in the area and buried in the cemetery of Mareuil-Caubert, a cemetery closer to the crash site.

Noel finished her thesis on the crew and subsequently graduated from George Washington University. Through her research, the memory of the Spare Charlie crew is still alive.

Little did she know, her association with the crew was just beginning.

She said that two years ago, Berle contacted her saying he wanted to organize a memorial for the crew.

“When he asked me if I wanted to help get this memorial going I was very excited and said, yes, so on my end I helped raise funds,” Noel said.

She also contacted the military to have a representative there, as well as spoke with the families of the crew members to see if they could make the trip to the memorial.

Noel said that a good amount of family members of the crew were able to make the trip to France for the dedication.

In addition to the memorial near the crash site, an American flag was erected where the plane is believed to have crashed. There was also a plaque placed at the former gravesite of Osterberg and members of the crew where they were originally buried by the French citizens who found them at the crash site.

Noel got the chance to speak at the ceremony, and meet Berle, her partner in keeping the memories of the crew alive.

She said that what started as a curiosity about the crew turned into a passionate project to find as much out as much as possible about the crew.

“Just uncovering all the information that I did find, I brought these soldiers back to life for their families. A lot of them didn’t know much about them and in some instances, it brought closure to their families,” she said.

Osterberg is now buried in a family plot in the Gardens of Rest Cemetery in Wells.