This story originally published May 25, 2014.
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Three days before Christmas in 1943, two hours past midnight, 14 men climbed into an airplane and lifted into the dark sky over the slumbering hamlet of West Palm Beach.
Their journey lasted but a few moments, and killed every one of them.
The crash is believed to represent the largest loss of life in a single incident at what is now Palm Beach International Airport. And you never heard of it.
At the time, The Palm Beach Post reported it in a five-paragraph story on the front page, beneath a list of Christmas events. Then even briefer follow-up stories the next two days. Then nothing.
Eight days after the crash, New Year’s Day 1944 kicked off a year that would see the greatest invasion in world history and the beginning of the end of a great war. To all but those who loved them, the story of the 14 was quickly out of sight and out of mind.
Forgotten.
Monday is Memorial Day. We honor heroes, whether they died in glorious battle or in a sad accident. They are heroes, not because they died but because they knew they could die, and went anyway.
But there’s a special sadness in people dying in near anonymity.
The stories of the 14 had been small for two reasons. First, the government had directed America’s press to play down bad stories. It was hard enough to keep morale high in South Florida, where people could stand on the beach and watch black smoke from dozens of freighters sunk by U-boats.
And, well, this crash wasn’t that big a deal. By the dozens, brave boys — and, yes, girls — were dying every day.
But of course, it was a big deal. It is a big deal.
The 14, whose deaths a reporter would stumble across seven decades later, were fathers and brothers and sons. Their faces beamed with hope and pride, in their neatly pressed dress uniforms, black-and-white studio portraits tinted with pastel hues. They dreamed the way we all do.
Bert, and Louis, and Doug, and Radamés, and the rest: A grateful nation cannot salute you enough.
You didn’t get the send-off you deserved then.
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