The colors have faded and the cloth is torn, but war veteran Gordon McCoy handles the 56-year-old American flag like a precious jewel.
If he stares long enough at the painted-on stars and the wispy cotton, it tells him a story he never gets tired of hearing or telling, a story that begins in death and ends in hope and pride.
On the dawn of the Allied invasion of Normandy, a French woman named Juliette Quartelet secretly worked for three nights in the Nazi-occupied village of Remy, France, to make that American flag. She sewed together strips of red and blue bedcloth and used white paint to carefully brush in the 48 stars.
On Aug. 2, 1944, members of the 383rd Fighter Squadron — which McCoy was a part of — were flying a mission over France to help destroy a German munitions train hidden in Remy, located northeast of Paris. A 22-year-old American pilot, Lt. Houston Lee Braly, was also a part of the mission.
But during the mission, something went awry. Braly’s plane crashed into the side of a 13th century church in Remy. The wall crumbled. Stained glass shattered. Braly died instantly.
The explosion sent shockwaves through Remy, but acts of courage surfaced from the rubble. The people of Remy banded together to hide Braly’s body from the Germans.
Quartelet’s flag greeted the American soldiers, a bold show of defiance against the Germans, said Stephen Lea Vell, 67, a local historian. He currently has Quartelet’s flag stored in his Alamo, Calif., home.
More than a half-century later, McCoy and other veterans have raised enough money, about $200,000, to repair the stained glass windows at the church marked by Braly’s crash. On July 29, McCoy, Lea Vell and several others will travel to Remy where the newly refinished stained-glass windows will be officially unveiled. The veterans will march the flag through the village during the celebration.
To McCoy, now 78, it’s a profound show of patriotism for both countries. Don’t tell him that the French are ingrates who have no appreciation for the Americans who lost their lives there.
McCoy says he knows better.
“If the Germans knew (Quartelet) was making the flag, they probably would have shot her,” McCoy said, admiration ringing clearly in his voice. “It was courage. Just sheer courage that she did this.”
Lea Vell echoes that sentiment.
“This is a real-life Betsy Ross story,” he said. “There are people who walk around saying how the French are so ungrateful. It’s just not true.”
Lea Vell’s passion for the Remy story was sparked almost accidentally. Lea Vell, a retired pilot and a military aviation buff, came across the Remy raid in 1994, when he was researching a historical account of the 383rd Fighter Squadron at the Air Force Archives in Alabama.
The story of Braly gripped him. He deeply admired how the people of Remy had the guts to hide Braly’s body and covered his body with flowers as a sign of respect. “They gave him a proper funeral even though it could have cost them their lives.”
He was compelled to visit Remy and when he got there, he saw that the villagers had not forgotten the young pilot. They had renamed the crossroads in the village for Braly.
“It touched me,” Lea Vell said. “It was amazing.”
Two years ago, Lea Vell met Quartelet. She was 88 then and he remembers vividly the mixture of gratitude and pain in her eyes.
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Then she gave Lea Vell something remarkable — the flag.
“She told me, `We needed the Americans to come,”‘ Lea Vell said. “She said `take it, take it, it belongs to you.’ She was tearing up.”
His voice choked with emotion as he remembered the chance she took in sewing the flag.
“It took a lot of guts because there was nothing to be gained from that,” Lea Vell said. “When they thought of a young American who came that far and died so they could have freedom, an electrical thing ran through them. It stirred them.”