Captain James Hudson “Capt. Jim”
O.S.S. Veteran

    Willis S. Cole has been doing considerable research on this important incident after
we had obtained Victory over the Axis Powers in WWII. Traveling to Europe numerous
times and throughout the United States researching the records as only an expert on
Graves Registration and military history is qualified to do.

    If General Patton had lived to present the proof he held to the American public at
time of his death, in the manner which they knew he was going to do so, the families
of American War Dead would have demanded an intense investigation which would
have led directly to those just mentioned.

    This was an excellent motive to kill Patton, in order to prevent the disclosures that
would have been detrimental to top world leaders.  The magnitude of “D-day”and the
opportunity for personal aggrandizement or absolute disgrace, were too enormous to
be free of manipulation.

    I find this to be an enlightened message clearly presented in this book. Having personal
experience with General Patton, both with the King of Yugoslavia at Christmas 1942,
and in the flesh at Comiso Airdrome in Sicily, the second day of the invasion when he
personally kicked me off “his island,” Patton has always been a sympathetic character
in my memories of WWII. I liked Patton and admiredhis skills as a Leader and Aggressive
General.

    We needed him desperately.

Captain Jim Hudson, WWII, OSS Veteran
Hudson Associates, Woman Owned VE Consultants
Patricia W. Hudson, SAVE, Value Engineering
James W. Hudson, CVS, FSAVE, BICSI
7430 Miller Lane,
POB 399
Spotsylvania, VA 22551-0399

jhudson399@aol.com valumanagement-hudson.com (540)895-5551

    We established Ten Temporary US and Enemy Cemeteries during WW II in Europe. We
also did battlefield recovery of US, Allied and Enemy dead, operated Division and Corps
Collecting Points for US, Allied and Enemy Dead. In addition, during the War and after
the war we did isolated burial recoveries. Which was going out locating graves of deceased
military, where the military, enemy and civilians had made temporary burials. This included
investigating downed aircraft reports and recovering remains from these crashes.

    In addition, I was stationed in Italy during 1947-1950, with the American Graves Registration
Command. I personally conducted search and Recovery in Sicily and Central Italy.

    This, investigating downed aircraft reports, seems to be the specialty of Willis S. Cole, Jr., "Sam,"
in which he has become very efficient, but nothing can be recovered, reported or recorded without
the complete cooperation of all evolved. I have investigated downed aircraft, but never ran into as
many obstacles as he seems to have, in his investigation of the particular downed B-24. Relative to
this instance, in 1994, I told him that he seemed to be barking up a tree that someone had built in
personal obstacles, which of course is against all human feeling, decency and desire to learn the truth
regardless of Pride, Self Protection, and downright, I believe the law calls it, Obstruction of Justice.

    When hitting one of these obstacles, instead of stopping his research into these aircraft crashes,
Sam intensified his research. He has attended Graves Registration Reunions to meet those of us who
served in Europe during WWII, to learn of our personal experiences. He has spent weeks at the National
Archives, going through Graves Registration Records in search of any other explanation for the
un-accounted-for remains he is still searching for and over the years, Sam has kept me fully informed
of his research.

    (Colonel Butte is, at the time of this writing, considered to be the major expert on American Graves
Registration work in the European Theater of Operations - Author.)

    One might say about Sam, is he does not stop when a wall appears. He will not stop, until he is
positive, there is not a way over, around or under what others considered a wall and Sam, considered
a closed door, and he just needed a key.  When he could find no explanation for remains from the B-24
crash being buried in Belgium, Sam kept searching until he found one of the Graves Registration men,
who should have handled the remains once the original recovery team had turned the remains over to
their senior hospital just to be certain, his research was correct. For instance, it took Sam over ten
years to do it, but he also located the only man still alive, of the three men who recovered the first
remains from the B-24 crash.

    Those are the remains that became the remains in the three men's Official Graves. A second hospital's
medical recovery team is responsible for hiding the rest of the remains of the dead aircrew, recovered
later in the day at the crash site. Those remains, which the French helped recover, were hidden in an
unmarked grave.

    Thanks to a Frenchman who saw them hide the remains and a Village Priest, those are the remains
that are contained in the Unknown American's Grave in France, that started Sam's research in 1991.

    Almost all of what Sam has found out, was against every Regulation at the time it was done. And,
Sam's conclusion that no real Graves Registration personnel were involved except at the cemetery sites
is correct. I have to agree with Sam, for my personal knowledge is, that we would never have permitted
what was done at both crash sites to the remains of the seven men! And, if any of us had found out,
what was done, a full investigation would have followed every lead to the men who permitted it to be done.
We owed no less to the dead.  All barriers, logjams and personal feelings and beliefs must be put aside
in order to obtain the truth.

    As a retired Officer myself, I am certain that the Squadron and Group Commanders would never
have created the Congressional Medal Of Honor Applications containing false crash and death
information, unless they were verbally ordered to do so by someone very high up in their Chain
of Command.

    And, thanks to Sam's research, I believe, there can no longer be any doubt, but that is exactly
what had to have happened. Just think, what if it were you that were missing and your mother and
father had to carry a thought of questionable doubt as to just what happen to you during the War,
never a moment of complete rest, always thinking "tomorrow he will show up, having had amnesia
all these years."

    If General Patton had lived to do what Sam has found General Patton intended to do, I believe
that General Patton would have succeeded in exactly what Sam theorizes in this book.

    I appeal you to assist Sam in his quest for truth and honesty.

Charles D. Butte “Bud” LTC., US Army (Retired)
733 Fairhaven Place
North Palm Beach, FL 33408-5216