Letters & Notes from Museum Visitors

From: Cas Kacala - April 4, 2006

I happened to get to your site and noticed my father’s name. I also noted it was spelled wrong.

It is shown as KACALA, Casimir K.

It should read:   Kacala, Casimer E.

Thank you for your efforts to get all the WWII vets from NT on the web.

I spent 23 years in the US Air Force and another 14 years working at the Department of Veterans Affairs in Washington DC that all involved working with and supporting vets.

Take care


Leeuwarden (The Netherlands ), June 4, 2004

Dear colleague,

    First of all I'd like to give you my compliments for your excellent, exploratory website on the history of North Tonawanda - New York . Among all the interesting items, I noticed that you also did a lot of research regarding the citizens who laid their lives down in the Second World War.
     In your list of honored heroes, the name of S/Sgt. Wilfred Merle Husband immediately attracted my attention. In 1943, Mr. Husband served as a ball-turret gunner on a B-17 bomber that was piloted by 2/lt. Edwin F. Pollock. Their aircraft took part in an air-raid on Emden-Germany on December 11, 1943 and was hit by ‘Flak' in the surroundings of the target-area. Returning home to its airbase in England , Pollock's straggling B-17 became an easy prey for Luftwaffe-fighters. Their constant fire eventually caused the cruel deaths of  Wilfred Husband and his fellow-crewmember Howard Hall somewhere in the airspace above the northern Netherlands .
    About 13:00 h. the aircraft came down in a meadow near by the small village of Offingawier in the Dutch province of Friesland . The corpses of Sgt.'s Husband and Hall were recovered from the wreck by the German army and buried at first on the local graveyard of Offingawier. Later on – in November 1945 – Wilfred M. Husband became interred on the American Military Cemetery in Margraten.
    The fellow-crewmembers of Sgt.'s Husband and Hall all survived the Second World War, but they had a hard time in several prisoner-of-war camps. Although they were helped by Dutch civilians and the underground, all of them eventually fell into German hands.
    Since I would rescue the War-story of Pollock's B-17 (in which my great-grandfather was involved also) from oblivion, I began my search for the former crewmembers and/or their next of kin a few years ago. In the meantime I have traced  four of the eight surviving airmen.
    As it is my goal to get in touch with family-members of  late S/Sgt. Wilfred M. Husband as well, I'd like to ask you if you have any further information on him or his next of kin. From American archival sources it is known that Mr. Husband was born on October 5, 1923 as a son of Merle Husband and Marion C. Husband (maiden-name unknown). His parents divorced on September 9, 1930 and Wilfred was raised by his mother in North Tonawanda . In the 1940s  the family lived at  114 Vandervort Street and thereafter at 43 Delaware Avenue . Wilfred Husband had three brothers and/or sisters, whose names are unknown to me.
    I look forward to any information that you might have with regard to Mr. Husband and/or his family.

Yours sincerely,
Alexander Tuinhout MA,
Historian and archivist of Boarnsterhim-municipality
The Netherlands

Frans Halsstraat 31
8932 JB  Leeuwarden
The Netherlands
E-mail: a.tuinhout1@chello.nl

P.S. In your list of honored heroes it is stated that S/Sgt. Wilfred Merle Husband died above Germany on December 11, 1944 . However, I am absolutely sure from research in archival sources that Mr. Husband lost his life above Dutch territory on December 11, 1943.

Editors Note:  After several months of research, the Museum was successful in early 2005 in assisting Mr. Tuinhout in additional research on his family history in the Tonawandas.

Leeuwarden (The Netherlands), April 3, 2005

Dear Donna,

Congratulations with your new website. I have spent more than an hour looking through all the wonderful information, photo's and so on. Also a compliment to your webmaster, since navigating through the site is very easy!

A few weeks ago I have finally been able to lay contact with Wilfred Husband's sister, Mrs. Audrey Harbeck. It appeared that my letter of December 2004 hadn't reached her. She did receive my letter of February 2005 however and responded immediately. Without the great help of the NT History Museum it wouldn't have been possible to trace the family of late Sgt. Husband.

I attached a photo of Mr. Husband that might be interesting for your photo-archive (which can be found by clicking HERE).

Sincerely,
Alexander Tuinhout