In the two-week buildup toward D-Day in 1944, two American C-47 cargo planes collided over a patch of rural ground in England. Both planes exploded in the sky, killing 14 American servicemen.

A Cullman County native, 24 year-old Harlin Sandlin, was among the crew who lost their lives in the tragedy. Sandlin and the other crew members were casualties of Exercise Eagle — a covert, “blackout” training exercise; part of the mammoth-scaled Allied preparations that contributed to the eventual success of the Invasion of Normandy.

Along with those of his fellow crew members, U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Harlan Sandlin’s remains were interred at Cambridge American Cemetery and Memorial, the main U.S. war cemetery in England.

After the war, the remains of Sandlin and eight other soldiers were repatriated to the United States. Since 1948 Sandlin has lain, with full military honor, in the cemetery of the Addington Chapel Methodist Church near Cold Springs.

Now, in 2017, Sandlin’s sacrifice has been commemorated in the U.K., by Englishmen, with the placement of a memorial near the site of the crash in the rural English countryside. Thanks to the efforts of one U.K. native with a heart for preserving the past and a little crowdfunding savvy, a monument to the tragedy was set earlier this year on the grounds of Holy Trinity Church in the village of Coates in Cambridgeshire.

The monument itself is an appropriately solemn and restrained piece: a 3’ x 3’ square of black granite set atop granite base, engraved by a local stonemason with the insignia of the two U.S. units who sustained the casualties.

But getting that monument set in the church yard was no rapid or simple endeavor. It required research. It required money. It required a patient and tactful navigation of local regulations.

Above all, it required gratitude.

“It may seem odd for someone who lives thousands of miles away to invest so much time and effort and money in something so distant from themselves,” says Darren Bond, the Nottinghamshire, U.K. resident and avid military history enthusiast who singlehandedly spearheaded the effort to establish the memorial.

“But I have a passion for this history; one that’s been there since childhood, really. As a teenager, my sort-of hobby was living history, and to this day it is still my main interest. I’m in a group of like-minded individuals, and we go all over Europe doing living history events, and ceremonies to honor and remember these sorts of sacrifices that were made some 70 years ago.”

A gesture of thanks, then, from the Mother Country; a reaffirmation of the longstanding amity between citizens of the two allied nations that share the most inextricable of cultural and diplomatic ties, both in times of war and times of peace — it’s compelling stuff. 

“We are very thankful,” says Cold Springs resident Sandy Vandiver, Sandlin’s niece by marriage.

“All of this work was done by Darren on behalf of people who died long before he was even born. I think there are people in England who were, and still are, so very appreciative of the role the Americans played in helping them turn the tide in World War II.”

Sandlin graduated from Cold Springs High School. He was engaged to a local girl, Leslie Parker, at the time of his death. The son of Grant and Pearlie Stricklin Sandlin, Harlan and his four siblings were born and raised in southern Cullman County. Grant owned a small general store that supplied farmers in the community; he also operated his own small-scale cotton farm.

After Harlan graduated from high school, he spent a year attending Jacksonville State University.

“Then he was drafted into the Army. He was drafted on March 6, 1942. He had graduated high school in 1939,” says Vandiver.

“In the Army, Harlan was a member of the 316th Troop Carrier Group. On May 12, 1944, they were doing a blackout practice mission for D-Day — that means no running lights; nothing. They were flying totally blind, and this was at night.

“They were flying in formation, and I assume, from what I have read in declassified information, that it was Harlan’s plane whose pilot started to make a turn out of formation — for whatever reason. And that plane clipped the wing of another aircraft, and they both exploded in midair. Harlan was the radio operator on his plane.

“Harlan’s brother, Shulus, was also in World War II. And when Harlan was killed, Shulus was sent home with an honorable discharge. He was the only one left to carry on the family name.”

The path that led to the placement of the black granite monument commemorating the crash has been cleared almost entirely by Bond, whose early research into the circumstances of the event led to a years-long, one-man investigative effort. It was an effort that may have saved the particulars of the tragedy from being irrevocably lost to history’s neglect.

“The idea started out as a research project, just to try to gain as much information as possible,” says Bond. “There was very little information available from the start. From that, it led to a point at which I had done enough research that I wanted to share what I had found with the victims’ family members. So I started to trace the relatives of each one of the men.

“From that, then, it continued on to a point of, ‘Well, there’s no memorial — nothing in place to remember the crash or the men who were killed.’ I felt quite saddened by that, really, so it led to contacting the local council; the local authorities, to see if a memorial could be put in place. That process was slow. It was very bureaucratic, and it took probably about three years.”

The process has put Bond in touch with a lot of descendants throughout the U.S. When the memorial was dedicated in May of this year, two Americans — Arizona residents Jane Black and Rayma Lee — flew to England and were on hand in Coates to participate in the ceremony.

“Those two are the nieces of Joseph Sharber Jr., one of the pilots,” explains Bond. Harlan had been on the same plane as Joseph.

“The monument is in place, but I still consider this to be sort of a work in progress,” he adds. “I am still trying to push for some trees to be planted at the actual crash site [which today is rural farm land]. Ideally, we would like to plant 14 trees — one for each soldier there. It’s a slow process, and you have to work with the local authorities to accomplish it.”

For the descendants of Staff Sgt. Harlan Sandlin, a lot’s already been accomplished.

“Our family was thrilled, and they’re still excited, about all of this,” says Vandiver. “It’s been wonderful to learn that there are people — strangers, before we learned about all of this — who want to honor his memory; the memory of all of these men. That has been a wonderful experience.”

To learn more about the ongoing effort to commemorate the tragedy of Exercise Eagle in England, follow The Eagle Project on Facebook at facebook.com/Exerciseeagle.

Memorial unveiled at Holy Trinity Church in Coates to honour 14 US servicemen who died during World War II

Photo by Ian Carter via CambsTimes.

Benjamin Bullard can be reached by phone at 256-734-2131 ext. 145.