For Those Who Gave

In the hills around my Czech home you can come across many memorials. Often they are wayside shrines to people who died on the roads. But a few remember those who died in the battle to free the country from the Nazis. In this part of the battle zone it was the American army and air force that were fighting.

On the 17th April 1945 a squadron of US fighters led by Captain Reuter had been strafing German airbases at Klatovy and Eisendorf, when Reuter and Lieutenant Preddy both in P-51 Mustangs spotted two German Me-262 jet fighters and commenced pursuit, The faster German planes led them to Ceske Budejovice airport, then a German base, where the Americans undertook another strafing run. It was to be their last.

     

Captain Reuter and Lieutenant Preddy

Both airplanes were hit by anti-aircraft fire. Captain Reuter's plane exploded on being hit and he died instantly.  Metal detectorists are still find fragments of his plane, showing the force with which it hit the ground. Lieutenant Preddy was able to get away, but with his aircraft badly damaged he was only able to get as far as the nearby village of Zaluzi, where he crashed. A local man, Jan Smejkal, took the seriously wounded Preddy by cart to a German emergency treatment centre where he received first aid only. When the Germans refused to transport Preddy to the hospital in Ceske Budejovice, Smejkal took him there in his horse-drawn cart. Preddy died in the hospital, having never regained consciousness.

You will find the above memorial to Lieutenant Preddy on a small road above Zaluzi near the crash site. The memorial to Captain Reuter is near Borsov nad Vltavou at the edge of the woods overlooking Budejovice Airport where he died.