A Widow’s Journey to a Husband’s Valor

July 17, 1944

Air Force 1st Lt. Billie D. Harris and wife Peggy

Peggy and 1st Lt. Billie D. Harris (USAF) were married six weeks prior to his deployment in WWII.  Billie, a fighter pilot, would fly his last mission on July 17, 1944 over Nazi-occupied northern France.  With his plane shot down, he crashed into the woods near a small town in Normandy and did not survive.

Peggy, however, would receive no telegram or a knock on the door, nothing definitive to explain what had happened to her husband during his WWII service.  Initially he was reported missing, then alive and coming home, followed by a letter stating he was killed and buried in one cemetery, and then buried in another.  “Perhaps those weren’t his remains at all” would soon follow.

American planes flying over Northern France 
July, 1944

For Peggy, it was extremely frustrating and painful as she…