Boomerang crashed near the little town of Perle, Luxembourg, only a few miles from the Belgium border.
Hedges and the other members of his crew who didn’t require extensive hospitalization were returned to duty.
He went on to fly 24 more missions with the Hundredth’s 349th Bomb Squadron out of Thorpe Abbotts, England.
After the war, Hedges returned to civilian life and became a Deputy Sheriff, Detective and jailer in Greene County, Ohio -- a job he held until his retirement in 1982. Like many WWII veterans, he tried to put the war behind him as he moved on with his life. But as the years went by, he had a desire to reconnect with his old Group and Squadron mates. Together they would recall the good times they had together, and in quieter moments, reflect on the missions they had flown and friends they had lost.
In 1999, Hedges returned to Luxembourg at the invitation of historian Roger Feller, of Perle, who Hedges had heard was looking for any crewmen of a B-17 that had crashed near his town with the loss of the pilot.
Hedges return to Europe included stops at his old base at Thorpe Abbotts in East Anglia, and finally Perle, Luxembourg, where his plane had crashed.
Hedges was amazed by the reception he received in Perle. The town had erected a memorial to several lost aircraft from the 385th Bomb Group in the town center—and had expanded the inscriptions on the monument to include Lewis Williams from the 100th. Upon learning of Hedge’s impending visit, the city fathers arranged a special dedication ceremony in his honor. At the ceremony, they presented Hedges with the flag which flew over the memorial
"I was honored to receive the flag on behalf of my crewmates, but ever since that day I have always believed that the people who deserved to have it was the family of Lewis Williams." Hedges spent the next six years in a fruitless search for the family. "Meeting Dave Berry at the store was the luckiest thing that could have happened, because my search had pretty much reached a dead end."
Berry is a military historian who specializes in World War II subjects. The history of the Army Air Forces is a particular favorite. He has studied various units in detail for over thirty years and has helped numerous veterans and families reconnect with their own, or a loved one’s, military past. When Bob Hedges told Berry about his search for the pilot’s family, all thoughts of weekend home improvement projects were soon forgotten. The two swapped phone numbers and details, and Berry immediately began his own search.
"I don’t think it was more than two days later that Dave sent me an email with information he had discovered. It was more than we had found in six years of looking," says Hedges. Berry had dipped into his archival databases and discovered key information about Lewis Williams that would help them on their search.
"I learned that Williams, like most pilots, entered the service as an enlisted man," says Berry. "From that information, I went on to verify the year he was born, that he was from New Jersey, where he had entered the service, and that he was not married when he enlisted. I often find that when researching an historical event, I have to ‘back up’ in order to move forward. While the events of November 9th, 1944 were crystal clear in Bob’s memory, the facts of the event were something that I have to place in their proper perspective. So I began to gather information on the members of the crew and backtrack the history of the plane itself. In gathering this information from various resources, it’s important to understand that almost all historic records are subject to human error as the data was manually transcribed." As it so happened, a simple transcription error sent Berry off on a wild goose chase right at the start.
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"I went looking for Lewis C. Williams, age about 8, in the 1930 vintage records for New Jersey. It was almost too easy. I found a family in south central New Jersey with a son Lewis C. and spent about a week trying to locate information about them. Every bit of detail I turned up did not fit the story as I understood it.
"Then I turned to what I knew would be a long and involved process---searching the Casualty Lists of the New York Times for mention of his name. These lists ran three or four times a week and listed war casualties from the New York and New Jersey area. Experience told me that the names of the casualties usually appeared several weeks or even months after the report of their loss. I finally found Lewis C. Williams listed in February of 1945, and it gave his next-of-kin’s name as "Mrs. Emelie Williams of Hawthorne, NJ. Initially I thought this might be his wife"