WWII veteran who searched for his pilot’s wings dies at 90

MILFORD – Bernerd Harding, the World War II bomber pilot who returned to Germany to search for his pilot wings, died Tuesday.

Harding was 90 and suffered from prostate cancer, but his illness didn’t prevent him from traveling to Germany in September with his wife, Ruth, to search for the wings that he remembers burying in a farmhouse cellar after he parachuted out of his plane. Later that month it didn’t prevent him from taking one last flight on a B-24.

On July 7, 1944, Harding was a 25-year-old first lieutenant leading nine other B-24s in his squadron back to England after dropping a bomb load on an aircraft assembly plant. They were attacked by German fighter planes and all 10 planes went down.

Last week, Harding described how he made sure everyone in his plane had bailed out and then noticed that the pilot of a German fighter was flying so close that he could see his face. Harding said he saluted as a way to thank him for not blowing up the plane, and then the German pilot flew alongside him to make sure he parachuted out safely.

Such generous acts were not uncommon among wartime pilots, he said.

“You’re not fighting a man,” he said. “You’re fighting a machine.”

One of Harding’s men was shot after parachuting to the ground and the rest of the surviving airmen in Harding’s plane were captured, but half of the 100 men in the squadron were killed.

Harding landed in a wheat field and three farmers, two with pitchforks and one with a gun, captured him and herded him into a cellar. Fearing that villagers would take revenge if they learned he was a bomber pilot, he hid his wings in the cellar’s dirt floor.

He spent 10 months as a prisoner of war, and then came back to New Hampshire, married, raised three boys, and went into the construction business.

Harding, who never found his wings on his visit to Klein Quenstedt, Germany, was given replica wings by the Collings Foundation, which owns the Witchcraft, the last B-24 still flying, after Harding took a 30-minute flight several weeks ago when the plane was visiting New Hampshire.

And last Friday, a 6-year-old Milford boy wore the replica wings to school pinned on a small version of military fatigues.

Joshua Salzman is the son of Janelle Salzman, an occupational therapist who worked with Harding.

When Joshua heard about Harding’s war experiences, his mother said, he decided to dress in a military costume for his school’s Peacemakers’ Day, which the Country Village Montessori School in Amherst holds in place of Halloween.

Last week, just days before Harding died, the Salzmans – Joshua, his parents, Janelle and Michael, and his younger sister Hope – visited him and his wife, Ruth, in their Milford home.

On Friday Joshua wore the wings when he and his classmates visited the Isle of Ledgewood assisted living facility in Milford to sing and to talk about the peacemakers they had chosen.

Harding is a peacemaker, Joshua said, “because he’s brave enough to protect our country.”