The crew of The Buttercup is shown here before their plane crashed in 1943. Ewing Shields III from Greenfield is believed to be kneeling in the first row, second from left.
Submitted photo
GREENFIELD – A man once known as Hancock County’s first fatality during World War II will be remembered in a ceremony in England next month, marking the 80th anniversary of the day his plane crashed.
Lt. Ewing Shields III was killed in action at age 22 on Nov. 13, 1943. He was a navigator for the United States Army Air Force en route to Germany when the plane crashed in a storm, killing all 10 Americans onboard.
Known as “Sonny” to most, he was once a quintessential son of the community, having worked in the former Eikenberry and Edwards Drug Store in downtown Greenfield and serving as a class officer for Greenfield High School, Class of 1939.
While his family has since moved from Hancock County, they still hold ties to the community and are grateful their uncle will be honored.
“He’s always in everybody’s thoughts. He was always mentioned at gatherings,” said Doug Messerlie, Shields’ nephew. “I was so thankful and so proud that somebody would take the time and go to the trouble after all these years to honor somebody like that, and I was lucky enough to be related to him.”
Messerlie now lives in the Atlanta, Ga. area, having grown up in Greenfield surrounded by the family that held Shields close. He’s the son of Shirley Ann, Shields’ sister.
Ewing Shields III was the son of Ewing and Rachel Shields, and had an older sister Shirley Ann and younger brother, John “Jack.” They lived on North Wood Street in Greenfield, just west of Riley Park.
After graduating from high school, Shields went to DePauw University and then enlisted in the war effort.
“I remember my mom or my grandmother telling me that he wanted to be a pilot but his eyesight wasn’t good enough when he was in flight school,” said Messerlie. “The next best thing if he wanted to fly, which he did, was to become a navigator.”
He was navigating a plane nicknamed The Buttercup with nine other men that took off in a storm and crashed shortly thereafter. The plane was headed to a bombing mission over Germany when it crashed near the community of Great Haseley, England, west of London.
Margaret Howlett, a member of the Great Haseley History Group in England, said the B17 Flying Fortress encountered severe turbulence and came down in a field.
“Very few people in the village are old enough to remember the crash, but one 95-year-old lady who lived in a cottage in Latchford Lane has vivid memories of it,” Howlett said via email. “She was able to indicate exactly where the plane came down in farmland and recollects her mother picking flowers from her garden to place at the site.”
The group decided to use Facebook and Ancestry.com to reach out to the families of the men – none of whom were married at the time – and raise money to provide a permanent memorial through a Just Giving page.
That memorial stone will be presented at a ceremony next month, just one day shy of the 80th anniversary of the crash.
The history group in England connected to the family of Shields indirectly through another man, David Hine — a local resident who has researched WWII history in Greenfield. Hine was able to connect the group in England to Shields’ family in America.
Hine became involved in researching WWII veterans when the Hancock County Veterans Park in Greenfield was being built. Research shows that 49 Hancock County residents died during WWII.
Ewing Shields III, at the time, was considered the first. Another, Bob Culley, was considered missing at the time of Shields’ death and was later pronounced dead, so newspaper articles from 1943 listed Shields as the first death but later Culley.
One article dated 1945, for example, reads as an editorial indicating the down-home impact Shields’ death had on the small Greenfield community at the time.
“He was one of the gang that came into our homes after school, passed the evening paper, worked in the stores, shops and garages of the town,” the Daily Reporter article states. “One of the same gang which played basketball on the vacant lot, and went on swimming parties to the gravel pit. Just about everybody knew and liked him.”
Shields’ death shook his family at the time. While Messerlie was born two years later, he heard stories of the impact: his grandparents took the news in that old house on North Wood Street hard, his grandfather not coming out for three days.
Shields was remembered fondly as almost 6 feet tall; he was smart, funny, industrious and well liked. He delivered newspapers and was editor of the high school yearbook, and worked at the soda fountain in the downtown drug store. Shields enlisted in the war during or after his sophomore year of college.
Shields’ photo has been proudly displayed on the mantle of the family home for years.
“His presence was in everybody’s home when all of us kids were growing up,” Messerlie said. “When I was old enough to ask a question I said, ‘Who’s that?’ ‘Well, that’s your Uncle Sonny.’”
The ceremony Nov. 12 will include a memorial service at St. Peter’s Church in Great Haseley, as well as visitors from the American families impacted by the plane crash. Shields’ nephew David and his wife Carol are expected to come from Florida and read a poem at the event. Family members from at least two other Indiana families are expected to attend, including the family of Albert Griepenstroh of Lamar and Floyd Scudder of Indianapolis.
These days, most of Shields’ family lives in Indianapolis or out of state, but Messerlie comes back occasionally to visit friends and will drive by that house on North Wood Street and wonder what it must have been like on that day the telegram came.
“Greenfield was very near and dear to our heart, still is,” Messerlie said.
Meanwhile, Hine is grateful his research connected the family and Greenfield community to the Great Haseley community, and that a local resident is being remembered all these years later.
“It is wonderful that the village of Great Haseley is remembering and honoring the men that died in the crash of their aircraft,” Hine said. “We must never forget the sacrifices of the men and women lost during the war.”
