For more than half a century, Bountiful resident Robert "Bud" Clay was celebrated as a World War II hero without even knowing it.
It wasn't until 1999 that Clay learned residents of Als Island, off the southern coast of Denmark, gather every May 24 on the grassy field where Clay and his crew from the 351st Bomb Group crash-landed in 1944.
"I couldn't believe I'd been telling people about this event for years and had no idea," Clay said.
The sight of a B-17 breaking through the clouds that day gave hope to people living on the tiny German-occupied island, and they have honored the American airmen on that day ever since.
"They thought that we were heroes. Since 1939 they had been oppressed and there was no way they could do anything about it. There was no way for them to liberate themselves, and our airplanes were the only visible connection they had to the Americans," said Clay, 82, who is a crossing guard for Adelaide Elementary School. "It was their only hope."
Als residents were so moved by the sight of the American plane that they later raided the wreckage for mementos. They kept headsets, radios, anything that was loose in the cockpit. One woman even made her wedding dress using fabric taken from one of the pilot's parachutes.
But Clay knew none of that. He saw his crash — which landed the crew in a German prisoner-of-war camp for a year — not as a source of inspiration but despair.
As the pilot of that mission, he felt responsible for wrecking an expensive airplane, for putting his crew in a POW camp, for not being able to finish other missions.
"When I came home I was bitter," he said. "It was all my fault because I was in charge."
Fifty-five years after his crash-landing, islanders gave Clay the same gift he had given them.
Thumbing through a war-reunion newsletter two years ago, Clay recognized a photograph of the plane wreckage and the hills and farmhouses surrounding it. An islander had taken the picture as a boy, and had published a photo and story in hopes of finding the Americans whose crash-landing Als has celebrated for decades.
Now, for the first time, Clay will be part of that celebration. Clay leaves May 19 for Als, where he and five others from his bomber crew will attend the ceremonies that have been held in their honor for 56 years. He'll meet residents and see the parachute wedding dress he knows about only from stories and photographs.
The three mayors on the island have organized a 57th anniversary celebration for 400 people, and residents will provide food, housing and transportation for the crew members during their stay.
By now, Clay and island hosts aren't exactly strangers. In the months and years since seeing the photo of his crashed plane, Clay has received letters and e-mails from the people of Als, many of whom were children at the time of the war.
"They were heroes in those days and still are today," one resident wrote to Clay. Another resident wrote that "seeing them up in the sky . . . gave us hope."
The cycle of disaster and hope, despair and inspiration began with engine problems while Clay and his crew were on a German bombing mission in 1944. Clay, the operations officer of an England-based squadron, was leading the mission to Berlin when, just minutes from the target, the plane's engines started failing one by one.
He turned around. Ditching in the North Sea was not an option because of the icy waters and slim chances of being found. Then Clay decided to head toward neutral Sweden but soon discovered another engine was out. He turned in the direction of the island.
"So there I was, sitting right on the coast of Germany, almost standing still. I thought we were never going to make it," he said.
He threw supplies out of the plane to lighten the load and tried to build up speed. By then, only one of the plane's four engines was working.
Once over the island, eight of the 10 crewmen bailed out while Clay and his co-pilot made the decision to attempt a crash-landing in a quarter-mile-wide valley between two hills.
"I couldn't bail out. I thought, 'I've got to crash-land,' " Clay said. "I didn't know what was going to happen. . . . I was just going to slide it in."
Once the plane crashed and spun around into the field with the tail broken in half, Clay looked over at his co-pilot and saw his face dripping with blood but was relieved they both were alive.
He took his injured crew member to a nearby farmhouse, where a German soldier soon walked in and took Clay and his co-pilot to a truck that held the rest of their crew. Clay spent the next year as a prisoner of war — a year he said seemed like five.
Although he returned to Utah feeling some anger and guilt about the failed bombing mission and his time as a POW, Clay says knowing that the sight of his plane in the skies made a difference in so many lives has "helped more than anything" to erase the bitterness he felt.
"I've never had any desire to go back there, but now I'm happy to go. I'm looking forward to it," Clay says. "I still don't feel like a hero, but I guess I'll have to act like one."
E-mail: ehayes@desnews.com