Strangers' kindness fills in the gaps of a family's history

It's safe to say that Bill Knudsen never dreamed that his own dream of finding his dad would come to this.

In May, Knudsen wrote about a journey he took this spring to an American cemetery in France that holds the grave of the birth father he never got to meet. It was printed in NWTraveler (May 18, 2008; "Trip to find father brings past to life"), and since then, his world has turned upside down — in an amazing and heartwarming way.

His story has spawned more e-mails and phone calls than we've ever seen with a story of its type in our Travel pages. More than 150 e-mails, dozens of phone calls, cards and letters, by Knudsen's count, and finally two contacts he still can't believe.

First, a little background.

Knudsen's father — William B. Cuthbert, 2nd lieutenant, U.S. Army Air Forces — died on April 20, 1944, less than two months before D-Day, when his bomber was shot down over France. Knudsen (who was adopted by the man who later married his widowed mother) was 6 months old when his father died.

But that's about all Knudsen knew of the man. His mom first told him about his birth father when Knudsen turned 18. And until recently, he pursued it no further, accepting his mother's decision not to talk much about Knudsen's father and wanting to honor the man who later took him in and raised him as his own son.

But that changed recently, after his adoptive father died and Knudsen's desire to discover his history overtook him.

After his own research and after talking to his birth father's family in Spokane, Knudsen made his personal journey to France — to "meet" the man he'd never known.

When his story was printed in The Seattle Times and on seattletimes.com, the outpouring began. Readers from all over the world told Knudsen they cried when they read his words, told their own stories of war and remembrance and thanked him for his courage.

And then came two special e-mails.

They came from Jean-Marc Lesueur, a French policeman. Lesueur is a member of Les Fleurs de la Mémoire (Flowers of Memory), an organization that takes care of graves at the cemetery at Normandy, where Bill Cuthbert is buried.

Lesueur told Knudsen that, having read his story, he and his family wanted to "adopt" Cuthbert and decorate his grave with flowers each Memorial Day — for as long as they live. If that was OK with Knudsen.

And then, days later, came a second e-mail from Lesueur. He'd been at work behind the scenes, in touch with another French organization that has records of military personnel killed in Europe during WWII.

Indeed, they told Lesueur, they had found information on Bill Cuthbert's bomber — 18 pages of it, in fact, including what happened the day the plane was shot down and what happened to its crew.

There is no better way to tell it than to reprint Knudsen's e-mail to The Seattle Times telling us the latest news about his father.

"OK, this will blow your mind. So I hope you are all sitting down as you read this:

"The e-mail arrived this morning from a private group of French citizens who have compiled the records of our servicemen who gave their lives during World War II in Europe. [The first file] you will see is the first official documentation of where, and how, my father, William B. Cuthbert, died on April 20th, 1944. These documents, which were classified for many years, are now available and have been cataloged by the French people.

"According to these records Bill Cuthbert's plane, a B-24 Liberator #272981, with its crew of ten, was hit by German flak on April 20th at 8:45 p.m. on a bombing run. They lost engine #3 and #4 and at 18,000 feet eight men left the plane, and the sighting of those eight men and their parachutes was confirmed by several witnesses, including the pilot of the plane in formation directly behind them. The plane circled in the air and crashed approximately three minutes after the other guys bailed out. Seven were taken captive and one died on the ground.

"It is reported that two men did not exit the plane, Lt. William B. Cuthbert and 2nd Lt. Anthony Kuzinski. Both bodies were found by the Germans in the plane's wreckage, and they returned to the U.S. government four days after the crash in Bernaville, which is 2 kilometers from Prouville. Prouville is located at the far north of France, about 200 miles north of Paris. Interviews with the survivors gave no reason why my dad or Mr. Kuzinski did not leave the aircraft. Although one interviewee indicated that he 'thought the nose gunner, Mr. Kuzinski, was trapped in his turret and perhaps Bill Cuthbert stayed to try and get him out of the damaged plane.'

"My dad was originally buried in an English military cemetery in Abbeville [France] in grave #B-18. The body was transferred to the American Cemetery at Normandy upon its completion July 18th, 1956, to Plot D-Row 14-Grave 42.

"God bless Jean-Marc Lesueur, and the people [in France] for solving a mystery that has been with our family for 65 years.

"I am grateful beyond belief."

— Bill Knudsen

Terry Tazioli, Seattle Times Travel editor