Peggy Wells and her late husband, David, greeted many Yanks who came back to Station 131 in the years following World War II.



Before her marriage, however, Peggy was one of the ‘Bates Kids’ who lived on ‘Gypsy Farm’ north and east of the main runway. Peggy remembers the B-17 that sat down on their land in February of 1945 and remained parked there for over two months. She also remembers losing about 100 chickens when the Fortress’ wing clipped the wooden coop. And all the commotion caused when men came to ponder the task of retrieving the big plane. She wondered, at the time, how the plane could take off downhill, miss the big tree at the bottom and fly over Tony Clark’s ‘Langley Lawn’ farm on the hill. “It was an exciting time”, she recalled.