WASHINGTON — Air Force master sergeant Melvin Rector long carried England in his heart after he helped defend it during World War II, but 70 years passed without him stepping foot back in the country.
The 94-year-old finally decided to leave his home in Barefoot Bay, Fla., to visit Britain earlier this month. The National World War II Museum in New Orleans conducts a travel program through which interested parties can visit certain sites of the war. He signed up for one, in hopes of visiting RAF Snetterton Heath in Norfolk.
He served there with the 96th Bomb Group in 1945 as a radio operator and gunner on B-17 Flying Fortresses, flying eight combat missions over Germany during the spring of the war’s final year. On four of these missions, his plane came under heavy fire. One almost proved to be catastrophic, and the plane returned to base with holes dotting its wings.
Mr. Rector was excited for his return to this place of his past. ‘‘He planned it for like the last six months,’’ Darlene O’Donnell, Mr. Rector’s stepdaughter, told Florida Today of the trip. ‘‘He couldn’t wait to go.’’
On his long flight over the Atlantic, the pilot of his American Airlines flight summoned him to the cockpit so the two could take a photograph together. ‘‘The flight attendant stopped us and said, ‘Mr. Rector, the captain would like to meet you,’’’ Susan Jowers told Florida Today.
She had become almost a daughter to Mr. Rector after serving as his guardian during a 2011 Honor Flight trip to Washington, D.C., and she accompanied him on this tour.
On May 6, Mr. Rector stepped foot on British soil for the first time in 71 years. The group first visited RAF Uxbridge in the London Borough of Hillingdon.
Mr. Rector toured Battle of Britain Bunker, an underground command center where airplane operations were directed during D-Day. After climbing back into the sunlight, he told Jowers he felt dizzy. She grabbed one of his arms, and a stranger grabbed the other.
There, just outside the bunker where Winston Churchill famously said, ‘‘Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few,’’ Mr. Rector died.
‘‘He walked out of that bunker like his tour was done,’’ Jowers said.
Sandy Vavruich, Mr. Rector’s daughter, said it’s how he would have liked to pass on, even though he never did make it to RAF Snetterton Heath.
‘‘He couldn’t have asked for a better way to go,’’ she told Florida Today. ‘‘It was quick and painless. He had just gotten to see two planes, and he passed away between them.’’
Before repatriating his remains to the United States, authorities planned a small service for the fallen hero in Britain. It did not remain a small service.
‘‘They just wanted something very simple. And when I found a little bit of background out about Melvin, there was no way we were going to just give him a very simple service,’’ Neil Sherry, the British funeral director in charge of Mr. Rector’s service, told ITV London News. ‘‘I wanted it to be as special as possible.’’
Though Jowers expected no more than four people, word of Mr. Rector’s war record reached the American and British Armed Forces. The US Embassy donated a flag to drape over his coffin, and the room filled with servicemen and women and London historians who had never met Mr. Rector but wanted to pay their respects to their spiritual brother in arms.
One of them was US Army Major Leif Purcell. He may not have known Mr. Rector, but he attended the funeral on May 18.
‘‘Representation from the Royal Air Force and the British Army I saw here was phenomenal,’’ Purcell told ITV London News. ‘‘I was expecting just to see myself and maybe two or three other US service members and a priest, and that was it. So it was very delightful to see.’’
Speaking to the congregation, one US serviceman said, ‘‘I do know of his sacrifice and his family’s sacrifice, so you do him and his family a great honor by being here today.’’
‘‘He completed his final mission,’’ Jowers said.
