St. Cloud Family Going To Site Of WWII Plane Crash

ST. CLOUD (AP) - Members of a St. Cloud family are traveling to France for a ceremony honoring a relative and two crew members who died when their plane was shot down during World War II.

Margaret Thomas and other family members will visit the site of the crash this week. It will be the first time Thomas sees the farm in northern France, where her older brother, Jerome Gross, died 70 years ago.

Gross joined the U.S. Air Force at the height of WWII and eventually rose to the rank of first lieutenant. Two years later, he was hit by heavy fire while piloting a plane, causing the 1944 crash in which he and two other men died.

A monument is being erected by a local French organization to honor the aviators' wartime sacrifice.