Jun 12, 2011

In the Netherlands, a fallen WW2 soldier from West York 'will be remembered'



York, PA (YDR) It was a Thursday, Dec. 16, 1943, when the Eighth Army Air Force's 413th Bomb Squadron took off from the airfield at Snetterton Heath, on the east coast of England, on the edge of the North Sea, to bomb Bremen, an industrial town in northwest Germany.
The fleet of B-17 Flying Fortresses left the base and climbed above the clouds, leveling off at 25,000 feet over the North Sea, heading northeast toward the coast of the Netherlands.
Tech. Sgt. Kenneth Elwood Slenker was the top turret gunner and engineer on one of those aircraft, one of 10 crew members. He was a 19-year-old kid, the second youngest of the four Slenker boys from West York, all of whom served during World War II. Growing up, Kenneth Slenker never ventured far from his family's home on West King Street -- the family didn't have a car -- and here he was, flying over the North Sea in a bomber. Continued

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