Staff Sgt. George F. Hague had been in England about a month when he flew his first combat mission. He did not come back from it.
The 21-year-old McKinney airman is one of five service members whose portraits Collin County will add to its fallen warrior display on Monday, Nov. 9, at 11 a.m. at the Russell A. Steindam Courts Building. The Commissioners Court is hosting the installation, and the county says Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 2150 made it possible. The county announced the ceremony on Nov. 2.
'Up and At Em'
According to the biography the county published, Hague served with the 526th Squadron of the 379th Bomb Group, part of the 8th Air Force in the Army Air Forces. He arrived at Kimbolton Airfield in Cambridgeshire in late April 1944 and was assigned as a waist gunner on a B-17 named "Up and At Em."
On May 29, 1944, the crew took off to bomb the submarine pens at St. Nazaire, France. The bomber was shot down. Four men parachuted out, the county says, and Hague was among the six who died when the plane came down about 10 miles east of Lorient. A memorial marker stands there in his honor.
The county notes he was the second Collin County airman killed in action on a St. Nazaire bombing run, after 2nd Lt. Lowell Kinney. Hague is buried at Pecan Grove Cemetery in McKinney.
