IN MEMORY: We got a message from David Paddon of Newfoundland, Canada, about Bradford native Roger Mellion, and the “Liberator with a gift from above.”

His story was amazing. He said Roger was born in Bradford in 1924, but moved to Belleville, N.J., with his family at the age of 3.

In 1942, he joined the Army Air Corps, becoming a second lieutenant and a pilot. He and his crew were given a B-24 Liberator, “and flew to Goose Bay, Labrador, preparatory to going overseas, but bad weather held them there for three weeks.”

At midnight on Jan. 13, 1945, Mellion and crew took off from Goose Bay in their B24, to Keflavik, Iceland, enroute to the UK for active combat operations. “Something went wrong and the aircraft crashed on the ice just 3 minutes after takeoff.”

One man survived, but passed away within a week.

David told us his grandparents, and later his father, had a medical mission to care for patients in Labrador. They weren’t well equipped and didn’t have access to antibiotics, which were new at the time.

That summer of 1945, David’s father was walking home when a child ran up to him with a shiny bottle. “Where did you get that?” he asked.

“On the beach doctor, there’s lots of them lying around in the landwash,” the child said.

And there were. It was penicillin, between 300 and 400 vials, cargo from the crashed plane.

“And so, good people of Bradford, every January 13th I take a few minutes to think of Lt. Roger Mellion and the 8 other young men who lost their lives back in 1945.”

They didn’t make it to Europe, but made a huge difference to the people of Labrador. Every vial of the lifesaving medication was used.