ID of hero soldiers step closer to being resolved

Researchers heard how the US soldiers set up a fondly-remembered community choir in the town

The mystery behind the identity of two American soldiers hailed as heroes for saving eight girls during a World War Two bomb blast is a step closer to being resolved.

The story was uncovered after US artefacts were found under the floorboards at the Victoria Centre, on Palk Road, Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, in the 1990s.

After years of digging, researchers have finally received official confirmation that they served with the Eighth Air Force, and a US museum hopes to find out who they were.

Edeltraud Freund, from the Victoria Centre, said: "This was a remarkable act of heroism that remained forgotten until recently."

A series of finds, including a uniform button, were discovered under floorboards at the Victoria Centre

The story was rediscovered after Mike Parnell began researching the building's wartime history shortly after the artefacts were found.

The items included a US Army button stamped with an eagle, a knife, blank cartridges, three rounds of live cartridges, cigarette packages and matchboxes.

Mr Parnell, a volunteer at the centre, said: "I went out and interviewed people who were around during the war, and they remembered the black American soldiers but didn't know which unit they were with."

US society was divided by racial segregation at the time - black people were denied equal rights under the "Jim Crow" laws, which remained in place in the southern states until the 1960s.

The director of Wellingborough Museum told Mr Parnell the site was a day centre for black soldiers; white American soldiers had their own facilities.

The museum then found a report in the Wellingborough News, describing a bombing raid on the town in August 1942, revealing how the two American soldiers, described as heroes, shielded "eight girls as they lay on the roadside for safety's sake".

As a result, the Wellingborough African-Caribbean Association (WACA) gave the men its 2002 annual award for black people who made a contribution to the local community.

The building was the Victoria Road Congregational Sunday School during the war and was used as a day centre for black US soldiers

But despite appeals over the years, Mr Parnell struggled to find any further information about the men.

The breakthrough came after BBC Radio Northamptonshire's Annabel Amos interviewed Heather Thies, from The National Museum of the Mighty Eighth Air Force, in Savannah, Georgia, for the 80th anniversary of VE Day.

Ms Freund was put in touch with the museum, which confirmed the men based in Wellingborough served in the Eighth Air Force.

"We will continue our research to a hopeful conclusion and to be able to honour them by name," Ms Thies said.

The WACA award will be donated to "its rightful home" - the Mighty Eighth museum - at an event on Friday at the Victoria Centre.

Mr Parnell said: "It is the closing chapter of over 20 years of local research and a piece of Wellingborough history that deserves to be told."