Historian pieces together details of WWII drama involving local woman's dad

"For years, Kay Talbert of Duncanville had heard only fragments of her father's remarkable war story.

How his B-26 bomber – nicknamed "Hitch Hiker" – was shot in half over northern France in 1944.

How he parachuted into a circle of German troops.

How he was later rescued by the French underground.

But just as remarkable is the story behind the story – how a French historian tracked down pieces of the bomber in a Normandy wheat field and coaxed the details of the crash from its last living crew member.
This month, the historian, Christian Levaufre, is completing the story by bringing a few of the plane's fragments home to the crew's relatives.
One of his stops was Duncanville, where he visited last week with Talbert and brought her a piece of the Plexiglas windshield her father looked through as Hitch Hiker's copilot.

"It was just a story that had died as far as I knew," said Talbert, whose father, 1st Lt. George L. Parker, kept the tale largely to himself.
"He was very open and friendly. He talked a lot, but not about the war."
Parker died in 1989, but thanks to Levaufre, who e-mailed Talbert out of the blue in 2004, she has managed to reassemble her father's story."

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