World War II pilot reunited with woman who saved his life

Monday, Nov. 1, 1999 | 10:05 a.m.

An American pilot who crash-landed near a French farm during World War II has been reunited with a woman who led him to safety.

In the summer of 1944, Jacqueline Briand was a 14-year-old girl living in German-occupied France when she saw Dee Harper fall from the sky in his P-38 aircraft.

She didn't give a second thought to her own well-being as she helped the American airman to safety.

Her life and the lives of her family would have been at stake if the Germans had discovered Briand helping an American.

"She was a very brave little girl to wave me to follow her because it was very dangerous for the Frenchmen to do that," Harper said. "There were many Germans in the area. There was also a French militia that wasn't friendly to the Allied forces. It was an extremely patriotic and very, very courageous move."

Briand claimed she was guided by instinct when she rushed the pilot to her grandparent's house in the farming community of Concise, less than 100 miles south of France.

"I may have saved an American, but the Americans saved all of Paris," Briand said.

Harper, 79, didn't even know the girl's name and never dreamed he would be able to thank her for saving his life. For her part, Briand, now 70, never thought anything would fill the emptiness she felt not knowing whether Harper had survived World War II.

Then last year, an archaeologist connected the pair while researching the crash site. With translation assistance from their grandchildren, the two wrote letters and exchanged e-mail before Briand decided to fly to Las Vegas to meet him.

The two appeared recently at a French class at UNLV, exchanging stories.

Harper has lived in Las Vegas since 1986, retiring as a colonel after serving 28 years in the Air Force.

The young girl found the pilot dazed in a field near her grandparents home on July 15, 1944. Her mother cooked for the airman and helped inform underground Allied supporters of Harper's crash.

The pilot was picked up the next day by English soldiers.

"It's hard to believe that everybody doesn't know all the history of World War II because in my generation, it was our whole lives," Harper told the French class. "It was probably the most important war in the history of mankind. We were fighting really for your way of life today.

"It meant that we would either live as free people with liberty or you were going to be serfs serving under dictators. That was what the war was all about."

Harper was also shot down during the Korean War, but recalls most vividly the French experience. His plane was ripped apart when he and other pilots made a low-level attack on an ammunition dump in southern France.