Who owns the Mi Amigo memorial?

Good morning, readers — and welcome to Thursday’s Tribune.

Not long after starting this job, I considered working on a story about this topic, only to quickly abandon the idea. No matter what my colleagues (and housemates, friends, strangers who meet me in smoking areas, etc) might think, I’m not one to muckrake just for the sake of it. A number of people — most notably ex-Star journalist Martin Dawes — had already said their piece about Tony Foulds, who rocketed to viral fame in 2019 for his devotion to the Mi Amigo crash memorial in Endcliffe Park. It didn't seem worth stirring the pot.

Then, two months ago, a journalist I respect published an uncritical piece about Tony Foulds in a national newspaper. I’m sure it represented, at most, half an hour’s work — dashing out quick stories about trending topics is a huge part of most journalists’ jobs. But it made me wonder. There’s Dawes on one side and, as Foulds himself is keen to point out, hundreds of thousands of people backing him on the other. So is Dawes a crank? Or a Cassandra? That’s today’s story.

Your Tribune briefing

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Who owns the Mi Amigo memorial?

As First Lieutenant John Kriegshauser’s badly damaged plane, the now famous Mi Amigo, was limping over the coast of England on 22nd February 1944, I’m told he received a message from God. He and his nine comrades — American soldiers fighting the Nazis, the oldest just 24 — were not long for this world. At around 5pm that day, their Flying Fortress aircraft would crash into Endcliffe Park and explode into flames. But in that moment, they allegedly received some words of comfort from on high: “There’s a young lad that’s going to look after you for the rest of his life.”

“It’s funny,” Tony Foulds, now an old man of 88, tells me. “I have done it since then.” We are sat gazing at the memorial to the Mi Amigo crash in Endcliffe Park, on a bench with the hashtag “Tony’sTen” carved into it. It’s a memorial that Foulds has voluntarily maintained for a long time, although there is a surprising amount of controversy over exactly how long. It’s also where he says the above moment of divine revelation was recounted to him, by a Jehovah’s Witness from America who came to pay tribute to the fallen a few years ago. 

Since he rocketed to viral fame in early 2019, thanks to a chance encounter with the then-BBC Breakfast presenter Dan Walker, people have often said amazing things to Foulds. Sometimes it’s that they want to give him an award or a special honour for tending to the memorial, like his star on the Walk of Fame outside the Town Hall. At other times, they tell him how much his devotion means to them, like the woman who said he had indirectly inspired her to get sober after 30 years as an alcoholic. 

Though less often and never to his face, Foulds knows some people say far less kind things. “They are jealous,” he insists, “that I know what I’m talking about and they don't.” He also readily admits that he’s at loggerheads with Sheffield Council and the local branch of the Royal Air Force Association (RAFA) — “we’re at each other’s throats” — because they don’t agree that the memorial, in spirit if not in the literal sense, belongs to him. “Nobody tells me what to do with this. Everybody calls it mine,” he says. “I have got more than 3,000 followers on my Facebook and Dan [Walker] has got hundreds of thousands on his and they are behind me as well.” 

It’s obvious that a lot of people really do like Foulds, not least because several stop to chat with him during the course of our interview. Dan Walker wrote about him at length in Remarkable People, his book about inspiring everyday heroes, and considers the flypast he arranged for the 75th anniversary of the Mi Amigo crash, at Foulds’ behest, one of the highlights of his career. Thousands of people showed up to Endcliffe Park for the occasion, which made international headlines, a fact of which Foulds is clearly very proud. “I personally put Sheffield on the world map with what I do here,” he tells me, before adding: “Through Dan.” (The Tribune contacted Walker through his PRs for this story but had not received a response at the time of writing.) 

But, according to some, Foulds’ touching story of everyday heroism is, at best, a misunderstanding and, at worst, a deliberate lie. His most vocal critic, ex-Star journalist Martin Dawes, calls him “Phony Tony” and can’t believe other journalists aren’t more sceptical. “I think people think ‘It’s a lovely story, so why spoil it?’ But it’s not true,” he tells me over the phone. “What are we in business for if not to tell the truth?” David Harvey, who spent four years researching the Mi Amigo crash, is far more charitable. He also believes the dominant narrative around Foulds is at least partly wrong but, if he blames anyone for that, it’s the media. “They got hold of the story, exaggerated it and it’s difficult to step back from that,” he tells me. “It must have caused him huge embarrassment.” 

Foulds doesn’t seem like an embarrassed man to me. In fact, he insists he’d happily submit to a lie detector test to prove his story — an idea he says he was only talked out of by Dan Walker. If anyone is being embarrassed into silence, it seems to be some of his critics. “I’ve been advised by my son that I should let it go about Tony Foulds,” an anonymous member of the Sheffield RAFA tells me. He’s learned from bitter experience that no one is willing to listen when he speaks up. The next morning, however, he rings me again. Evidently, whether you believe Tony Foulds or not, it’s very hard to get him off your mind.