By 
THIS month marks the anniversary of the brutal murder of a Tyrone schoolgirl at the hands of an American soldier during the Second World War.
In early 1942, soldiers from the 2nd Combat Crew Replacement Center Group were stationed at Cluntoe Airfield near Ardboe. For such a rural area, the influx of troops was quite the novelty, and they were warmly welcomed by local families.
Among them were the Wylies of Killycolpy, who befriended Private William Harrison Jr. The family had four young children, and the airman often joined them for evening meals.
He struck up a particular friendship with Patrick Wylie, with the pair drinking together in Dorman’s Bar.
But behind his genial front, Harrison harboured a darker side… one that wouldn’t emerge until near the end of the war.
On September 22, 1944, after days of heavy drinking, Harrison consumed 15 beers, each with gin chasers, as well as port wine at the local bar.
Later that afternoon, he called at the Wylies’ home, where he asked Mary Wylie if he could take her seven-year-old daughter Patricia into town to buy a thank-you gift for the family.
However, neither Harrison nor Patricia ever made it to Ardboe. Instead, the soldier led the child through a field, where he violently raped and strangled her.
When she did not return, the girl’s anxious father telephoned the police. RUC from Coagh, Stewartstown, Cookstown and stations throughout the district, American military police, and civilians began to scour the countryside.
Locals later discovered her body concealed in hay, the child’s face bloodied and her neck bearing deep bruises.
The basket which the murdered girl took with her was lying near the scene.
The community was highly shocked by the heinous crime, and hundreds of people from the surrounding districts attended the funeral of the murdered girl.
Harrison was quickly arrested and brought before a US Army court martial a few months later.
Though he admitted his guilt, his defence argued he lacked ‘sufficient moral awareness’ to understand the gravity of his crime.
Harrison, in evidence, told the court he graduated from a high school at the age, of 16.
He started drinking when he was 15. When he came to England he drank more than usual.
He had been court martialled five times for being absent without official leave.
In April, 1943, he was in hospital for six weeks with amnesia. Harrison told the court that he took the child through a field as a ‘short cut’.
Major Liggitt, senior defending counsel, asked, “Do you remember everything which took place after that?”
Harrison replied, “No, sir.”
Major Liggitt said, “Did you choke her?
“Yes,” responded Harrison.
“Why did you choke her?”
“I don’t know.”
“Had you any purpose in mind?”
“No,” claimed the soldier.
Major WV Huber, a psychiatrist of the US Army Corps, said that when he examined Harrison he found a ‘constitutional psychopathic state and inadequate personality manifested outwardly by alcoholism.’
Extracts from the prisoner’s medical history were read to the court revealing that on one occasion he was found in an English cinema suffering from loss of memory, and that on another he left a hospital and was found drinking in a public-house.
In one document he was described as a ‘spree drinker since entering the Service’.
A US army medical officer declared Harrison sane and fully capable of knowing right from wrong.
With a history of repeated disciplinary breaches, including five prior court martials, the soldier’s fate was sealed.
After just half an hour of deliberation, he was sentenced to death – one of 18 American servicemen executed in the UK during the war.
On April 7, 1945, he was hanged at Shepton Mallet Prison In Somerset, England by executioner Thomas Pierrepoint, assisted by Herbert Morris.
Today, Patricia is remembered at her grave in St Patrick’s Churchyard, Mullinahoe, opposite the primary school she once attended.