George M. Collar - POW Stalag Luft 1

Enlistment and Training

I joined the United States Army Air Force on June 2, 1942 in my hometown of Jackson, Michigan, as a private in the enlisted reserve, but wasn't called to active duty as an aviation cadet until January 5, 1943.

We went by train from the Old Fort Street Station in Detroit to the classification center in Nashville, Tennessee. One of the fellows in our group was Bob Westfall, the great football player from Ann Arbor. Unfortunately, be could not pass the physical at Nashville, due to some ear problem, and was sent home. He later became a star for the Detroit Lions. I learned that he passed away a couple of years ago in Adrian. Michigan from a heart attack.

In Nashville, we went through a multitude of tests, at the conclusion of which, I found out that I was qualified to go on, either to pilot or bombardier pre-flight school. I chose the former, and was sent on to Maxwell Field, Alabama.

By this time, there were only four of us left who had been sworn in together in Jackson (myself, Bob Burns, Chuck Cooke, and Charlie Bennett). Of the four of us, only two made it through pilot training, Bennett and Cooke. Chuck Cooke stayed on in the Air Force after the war and retired as a Colonel. The last I heard of Bennett, he was flying C-47's in the Air Transport Command.

Both Bob Burns and I washed out on check rides in primary at Carlstrom Field in Arcadia, Florida. He was sent to Biloxi, and I was sent to Ellington Field, Texas for bombardier pre-flight school.

Ellington Field is situated about half way between Houston and Galveston, at Webster, Texas, and in addition to being a pre-flight school for bombardiers, it was also a twin-engine advanced school for pilots.

We were in class 43-18 and stayed at Ellington for twelve weeks. The commandant of cadets was Captain Roscoe Ates, who had been a stuttering comic in western films. He was a re-tread from WWI, and in real life did not stutter. I remember that the food at Ellington was excellent, the best I ever had in the army.

I made friends with a lot of cadets at Ellington Field. I especially remember Lee Hyde of Memphis., Tennessee; Bob Crotty of Erie, Pennsylvania; Art Devlin of Lake Placid, New York; Fred Crockett of Kalamazoo , Michigan; Shorty Burke of Appalachicola, Florida; Red Dillon of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Phil Brown of Syracuse, New York and Jack Michaels of Seattle, Washington, and John Dalgliesh of Meriden, Ct.

During our stay, we experienced a hurricane with 125 mph winds. There was advance warning, so as many as possible of the AT-9's and AT-10's were flown inland, but there were still a great many left by the time the hurricane struck. Our job was to anchor the planes down to the hardstands facing the wind. Then five or six cadets would lie across the cables to cushion the wind force (if the cables were taut, the gusts would buckle the wings). The wind was so strong that you could not face it. At one point, I glanced up and saw Shorty Burke stretched out horizontally hanging on for dear life.

When the eye of the hurricane passed over, we had to swing the planes around 180° and wait for the next blow. For our valiant efforts during the crisis, we were granted an overnight pass for the following weekend, but when the time came, we were all restricted to the post, due to an outbreak of polio.

From Ellington, we proceeded to Laredo Air Base for six weeks of aerial gunnery training. Even though it was very hot, and the food was terrible, it was a lot of fun. We shot a lot of skeet and moving base trap. We studied turrets and fired air to air, from the rear cockpit of an AT-6. We fired thousands of rounds using everything from machine BB guns to 50 caliber Brownings. We studied the three rad. lead system, and fired at clay pigeons from a Martin turret mounted on the back of a truck and equipped with shotguns.

At the end of our six weeks, we were presented with gunner's wings, and sent to Big Spring, Texas for twelve weeks of advance bombardier training. We had excellent training at Big Spring. The senior ground school instructor was Lt. L. K. Bowen, who taught us the theory of bombing and the 'M' series Norden bombsight. He was a fine teacher, and could have made a dummy understand. Lt. E. J. (Dashpot) Johnson taught us all about the automatic pilot and also the Sperry bombsight. Big Spring was one of the few bombardier schools that taught both Norden and Sperry Bombsights and this probably accounts for the fact that so many Big Spring graduates ended up in B-24s in the 2nd division of the Eighth Air Force. (B-24s of the Second Division were equipped with Sperry bombsights, while the B-17s of the 1st and 3rd Divisions had Norden.)

My flight-bombing instructor was Lt. Elliot and my bombing partner Louis Celantano of Minong, Wisconsin. We flew in AT-11's and dropped 100-pound practice bombs, which contained ten pounds of black powder, with the balance being sand. It was amazing how accurate you could be with the correct training. In order to graduate we had to have less than 210 feet average circular error for 100 bombs dropped. While you were dropping, your partner took aerial photos of the strikes, and accurate records were kept.

I was in flight 'D', and our cadet Lt. was Don Crowley of El Paso, Texas. He stayed in the air force after the war. He was Air Attache in the Dominican Republic, and in March of 1970, he was kidnapped by terrorists. Luckily, he as released unharmed later.

On December 21, 1943, one hundred ninety-nine of us received our bombardier's wings and were commissioned as 2nd Lt. We were a close-knit group, but soon were to be parted. Most of then I never saw again, many of them were later killed.

I went home on a ten-day delay en route, and then reported to Salt Lake Air Base, where combat crews were formed. Our original crew consisted of:

Pilot	1st Lt. Reginald Miner	Teameck, N.J
Co-Pilot	2nd Lt. Virgil Chiwa	Akron, Ohio
Navigator	2nd Lt. Francis J. Bertraw	San Francisco, Cal
Bombardier	2nd Lt. George M Collar	Jackson, Mich
Engineer	T/Sgt. Robert Ault	Texas
Radioman	T/Sgt. Edward Weddle	Norfolk, Va
Gunner	S/Sgt. Mertis C. Thornton	McComb, Miss
Gunner	S/Sgt. Larry Bowers	Atlanta, Ga
Gunner	S/Sgt. Arthur Lawberson	Sunbury, Pa
Gunner	S/Sgt. Alvis O. Kitchens	Monroe, La.

Soon after our crews were formed, we left by train for Casper Air Base in Wyoming. We traveled by troop train from Salt Lake to Denver on the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad through some of the most beautiful mountain scenery I have ever seen. At one point we went through the Moffat Tunnel.

At Casper were several of the bombardiers who had been with me at Big Spring. Among them were Bob Crotty, Fred Crockett and Sid "Chappie" Carlson.

At Casper, we were introduced to the B-24. Many of these planes were older model B-24-D's with a lot of hours on them.

We flew a lot of triangular navigation missions to such places as Wolf Point, Montana; Omaha, Nebraska; Dalhart, Texas; and Sioux City, Iowa. One night when we were returning to Casper, we ran into an electrical storm. Suddenly the plane was covered by St. Elmo's Fire. The navigator, Frank Bertram and I were petrified when the fire raced up and down the grillwork of the greenhouse nose, not two feet from us.

Another time we had a runaway prop on take-off, but thanks to some very cool work by Reg Miner, who feathered the correct prop instantly, we just cleared the trees at the end of the runway.

The pilots had to undergo training in emergency procedure. The instructor was a veteran of Ploesti, the name of Captain Bley. He was an accomplished B-24 pilot. He would sit in the co-pilot's seat, and put the plane in a steep climb until it was almost ready to stall, whereupon he would reach up and feather two engines on one side. The plane, would flop over and start to spin, then he would calmly pull it out somehow. Then he would let the pilot try it. This gave the rest of the crew a great heart-stopping thrill. I can remember how those twin tails would shudder.

A day or so after we had been up with Captain Bley, he took up the crew of Lt. Rivera, whose bombardier was "Chappie" Carlson. A couple of hours later word came back that the plane had spun in. This occurred in a quite inaccessible part of the Powder River Range to the west of Casper. From the air it appeared that no one had survived the crash, which later proved to be the case.

They sent a search party into the mountains to the scene of the crash, but by 11:00 P.M. no word had been received.

Freddie Crockett, Bob Crotty and myself were sitting in the barracks lamenting the demise of our pal Chappie, when suddenly the door opened and he appeared person. When we congratulated him on his survival, he didn't know what we were talking about. It seemed that shortly after they took off that morning, one of the gunners had become ill, so Lt. Rivera returned to the base to let him out. Since the function of a bombardier on a mission of this type was nil, Carlson asked Rivera if he could be dismissed also, and Rivera assented. Carlson then went into town, but failed to report to the operations office to take his name off the loading list. His life had been spared, but he felt very badly about his crew. The rescue party eventually reached the wreckage. There were no survivors.

The weather became so bad in Casper, that we were forced to move to the Pueblo, Colorado Air Base to complete our training. There was no bombing range near Pueblo, so we used to fly to La Junta, Colorado, to drop practice bombs. We used to start our bomb run near La Junta. One day we had a rack malfunction as I threw in the rack selector switch, and two bombs dropped out prematurely. This was just as we were starting the bomb run right at the edge of La Junta city limits. The tail gunner, Shorty Lamberson, reported that the bombs had fallen. We watched the bombs go down with our hearts in our throats. Fortunately for us, and me especially, they hit in open range and did not cause any fires.

When we finished up at Pueblo, we flew our plane to Topeka, Kansas, where we left them for modification. We then went to Lincoln, Nebraska, which was a staging base for overseas.

Our plane came back from Topeka after about a week, and one day we got orders to depart. As I recall, we didn't know where we were going until we were aloft. At any rate, we flew to Dow Field, Bangor, Maine and after an overnight stop, we took off for Goose Bay, Labrador. We stopped there for a couple of days, waiting for favorable weather. Our next stop was Keflavik, Iceland, where we stayed overnight, and then departed for the United Kingdom. We made landfall at Stornaway, on the isle of Lewis, and then headed down across the western highlands of Scotland toward the Irish Sea. The weather was completely clear, and the scenery was beautiful.

England

We landed at Valley, Wales, on the Island of Angelsea, and the next morning we were on a train bound for a camp at Stone, in Staffordshire. We were in Stone for a couple of days, and then took a train for Ringway Airport, between Manchester and Warrington. When we came into the railway station at Warrington, the stationmaster came running out with the news that the allies had landed in Normandy. It was June 6, 1944.

At Ringway, they loaded us on a stripped down B-17 and we flew to Clunto, County Tyrone, in Ulster, where the pilots were taught forming procedures.

While at Clunto, I met Ernie Frey, who was a co-pilot from my hometown. His bombardier was Ben Digregorio, of San Jose, California. I would again run into them at Stalag Luft I. Ernie was a professional baseball player, who before he joined up, was the property of the Cleveland Indians, farmed out to the Fostoria, Ohio team. His uncle was Benny Frey, a former pitcher for the Cincinnati Reds.

Clunto was on the banks of Loch Neigh, which is the largest lake in Ireland. One evening, a fellow by the name of Olson, from Long Island, was fooling around and fell in the lake. He was fished out by an eel fisherman, named Peter Coyle. Coyle was a bachelor who lived with his parents and a married sister and her husband and their four children, aged about 3 to 12 years. They lived in an old stone cottage, with a thatched roof, which had been in the possession of the family for over 250 years. Olson was taken to the house to dry out and warm up. As a token of his gratitude, Olson decided to visit them one evening, so he invited me along. We took our tobacco ration and some candy for the youngsters.

We were treated like long lost relatives. They didn't have much, but they cooked eggs and toast and made a pot of tea. The teakettle hung on a hook over a raised stone hearth, which contained a peat fire.

After tea, the children all lined up and sang Irish songs for us. Soon the whole family joined in. They could sing like larks. Before the evening was over, we all sang. Olson was especially good, as he had sung in light opera before the war.

After we bid the family goodbye, Peter Coyle took Olson and Me to a large barn a couple of miles away, where a group of traveling players were staging a play for the benefit of a large rural audience. Between the acts, the master of ceremonies entertained the audience by singing songs in rhyme about various people in the crowd. Before we knew it, he as singing about Olson and me. It came as a complete surprise, and we were both flattered to say the least.

There used to he a gnome-like Irishman who came around to the barracks with fresh eggs for sale. One night he appeared with a bottle of Jameson's Irish whiskey, which he sold us for $10.00. After he had gone we poured ourselves a drink in our mess cups, and to our chagrin, found out it was cold tea. Needless to say, we never saw the little Irishman again.

Upon completion of the training at Clunto, we were loaded into B-17's and delivered to the various bases to which we had been assigned. In the case of our outfit, mostly to groups in the 2nd division.

We eventually arrived at Tibenham Norfolk, where the airfield of the 445th bomb group was located. There were four crews who had gone through phase training at Casper who were assigned to the 445th that day. I knew the three bombardiers of the other crews, since we had gone through Big Spring together. They were: John C. Carillo of Dallas, Texas; Francis Ft. Briggs, of Buhl, Idaho; and Leon (Beartracks) Coon, of Lake Village, Arkansas. Of the four of us, two would finish up, Carillo and Briggs (although Carillo was wounded by flak). Poor Beartracks was killed on his 30th mission, by a direct flak burst over Wilhelmshaven. One of the gunners was blown clear and survived. I later met him in Germany and he told me the story. As I understand, they had bombed Hamburg, but were hit at Wilhelmshaven on the way out.

Tibenham is located approximately l8 miles south of Norwich. At the opposite end of the field is the village of Tivetshall, which had a railway station. About six miles away lay the village of old Buckenham. Near here was the airfield of the 453rd bomb group. This was also the wing headquarters. (Rowe Bowen informs me that Hethen (389 BG) was wing HQ and not old Buckenham)

At the time I arrived, the 5th was commanded by Col. Robert H. Terrell. He was later replaced by Col. William Jones. The commander of the 702nd squadron was Maj. Lloyd Martin. Our squadron bombardier was Capt. Painter. The group intelligence officer was Maj. Donald S. Klopfer, who in civilian life was associated with Random House Publishing Co. Maj. Klopfer was ably assisted by Capt Morgan Evans.

Jimmy Stewart had originally arrived in the United Kingdom with the 445th, and flew most of his combat missions with them, but by the time I arrived, he had been transferred to the wing headquarters. I only saw him once; at a dance he attended in our officer’s club with General Timberlake.

Many of the combat hardened veterans of the original group were still around, and although most of them had finished their missions, a lot of them wanted to stick around the E.T.O. in some capacity, rather than be reassigned back to the States. Among these was a pilot named Cunningham, who had been the airport manager in my hometown of Jackson. He became the air-sea rescue officer. Capt. Kluksdahl stayed with the group to check out the new pilots. Captains Steinbacher and Johnson were waiting to be assigned to fighter planes, and while waiting, volunteered to fly five extra, bombing missions.

I got to know Capt. Steinbacher quite well, since he had the bunk next to nine in our Quonset hut. He was from Williamsport, Pennsylvania; he had played football for Penn State. After he got into P-51's, he came over Tibenham one evening and gave us a royal buzz job. Later on, he came to a dance at our officer's club and celebrated his first victory (an FW-190, shot down over Munich). I heard that he was killed later on, but cannot confirm this. Col. Martin informs me that Steinbrcher was killed as a result of a high-speed stall while buzzing near Tibenham.

Combat Missions

I remember the first combat mission I flew, which was on June 29, 1944. Capt. Steinbacher came down to breakfast with us to get come fresh eggs. During the meal, some of us rookies expressed some concern about flak. He said, "don't let it scare you, because if you can see those black powder puffs you will know that they have missed. If they have yellow centers, they are getting pretty close, but don't worry, you'll never see the one that hits you."

We went to the Junkers engine works at Kothen that day, end they split us up. I was flying nose turret navigator in the deputy load ship with Capt Sherrard and my pilot, Reg Miner, was flying co-pilot in a ship off our wing. As we made landfall over Schoewen Island on the Dutch Coast, up came the flak, and they all had yellow centers. Luckily, we got through this okay and didn't see any more until we got on the bomb run. We were or the bomb run for twelve minutes and the flak was really thick. I glanced off our wing and saw a burst under the plane in which Miner was flying. I saw them feather an engine, and then they dropped down and I lost sight of then. About that time, we were hit and a piece of flak tore a hole in the side of the nose compartment and passed between the navigator and me and out the other side. After all this terror and excitement, we passed over the target without dropping our bombs, due to the target being obscured by low clouds.

We next flew to the secondary target at Stendahl, and again didn't drop the bombs. We headed back west and found a target of opportunity at Obersfelde-Kaltendorf where we dropped on the rail yards and did a creditable job. We all got back safely including the plane which Reg Miner was on (they limped back on three engines).

On 6 July 1944, we flew our second mission, and this time we flew as a crew. We bombed a V-I buzz bomb site at a place called Vignacourt, in the Pas de Calai. We encountered no fighters and no flak. It was what was generally described as a milk run. We could not actually see the buzz bomb site, since it was camouflaged in the woods. We had to bomb on co-ordinates received from the French underground, using known road intersections as checkpoints. From all reports later received, the mission was successful.

On 11 July 1944, we flow to Munich. We were supposed to bomb a jet plane assembly plant at Riem Airfield, if visual, and if not, to bomb the center of Munich. It was under cast, so we did not bomb the airfield. The flak was very intense.

Since we were not successful, we went again to the same target on 12 July 1944, with exactly the same results. These were maximum efforts (1500 bombers and 750 fighters) and were long grueling flights approximating nine hours. We saw quite a few bombers that were hit by flak, and saw several of the damaged planes peeling off for Switzerland, which lay on our left as we returned. We had a breathtaking view of the Alps projecting up through the clouds.

We stood down until the 16th of July and once again heard the ominous instructions at the early morning briefing. It was to be Riem Airfield at Munich once again. This was to be one of the roughest missions we were to participate in.

We took off in heavy ground fog, and as we flew to the southeast across the Channel, the weather continue to build up below.

By the time we reached the Moselle, we were flying about 24,000 feet, and the clouds were building up ahead.

Suddenly, ahead and to our high right a four burst pattern of flak picked off a P-51 at about 30,000 feet altitude. We saw his chute open.

The clouds had continued their buildup and as we climbed on course, we suddenly found ourselves surrounded by fog so thick that we could barely see our own wing tips. Everyone was really scared, but all the pilots could do was maintain a set rate of climb at a set airspeed, with absolutely no deviation in course. We finally pulled up through the tops of the clouds at about 25,000 feet altitude. Luckily our group came out in perfect formation, but the group ahead was not so lucky. We were eyewitnesses as two of them came together just as they emerged. There was an explosion and both ships disappeared back into the clouds.

To take our mind off this horror, we found ourselves in the Saarbrucken flak, which was bursting all around at our altitude. We were hit and lost an engine.

At the altitude we were flying, the B-24 with a full bomb load is not a good vehicle for flying formation. Since the weather ahead appeared to be building up even more, it was decided to scrub the Munich mission, so the order was given to reverse our course and bomb Saarbrucken through the clouds.

After we lost the engine, we could no longer keep in formation, so we bombed on the smoke markers and continued back to England on our own. We were losing altitude so we jettisoned anything we didn't need and made it back on three engines.

On 21 July 1944, we again bombed Saarbrucken.

On 23 July, we bombed Laon Airfield in France using the "G" box.

On 24 July, we participated in the famous St. Lo raid. This was the largest raid in history up to this time. Everything that the 8th and 9th Air Forces combined could put up plus all the RAF bombers and fighter bombers (3,000 planes in all) took part.

We dropped 260 pound fragmentation bombs, which were about the same overall size of a 100 pound G.P. bomb, except that the wall were about an inch thick and were serrated. When they exploded, they scattered one-inch square chunks in all directions, and were deadly anti-personnel weapons.

We went in at 15,000 feet and bombed the front lines along a ten-mile stretch of road that runs between St. Lo and Perrier. The artillery laid down pink smoke markers as a guide, but unfortunately, the wind drifted the smoke and one group dropped short, killing 400 American troops including General McNair. I am happy to say it was not our group.

On 25 July, when the group flew another mission to St. Lo, the flak was thick and accurate. The German 8 mm gun is deadly at 15,000 feet. One of our ships took a direct burst and went down. The co-pilot, a fellow named Long was blown out and landed in his chute in the hedgerows of no man's land. He crawled in a ditch and lay there for four hours until he was fortunate enough to be picked up by an American Patrol. That night he was back in England. He was later shot down in late November 1944 and ended up in our compound at Stalag Luft I.

Along about this time, the higher authorities decided to make Reg Miner a lead pilot. Lead ships were equipped with radar for bombing through the clouds, so Major Martin replaced me on the crew with a radar man, and I was assigned to the pool. This meant I would fly wherever and whenever I was needed.

The crew of Lt. Klein of Akron, Ohio, needed a bombardier, so l was assigned the job.

On 28 July 1944, we bombed an oil dump at the bend of the Seine in Paris.

On 31 July 1944, we bombed, the I.G. Farben Chemical plant at Ludwigshaven on the Rhine. Heavy flak, everyone returned safely.

On 1 August 1944, we flew a tactical mission in support of ground troops and bomb a bridge at Nantruel Sur-Marne.

On 2 August 1944, bombed bridge at Nogent Sur Seine.

On 4 August 1944, we bombed a jet engine plant at Schwerin in Mecklenberg. This was a long mission of seven and three-quarter hours. Fourteen years after the war, the company I worked for hired an Austrian named Miller as technical director of our Nurnberg plant. He had been a major in the Luftwaffe and was present at Schwerin Airfield the day we bombed it. He confirmed heavy damage.

About this time, Lt. Klein finished his 35 missions, so I was assigned as bombardier with the crew of Lt. Jerome Bernstein of New York City. Berstein later flew B-29's in the Korean War. He has now changed his name to Jerome Prince, and lives in Springfield, OR. The co-pilot was Lt. Wren of Chicago. We flew in an old B-24 H, which did not have a name, so one morning we went out to the hardstand with a paintbrush and christened it "Weeping Willie."

On 5 August 1944, we went to bomb a tank plant in Brunswick. Heavy flak, no fighters.

On 8 August 1944, we were supposed to bomb a buzz bomb site at Haute De Foret Disu in the Pas De Calais, but after making about four passes we could not find the target, so we were forced to jettison our bombs in the North Sea. The bombs we were carrying were RDX and we were not allowed to land with them.

On 13 August 1944, we bombed the Ile De Cezembre in the Harbor of St. Malo, France. At this time the American Army had invaded the Brittany Peninsula, but were unable to capture the Port of St. Malo. The German Commander known as the Madman of St. Malo" was holding out. The Ile De Cezembre was equipped with large French naval guns and was holding, our naval forces at bay.

It was a beautiful clear day and we had no flak to contend with. We were loaded with 2,000-pound bombs and we scored 90% hits on the island, which was only about a half mile long. We found out later that the Island was solid rock, and that the guns retracted into the ground, so that the raid did relatively damage.

On 16 August 1944, we started for Dessau. After we were deep inside Germany, our superchargers started acting up, and Lt. Bernstein couldn't keep the old crate in formation so we had to abort. We called for a fighter escort and started back. I immediately started looking for a target of opportunity. We had aboard a young intelligence officer flying on his first mission in the nose turret. His name was Frederick Jacosi, and now lives in N.Y.C.

On 19 August 1944, bombed bridge at Fismes, France.

I spotted the Dortmund-Ems Canal coming up d Was synchronizing on a nice railroad bridge, when all of a sudden Jacoby came on the intercom in an excited voice, shouting "there’s an airfield down there". He broke my concentration, and I knew I couldn't hit the bridge, so I immediately raked the ship over in a steep bank (using the course knob and autopilot) trying for the airfield. Needless to say, I didn't have enough time to kill rate, and the bombs overshot the field and fell into an adjacent woods.

When we got back to Tibenham and reported in at the Intelligence interrogation we found out that the airfield was a night fighter base at Plantlunne, and that the hardstands were all camouflaged in the woods where our bombs had hit. Instead of a reprimand we were highly congratulated. Meanwhile, the group lost a ship at Dessau, when Capt. Carlyle's plane was blown out of the sky. A plane flown by Lt. Cuestella, in one of the high squadrons was hit by flak, and dropped down on top of Capt. Carlyle's plane. I do not know of any survivors.

On 18 August 1944, we bombed Metz Airfield in eastern France. This was the day that Paris fell, and we flew at a lower level over Paris on the way home.

On 24 August 1944, we again returned to Brunswick to bomb the tank plant.

On 25 August 1944, WE went on a long mission to hit a naval installation at the Port of Wismar on Mecklenberg Sound in the Baltic Sea. We crossed the Danish Peninsula to the north of Kiel Canal. Plenty of flak but didn't see any fighters.

On 27 August 1944, we bombed a military installation in the Berlin suburb of Oranienburg, plenty of flak. Coming back from this mission saw what looked to us like a smoke marker in reverse. It turned out to be a V-2 rocket being launched.

On 8 September 1944, bombed an installation at Karlsruhe, Germany.

On 9 September 1944, bombed an airfield at Gustavsburg, Germany.

On 10 September 1944, bombed a factory at Ulm, Germany. This was (I believe) Lt. Bernstein's 35th and final mission.

On 12 September 1944, with Lt. Wren as first pilot, we bombed an oil refinery at Hanover, Germany. On this mission we left England at Great Yarmouth and headed across the North Sea to make landfall between Cuxhaven and Hamburg. There is only one place in the North Sea, which we were to avoid, and this is the island of Helgoland. Sure enough, the lead squadron took us right over the top of it. Up came the big dumbbell shaped flak (must have been 105 mm) and down went the "Dixie Flyer" which was flying right in front of us. We were hit in the waist but no serious damage. We hit the oil refinery at Hanover after experiencing more heavy flak on the bomb run.

On 13 September 1944, we again returned to Ulm, same target had hit on 10 September 1944.

On 26 September 1944 I went with Lt. Bob Russel (of Chula Cista CA, he later flew B-29's in the Korean War) to Hamm Rail yards on the edge of the Ruhr. This was his 35th and final mission, and on the way home over the North Sea, he asked permission to leave the formation (said he was having supercharger trouble). We dove right down to the deck at Great Yarmouth and did a low level buzz job all the way back to Tibenham. I was sitting in the nose turret so I had a ringside seat. We flew so low that we had to climb up to avoid church steeples. Once we went over a chicken farm and about a thousand white leghorns rolled over the ground like tumbleweeds.

When we were returning from one of our raids in early September, we witnessed the invasion of Arnheim, (operation Market, Garden) and saw the hundreds of transport planes and gliders on their way. It was an impressive sight.

The Final Mission

On 27 September 1944, I had finished 28 missions, and was supposed to leave on a three-day pass, but a young bombardier by the name of Aarvig, from Chicago, failed to return from his pass and I had to take his place. There was rumor brought into Stalag Luft I in late Nov. that Aarvig had later been killed. I now have reason to believe that this rumor was unfounded.

The crew I flew with that day consisted of:

Pilot	1st Lt. James W. Schaem	DesMoines, IA	KIA
Co-Pilot	2nd Lt. Robby McGough	Lake City, Ark.	POW
Navigator	2nd Lt. Corman Beam	Fargo, N.D.	POW
Bombardier	2nd Lt. George Collar	Jackson, Mich	POW
Engineer	T/Sgt. George S. Eppley	Carlyle, Pa.	POW
Radioman	T/Sgt. Robert L. Collins	Cleveland, Ohio	POW
Gunner	S/Sgt. Richard L. Parsons	Baimbridge, N.Y	KIA
Gunner	S/Sgt. Edward J. Johnson	Ozone Park, N.Y.	KIA
Gunner	S/Sgt. Bryan J. Hurt	Samford, Fla.	KIA

As I recall, the 445th group was leading the rest of the 2nd division groups that participated. The target that day was Kassel Railyards.

We made landfall at the Dutch cost and proceeded uneventfully toward Kassel with fighter escort. Due to cloudy conditions we could not see the ground and the plan was to bomb through the clouds using P.F.F.

We were flying southeast toward Kassel, and at the group I.P., we were to turn downwind in a more easterly direction.

As we approached the I.P., we could see the Kassel flak coming up in a blanket, and bursting at our altitude. Suddenly before we got to the I.P., the lead plane in the lead squadron made a left turn and the whole group followed. At this point, our navigator, Corman Bean, said over the intercom "That Mickey man in the lead ship has screwed up, we shouldn't have turned yet."

By the time the lead pilot discovered the mistake, it was too late to turn back on course, as all the other groups following us were in the way as they proceeded to the correct I.P. At this point we would have been okay (in my judgment) if the lead pilot had circled 360° and followed the last group in, but he made a snap judgment to continue on an easterly course, and bomb the town of Gottingen, which lies about 50 miles northeast of Kassel. We got to Gottingen and dropped the bombs, but unfortunately we lost our fighter escort. At this point our leader made another error in judgment (in my opinion). Instead of getting out of there and making a bee-line for England, his army trained mind followed the original plan for Kassel, which was to bomb downwind from the northwest, hit the target, then turn south for about 50 miles, then turn west and cross the Rhine near Coblentz and head for friendly territory in France before proceeding back to England. He turned us south from Gottingen with the intention of flying south to a line that would bring us back toward Coblentz. Of course by this time we were 100 miles behind everyone else, with no fighter escort.

Just as we made our turn to head west, we were hit by a wolf pack of FW-190's. I have heard between 100 and 200 of them. They came out of the high clouds behind us, and hit us so fast that our tail gunner never got to call them. He and the two waist gunners must have been hit almost immediately.

The top gunner Eppley got in a few shots as he watched the 20 mms hitting the top of the fuselage and crawling toward him. I was in the front turret, and wondered what those small flak bursts directly in front of us were. I soon found out, as there was an explosion directly under the turret, which blew out all the controls for the turret and the guns.

I was helpless as the F-190 streaked past. He couldn't have cleared us by more than six feet. We were in the high right squadron, and I could see the fighters attacking the lead squadron like a swarm of bees. The lead ship and at least one other were on fire and slowly nosed forward and went down.

At this time, I heard the bailout bell ringing, so I got out of the turret and found Corman Bean putting on his chute. The whole nose compartment looked like a sieve. Those exploding 20 mms had blown up right between us, but neither of us was hit. By this time we were nosing down and the whole left wing was on fire. We opened the nose wheel door and bailed out.

In the meantime, Sgt. Eppley was still firing from the Martin turret and failed to hear the bailout bell. He happened to look down and saw the pilot walking across the flight deck, so he decided it was time to leave. He followed the pilot down into the bomb bay. Imagine his surprise when he found the bomb bay doors closed.

Schaen, the pilot, was going up the tunnel toward the nose following the radioman and the co-pilot. Eppley automatically reached for the bomb door handle, and to his surprise, the doors opened, so he went out there. He was no sooner out than the ship blew up. We learned later that the radioman, Sgt. Collins, and the co-pilot, Bobby McGouh, got out, but were wounded. Unfortunately, our pilot, Jim Schaen never made it. He left a wife and baby. We never found out why they didn't go out of the bomb bay as they were supposed to do. Perhaps the first one down pulled the handle the wrong way and thought the doors were stuck.

When I bailed out, I couldn't wait to see if the chute would work, so I didn't waste time in pulling the ripcord. I stopped with a jerk and away went my flying boots. The air battle was going on and it was better than the movies. Swarms of FW-190's shooting down B24's right and left. It was pretty noisy with gunfire end explosions at first, but the battle receded in the distance, and then it became eerily quiet and still. There was a cloud cover obscuring the ground and the only sight was 20 or 25 parachutes floating down. I descended into the clouds and would estimate that I broke through at about 3000 feet.

Below me was a beautiful valley and wooded hills, one of which had a ruined castle on top. There was a small river and a village, which I could see below. Scattered in the woods I counted the wrecks of three B-24's. As I descended, I suddenly beard a fighter plane coming toward me up the valley. At first I thought it must be a German, but as it approached, I saw it was a P-51. He saw me and banked around, I could see his face and he waved to me. Just as I waved back, his prop wash hit me and I started to swing like a pendulum. There was a stiff wind blowing, and as I righted myself to put my back to the wind, I could see things more plainly on the ground. I saw a man on a bicycle pedaling down a lane and looking up at me.

My first thoughts were that be was probably a slave laborer, and maybe he could be helpful in hiding me out. About this time I was approaching the ground rapidly, so tried to remember our instructions for landing in a chest pack chute, such as facing down wind, and relaxing like a tumbler. I also remembered that they said landing with a chest pack chute was like jumping off a ten-foot wall. Luckily for me, I landed in a ploughed field. Even so, I sprained my ankle (no boots, only my socks). I slammed so hard into the ground with my left shoulder, that it knocked the wind out of me. In the meantime the chute was dragging me along the ground. I weakly reached for the shrouds and collapsed the chute, and as I lay there trying to get my breath, the man on the bicycle ran across the field waving a luger at me. He was quickly joined by two farmers with pitchforks. (So much for my slave labor theory.)

Capture

It must have been about 10:00 A.M. when I landed. The man on the bicycle turned out to be the Burgomeister of the village, which was about half a mile away. They made me pick up the parachute, and marched me into the village. Since I came down closest to the village, I was the first one captured, and the whole village turned out to line the streets to get a close up look at the 'Americanishe Terrorflieger". It was like walking down a gauntlet, with people glaring at me malevolently. One teenager stepped out and gave me a swift kick with his big rubber boot.

They marched me into the courtyard of the Burgomeister's house, and all the people flocked in and surrounded me. They made me take down my pants and hold my hands out while they searched me. As I was standing there in my long handles, with my pants around my ankles, an ugly looking farmer with big fists swung from left field, and planted his fist right between my eyes. I found out later he had broken my nose and both eyes were black for two weeks. He started swinging again, and I kept dodging out of the way as I attempted to get my pants back up. Finally I got my belt buckled and I closed in on him. I had a funny feeling, that if I went down, that the whole crowd would jump me. He finally broke away and picked up a long handled, square nosed spade. He swung at me, and as I ducked, I felt it whistle over my head. I knew I had to get in close and get hold of that spade. I knew at that moment that I was fighting for my life. I finally closed in, and as we were grappling for the spade, an old man with a walrus mustache and a green felt hat stepped in and started to help me. By this time, the Burgomeister and the village cop came to my aid and disarmed him. After that the crowd seemed to cool down somewhat. They then marched me off to the local jail. This was a structure made of stone, built adjacent to the church, with walls about three feet thick. It consisted of one room about twelve by twelve feet. There was one small barred window up high. The floor was made of stone and covered with dirty straw. There were no toilet facilities. The door was made of massive oak, complete with bolts, bars, chains and padlocks.

They locked me in, and I was all alone with my thoughts. After about ten minutes, they opened the door and shoved Sgt. Eppley in. (This was when he told me his story.) As we sat there talking, we heard a commotion outside. Someone said, "You can't do this to me, I'm an American Officer." The door opened, the American officer came flying in bodily. He turned out to be Lt. Somers, a navigator in the lead squadron. For the next hour or so, they kept bringing in prisoner. Among them I remember a redhead, Lt. Dowling. Finally there must have been about fifteen of us crowded in the jail. Before long we heard a truck pull up outside. The door opened, and we were marched outside and lined up. The truck contained several Wehrmacht Soldiers. The Obergefreiter and the Burgomeister walked down the line and picked out three of us; Sgt. Eppley, Lt. Somers, and myself. The others were herded into the truck, which drove away. We wondered what they were going to do with us. We were soon to find out.

They marched us back to the Burgomeister's house, and from a table containing a variety of artifacts, picked up by the German search parties, including escape kits, parachutes, etc., they gave me a pair of felt boots about two sizes too big. Summers and Eppley had not lost their boots. We next marched into the street, where they had two horse drawn wagons, each about half full of hay. We were prodded to fall in, end as the wagons moved out, we had an escort of about ten men and boys all armed to some extent. One little short fellow named Hans had an old WWI Mauser pistol, with a huge wooden holster half as long as his leg. We proceeded out to the edge of the village and stopped. They motioned us into an orchard and there lying on the ground, was the body of one of our fliers. It became clear what the Germans wanted us there for. They wouldn't touch the body, that was to be our job. I will say one thing though; they made us remove one of the man's dog tags, which they put in a big envelope.

The victim had obviously been blown out of the plane as he landed without a chute. Every bone in his body was broken. His name was Lt. Bateman and was a member of the crew of Lt. Johnson of the 703 B.S. After we lifted his body onto one of the wagons, an elderly man rode up on a beautiful sorrel horse. He had the appearance of an aristocrat, and was armed with an expensive double-barreled shotgun. He was scouting through the hills, locating plane wrecks and other bodies. He gave our escort directions, and we proceeded up into the hills.

We traveled up and down the hills and forests all day, and did not arrive back in the village till about 9:00 P.M. We picked up approximately a dozen bodies, some of them horribly mangled. In the middle of an open field, we came across a radioman named Joe Gifoil who was a friend of Sgt. Eppley. He had a bad leg wound, but came down in his chute. He was lying in a pool of blood and was dead.

One of the bodies we picked up was Lt. Martin Geiszler of Bell, California. I think he was from the 701st squadron. After the war, his parents came to my home in Michigan to see me, because they had heard from a pal of mine from Stalag Luft-I, (Lt. Oscar McMahon) that I had been shot down on the Kassel raid. At that time, they did not know if their son was alive or dead. I had the painful duty of confirming his death. About a month later, they received word from the Red Cross to the effect that his death was officially confirmed, which proved that the Germans had turned in the dog tags. Unfortunately, some of the men we picked up were not wearing their tags, so their loved ones never knew for sure. In one of the burning wrecks we saw several more bodies, but we couldn't recover them.

That night when we returned to the village, we left the wagons containing the bodies at the cemetery, unhitched the horses, and walked to the village pump. We hadn't had anything to eat or a drink of water since we left England about dawn. They took us back to the jail and brought us a loaf of bread and some ersatz coffee. It was the last white bread we were to eat till we were liberated in May of 1945.

We were settled down for the night on the stone floor. Along about midnight, wakened by the arrival of a Wehrmacht truck we were prodded to climb aboard. We never did learn the name of the village but if those bodies were buried there, it might be possible to find out from grave commission records.

The truck was filled with wounded fliers from the 445th, who had been picked up from a wide area. One of them was a co-pilot I knew from the 702nd squadron. His name was Gerry Kathol In civilian life he was a petroleum engineer and had played football for the University of Nebraska. He had been blown out of his plane, but fortunately is chute opened and he came to on the way down. His back was injured and we thought it might be broken. After the war, I ran into him at Miami Beach, and he was okay. He had sustained a dislocated hip.

We spent the next three hours riding around the countryside picking up more wounded prisoners. (Evidently other trucks had picked up the unhurt fliers earlier.) Some of the men we picked up were in very bad condition. About 3:00 A.M. we arrived in the city of Eisenach, and drove to a hospital, where we had to carry all of those wounded men up to an emergency room on the second floor.

After we left the hospital, they took Eppley, Sommers, and myself to the Wehrmacht base, and put us in the guardhouse, where we met about 25 of our buddies. Among then were Lt McGregor and Lt. Weinstein. There were also two wounded men. They both should have been in the hospital. Why they were not taken there, I do not know. One of them was a Polish boy from Detroit.

In this guardroom, we slept on wooden shelves in rows. We were there for about two or three days. Couldn't keep much track of time since the guardroom was in the basement and we couldn't tell if it was day or night. The only time we could leave the shelves was to go to the toilet under escort. We only had black bread and coffee.

One day two Luftwaffe soldiers showed up to take us away. The Wehrmacht supplied two stretchers for the wounded men, and put several loaves of bread under the blankets. The Luftwaffe Feldwebel in charge told us that they had orders to shoot us if we tried to escape, (they were armed with Schmeissers). He also said we would be traveling on a public train and they would protect us from any harassment, but he warned us to keep a low profile, and not to uncover the bread in public.

We marched down to the Eisenach Railway Station and boarded a train heading east. After passing through Gotha, we eventually arrived at Erfurt. From Erfurt Station we had to march about seven miles to the Luftwaffe Base, mostly uphill. We had to carry the wounded men on the stretchers and it was really rough. We worked in shifts on the stretchers. It was a hot day and we finally all pooped out at the top of a hill. We just set the stretchers down and flopped upon the ground. A woman came out of a nearby house with a big pitcher of cold water, nothing ever tasted so good. Finally one of the guards scrounged up a pushcart to put the stretchers on. This worked well for about a half mile, when one of the tires blew out rendering it useless, so we went back to carrying the stretchers. Then our last ounce of strength was just about gone, we stumbled into the Erfurt Luftwaffe Base. They put us in a big room, and we all stretched out on the wooden floor and went sound asleep.

The two wounded men had not been taken to the base hospital and their stretchers were in the room with us. The next day, we all got a bowl of barley and cup of ersatz coffee. They confiscated our Government Issue watches; I still have the receipt for mine. They did not take privately owned watches.

After a couple of days spent on the wooden floor, we were lined up outside and loaded on trucks, which drove us to the Erfurt Station. As we stood in a column of twos on the sidewalk outside the station a couple of S.S. men in black uniforms showed up and started giving us a bad time. A crowd quickly gathered and things started to get ugly. About this time the Luftwaffe Colonel (Oberst) drove up and read the riot act to the crowd. He must have outranked everybody, because the crowd dispersed quickly.

We boarded a train with the same two guards we had had before, but this time we were in a special car marked P.0.W. One guard at each end.

We traveled back westward, and about 10:00 P.M. arrived in Frankfort on Main Station. There was a lot of bomb damage evident. Our car was uncoupled, and we sat alone in the station. Before long a large crowd gathered and started to get nasty. The guards told us to get down, and they yelled at the crowd and waved their Schmessers menacingly, but this seemed to have little effect on the mob as they advanced with bricks and stones. At this critical moment, we were saved, when the air raid siren sounded. The mob scattered to the air raid shelter. In a few minutes, an R.A.F. Mosquito came over and dropped a large bomb about a block away. It really shook things up. Then the all clear sounded, a small engine steamed into the station and pulled us away. They took us to the town of Oberuesel, where we arrived about 12:30 or 1:00 A.M. We marched from Oberuesel Station to the interrogation camp.

When we arrived in the vorlager of the camp, we found it filled with British, Polish and Canadian paratroopers who had been captured at Arnheim. They kept us all standing for over an hour. I was standing next to a Polish Colonel. They finally assigned us to some rooms in the basement. The next morning they got us up early and brought us each a bowl of red cabbage soup. We called it "purple passion", and it tasted pretty good. The guard told us that we would be taken singly for interrogation. I had a small compass, and thought I had better hide it in case they searched me, so I hid it in a crack of the windowsill. It is probably still there, as we never came back to the room.

I was finally escorted to a small office where a (captain), dressed in the uniform of the Africa Corps, sat behind a desk. He told me to take a seat, and offered me a cigarette, which I declined. He spoke perfect English, and started to ask me a lot of question, such as what group I belonged to; what our target was, etc. I told him that I could only give hi my name, rank and serial number. He then gave me the business about how nice it would be to go to a permanent camp and be with my friends; otherwise, I would have to remain at Dulag Luft, alone, in solitary confinement. All I had to do was answer a few simple questions. I still declined. He then said, “Well, we know where you came from, Tibenham, the 445th bomb group.” I was surprised, but remained silent. He then called the guard and said that he would be seeing me again.

The guard took me up to the second floor and along a corridor, and put me in a small room, which contained a cot with a burlap pallet, filled with excelsior. There was a barred window, with frosted glass. Nothing else. No chair, no table. If you wanted to go to the toilet, you had to pull a rope near the door, which let down a sign in the corridor. When the guard got around to it, he would let you out, and accompany you down to the washroom.

Occasionally, you would meet someone there, but you were not supposed to converse. I met an English pilot there, who told me he had been there almost a month. He whispered out of the side of his mouth.

I never was called back for interrogation and the next day, I was rousted out by the guard and found about two hundred men lined up in the hall, including most of the 445th prisoners who had arrived with me. There were also English aircrew and paratroopers, Canadians, Czechs and South Africans of the R.A.F. and also some 15th AF. Personnel. We were all marched out of the building, and into a separate barracks, with rows of bunks. They made everyone take off his shoes, tie them together, and throw them in piles on blankets. The shoes were then removed from the building, not to be returned until the next day.

They woke up early the next day, and there was a mad scramble to retrieve our shoes. I was hoping to get a better pair than the oversized felt boots, but no such luck.

Speaking of those felt boots, the day I went into solitary, and I took some excelsior out of the bunk and lined them for a better fit. I didn’t know that the excelsior was full of fleas, but soon found out when my ankles started to itch.

Shortly, we were marched from the camp to the railway station in Obereusel where we boarded railway coaches, and headed north. Along the way was much evidence of war damage. At one place there were a great number of burnt out locomotives on a siding. We had to back into a tunnel at one point to avoid strafing planes.

We arrived at the town of Wetzlar in late afternoon, and after we pulled up in front of the station, we were lined up by the engine to be counted. At this point, the air raid siren sounded, and along came a flight of P-51’s flying at about 1000 feet. They must have sighted the locomotive, as the circled around and returned. We were kept in line by the guards, who held their burp guns on us as they retreated toward the relative safety of the station.

We were all sweating blood, as we watched those planes bearing down on us, but for some reason they pulled up, circled back and disappeared, without firing. We never knew why, but were well satisfied with their decision.

We then marched through the town, and up a hill to a large camp. I remember walking by a factory where it was reputed they made 20mm guns. We also passed the factory of Ernst Leitz, the home of the famous Leica camera.

At the camp, we were assigned bunks in large rooms, and here we got our first decent meal, reportedly made from the contents of Red Cross parcels. We hung around for several days and it was at this camp that contingents were made up to travel to the permanent camps. We found out that all of the air force officers would be sent to one of two camps. Stalag Luft I, located on the Baltic Sea about 20 miles west of Stralsund. The other, and larger camp, Stalag Luft III was located near the Oder River at Sagan.

Eventually, I was assigned to a large group, including a lot of the other fellows who had gone down on the Kassel raid, and we were marched back to the railway station. As we marched down the road, we came across a number of Russian prisoners engaged in road repair. As we passed, they surreptitiously flashed the “V” sign to us. At the station, we were placed in an old Italian carriage, with wooden seats. This was to be our home for the next several days and nights.

Before leaving the camp, we had each been given a Red Cross parcel which contained hard tack biscuits, powdered coffee, powdered milk, cheese, a “D” bar, a tin of sardines, sugar and prunes. This was to be our ration until we got to the permanent camp.

We traveled eastward from Wetzlar, and I remember passing through the towns of Giesen, Marburg, Bad Herzfeld, Eisenach, Gotha, Erfurt, Weimar, Jena and Leipzig.

We sat side by side on the wooden seats. The fellow who sat next to me was a South African pilot, from Durban, Natal, by the name of Whitehead. He had been shot down and captured in Italy. He was a happy high-spirited fellow, and entertained us by singing songs in the Africaner language. I remember one of the songs was, “Fut Yo Hut Und Trek Ferrera.”

Note: In Col Zemke’s book “Zemke’s Stalag”, it confirms a rumor that I had heard in Stalag Luft I, that Whitehead had been shot for being out of the barracks during an air raid, although in Zemke’s book, the name is give as Whitehouse.

During our five-day trip, my ankles swelled up perceptibly, especially the one I had sprained. The only exercise we got was walking to the toilet at the end of the car. To make matters worse, after about two days the toilet stopped up.

We eventually arrived in Berlin and the devastation was tremendous. Everything along the rail line seemed to have been destroyed or damaged by bombs. One of my bombing missions had been to Oranienburg, which is a suburb of Berlin, and I wondered if I might be a witness to my own handiwork. At one point, we entered a station, we never determined which one, some said Chalottenberg, others Potsdam. The station was filled with people waiting for commuter trains. We proceeded northeast out of Berlin, going through the towns of Pasewalk, Anklam, Greifswald and Stralsund. From Stralsund, we proceeded northwest and at Barth, we entered a side track that took us into Stalag Luft I.

Stalag Luft I

We were herded into a building, where they made us lay out our belongings. They opened up any unopened cans from what remained of our Red Cross parcels, and ran penknives into the contents, after which they were returned to us. I never did know what they were searching for. We next had to strip, and our clothing was placed in baskets and fumigated. We were sprayed with lice powder and taken to the showers. I remember that the soap they gave us didn’t lather up very well.

We went into another building and were issued prison dog tags. My Stalag Luft I serial number was 6107. We were next issued a G.I. blouse and trousers, a pair of G.I. shoes and a balaclava wool helmet. We also got a choice of a wool G.I. blanket or overcoat. I took the blanket. We also get a grey German blanket, (which wasn’t very warm.)

We were then segregated from the R.A.F. fliers, who were marched off to the South compound. We were marched to the North 2 compound. As we came up the street to the compound, we heard a rumbling noise that sounded like a herd of buffalo stampeding. It turned out to be about a thousand men rushing to the fence to see if they knew any of the new “kriegies”. Among them were quite a few people that I know. Including my old pal, Bob Crotty of Erie, Pennsylvania; Sid Carlson of Farwell, Minnesota; Ernie Frey of Jackson, Michigan and Ben DiGregorio of San Jose, California.

Note: Am sorry to say that Crotty died in June ‘91 and is buried in San Francisco.

Our compatriots made us most welcome, and Bob Crotty found a bunk for me in his room, where the inmates each donated a share of their cooked barley so that I could have a large bowl. I then took out my Red Cross parcel and shared the contents with them.

The rooms were originally designed to accommodate ten men, but when our contingent arrived, it was increased to twelve. By the time the war ended, most of the rooms contained 18 to 20 men. The bunks were two tiered, but as the population increased, we added a third layer and more bunks were crowded into the rooms. Most of the bunks were made of two by fours with slats. On top of the slats was placed cardboard from the Red Cross parcels, atop of which was a burlap pallet filled with excelsior. When the excelsior was packed down, you might as well have been lying on the boards. After I returned to the states, I felt very uncomfortable on a soft bed.

The following is a list of the fliers who inhabited my room, as nearly as I can remember.

Walter M. “Shorty” Armistead	Atlanta, GA	P-51 Pilot 353 F.G.
Daniel J. Clark	Pittsburgh, PA	B-17 Bomb 390 B.G.
George M. Collar	Jackson, MI	B-24 Bomb 445 B.G.
Robert Crotty	Erie, PA	B-24 Bomb 489 B.G.
Wesley G. Fish	Los Angeles, CA	P-51 Pilot
Howard Griffin	Baytown, TX	Liaison Pilot
Donald Harris	Baltimore, MD	B-17 Nav
Harvey J.A. Jarantoski	Milwaukee, WI	Nav
Marvin A. Jest	Milwaukee, WI	Nav
Robert L. Korth	Elmwood, IL	B-24 Nav 445 B.G.
Michael Kuchwara	Dickson City, PA	B-24 Pilot
Desmond E. Laird	Vernonia, OR	B-24 Nav
Gail E. “Curley” Leediker	Houston, TX	B-24 Nav 389 B.G.
Oscar McMahon	Los Angeles, CA
Edwin Meade	Ray, MN	P-47 Pilot
Warren E. Perry	Lindenwood, IL	P-38 Pilot
Norman A. E. Quast	Bay City, MI	B-17 Co-Pilot 390 B.G.
Richard Stearns	Augusta, GA	P-47 Pilot 353 F.G.
George Verbruggen	Milwaukee, WI	B-17 Pilot
Don Ward		Nav

Stalag Luft I was located on a peninsula that juts out into the Barther Bodden (Bay) to the northwest of the town of Barth. Near the base of this peninsula is a long railroad trestle, which crosses the west half of the bay to another horn of land upon which lies the small port of Zingst. We had a flier in our room by the name of Norm Quast from Bay City, Michigan. Quast’s ancestors had originally come from Zingst. I remember that Norm was an avid bridge player who acquired the nickname of “Ely” in reference to Ely Culbertson.

One night we were awakened from a sound sleep by the sound of 20mm gunfire directly overhead. It turned out to be a low flying R.A.F. Mosquito who had spotted the glow from the firebox of a freight train crossing over the trestle.

Next door to our room was the small room which housed the food “acco” where articles of food could be exchanged utilizing a point system based on the “D” bar standard. It was run by two flyers by the name of Jones and Weiss. When the gunfire started, everyone hit the deck except Weiss, who responded to Jones’ entreaty to bail out by saying sleepily, “Don’t panic, it’s just those guys rolling our potatoes down the hall again.”

Note: Neil Weiss was a Nav on a B-17, shot down at Emden, and only survivor of his crew. He is now retired and lives in the Virgin Islands.

Stalag Luft I, at the time I arrived, consisted of three compounds. The original, or South compound, North I compound and North II compound, with North III compound under construction. These compounds were separated by barbed wire, but we would yell across the wire to the boys in North I compound and also trade items by tossing them over the fence.

Someone in the camp had a clandestine radio, and each evening a typed sheet of BBC news came across the fence concealed in a tin can. This newssheet was circulated from room to room. We always knew the latest war news and where the front was, in spite of the official German news that was very misleading. We always maintained the tightest security and no one ever knew the location of the radio, or who typed up the sheet, or where the sheet eventually ended up. The Germans never knew either.

The main occupation around the camp was swapping “horror” stories as we called them. If someone had had a tape recorder he could have written a thousand adventure stories from real life that would have topped any fiction.

The outer perimeter of the camp consisted of a double row of electrified barbed wire with concertina wire between. At intervals were guard towers equipped with machine guns and searchlights. Several feet inside the outside fence was a single strand of wire about knee high, which was the warning wire. It was made plain that you would be shot if you stepped across the warning wire.

At night we were locked in the barracks, and roving guards patrolled the inside of the compounds with police dogs. The older compounds had barracks that were built with foundations flush with the ground, but in order to discourage tunnel digging, North II barracks were built on raised posts, and the guards set the dogs loose at night under the barracks.

Curley Leediker had originally been in the south compound where tunnel digging was a way of life, so he always wanted to dig a tunnel. When things got rough in January of 1945, he finally started a tunnel under our barracks next to a chimney. He first cut a trop door behind our stove. Work could only be done during the day on account of the dogs. Digging started next to the chimney, but had to be abandoned because at three feet deep the hole filled with water. Actually at this part of the peninsula we were only about three feet above sea level.

One of the fellows in our room was George Verbruggen of Milwaukee. He was the block trader, and was chosen so because he could speak fluent German. No one was allowed to speak to the guards except the block trader whose job was to obtain contraband articles from friendly guards in exchange for cigarettes, etc. When Verbruggen was in the south compound, he had escaped out the gate with a work party but was apprehended the next day while asleep in a haystack near Stralsund.

We had a small three-cornered file obtained by the block trader that Wesley Fish kept in a secret pocket in his pant leg. Wesley Fish was a P-51 pilot from California and was very clever with his hands. When we altered the bunks from two tiers to three tiers, he decided we needed a saw. In each barracks hall was a large wooden tub that contained water for use in case of fire. These tubs were held together by four steel bands. Wesley removed one of the bands and rearranged the others so no one would notice that one was missing. He then filed out a saw blade about a foot long, and made a frame out of wood, similar to a mall buck saw. He could assemble it or take it down in an instant. The frame was tightened by a shoelace wound by a small piece of wood. He made another secret pocket in his pant leg and always carried it with him; ready for any sawing which was required.

Another time, Wesley decided that we needed a brighter bulb in our room, as the one furnished was only about forty watts. Just outside our barracks door was a pole about twelve feet in the air and on this pole was a nice bright bulb. The only problem was that it was in plain sight of one of the guard towers.

Wesley made a sectional pole with four strips of tin fashioned to the end. These strips were flared out at the end and held together by a piece of elastic.

Elaborate plans were laid for some kind of diversion in the yard to keep the guard’s attention. When the goon guards gave the signal, Wesley calmly raised the pole, shoved the tin strips over the bulb, and unscrewed it. Everything went smoothly, and we were now the owners of a nice bright bulb.

The Germans were very upset when they discovered that the bulb was missing. They pulled several surprise searches, but never found the bulb as it was in a different person’s pocket except when in use at night. Whenever we were using the bulb, we always made sure that we had good guards posted.

In our room we had two pilots each who had flown P-47’s and P-51’s and one pilot who had flown P-38’s. There were always plenty of arguments as to which was the best plane. Edwin Meade of Ray, Minn, had been a Sgt. pilot in spitfires with the R.C.A.F., but had transferred to the 8th A.F. and had been flying P-47’s in the 4th fighter group when he was downed. His idol was Col. Blakeslee. The other P-47 pilot was Dick Stearnes of Augusta, Georgia. He was a member of the 56th F.G.

The aforementioned Wesley Fish and his sidekick “Shorty” Armistead of Atlanta were both P-51 pilots, and had both been downed by ground fire while on strafing missions. (Wesley Fish was about five feet six inches tall and “Shorty” Armistead was over six feet tall.)

The P-38pilot was Warren Perry of Lindenwood, Illinois, who was a member of the famous Hat-in-Ring squadron and had been shot down in Italy.

There were some famous people in Stalag Luft I, the foremost of who was Col. Hubert Zemke, commander of the 56th fighter group. When Col. Zemke arrived in camp he became the senior allied officer.

Sometime after I arrived, Col. Francis Gabreski, the top ace of the E.T.O. had the misfortune of being downed and arrived at Stalag Luft I. Another ace, Maj. Duane Peeson was in Stalag Luft I. We also had the famous Lt. Col. Greening who had participated in Dooliittle’s raid on Tokyo. Col. Greening was an accomplished artist and did many paintings of camp scenes.

The most admired personality was Col. Henry Spicer, Commander of the 357th F.G. Col Spicer went down in the North Sea while flying a P-51. Col. Spicer was a tall man with military bearing, and had a luxuriant mustache.

I was present the day he made his great speech to an assemblage of prisoners in front of Col. Wilson’s barracks in the North II compound. It was a speech of defiance against the Nazis. As I recall it, and my memory may not be exactly correct, word had arrived by news from recently arrived prisoners that the Gestapo had killed some fliers, presumably those who had escaped from Sagan in the Great Tunnel Escape. I do not recall that he actually alluded to this escape but I am sure that he alluded to the killing of fliers. At any rate, his speech had a great impact on our minds and everyone cheered him, although no rioting took place. As he finished the speech he was seized by the guards and marched off to the cooler. We found out later that he had been taken to Berlin and sentenced to death for inciting to riot. Fortunately, the war ended before the sentence could be carried out.

Another personality in our camp, was a war correspondent by the name of Lowell Bennet. When we were liberated, Bennet published a one-page newspaper telling of the event. I have a copy of this paper.

From the time that I arrived in camp in mid-October, until after Christmas, we each received a Red Cross food parcel every week. This supplemented our German black bread, rutabagas and occasional potatoes. This meant that we could eat a halfway decent meal a day, so that no one was starving. Early in January of 1945, the Red Cross parcels suddenly stopped coming, and from then on, until late April, we lived on 800 calories a day. As everyone knows, this is a slow starvation diet.

Gradually people started to slow down. People stopped doing calisthenics, and the walking pace around the perimeter track slowed down considerably. You could notice people starting to become a little peculiar. For instance, invariably the conversation would turn to food. People would recount the last detail in the great meals they had eaten at famous restaurants. Some individuals even started to compile recipes on scraps of paper.

As I have mentioned before, we always knew where the front lines were, and we knew that our ground forces had received a major setback in the Ardennes. We soon received first hand accounts of the Battle of the Bulge when several hundred prisoners came into camp that had been marched from prison camps at Stargard, Graudenz and Gros Tischow in Poland. They had endured extreme hardship along the way and a great number had died during the march. Among the survivors were several members of the 106th infantry division that had been wiped out at the Bulge. These enlisted men had been shipped to Poland immediately after their capture but the advance of the Russians had forced the evacuation of the camps to which they had been sent. Most of the prisoners were British Army troops many of whom had been captured at Dunkirk and had been prisoners for almost five years.

One of them that I met was an old soldier named James Anderson, who was a piper in the 1st Black Watch and had been captured at St. Valery on the channel coast some days after the last troops had been evacuated from Dunkirk. We later were all to end up at St. Valery in the middle of May after we eventually got back to France.

Along about this time, Bob Dalheim of Cordova, Illinois, showed up with a batch of prisoners. Bob had been a member of my class (43-18) at Big Spring, Texas. He was a model cadet, and very attentive to his studies. He was also anxious to get into the battle against Hitler. He did so well on his bombing scores and in his tests that upon graduation they made him a bombing instructor. He didn’t like this one bit, and was always asking for new orders attempting to get overseas so that he could show his bombing skills against the enemy. Finally, many months later, he got his wish and was sent to the 8th Air Force.

On his very first mission, just as they crossed the German frontier, all of the engines quit (due to a foul up in switching tanks) and everyone had to bail out. Bob used to say (It costs $25,000 to train a bombardier, and I never got to drop a single bomb.” I honestly think that he thought he owed the government the twenty-five grand.

One of the boys in our room was Bob Korth of Elmwood, Illinois. Bob Korth was a member of the 445 B.G. He had been shot down in Belgium in March 1944. He fell into the hands of civilians who hid him out for several days, and they spirited him into the mountains of the Ardennes where he spent some time with a band of Belgian Partisans. He even went on raids with them.

When spring came, he decided to make for Spain, so the partisans supplied him with civilian clothes, a bicycle, money and fake papers, and he set out. He got as far as Southern France, but was captured while trying to cross a bridge at night. He was turned over to the Gestapo who took him to a prison in Paris where he thought that the best thing he could hope for was to be shot. Eventually they were convinced he was an American and he ended up in the hands of the Luftwaffe.

Another fellow who was from St. Louis, (I cannot recall his name), was shot down in the mountains of Slovakia. He fell in with Slovak partisans and spent part of the winter in the mountains with them. Unfortunately, the food ran out, and they were all starving, so he attempted to walk his way to Yugoslavia, but was captured after a couple of miserable days on the road.

Perhaps the most unusual occurrence happened to another flier from the 15th AF who was shot down in Budapest. When he came down, his chute became entangled in the eaves of a church and as he hung there, he was shot by a member of the Hungarian home guard. When he was cut down, he was taken unconscious to a hospital where it was discovered that the bullet was lodged in the wall of his heart. The German doctors did not remove the bullet for fear of killing him. Miraculously, he recovered, and when he arrived at Stalag Luft I he appeared to be in perfect health. The last time I saw him was on a train coming back north from Miami Beach in September of 1945. He said he was on his way to Percy Jones Hospital in Battle Creek for an operation to remove the bullet. I never heard what happened after that, and unfortunately, cannot remember his name.

My future wife’s cousin, Dennis Johns of Jackson, Michigan, was a prisoner in our compound. He had originally been a Sgt. pilot in the R.C.A.F., but later transferred to the 8th A.F. For some reason, he was given an enlisted serial number, but told that he was a flight officer. He was shot down while flying a P-51 and upon interrogation gave his name, rank and serial number. The Germans knew the difference between an enlisted and an officer’s serial number, so the turned him over to the Gestapo. He was accused of being a spy and they threatened to execute him. They must have been bluffing, because eventually they turned him back to the Luftwaffe.

One night the air raid sired went off and we heard bomber planes approaching in the distance. They passed to the north of Barth out over the Baltic Sea heading east. Since it was a night raid and they were flying in trail, we knew they were Lancasters of the R.A.F. Later to the east we could see flashes of light and hear the rumble of explosions. It turned out that they were bombing a naval target at Sassnitz on the Island of Rugen.

We had all participated in raids on jet plane factories, but most of us had never seen a jet, although some of the late arrivals in camp had been shot down by them.

One day we were treated to the spectacle of an ME-262 that flew over the camp. When he climbed up and out of sight, straight up, at a speed we had never before witnessed, I can tell you we were very much impressed.

As Easter of 1945 approached, we were all getting pretty weak as a result of our 800-calorie a day diet, and some people were definitely showing the effects. By this time, we knew that the ring around Germany was closing. The Russians were approaching Stettin, which was only 60 miles to our east. We began to hear the rumble of artillery in the distance and we could see some hope of liberation. We heard rumors that if the Russians came much closer, that we might be marched westward. We found out later, that the German camp commander Oberst (colonel) Warnstedt, actually had received some orders to that effect, but was talked out of the move by Colonel Zemke.

One day we heard a peculiar sound coming up the street that ran past our compound toward the tip of the peninsula. Everyone gathered at the fence to see what was up. It was the sound of marching feet coupled with the clanking of chains. Soon a contingent of men dressed in grey and white striped clothing, wearing wooden clogs and chained at the ankles marched past, guarded by Volksturm Guards. They were from a nearby concentration camp. They looked like walking skeletons, and there was an aura of death present as they went by, looking neither to the right nor to the left. We had heard rumors of these death camps, but this is the first time we had seen any of the victims. It was a profound and heart-rending sight and it made us all forget our own plight.

Sometime in late December 1944 or early January 1945, the order came through that all the Jewish prisoners in our midst were to be segregated. This was done, and they were all marched to North I compound and put in a single barrack. This was ominous news and everyone was very apprehensive as to what was to become of them. Fortunately the war ended before anything bad came of it.

Along about this time, a large number of Ukrainians come into camp riding in horse drawn wagons. They had come in from the east and the Germans allowed them to pitch camp in the woods opposite North II compound. They probably were guerillas fleeing from the Russians. At any rate, when the Russians came, we heard that they were all hunted down and shot.

In the middle of April we had a visitor to camp in the person of Max Schmeling, the ex-heavyweight boxing champion. As I recall, he was in civilian clothes, although he had been a Luftwaffe paratrooper and had participated in the airborne invasion of Crete. The purpose of his visit was probably some kind of publicity play by the Luftwaffe. As I recall, he talked strictly about his boxing days.

We heard rumors that Count Folke Bernadotte, the Swedish Red Cross representative was coming to camp to see about getting the Red Cross parcels rolling again, but we never saw him.

By the end of April, we all knew that the war was nearly over, and as the Russians approached, Oberst Warnstedt authorized the digging of slit trenches. The Germans also distributed the remaining Red Cross parcels. One day they blew up the flak school. It was a tremendous explosion.

Liberation

Everything was fairly normal at lock-up time on the 30th of April. As the lights were turned off and the blackout shutters were opened, the cries of “come on Joe,” and “come on Ike,” could be heard echoing across the peninsula.

Along about 2:00 a.m. on May 1st, 1945, someone in one of the barracks noticed that the guard towers were empty and there did not appear to be any dog patrols in the compound. Within a very few minutes, the outer doors were broken open and everyone was up and milling about the yard. Our block commanders passed on orders from Colonel Zemke that we were to remain in the compound.

At about 6:00 a.m. a crack Russian armored spearhead rolled into Barth. By this time, the Germans were retreating westward toward Rostock.

The Russians soon appeared at the main gate in the south compound. The officer in charge was a certain Gen. Borisov, who met with Colonel Zemke. We heard later that the general was a little perturbed because the America POW’s were not showing enough enthusiasm for the glorious Red Army by way of burning down guard towers, etc. as a show of appreciation. At least this is what our block commanders in North II compound told us, and further added that we were to put on a demonstration by way of chopping down a couple of guard towers and burning them. After this happened there was a general exodus from the camp toward town.

For several months prior to our liberation, it was generally felt that the Russians would arrive first. Anticipating this, Harvey Jarantoski started giving lessons in the Polish language, figuring that Polish was near enough to Russian so that a person would be able to converse. On May 1, the first Russian to appear in the North II compound was a short, bowlegged type carrying a machine pistol. As he entered the gate and started across the compound, he was approached by Harvey Jarantoski who welcomed him in Polish. The Russian looked at him with a blank look and answered “Nicht Verstehen” in German. It seems he was an Asiatic form the Steppes, and Polish was Greek to him.

Up until the time they arrived at Stalag Luft I, all of the camps liberated by the Russians had been evacuated by rail to the east and then to the Port of Odessa in the Crimea. The prisoners were sent from Odessa to Istanbul, and somehow gotten out of Turkey to Egypt where they came back to allied control.

We heard that the Russians wanted the POW’s in Stalag Luft I to march to the railhead at New Brandenburg to entrain to the east. Colonel Zemke reportedly argued against this since the war was almost over, and it was a lot closer to allied control to the west as the British were moving eastward from Hamburg toward Lubeck and Rostock. Zemke felt it would be best if the 8th A.F. could evacuate us by air. He evidently got his way because we were ordered to hold still until further notice. However, approximately four hundred kriegies moved out on their own, and were promptly listed as A.W.O.L. Among them was my wife’s cousin, Denny Johns. He told me later, that a group he was with moved westward in the wake of the Russians and eventually met up with a British patrol. They were immediately shipped to Brussels and were put up like kings in a plush hotel courtesy of the Red Cross. In the meantime, we were still languishing at Stalag Luft I. Incidentally, no action was ever taken on the A.W.O.L. charges against the miscreants.

One day a jeep with a couple of Canadian soldiers showed up in camp. The officer in charge had a brother in Stalag Luft I, and came to liberate him, having driven through the Russian lines to do so.

On the 5th of May the war was officially over, but we still remained in Stalag Luft I. Along about this time, Marshal Constantine Roukasovsky paid us a visit, arriving in a captured German staff car.

The Russians also brought in a large military band and the Russian version of a U.S.O. show complete with dancers who performed. They put on a very good show.

To put the damper of the good will, we heard of atrocities being committed on German civilians by some of the Russians. The Burgomeister of Barth killed his family and committed suicide rather than be captured by the Russians. By the time we got out of Germany, most of us had had enough of the Russians.

We had also had enough of the Nazis, especially after some of the concentration camp victims were brought into our camp. I saw one poor fellow lying on a stretcher in such a state of starvation that they couldn’t find enough meat on his bones to feed him intravenously. These are sights that live in your memory forever.

Finally, on the 13th of May, the 8th A.F. arrived in squadron after squadron of B-17’s. Everything was well organized, and we gathered up our belongings and marched out of Stalag Luft I for the last time. We marched through Barth, and as we marched under the old clock tower, we felt like Napoleon marching under the Arc De Triumph. Even though our clothing was mostly rag tag, we marched like soldiers, everyone in step, and sang “We heil, heil right in der fuhrer’s face.”

At the airfield, we loaded into the B-17’s and flew directly to Laon Airfield in France. The visibility was good, and we flew over the Ruhr Valley at about 1000 feet altitude. The destruction we saw below was appalling.

It was ironic, but landing at Laon Airfield brought back memories of my 7th mission (23 July 44) when, while still flying with Red Miner’s crew, we bombed this same airfield, using the “G” box. I imagined that some of the craters I saw were put there by us.

At Laon, we were loaded into trucks and driven to a tent city near Rheims where we had a chicken dinner and spent the night. The next day we were driven to Camp Lucky Strike that was on the Channel Coast at St. Valery en Caux. Here we were deloused, and waited for the issuance of new uniforms and a promised three day pass to Paris before being ordered back to the U.S.

Unfortunately, they were not prepared for the huge influx of POW’s and only had rations and facilities for about 9,000 men when actually about 20,000 showed up.

One day the word got out that the Red Cross was setting up a tent to pass out coffee and doughnuts. By the time I arrived, the line stretched the full length of the airfield runway.

One day Ike Eisenhower and his staff arrived to give us a pep talk. The crowd was so big I could hardly see him. His visit must have shaken things up because the next day a notice appeared on the bulletin board to the effect that people were encouraged to sign p to be flown to England where better facilities were available for processing and two week delay in route furlough would be granted. I signed up immediately, but my pal Ernie Frey was anxious to get home to see his new baby, and he decided to stay at Lucky Strike and forego the two-week delay. Actually I arrived home almost a month before he did as I was lucky enough to come home on a Grace liner while he drew an LST that took 30 days to cross the Atlantic.

Recollections of a Bombardier
By
George M. Collar

FORWARD

Enlistment and Training

England

Combat Missions

The Final Mission

Capture

Stalag Luft I

Liberation

Recollections of a Bombardier By George M. Collar

FORWARD

Enlistment and Training

England

Combat Missions

The Final Mission

Capture

Stalag Luft I

Liberation

Recollections of a Bombardier
By
George M. Collar