CL1013 Wendell A. Fetters

PICKING UP THE

PIECES

OF THE

PAST
Area WWII veteran completes a circle
by returning to Germany

By JAMES A. FUSSELL
The Kansas City Star

His pulse pounded as white-hot flames melted his eyebrows and a squadron of enemy airplanes closed in for the kill.

By all rights, Wendell Fetters was about to die.

Fetters, a tail gunner in World War IL was in a plane that had been hit hard and was going down fast. Moments earlier he had tried to bail out But in a moment even Hollywood might find unbelievable, his parachute harness caught on a gun sight He dangled awkwardly out of his B-26 bomber and banged like a rag doll against the side of the plane.

Staring into a flaming engine as more than 70 German fighters attacked from the front and back, he knew ins chances of survival were bleak They didn't get any better when he finally freed himself and pulled the rip cord on his chute - which didn't open.

Frantically Fetters clawed at his parachute as the plane neared some tall trees.

That was in 1944 over Frankfurt, Germany. Wendell Fetter's plane crashed in a dense forest, leaving him to fend for himself behind enemy lines with no food and a badly broken ankle. After two days in subzero temperatures, a frostbitten Fetters was picked up by the Germans and sent to a prison camp. It was Christmas. He spent four months in the camp before being liberated by the Russians.

Fetters never thought he'd go back to Germany. That changed in 1998 when he received a letter from a German forest ranger who had found Fetters' plane. This week the 76-year-old Leawood man, his wife, three

Donor	Original Source	PIMA ID	Donor ID	Category
Richard P. Ellinger	Ed Carr	na	CL-1013	G-CL

THE KANSAN CITY STAR		MONDAY, JULY 2, 2001

Wendell Fetters of Leawood in the uniform he still fits into and right in 1943
PICKING UP THE PIECES OF THE PAST Area WWII veteran completes a circle by returning to Germany By JAMES A. FUSSELL The Kansas City Star His pulse pounded as white-hot flames melted his eyebrows and a squadron of enemy airplanes closed in for the kill. By all rights, Wendell Fetters was about to die. Fetters, a tail gunner in World War IL was in a plane that had been hit hard and was going down fast. Moments earlier he had tried to bail out But in a moment even Hollywood might find unbelievable, his parachute harness caught on a gun sight He dangled awkwardly out of his B-26 bomber and banged like a rag doll against the side of the plane. Staring into a flaming engine as more than 70 German fighters attacked from the front and back, he knew ins chances of survival were bleak They didn't get any better when he finally freed himself and pulled the rip cord on his chute - which didn't open. Frantically Fetters clawed at his parachute as the plane neared some tall trees. That was in 1944 over Frankfurt, Germany. Wendell Fetter's plane crashed in a dense forest, leaving him to fend for himself behind enemy lines with no food and a badly broken ankle. After two days in subzero temperatures, a frostbitten Fetters was picked up by the Germans and sent to a prison camp. It was Christmas. He spent four months in the camp before being liberated by the Russians. Fetters never thought he'd go back to Germany. That changed in 1998 when he received a letter from a German forest ranger who had found Fetters' plane. This week the 76-year-old Leawood man, his wife, three

children and a grandson are in Frankfurt to retrace Fetters' steps and bring a little closure to a harrowing time. "I guess that's close to what I'm looking for," Fetters said. "I'll get to see where I suffered 50 years ago. And I'll come home and feel free again." - The ranger, Axel Paul, has already come to the United States. Last year Paul attended the 391st Bomb Group's reunion in Omaha, Neb., and brought Fetters a piece of the plane. Now Fetters will see the plane in person. It won't be easy. "I have mixed emotions, actually," he said. "It brings back some bad memories. On the other hand, here's a really nice person whose town we bombed, now doing something nice. So there are two sides of the coin." Yvonne Kinkaid, historian at the Air Force History support office in Washington, said that while it is not unusual to find parts of downed planes from World War 11, it is increasingly unusual to find entire planes in populated areas. Fetters' plane, found deep in a dense forest, was identified by the markings on its tail. The rest of his six-person crew is either dead or too sick to travel, he said. One of the people accompanying Fetters on his trip is his grandson, 26-year-old Ben Drickey of Omaha. Drickey is making a documentary of his grandfathers experience. "Part of the reason I'm putting this together is that a: it's a fascinating piece of history." Drickey said. "But ... I also want to share the things he went through with family members who iketft with us on the trip. It's a tribute to him, because if it wasn't for his is ability to stay alive and his bravery, we wouldn't be here to share this moment." -The story of Wendell. Fetters' military service started in 1941 when he was 16 and living in Indianola, Iowa. "We had just come home from roller-skating in Des Moines and my mom and dad were listening to the radio. And my dad said, 'The Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor!'" It didnt mean a lot to Fetters at the time. But it soon would. In 1942 he enlisted in the Army Air Corps. He attended a gunnery school in Florida and an armament school in Denver. Then he became an armor gunner. In his first year as a gunner, Fetters' plane was hit badly enough three different times to cause a forced landing. But each time the plane limped back to Allied terrotory where it was patched up and sent out again. "One time we had 156 holes in our plane," he recalled. "I remember I counted them." Then came the flight on Dec. 23, 1944. The objective: Destroy a bridge in the German city of Ahrweiler. Fetters was in his usual position - kneeling in the tail of the plane - when the B-26 was hit before it reached its target. Before long his craft and others on the bombing raid were under attack by scores of German airplanes. "There were 60 or 70 of them lined up four deep." Usually the bombers had fighter escorts to protect them. But this day, during the Battle of the Bulge, Fetters said, the fighters were needed to help out the infantry. As Fetters knelt in the tail of the plane, he suddenly felt a terrible heat coming from behind him. "I turned around, and it was like a blowtorch coming through the fuselage," he said. "The gas tank was on fire." Through the smoke he could see that others had bailed out. And although he had never before used a parachute, he knew it was time. "But when I bailed out, the parachute harness on my leg caught on the gun sight," he said. I was banging on the fuselage. Now that was scary,, He dangled in the face of a fiery engine at more than 250 mph. Fetters finally extricated himself by bending the metal gun sight. 'At any other time I couldn't have bent it with a wrench, but this time I bent it with my hands," he said. Fetters was out of the plane but hardly out of danger. As he hurtled to earth, he pulled the rip cord. Nothing. Frantically he clawed at his pack and ripped out the parachute with his bare hands. As he floated down he remembers seeing three perfectly round lakes. "When they found my plane, I told the ranger about this and lie said, 'Oh, yeah, those aren't the Crater Lakes.' He sent me a brochure from the area, and we're going to see them," Fetters said. Fetters landed hard in the top of a tall tree. His left ankle snapped on impact. Ignoring the pain he climbed down the tree. was 9 a.m., bright, sunny and bitterly cold. A foot of snow covered the ground as he tried to walk hack to Allied territory. He walked all day. Sleeping meant freezing to death, so he walked all night. After several days he was picked up by a German soldier. The soldier pointed to Fetters' class ring "Gold?" he asked. "Yeah," Fetters said, "Gold" The soldier indicated he would let Fetters go if lie gave him the ring. The soldier even set down his rifle to help Fetters pull it off. The ring wouldn't budge. "I could have made it if 1 could have gotten the darn ring off," Fetters said. Instead the Germans took him into custody and sent him to a prison camp. Later, after Fetters lost weight at the POW camp, he sold the same ring to one of the,., guards for half a loaf of bread. In four miserable months in an unheated barracks at Stalag 3A, Fetters got lice, lived on stale bread and dropped 45 pounds. After being liberated, he returned to the States in 1945. A year later he married his wife, jean, and spent the next 44 years in the animal health pharmaceutical field before retiring in 1990. For the documentary, his grandson wanted Fetters to revisit the area where he was kept as a prisoner of war. After all, Fetters is the commander of the Heart of America ex-POW chapter. Fetters declined. "I'm not going back there," he said. "I'm just not." His grandson was understanding. "I just feel fortunate that I am able to go visit some of these places with him," Drickey said. "This is not (just) a trip in his honor. It's an honor to be with him, sharing his memories."