I was commissioned a Second Lieutenant in Army Air Corps reserves on February 16, 1943, graduating class 43B, at Pampa, Texas, a small town north of Amarillo in the Texas panhandle.

The graduates were given a choice of 3 types of airplanes to fly. One of these was the Martin Marauder B26 training at Barksdale Air Force Base located at my home town, Shreveport, Louisiana. With Shreveport being my home, there was no question for me. The B26 had a very poor image as many men had been killed in its introduction and training but a good record in its combat flights. Due to this image, I had no competition so easily got assigned to this airplane.

In the hasty buildup just before the war this airplane was accepted straight off the drawing board without the normal series of flight tests and was literally debugged during construction and training.

Before I began flying it there were 2 series of major crashes.

The first problem normally occurred during takeoff. Electric propellers were on the airplane. During takeoff, as speed increases, the propeller blades go from being almost parallel to the wings to an open position where they can catch more air. If they cannot do so they cannot catch enough air to keep the engines from running away which produces virtually no power. This happened. The electric demand was so great at takeoff that there was not enough electricity to work the propellers and many planes had a runaway engine on takeoff. The B26 was a very touchy plane and the runaway engine resulted in many crashes, most fatal.

The second problem was in the hydraulic system. When landing or taking off the flaps are dropped to give added lift to the wing. In the early models there were numerous instances of one of the flaps dropping while the other remained up. The added lift given to one side of the aircraft resulted in rolling the aircraft in a takeoff or landing and also caused numerous crashes.

Luckily for me, both these problems had been cured before I began flying the Marauder so I did not experience either problem.

The earlier models had a very short wingspan with a very high wing loading which resulted in a very unstable and touchy airplane. Six feet of wing was added to cure this but in the process other things were added which kept the wing loading very high. Due to the short wing, the B26 had the nickname of "The Flying Prostitute - No visible means of support".

Barksdale Field had four flight squadrons. Two were used to train the flying of the airplane which took 2 months and the other two taught using the plane in combat which took another 2 months.

There were 18 airplanes assigned to each squadron. Shortly after my arrival as the warmup of spring & summer arrived there was a series of crashes. The gasoline used had been changed from 100 octane to 130 octane and as the heat arrived we began experiencing vapor lock although we did not know what it was at the time. The gasoline would literally vaporize in the fuel pump, effectively shutting it down. With no gasoline, the engine would stall and in a takeoff or landing attitude and green pilots this was a disastrous combination.

During this series of crashes my squadron lost 6 of its 18 airplanes. A neighbor squadron lost 15 of its 18 airplanes and all its instructor pilots. Worse still, the fatality rate in these crashes was very high. A local newspaper was keeping a running tally of our losses and we had a record of more losses per flight than the groups flying combat out of England. The group at Tampa, Florida had the slogan "One a day in Tampa Bay". Discussion was given to canceling production of the plane but luckily the problem was corrected in time. In combat it had the best loss record of any bomber in WWII.

At one time during this crash period, I watched three airplanes burning on the field at one time. It was so bad that we always went down to investigate any oil fire we saw.

I was selected as a first pilot and assigned a flight crew. We went through the training but did not go overseas together. My crew was split up and all my crew members were sent overseas as replacements while I was made an instructor pilot in the advanced squadron at Barksdale. Being an instructor I became part of the field permanent personnel and was allowed to move off the base. I moved home and lived there driving to work until I was sent overseas.

After making instructor, I was made a flight commander with the responsibility of the combat training of either 16 or 18 crews every 2 months. There were 60 missions that had to be flown and it was my job to schedule these and instruct on part of them. I was also made Tech-Tac inspector with the job to test hop and certify as flight worthy any new planes or any airplane with major repairs.

I was promoted to first lieutenant before I was 21. With all my responsibilities and rank I was not old enough to insure my automobile so I could drive it on the field but had to have my father carry the insurance.

The air force operated an instrument flight school at Bryan, Texas. I was one of two pilots at Barksdale Field that had been to the school and was certified to teach instrument flying. At the school I took over 100 hours of link trainer (a flight simulator which does not fly but which you are controlling on instruments just like in the airplane) and 60 hours of instrument flying in a single engine AT6 plane.

I loved to fly. Cross country did not appeal too much as I found it rather boring to fly straight and level but I loved low altitude and combat training. The B26 had five forward firing 50 caliber machine guns controlled by the pilot. Before I was shipped out I held the field record for machine gunnery with these guns.

As flight commander, I scheduled me as instructor on most of the machine gunnery, low altitude skip bombing, poison gas, and low altitude cross country missions.

When I first started flying the B26 we had to cool the wheel brakes between landings. The practice was to land and take back off, pulling up the wheels and flying for 30 minutes to cool the brakes. What most of the pilots did was to hedge hop at low altitude for the 30 minute cool off period. This rule was changed and low altitude flying was outlawed due to high losses but I never adhered to this rule. It would have been grounds for dismissal from the service if caught but I felt very strongly that any pilot forced to return home at low altitude had to know how the B26 controlled close to the ground. I had the pilots fly so low that often we had to go up a little to clear a fence.

When I first came to the field a crew that had finished its training would fly its own airplane overseas by way of South America. We would load the plane with extra fuel tanks and as much equipment as it could safely carry. The accepted practice on that last flight was to buzz the field at extremely low altitude and high speed as they left for combat. I got used to the low altitude practices and never completely accepted the rules that later outlawed both.

I had several close calls as an instructor a few of which I will try to describe here.

One day I was testing an airplane which had had both engines replaced to certify it as air worthy. As I fed full power on takeoff, I realized that the throttles did not align properly but thought that the ground crew had missed an adjustment and made a mental note to get it corrected. Then as I gained speed I became aware that I was not accelerating as fast as I should and apparently would not have enough power for takeoff. By this time, however I had too much speed to stop and had to continue the takeoff. When I reached the end of the runway without the speed I needed I pulled the wheels out from under the plane while coaxing the airplane to stay in the air. A construction crew working off the end of the runway saw me coming and scattered. The watching Martin Company specialist told my crew chief that he had just lost his airplane. Somehow I managed to keep it flying and gain just enough airspeed to brush past the trees at the edge of the field.

I finished the test and found that what we called the high blower to be used at high altitude was stuck in the on position which robbed power at the ground level.

Another time I was giving a single engine check to a student pilot. The procedure is to cut off an engine without warning, the pilot feathers the propeller on the dead engine to reduce air resistance, runs the remaining engine up to maximum power and we fly on one engine.

On this flight I evidently had a pilot who was afraid of the airplane. When I cut an engine, he reacted too fast to think, and feathered the propeller on the good engine. Without any engine working, the B26 tends to fly like a rock. I got the engines working, then tried a second time. Again he reacted too hastily and repeated his mistake. I corrected again and tried a third time and sure enough, he screwed up again. After recovering I proceeded to show him just how capable the B26 is at low speed by going to one engine, slowing down to below what he thought was stalling speed, and then turning into the dead engine, a no no to most pilots. Scared the fool out of him but he passed the next test.

On a night training flight we were landing without the landing lights turned on. The student began getting below what was safe but I let he go as I felt he should discover and correct his own error. Finally I had to turn on our landing lights so he could see how low he was but was horrified at just how low he was. I had let him get too low for safety. We brushed the trees but made it.

On another occasion we were taking off with me in the copilots seat and a student in the pilots seat. As we turned onto the runway I made a last minute check over my right shoulder. To my horror a trio of P47 single engine fighters were making what is called a pursuit approach, a fast turning curve descending to the runway. With their large radial engines and heavy cowlings, evidently they could not see us or the lead plane was being very careless. I locked both brakes and stopped just on the edge of the runway as the planes whizzed by a few feet away. I have seen pictures of the airplane on the ground in a collision where the plane in the air takes large bites out of the other with its propeller and we very nearly replicated that.

On one occasion we were having a field wide bombing demonstration with each squadron doing a formation practice bombing and then passing in review. All available men from the entire group were assembled in a long line of trucks in an open field next to the bombing range.

Our squadron was the first to demonstrate. We did our bombing and then dropped to pass in review. We were flying in a six ship formation with a V of three planes followed by a second V below and just behind the first 3 planes. Our leader evidently forgot that we were in a trailing V because he dropped below tree level to fly over the trucks with all the men. This left us flying in a space too small for the plane. The second formation had to partially pull up into the slip stream of the leading formation. The air in the slip stream behind an airplane is very turbulent and it is almost impossible to control a plane in the turbulence. I could see the men bailing off the trucks and running to the side trying to escape the impending crash. We made the long run past the trucks but I had to pull fully up into the slip stream of the plane I was following to miss a tree as we cleared the field. It could have been a major disaster had one of the planes dropped onto the line of trucks. The next 3 squadrons had to pass in review at 1000 feet.

When you have an emergency landing the tower will have your plane met by a firetruck and what we called "the meat wagon". During my stay at Barksdale field I had occasion to be met by them six or eight times.

We were young and full of stuff and vinegar and capable of pulling most anything. I'll give just one example to shorten this story.

I took a crew with me to Dayton, Ohio to ferry an airplane back to Barksdale Field. We spent the night and went out to the airfield to pick up the plane. We taxied out to the end of the runway and ran the engines up to test the magnetos. In the test the engines slowed down below the safety level indicating trouble. We taxied back and reported the problem and left for town. It is an all day job to fix this problem as all the sparkplugs on all 24 cylinders of both engines have to be replaced and a tune up done.

The hotel room we rented had a small balcony facing the street with the local telephone building directly opposite. In those days information and long distance calls were handled manually by young women so this building was full of young women. We had discovered this so we began using the balcony to attract attention from the telephone building. We would literally have someone standing in each window watching out antics. Notes were dropped from the windows and we would send over to pick them up. This would go on for an extended time and we were thoroughly enjoying ourselves.

On the second and third day we again picked up the plane, taxied out, tested the mags, and returned it to the mechanics, going back to town and our telephone building. On the fourth day we were out of money. When the plane tested bad, I asked them what octane fuel they were using and sure enough it was 100 octane. I suggested they replace it with 130 octane, they did and we flew home. I do not have any idea what a full tune up of those two big engines cost or how much time we lost for the telephone building but we had a good 3 day vacation.

This propensity for play almost got me in serious trouble and did cause me to be shipped overseas.

In the B26 in combat we had a tour of 60 missions. This meant that of the men going overseas to combat, at 60 missions when time to go home arrived, half would be left. When you are dealing with your life, these odds do not seem good enough but ours were better than some others. In any event, when a person had fulfilled his tour, he was rotated home and another person who had not been to combat was shipped over to replace him. In our squadron I was the last pilot who had not been to combat so I knew it was not long away but I was in no hurry.

I was returning from a flight test and decided to play a little. When I turned to line up with the runway instead of a gentle dive and slowing to land, I added throttle and went into a steep dive, running my airspeed up to the maximum for which the B26 is rated, flattened out about 5 feet above the runway, flew the length of the field at this altitude and speed, then made a high arching turn back to the traffic pattern. The thing I did not know was that we had a visiting general and that he was getting out of his airplane as I passed.

With me moving so fast and so low the general could not read the number on my plane except between the rows of parked airplanes so he was unable to get it. He called the tower and asked for the number. Fortunately the officer on duty in the tower was a friend of mine. He told the general that he was so interested in watching my maneuver that he forgot to take the number. This saved me from the general but my group commander knew who it would be. I was called on the carpet but got off with a warning.

Less than a week later I was flight testing an airplane with a new engine. I dropped my wheels to land, then called the control tower telling them to check my wheels to see if they were down and locked as my indicator was not indicating they were locked. Actually I had no trouble but wanted to have some fun with the men in the tower. I then proceeded to buzz the tower straddling it with the wheels. They had no way of proving what I had done but again my commanding officer felt he knew and I was again called on the carpet. When he finished with me this time I went directly to my squadron and advised them to put me on orders to go overseas before I got kicked out of the Air Force.

I left Barksdale on October 5, 1944 headed for New York on a troop train. I was the senior officer on the train so was made train commander and had to sign for everything on the train and accept full responsibility for every item. When we got to New York an inventory was made and everything accounted for.

I spent the trip playing poker with several friends and the train conductor. The conductor was not much of a poker player and ended up a fairly heavy loser.

While waiting in New York for our ship, a tJSO troop with a well known very pretty dancer entertained everyone at the camp. As we were due to sail we were restricted to our quarters and could not attend the entertainment. As commander of my group I called the USO troop coordinator and explained the situation to him. As a result the troop came to our section of the camp and put on a private show for us. I thoroughly enjoyed the entertainment especially as the pretty young dancer sat on my lap part of the time as we were in the open with no chairs. I wish I could remember her name, I can certainly remember her face.

We went to England on the USS America, at the time the worlds 5th largest passenger liner. The luxury had been just about all removed from the liner. It was operated by the British. The officers were housed in the cabins with a cabin built for two carrying 16 officers in narrow bunks 5 bunks high. The enlisted men were housed in the lower decks using hammocks. Also while the food for the officers was very good, the food for the enlisted was very poor. When I complained I was informed this was the British way.

Due to our speed we did not cross in a convoy but went solo taking evasive maneuvers whenever a submarine was possibly nearby.

We arrived in England and went to a small field near a small town that contained a pub but not much else. We stayed here 10 days awaiting air transport to France.

One incident tells me a lot of the British way of thinking. The plumbing in the latrine was made up of a row of wash basins with a pipe dropping about a foot below each basin. There was a concrete trough below the pipes into which the water dripped and which carried the water out of the building through a hole and emptied it on the ground. I questioned a taxi driver as to why they did not make a finished plumbing job of it and he said "If it was good enough for our ancestors, it is good enough for us".

We were flown into Paris and temporarily housed in tents on the grounds of the Rothschild Chateau. This was a nice looking building but the little I got to see of the inside was disenchanting. The halls were narrow, the rooms small, and the light dark.

It had only been a month since Paris was liberated from the Germans and it was still a dangerous place. The night before we arrived there had been a drive by shooting at the front gate guards. Flying personnel had a 45 caliber automatic pistol in a shoulder holster and we were instructed to wear this at all times. The perimeter had about a 15 foot wide strip of land mines just inside the fence.

We got the opportunity to get into Paris twice and visited the MonMart (?) entertainment district and watched some evening performances. The women wore elaborate costumes made with the chest open from the waist up. It was there that this young innocent boy learned that in spite of government laws and equal rights groups pronouncements, women are not all created equal.

They would put on 30 minute shows, take a 30 minute break and repeat this on into the night. The difference between their shows and the ones I had seen in this country was that each 30 minute show is different from any prior performance.

After 3 days, we joined our group on an airfield about 40 miles north of Paris. The field had been abandoned by the Germans as they retreated.

Our airplanes were parked off taxiways in open air earthen revetments scattered around the field. Living quarters were double tents set on wooden floor platforms alongside one permanent building which housed the senior officers. We slept on canvas folding cots. It was freezing weather and very hard to stay warm. I learned very quickly that a cot gets cold from the bottom as much as from the top.

I was assigned to a tent but after a few days was moved into a large open room in the senior officer barracks. Although inside I still used six blankets trying to stay warm. I folded and intertwined the blankets so that I made a sleeve of six blanket thicknesses both under and over me, 3 blankets thick on the sides. I slid in from the top to sleep.

As an instructor pilot I had accumulated over 800 hours of flight time in the Martin B26, probably as much or more than any other man on the field and had been teaching the tactics being used in the fighting. In spite of this, I still had to fly 3 missions as a copilot before I was allowed to command the airplane. With this I had no argument as I realized flying where you are being shot at is quite different from stateside flying and somehow I had to learn the ropes. Also the officers of the squadron had to become familiar enough with me to feel they knew what to expect.

Before each mission the flight crews would meet in a large room for a briefing on the mission. On the wall was a large map of our area of France and Germany. On the map using knitting yarn of various colors would be the route of the mission laid out. German antiaircraft gun emplacements and any other items we should know about were marked with the flight path weaving around trying to avoid what we could. The front between Germany and France was shown by a line of yarn and was changed as the front changed. The intelligence officer would explain the mission and the target, warn of known antiaircraft emplacements we would have to fly over and how heavy the fire to expect, give a weather forecast covering the area and answer any questions we came up with. He would then wish us good luck and we would adjourn to the airplane assigned to us while, I suspect, he went to the Officer's club to await our return. When the mission was completed, we would each be interviewed about what happened on the flight.

The airplane would be loaded with whatever type bombs we were carrying that day, fueled, checked by the ground crew and ready for us. The flight crew also conducted its own ground check satisfying themselves that everything was in working order. We would then sit around until the designated time when we would start the engines and taxi out for takeoff. Upon takeoff the flight leader would normally make a wide slow circle climbing to altitude while we formed the formation we were flying behind him.

One thing I was not prepared for was the amount of information on the enemy our intelligence could gather in a short time. I remember one mission that was canceled as we waited for start up time because the Germans had found out where the mission was scheduled to go and then we had found out the Germans had found out.

My group was the only American B26 group that had not bombed our own ground forces by mistake while trying to hit the Germans nearby. Consequently, we were in demand for close support so most of our missions were of that type or targets fairly close to our lines. I remember one day bombing Germans in the center of a large U shaped pocket between the American forces on both sides of the U.

My first mission as copilot was uneventful. We met no heavy ground fire or enemy fighters on a short front line support mission. On the second mission that changed. We were making a deeper penetration of enemy air space and encountered heavy antiaircraft fire.

As copilot you do not have much to do so can be very aware of what is happening around you. I remember being surprised that when a shell is fired by a cannon it emerges red hot and glowing. I could watch the antiaircraft cannons firing at us, see the red dots emerge and slowly float up to our altitude, then "Pouf", explode in a small cloud of black smoke near the airplane. The heavier the firing, the more dense the black clouds around us.

These would just hang there, waiting for us to fly through. On a clear day when several groups are following the same route into Germany you could see ahead of you knowing that the black spots with their heavy fire would be waiting when you got there and then waiting for your return.

Our plane got 16 holes that day. Intelligence can sometimes get it wrong. On this day we were to have very light resistance but we were later told that unbeknownst to us the Germans evidently found our route and moved in several trains carrying antiaircraft guns.

I flew a total of 8 missions before I was shot down on the 9th. I like to say I flew 8 3/4 missions. Until the last we had not encountered any fighter opposition and except for two or three trips did not have real heavy antiaircraft fire.

I remember one mission with especially heavy ground fire in which the turret gunner of the lead plane on which I was flying the right wing position was killed with a piece of shrapnel through his helmet. We received a number of holes that day.

Antiaircraft fire comes up from below you and when it blows up below the plane throws a shower of shrapnel upward. Each airplane comes with armor plate to the rear and side positions to help protect from this but none below the seats or on the floor, the direction of the ground fire. Therefore to protect the family jewels the first addition to a new airplane is armor plate salvaged from a wrecked plane and mounted under the seats. My bombardier never saw his bombs hit. He would toggle our bombs and then crawl back upon his armor plate for protection.
noticed the plane ahead of me giving indications he was about to drop down and cross over for landing position. The bottom 3 airplanes had not moved over to give him room which was not good. I made the decision to abandon the formation. As we were already in a steep left bank, to escape the collision I had to roll my airplane wings past the vertical position making me partially on my back. At 1,500 feet altitude with 4000 pounds of bombs this is not recommended. We made it just clearing the trees.

The lead left wing plane did drop and continue across, missing the nose of my leader about a foot. Already nervous from being so near completion of his tour, the near collision put him in such a state that he never flew another mission but had to be shipped home.

201-Burns, Lloyd D. (0) 3rd Ind. o/b/2 Hq, 397th Bomb GP (M) AAF, APO 140, U. S. Army, 6 February 1945

To: CG, 9th Bombardment Division, APO 140, U. S. Army.


During an operational mission to Eller RR Bridge in Germany 23 December 1944 this organization lost ten planes. Lt. Burns was the pilot of one of these planes (B-26 #43-34185). Nothing is known of his plane except that it was last seen in the vicinity of Seffern, Germany, and that it is believed to have been lost to enemy aircraft. To date nothing has been heard of any member of any of the ten crews lost on this date.

For the Group Commander:

s/B. Birnbaum

1st Lt, Air Corps, Asst Adjutant.

This answer received by my brother, Leon Burns, to inquiry from 8th Air Force Headquarters to my group after my disappearance.

Over 60 men gone from our group alone. As far as I know, my crew was the only one to survive and of our six men we lost our tail gunner. He disappeared into the trees with his parachute billowing but not opened. He was bleeding at the mouth but we do not know if he had been hit or if I had thrown him against something in the violent evasive maneuvers we were taking to avoid the fighters and enemy flak. I still do not know if we got the bridge.

Why Divine Providence chose our particular 5 men to be the survivors we have no way of knowing. Although you are doing everything you can to improve your chances, anyone who has been in actual combat knows there are many times in which the final decision as to who lives or dies is in the hands of the Good Lord. When the last decision is made for me, do not mourn, rejoice for the over 50 free years I have had.

We were flying Martin Marauder B-26 medium bombers off an airfield approximately 60 miles north of Paris, France. The plane carried a normal crew of 6, pilot, copilot, bombardier, engineer gunner, radio-gunner, and tail gunner. Lead planes also carried a navigator.

The confidential communique between the 9th Air Force and the 15th Air Force in Italy chronicles the beginning of the most trying period of my life. Although it happened 50 years ago the images are as clear in my mind as if it was yesterday. Names of people and places have been forgotten but not the mental pictures of the individual occurrences.

The Battle of the Bulge was started by Germany on December 16, 1944 coinciding with a period of bad weather. For 6 days my group would be briefed on a mission but would sit by the airplane all day waiting for the weather to clear. A war map was maintained in the briefing room which showed Europe, with highlights emphasized by colored yarn strung between pins. Each day the bulge into France became deeper as the Germans penetrated further.

We have been told that General George Patton ordered his chaplain to pray for good weather on the sixth day and evidently it worked. On the seventh day, December 23rd, dawn came with an extremely clear morning. If his prayer had not been so successful I might have missed the experience. In retrospect though, again divine providence knew best as the ground troops badly needed air support for they were taking a terrific beating.

On this day we were assigned to an airplane with the nickname of "THE FWIGHTENED WABBIT". On the nose was painted the image of a rabbit crouching amidst the black airbursts of enemy anti-aircraft fire. My crew had not been assigned a permanent aircraft as we had not been with the group long enough. This was our 9th mission. My regular bombardier was ill so we were assigned a temporary replacement (my regular bombardier was later killed in a crash at takeoff).

The 8 missions we had flown, except for one, had not been too traumatic with minimal losses and relatively light anti-aircraft fire. No fighters had been encountered. Of course, when you talk of minimal losses you have to remember that losses are similar to the definition of a recession as opposed to a depression. A recession is when your neighbor is out of a job, a depression is when you are out of a job. It can never be a minimal loss when you are the casualty.

In the briefing for the mission, we had the route of our flight to the target shown by colored yarn with the location of enemy flak batteries marked. The intelligence officer would explain the mission, point out where we could expect enemy fire, describe our target, and explain our routes into Germany and back out to France, wish us good luck and probably go to the officer's club to await our return. (In a counseling session in Miami after returning to the States I was put into a hospital for combat fatigue for insisting that this job was the one I wanted until the war with Japan was over).

My airplane was assigned to fly what was called "Window". This meant we would fly the right wing of three airplanes assigned to fly ahead of and below the group, dropping tin foil strips to confuse the anti-aircraft radar. We would crisscross the flight path one thousand feet below and a mile ahead of the group. To do this, we would be flying at basically full throttle to give us enough speed to be able to fly back and forth in front of the main group. The formation had 18 B-26 bombers flying together in three groups of 6 each. In flying formation, each time the lead aircraft turns away from a wingman extra throttle is required to allow the wingman to maintain his formation distance and when the lead aircraft turns toward him he has to reduce the throttle. With our group of 3 flying at close to full throttle the outside plane in a turn had to drop back a little as he had no reserve speed.

The day was so clear that we could see as far as our target as we approached the front lines. We could also see the black blocks made by German flak shooting at other formations ahead of us. Normally this enemy fire ignores the 3 planes flying "window" and concentrates on the larger formation but this day was different. The Germans had thrown most of their reserves into the fight and they were firing on our "window" planes. This was worrisome but with us going so fast and making so many turns to crisscross the flight path of the group their accuracy wasn't good enough to cause us much trouble.

We were not aware of any enemy fighters in the area until we made our turn over the target. After passing the target my leader made a 180 degree turn to get ahead of the group for the return home. He turned away from me and, as I had no reserve throttle to keep up, left me behind. As I was catching up fighters jumped my leader. One settled on his rear constantly firing. The B-26 made several fast S turns, banking back and forth, attempting to escape the hail of bullets. The fighter stayed with him. Suddenly fire broke out of the bomber at his back waist windows, moved rapidly forward to the wings, and moved out both wings. The plane rolled over on its back and went out of sight upside down and on fire. I saw no parachutes.

Realizing we had enemy fighters and that we needed fire support, I pulled up to join the main group. As we attempted to join a 6 plane group, at a distance of about a short city block, fighters jumped the 6 planes we were trying to join. I called my turret gunner and told him to get the lead fighter, banking toward the group to give him a good shot. He started firing, his tracers making a path behind the fighter, then he moved the line of tracers up the fighter into its cockpit. I know we downed that fighter. My bombardier later claimed he also got one but I was so busy that I was not aware of his firing.

Then all Hell broke loose. We were jumped by fighters. A solid mass of tracer bullets seemed to make a white roof over our plane, converging ahead of our nose, sounding like someone throwing rocks on a tin roof. If you can picture a Christmas tree made with small, fast flickering, bright lights laying on its side with the top ahead of you, you will have the pattern of the tracer bullets. I dove and made violent evasive turns to escape the fire and for some reason the fighters peeled off to come around for their next pass. They didn't know the extent of the damage we had sustained or they would have stayed to finish the job.

We were disabled. In that first pass we lost our left engine, the left landing gear was shot loose and the wheel dangled below the engine, our hydraulics were shot out, we lost our tail turret, the top turret had the canisters holding the 50 caliber bullets shot loose from both guns, the armor plate in front of the gunner and his foot rest were shot off, and we lost our radio. I tried to call for fighter support but with the radio gone, the group never heard me. The good Lord was with us though, for at that point we had no casualties and we still had our intercom and could talk to each other.

With the supporting canisters gone, our top turret guns could not lift the weight of the belt of bullets. My gunner broke the belt in lengths of 10 bullets per belt (showed fast thinking on his part) and loaded each gun with 10 rounds. With my tail turret gone we now had only 20 rounds at a time to hold off the fighters. My waist window guns were still operating but as they fire to the side and the fighters were coming in on our tail they did not offer much help.

We had 5 fighters who stayed to finish their job. They were Focke Wulf 190s that appeared to have brand new paint jobs. They would alternately attack in a group of 3, then the remaining pair. We were at 12,500 feet when first fired upon and I estimate at about 1,500 feet when we bailed out. The fight lasted about 15 minutes.

Not wanting the fighters to know how seriously we were hit, I did not fully feather the left engine but left it slowly windmilling to give the appearance of working. We were losing approximately 500 feet per minute to maintain enough air speed to maneuver as we were attacked. As each attack came, my gunners would start wildly telling me the planes were coming and, try as I might to get them to coherently tell me when and from what direction they were coming, I could only tell the attack was imminent. We were hit each time. I would escape the lines of tracers, the turret gunner would fire his 20 rounds, and the fighters would peel off for another pass. If only one had stayed with us a few seconds longer until he figured out we could not return his fire, we would have met the fate of my leader.

At approximately 10,000 feet the ground fire found us. Most of it must have been 20mm cannon. A row of about 20 black bursts would parallel our flight line. I would take evasive action and almost immediately another row of flak would be where we would have been. This deadly game of cat and mouse would continue until the fighters came back. We would then escape the tracers, the fighters would peel off, and we would again start dodging ground fire. Then more fighters, then more ground fire. The fighters must have made at least 10 or 12 passes at us badly shooting us up as we did our best to fight back.

As the fighters peeled off from an attack and circled for their next pass I could look down between the fuselage and engine and watch the fighter slowly turning off below me. Our B-26 had 5 forward firing 50 caliber guns controlled by the pilot, designed for ground strafing. I had the copilot charge these hoping that a fighter might get careless enough to turn close to me and I could turn on his tail. None did and as we could not sacrifice enough altitude for an attack these guns were useless.

As stated earlier, I was busy, too busy to remember being scared. My poor copilot, however, had nothing he could do except to watch and pray. I remember he had beads of sweat on his forehead larger than my thumbnail. These were not running but just standing out from his face. I had never seen this on a man before nor have seen it since. It must be very hard for a man to look death in the face and not be able to do anything to affect its course. To his credit, he did not break but did everything asked of him.

The plane was being literally shot to pieces. By the time I gave the command to bail out I could move all the controls to the engines, etc. and they were completely shot loose.

Suddenly the crew called from the tail to tell me that the left engine was on fire. At that point it is just a question of time until the plane will blow up so I gave the order to bail out. (The crew later reported that after they got out they could see that both engines were on fire). I opened the bomb bay doors, got the bombardier out of the nose, and had the copilot and bombardier jump. The copilot offered to help me but at that point there was nothing any of us could do.

The three men in the tail later told me that they called to report they were leaving but the intercom evidently went out as I never got that report. I continued flying the plane for as long as I felt I could to be sure everyone had time to jump and then started to leave. (I stayed so long with the airplane that neither I or the crew knew I had made it until we were retaken by our forces and met in LeHarve on the way home). The entire crew managed to jump safely except for our engineer-gunner. He was the oldest man on the crew and, as I wrote to his wife, the father image of the crew. War wastes so many good men.

I slid my seat back and turned to jump. The pilot has two electrical lines connected to his microphone and his helmet. In my haste to leave I forgot these and was brought up suddenly when they stopped me. Being in a big hurry by then I backed up and lunged forward disconnecting them.

As I got to the catwalk across the bomb bay I looked down and there below me about 100 feet, flying at our same speed and looking up, was one of the attacking fighters. Probably checking us out to see why the plane was still flying and if he needed to make another run at us.

The correct way to jump is to walk across the bomb bay and then to dive toward the front of the airplane. Knowing time was short and in a big hurry I did not follow this procedure but took a swan dive into space from the front of the bay toward the tail. I immediately blacked out. The wind got under my helmet and broke it off. I had a tumbling sensation such as I have gotten rolling in the water at the bottom of a long water slide and turning sharply, but in spite of being blacked out I still knew what I was doing. I pulled the rip cord.

Evidently the chute knocked me out because when I came to the parachute was not swinging and I was hanging vertical and still. There was a minor cut on the left side of my face evidently from the risers. I still had the handle to the rip cord in my hand and remember thinking "I don't need this any more" and throwing it away. I could see the Germans below running to meet me. Some men are killed while in a parachute but I did not see or feel anyone shooting at me. There was a plane burning below me but I do not know if it was mine. I have often wished I could have seen the "Fwightened Wabbit" after we left it just to see how many holes it had.

I only looked up at the parachute one time. It looked like it was no bigger than a quarter and a long way off. Not very reassuring.

The parachutes we used in those days were round and not maneuverable like the present day chutes. We are taught that you can turn yourself by twisting the risers. It didn't work. I must not have been listening. Try as I might, I could not turn in the direction I was drifting. If you have ever stepped backward off a moving platform you know the problem, your forward motion will trip you and you cannot stand up. This happened. I landed beside a narrow road through a forest, between the road and the trees and was thrown backward. The Germans got my gun before I could sit up.

Evidently I hit in the front lines or close to them. My gut feeling is that I landed in Luxemburg but have no way of verifying that. I was in a small valley in rough steep terrain. My last position report before bailing out was 3 minutes from our lines. The Germans had set up a command post in a house about 100 yards from where I came down and took me there. The officer in charge had me searched and I pulled what I know now to be a stupid stunt.

Before the flight, I had put a large chocolate bar in my pants pocket to eat on the return flight. The German pulled this out and started to keep it but I reached out, snatched it back, and said firmly that it was mine. I learned later just how rough front line troops get (both German & American) and now figure that the only thing that saved me was that I was an officer and the Germans were very strictly trained to respect an officer. They had not seen chocolate for several years.

There were several American ground troops there who had been captured in the fighting. We were all held at the command post until a truck could be found to transport us to the rear later that day.

To give further insight as to what the Air Force faced on that day I will extract from a newspaper article in the Shreveport Times quoting from Richard Johnson, another Shreveport, La. native.

Richard Johnson was with the 1st Pathfinder Squadron, a squadron flying special B-26 airplanes equipped to lead other B-26 groups in bad weather in order to bomb with radar when the target was not clear. On Dec. 23, 1944 Johnson was assigned as lead pilot with the 387th Bomb Group on a mission to bomb the same bridge my group was attacking later the same morning. They were flying with an escort of Lockheed P-38 Lightening fighters.

Not long into the mission, Johnson said the bombardier called him on the intercom to report seeing black dots all over the nose glass. Johnson looked out of the cockpit glass and saw a lot of black dots also.

About that time one of the little black spots blew up in a ball of flame and we realized the little black spots were fighters way up ahead." he said. "We were the first group of bombers to penetrate the largest dogfight in the history of aerial warfare. The Germans in their last major aerial effort put up 1,600 fighters, and we could only get about 800 off the ground due to the bad weather. All we could see was fighters all the way from the ground up to 25,000 feet and as far to the north and south as we could see."

Johnson wasn't exaggerating. Photos of the time, and accounts in many histories, say the action in the air was so intense, and so confusing to observers on the ground, that Allied antiaircraft gunners held their fire for fear of hitting "friendlies" in the sky. Historic photos show the contrails of the hundreds of airplanes looping and interleaving in violent knots in the winter skies.
Johnson said about 200 German fighters targeted his P-38 escort, knocking down the dozen planes in a few minutes, and then the enemy fighters made side passes at his bombers, strafing them until forced by low fuel to break away.

"When they broke off, I had five planes out of the original 36 left behind me," he said. "We went on and bombed the target. After turning around and heading back, I called the remaining ships and told them I had no intention of going back through that fight ... I was going to dive down and go back on the deck. They agreed they would follow me as close as they could."

A good note: 10 of the planes lost in the fighter attack weren't shot down, but managed to land at Allied bases, albeit with terrible battle damage.

"I'll never forget the 23rd of December, 1944," Johnson said.

As we waited for a truck to take us to the rear more prisoners arrived. Checking around among us, I found that I was the only Air Force prisoner, the rest being armored infantry and tank crew men. While there were separate prisoner of war camps for Air Force officers I was never successful in being sent to one, remaining with the ground force prisoners.

We were loaded into the back of the truck and a German guard was placed on the running board. His job was to constantly search the skys locating American fighter airplanes patrolling the road for targets. It did not take long for us to learn to appreciate his watchfulness.

The trip was unusual for us. We literally went from tree to tree as we drove. We would remain under the cover of a nearby tree until the Germans decided the coast was clear. Then we would dash a short distance to the cover of another tree. With reason the Germans had a healthy fear of our fighters who were heavily patrolling all roads behind the Battle of the Bulge.

We shortly reached a farmhouse which was the assembly point for captured prisoners from the area. After about 150 men had arrived, we were put on the road marching.

Fighting in the skys above us was severe, I must have seen at least two dozen airplanes shot down that day. The formation would be flying above us when one plane would suddenly break formation and begin lazily spinning down to the ground. I did not see a single parachute so most of these crews were lost.

We also quickly learned another lesson on this march which was reinforced on a second march I took later in captivity. You cannot hide from a fighter airplane. Under artillery fire your can lay in a ditch or hole or behind a substantial barrier and feel relatively safe but that doesn't work when dealing with a fighter plane on a bombing or strafing run. He can look down into the holes or over barricades so when in the open there is no place to hide.

The roads were being covered by P47 fighters. They would appear making slow S turns back and forth over the road looking for targets. When they would spot us (we were just another German column marching down the road to them) they would swing around to start their gunnery run. We had all located something white to wave and when the fighter started that final turn and started down at us we would wave everything but our underwear and (in our case) at the last minute be recognized as American prisoners. The fighter would pull up, wiggle his wings, and fly on. We had reports of other prisoner columns who broke and ran on that last pass and who were thoroughly strafed with many casualties. This is a very unnerving process even when not being shot at.

Along with the fighters there was constant bombing around us. During the day the American air force would bomb from large formations of airplanes and at night the British would take over with single planes, dropping bright flares and then a single large bomb. After about 2 days of this I reached the point that at night the snoring of a nearby person would cause me to wake up in a cold sweat.

The German method of farming is quite different from the American way as the farmers did not live individually on their farms. A group of farms in a vicinity would have a small settlement or town from which the farmers would go out each day to work their fields. The Allied forces were concentrating all their air power on the relatively small area behind the Bulge which made a constant stream of bombing and strafing on these small communities. Without exception, every small settlement or town was bombed and strafed just before we arrived, while we were in the town, or while we were within sight after passing through.

Understandably the German civilians in these towns were very upset at the constant activity and danger and feeling very belligerent. I was wearing flying clothing. On several occasions civilians recognized the clothing and had to be restrained from attacking me by the German guards. I remember one small settlement where the bombing had been heavy and had just stopped. The Germans were just gathering to assess the damage when we passed by. They recognized my pilot uniform and I probably escaped a lynching when the guards stopped a very irate native from coming after me.

Another difference in their farming methods is the layout of their homes in these small communities. The farmer could not leave his cattle out in the open during the subzero weather so he built to keep them under roof during the winter. The house was built in a rectangle with an open courtyard and an opening to the road for access. The more successful the farmer, the bigger the rectangle. The farmer lived in one long side of the rectangle with the rear of the rectangle housing his equipment or supplies and the other long side housing his cattle and chickens. The height of the buildings was normally two storied giving room for the second level of the non-living section to store hay (which is where we would spend the night). Along the side of the living wing would be a walkway porch on the second floor.

There is one other major difference in German farming practice. The center of the rectangle contained his manure pit. This was concrete and would hold water. The bigger the farmer, the bigger the manure pit. As the farmer cleaned out his barn each day, the manure was added to the pit. The rain would leach the manure pile and when planting season arrived the water contained in the pit would be carried to the field and used as fertilizer. Whereas our farmers would normally spread the manure as fertilizer the German farmer did not use the manure itself, only the water. They had a wagon with a round tank for this purpose which we nicknamed "the
honeywagon". Needless to say when spring arrived this area got quite aromatic. I can only imagine how bad it got in summer as I was recaptured in early May.

Another thing that became apparent to me in the week long march looking for a railroad was the shape of the German military transport. They were out of or very low on gasoline We met a constant stream of reinforcements and supplies. Along with horse drawn vehicles the troops moving forward mostly were walking, some pulling carts. The Germans had developed a tank or barrel contraption that made a gas from coal on which their vehicles operated replacing gasoline, this being attached to their passenger side running board With their armies having to operate this way, a prolonged seemed impossible for them.

On Christmas eve, 1944, we were marching late in the afternoon preparing to enter a small town when P47 fighters jumped it. For about 30 minutes we hid in the woods and watched the fighters thoroughly work the town over, making repeated strafing runs and occasionally dropping a bomb. they finished we entered the town.

In the center of the community there was a small open courtyard which contained a number of dead German soldier had not seen at close hand many casualties so was not prepared for this much death at one time. The most permanent memory was being made aware of how insignificant a dead person becomes at death. They literally seemed to have lo size and whatever other traits that set them apart during their lifetime. I also realized that as a bomber pilot I lucky in that I did not have to see the people we were killing.

There was a two story schoolhouse at the edge of the courtyard and we were placed on the second floor for the night. We were so crowded with prisoners and laying so close together that we had to roll in unison if we turned over. night long there seemed to be an extra heavy concentration bombing around us from the British. They would light up area with a large flare and then would come a monster bomb blast. The next morning when we marched out the dead German were still in the courtyard.

Several days later we were to spend the night in a 1 warehouse. This was in a small town on the railroad which still not operating. The day before we got there while bombing the town the Americans bombed the local hospital which was housing a large number of American wounded. The immediately moved the wounded to the warehouse which was housing other prisoners. We were lined up on a sidewalk w parallel the Warehouse approximately 15 to 20 feet from t sidewall of the warehouse. Allied bombers laid a stick of to come back down but not all the column was that lucky. We lost some men there.

During the air raid the day before, the rear wall of the warehouse had been blown off so the subfreezing temperature was filling the warehouse. It was packed with prisoners and the wounded. That night food was passed in but with the pack of men and the small amount of food it only got in far enough to feed the front group of prisoners. Needless to say I was not in the fortunate group. With the crowd and the cold sleep was impossible. Luckily I only stayed there 1 night.

We finally reached a working train and were locked into boxcars for shipment to a camp. German trains were small gauge railways and the boxcars quite a bit smaller than American boxcars. Space was not a problem to the Germans, they only packed us tighter. We remained locked in the car for 3 days without food or water, even though there was ample opportunity at stops to get water. There was a small window in the corner of the car we could open. On one occasion we passed empty helmets through the window to a young German woman and her small son asking her to fill them with water. She had done so and was returning to our boxcar when a guard stopped her, knocked the helmets from her hands, and knocked her down.

Doing without food is very uncomfortable but being without water is impossible. At one point I was so desperate I tried to get moisture by picking frost off the steel bolts going through the walls but there was just not enough moisture there to do any good.

We sat through an air raid locked in the railroad boxcar in the Berlin marshaling yard on New Years Eve while American B17 bombers pounded the area. We were expecting to be a target but fortunately for us they had selected other targets and our particular railyard did not get any close hits. Besides by then water was more of a concern to us than bombs.

The next day we arrived at our first prisoner of war camp which I believe was in Neu-Brandenburg, 102 Kilometers north of Berlin.

The camp at Neu-Brandenburg was made up of separate open bay barracks of temporary type construction. I estimate the room size to be 80 x 24 feet housing in each barracks probably 78 men. There was one small stove but we were not furnished enough coal to keep a fire so we had near freezing temperatures at all times in the room.

The beds were bunk beds, three beds high with about 2 1/2 feet between levels. Mattresses were straw filled burlap and we had one blanket each.

The latrine was in a separate building and did not contain showers or washing facilities. Little did I realize that the bath and fresh change of clothing I had just before leaving on my last mission would have to suffice for 4 1/2 months.

Food was one meal a day consisting of a weak vegetable soup with a 1 1/2 to 2 inch slice of heavy potato bread.

There was absolutely nothing to do at this camp. We were not allowed freedom and spent our days just laying around.

Immediately upon arrival we had the unpleasant experience of our first delousing. We did not realize how necessary it would be with the grade of cleanliness and sanitation in which we would be living. Our heads were shaved and what appeared to be coal oil was spread into our armpits, our personal parts, and any other hairy spots using a stick with a rag rapped around the end. A very degrading experience. It wasn't until I did not have any hair that I realized how much hair contributes to a warm head. This was especially uncomfortable in a very cold barracks.

I finally located a campaign cap I was able to use by splitting the end to make it fit which kept my head warm but looked terrible.

The established Air Force officer prisoner camps had been in existence from the early days of the British bombing of Germany. There also was a certain respect between the flying personnel of all countries that made life more bearable in these camps. In addition the American Red Cross gave two food parcels a week to each prisoner which allowed them to exercise and hold their weight.

Daily communication was held between my temporary camp and a nearby Air Force officer camp but I met nothing but a stone wall in attempting to get transferred there.

After about a month in this camp, we were loaded into boxcars and shipped to our permanent camp at Hammelburg below Berlin and 60 miles into Germany from France.

This camp had been built to house the Yugoslav army officers captured in 1941 when Hitler invaded Yugoslavia. It contained all the officers, from the commanding general and his general staff down to our equivalent of Lieutenant. The Germans had compressed them into half the original camp and put the American captives into the half so vacated. The buildings were of a permanent brick construction with paved streets between the buildings.

Our section consisted of six large buildings with 4 individual barracks in each building and a separate latrine building. The camp was ringed with a high barbed wire fence with an individual wire approximately 1 foot above the ground and 6 feet from the fence. There were guard towers located at the corners and strategic points between. We were subject to being shot if we touched the single wire or was caught between it and the fence. There was a wire fence between the Yougoslav officer compound and us. Each individual barracks contained bunk beds much as those at Neu-Brandenburg camp, the one small heater and no chairs.

Food was the same, one weak vegetable soup bowl per day with a slice of potato bread. This was not enough food for me to retain my weight. I went from about 170 lbs down to 130 lbs at final recapture. I feel that I had basically lost the weight before this camp was released by Patton's tanks, a period of a little over 3 months.

For a short period I supplemented the daily meal with bits of carrots I salvaged from the mess hall. It to me proves that pride goeth before hunger. In trimming the carrots for our daily soup, the cooks would cut off the top of each carrot up to 1/2 inch to get rid of the leaves and the dirty area there. These tops would be placed in a box awaiting putting into the garbage. I found that I could take these, cut the leaves off more closely, scrape the skin to rid it of the dirty look, and get a good sized bite of carrot from each scrap. This continued until the senior American officer in the camp decided it was below the dignity of an officer and ordered me to discontinue the practice.

Lack of food completely robbed us of any initiative. We had no ambition to do anything. We did try for a while to organize a lecture session each day with the teachers being each of us explaining what we were majoring on in college and teaching the detail of that subject. My major had been Geology with a minor in Chemistry and I tried to teach these two subjects. It did not last long.

Lack of food caused one other major change. We were all young men with at least a normal interest in the fairer sex. This interest disappeared and was replaced with an interest in food. Instead of off-color stories we swapped recipes. These were very wild, mostly centering around sweets. I remember one pie recipe, graham cracker crumb crust, filling of melted snicker bars, with a covering of melted chocolate. I do not remember hearing any off-color jokes or stories from about midway in our capture until about 2 weeks before final recapture. Then we were joined by two fighter pilots who had been shot down and had been eating well just 2 days before.

We developed a practice in our barracks of saving back a little food during the week as well as a little of the daily coal allotment and each Thursday firing up a good fire and cooking what we had saved. It gave us a full belly one day a week.

We did receive one Red Cross food parcel each month for the two months we were in the camp. These were 9 lbs of food. Some of the prisoners had the will power to put them on the shelf and eat only a bite or two per day, stretching them out for several weeks but mine only lasted 2 days. At least I had two days of not being hungry. These boxes each contained a bar of soap which, since we were not washing, I saved and later used to trade with the farm wives for food. As hungry as we were, I know of no instance in which any prisoner stole food from a fellow prisoner.

During the stay at Hammelburg I lost control of my kidneys as did most of the prisoners. A large can had to be placed at the front of our barracks as we were unable to get to the latrine in time. Also I developed a tendency for any part of my body with any outside pressure to go to sleep. If I laid my chin on my hand and rested my elbow on a table, the hand and arm would go to sleep. If I laid down or went to sleep with one leg laying on the other, the bottom leg went to sleep. I was told these two problems were caused by lack of sugar in our diet. These problems immediately got better after recapture but still exist to a lesser extent today.

The treatment by the Germans was typical German treatment.

There were two men shot without justification. One from our barracks (a very nice and capable officer) was shot on the way to the latrine. The rule had been that during an air raid all prisoners had to stay inside. Due to the kidney trouble mentioned earlier, this rule was changed to allow us to go during an air raid maintaining a 30 foot separation between men. The next air raid he had to head for the latrine. A guard leaned against a pole about 15 feet behind him and shot him in the middle of the back.

The second was shot attempting to reach his barracks during an air raid siren. We were required to be inside the buildings whenever an air raid siren ceased. He was visiting with the Yugoslav officers when the siren started and his barracks was the second from the fence. He took off at a dead run to get to his barracks rather than go into a closer room. As he was crossing the street at a full run between the two barracks, the siren ceased and the guard shot him. It should have been apparent that he was making a desperate effort to comply to the rule and certainly not been a death sentence.

Our commanding officer registered complaints on both these instances with the German commandant but he was wasting his breath.

On occasion I visited with the Yugoslav officers, particularly the commanding general. I enjoyed hearing how they operated prior to Germany taking over their country and what they had done during the 4 years of captivity. He also I felt was very interested in the Americans and what they were doing as well as what advances had been made in military capability since his capture. I couldn't tell him any military secrets but there was little danger as I knew very little secret information.

During the 4 years of captivity some of the Yugoslav officers had developed the practice of personal cleanliness with the taking of spit baths from the water pumps at the corners near the barracks. You would see them almost stripped in the cold air washing off. This water was not fit to drink or use for most purposes due to the practice of fertilizing with the honey wagons and putting personal waste in with the cattle manure so it was no real attraction to me. If the truth be known, probably the reason I or no other American prisoner adopted the practice was the lack of ambition or reason to desire a nice appearance.

As officers we were not required to do any work. Enlisted prisoners were given work assignments and required to do any work to which they were assigned.

Ours were officer prison camps, containing only officers. Enlisted men were in entirely different camps under different rules and restrictions. As I was the only Air Force officer, our camps had to be rated as non air force camps for officers.

March 28, 1945 started as just another day in camp. Then shortly before 3:00 in the afternoon the machine guns in the German guardtowers surrounding the camp cut loose with heavy fire answered by more machine guns and cannon fire. Through the windows on the front and back of the barracks we could see tracer bullets arcing over the buildings. This continued for a relatively short period while we stretched out on the floor of the barracks huddled up to anything which might provide shelter.

The camp was approximately 60 miles into Germany from the French border. General George Patton had sent two companies of tanks to release the prisoners, the force consisting of 307 soldiers and 53 vehicles. While this sounds like a large force capable of most missions, it does not sound that large when you consider the obstacles of fighting 60 miles into enemy territory and 60 miles back to your lines. It is certainly a lot of men and vehicles to lose.

One of the prisoners of war in the camp was General Patton's son-in-law. He went out of the camp with a white flag to meet the tanks and was shot in the process. General Patton later denied knowing his son-in-law was there but the tank commander was quoted to me by one of my fellow inmates with the statement "Well, this is a wasted mission". I am glad to report that the son-in-law survived.

Some time after the firing stopped we were informed that the way was clear for us to join the tank column which was parked in a nearby field. We left through a gap in the fence made by a tank entering the camp. Night had fallen and the only light was from several burning vehicles with the tanks and half-tracks silhouetted against the fires. As we walked across the field up a gentle hill in the dark, I almost stumbled over a dead GI who had been killed and then run over by a tank, not a pleasant sight.

The task force expected to see 900 prisoners and we had 1400 in the camp so they did not have the capacity to transport everyone back to freedom. When the prisoners realized this, a sizable group returned to camp with a few opting to try for the front on foot. I elected to try for our lines with the tanks.

Another problem materialized as we got to the tanks. They had had so many skirmishes before reaching us that the armored infantry that normally rode on the tanks had all been shot off the tanks with the survivors being carried back in the half-tracks. To get this infantry protection in our try for the lines they made us replacement armored infantry, giving each of us an automatic rifle and instructing us to ride the tanks. I climbed aboard the lead tank but it was so crowded that the only place I could sit was astride the 75MM cannon. The tank commander explained that he might have to use the cannon so it was best I not sit there. Seeing the wisdom in this, I moved to the second tank in the column.

Sitting on a hill in the dark, illuminated by the fires around us, is a very naked feeling. It seemed like an extremely long time before we were ready to pull out although it probably wasn't very long. The Germans had confiscated my watch so I could not tell the correct time. Finally everyone was loaded, the column was ready, and we pulled out for the long trek back.

In checking out the rear deck of the Sherman tank we found some boxes of ten-in-one rations. Each of these contains a candy bar, crackers, and canned food, mighty fine eating for someone who hasn't seen decent food for 3 1/2 months. We opened several and sat on the back of the tank, eating from then on as we drove through Germany. It is not a pleasant thing to relate but with the long time of no food my stomach was evidently not in shape and I had trouble holding it down. I would eat, upchuck, and resume eating. Sounds impossible to me today but the food had such a strong draw that I don't remember any trouble in immediately resuming my eating.

Traveling blacked out without lights the column seemed to be moving right along but in actuality was not covering a great amount of ground. I estimate that around midnight, without warning, we hit a roadblock. Suddenly we were in the midst of a fireworks display, load explosions, white showers of sparks everywhere blanketing the tank. Bazookas were exploding around us, some hitting the ground, others the tank, others missing us. The lead tank was lost and we bumped into it and stopped. The tank commander opened fire on the nearby area with his 50 caliber machine gun, spraying tracers like a garden hose, we opened fire with the automatic rifles shooting where we hoped the enemy was, then jumped off the tank into a shallow ditch, knelt there and searched for targets. It was pitch black and the Germans quit firing so I could not find any targets. Our tank immediately reversed, backing up about 100 yards and stopping. We ran back and climbed aboard.

We lost 5 men. I have no way of knowing from which tank but feel that all were aboard the lead tank. I do not remember any reports of any wounded.

Upon hitting the roadblock the column immediately reversed, making our tank now at the rear of the column. The column then attempted to bypass the little town where we had been stopped. With my tank now bringing up the rear, we circled around the town on what was no more than a two lane trail up some hills. Suddenly a bazooka shell blew off the track on a half-track three vehicles ahead of us, blocking the trail and bringing us to a halt. While we sat there, the column continued on leaving our four vehicles alone in what seemed the middle of Germany.

We sat there for what seemed several hours. Tanks and other vehicles make a lot of noise while moving around and the German soldiers seemed to like to talk to each other. We could hear them during this wait moving into position around us, probably waiting for daylight. At one point, the senior tank officer in our little group came back to our tank and ordered someone to go over to a ditch paralleling the road and clean it out. Being Air Force and not skilled in infantry tactics, I walked over to the ditch, looked around, thought I saw movement, and opened up with the automatic rifle, spraying like the proverbial garden hose. About that time a Captain from the infantry grabbed me, pulling me down, saying "Get down you fool before they blow your head off". Either I hit the enemy or I was shooting at shadows as I was able to return to the tank still retaining my head.

We were finally able to get contact with the main group and shortly before dawn they sent a jeep back to lead us to the column. I still admire the bravery of a man who would drive alone an unarmed jeep several miles at night across Germany.

At dawn, all the ex-prisoners were assembled for a briefing. We were told that the weather was not cooperating, low clouds would prevent our having air support from US airplanes. Also, on the fights coming in all the gasoline trucks had been destroyed and we were short of gasoline. The plans were to junk half of the vehicles, transfer gasoline from the junked vehicles to the remaining tanks and halftracks, and make a try for our lines.

Upon hearing this, all but approximately 30 of the exprisoners joined in a marching unit and marched back to the camp from which we had been liberated. Even with the troubles I had been having holding something down, I had been eating all night with the tanks and I hadn't been eating at the camp so I elected to take my chances with the tanks and climbed back aboard my tank.

The column was bivouacked on a curve of the road at a gently sloping farm containing two large barns and a two storied brick house. The wounded were in one barn with the half-tracks parked behind it. My tank was between one of the large barns and the house, with the rest of our vehicles spread out between the barns and the road. Behind the barns was a forest. Across the road was an open field approximately 1/4 mile wide with another forest beyond it.

The gasoline transfer had been completed and we had our motors running and were loading up to start our run for our lines. Suddenly we were under heavy cannon fire. German tanks emerged from the trees behind the field across from us, firing as they came. The heavy fire literally blew the large barn containing the wounded infantry down on them. I only saw one tank of ours get underway and I saw it the next morning in the middle of the road upside down and burned out.

I climbed down from my tank and was standing between it and the farmhouse which I estimate was 50 feet wide. I could see cannon fire going into the woods behind us, the shells exploding as they hit the trees showering the surroundings with shrapnel which would make escaping that way like walking through a bunch of exploding hand grenades.

I stood at the corner of the house looking for a way of escape and then one of the enemy tanks decided to go for my tank behind the house. A shell came through the house at the far corner from me, 3 to 4 feet from the ground, showering the area with bricks. My tank backed up a few feet. Then another shell came through the house about a yard closer to me. My tank backed up about a yard. This became the pattern, the shell coming through throwing bricks, the tank backing up while I had to stand and watch. It soon became apparent that I was running out of options, it was a matter of time before we ran out of house to protect us. Taking advantage of the few seconds between shells, I crawled through the area of the shooting below the line of fire, got behind a low brick decorative wall about 1 foot high that connected to the corner of the house, crawled about 50 feet from the house and then ran to a shallow ditch beside the road. I crawled about 100 yards in this ditch and then ran into the woods.

I ran through the woods about 1/4 mile to another field and then to a small separate group of trees approximately 15 x 20 feet across and 200 yards from the main woods, hiding there. I was joined by about a dozen other prisoners.

We watched German infantry march across the open field surrounding us, walk around our small tree stand, and march on into the large woods, not seeing us hiding as they passed. There was heavy firing in the woods which continued all afternoon, getting less and less frequent as time went on, finally turning silent. We were waiting for darkness, planning to make a break for our lines then. The Germans sent in reinforcements expecting another attack and a group of these men walking up to the trees going to look at the site of the tank battle saw us as they passed and we were recaptured.

We were then taken to the little town where we hit our first roadblock. It turned out that this was an officer training school for the German army. This was where I learned about the 5 men killed. I also was allowed to inspect the Sherman Tank that was lost. The Germans had managed to get it running and had parked it under camouflage with its cannon pointed back down the road from which we had come, expecting to use the cannon on the first American tank that used that road.

We spent the night in the basement of the house in front of which our roadblock had taken place. That was a lucky break for me. There was a large pile of the farmer's seed potatoes in the middle of the floor, being there to keep them from freezing. I took the pants from my flying suit, tied strings around the cuffs, and loaded the pants with potatoes. This was to help feed me for the next 5 weeks. The next morning we were trucked back to the original prisoner of war camp from which we had been liberated two days earlier. There we found that of the original group that immediately returned to camp and the second group that marched back rather than try the run for the line without air cover, part had been placed on the road marching to stay out of Allied hands and part had been placed on the train to Moos burg, a large prisoner of war camp.

The Germans selected the 30 highest ranking officers of our group (which included me), placed us in a truck and took us to join the marching group and the balance of our group was then placed on a train to Moosburg.

Until my final recapture on May 3rd my group was kept out of Allied hands by marching when American troops got too close, taking a walking tour of Bavaria. We marched completely across it being retaken on the Inns River, the boundary of Austria.

I do not know how many men were killed in the failed attempt of rescue. Of the 307 men sent in I never saw a captive. It is possible and I hope the case that they were on one of the trains to Moos burg. We undoubtedly lost all 53 vehicles.

My final day as a captive was a good day weatherwise. We had spent the night sleeping in the hay in a barn that was extra large based on the standard we had come to expect.

For the last two weeks long range artillery from our forces had been occasionally landing in our vicinity. By now we had seen enough that I do not remember being overly concerned by these shells being so close. However for the last week we could hear periodic small arms fire and automatic weapons along with sparse cannon fire so we knew we had to be close to the fighting. Yesterday we were hearing the small arms and automatic weapons very close and loud so we knew we had to be very close to our lines.

Frustration from the nearness of our forces without recapture could be tolerated just so long. An infantry captain friend and I decided that now was the time to defect and try for our lines. We hid in the hay and did not answer morning roll call. The prisoner column lined up and marched out of town without us.

After the activity around us had ceased, we began to look around and discovered that we had company, other prisoners had had the same idea. The German SS troops had a reputation of shooting any escaped prisoners they recaptured. Knowing this and that with so many men hiding, we felt that the SS would probably locate at least one and then thoroughly search the town locating us all for final execution. Therefore the odds of us surviving were better with the main column than in the town. Accordingly, we started walking by ourselves through Germany to rejoin our troop.

As we walked we met a surprising number of individual German soldiers (evidently deserters) who did not seem too concerned about the two Americans. The road was a country type road, narrow and winding with no other small towns. We met one German driver of a gasoline truck who was out of fuel parked on the side of the road awaiting either his own forces or capture by the American forces, whichever came first. We talked with him a while and were told that the road we were on was between two major roads and that the Americans were driving down both main roads. He said "Today you are prisoners, tomorrow I will be".

About noon we caught up with our column. They were dispersed in the woods on both sides of the road. There had been a tank fire fight immediately ahead of them where our secondary road crossed the main road and they were waiting for it to finish. We also for a brief time had an American airplane used for artillery spotting flying over us.

When everything seemed quiet we resumed the march. On crossing the main road, we had a man drop out of our column, hide in the woods, and watch for an American tank column. We wanted him to point the column after us.

We were only a mile or so from the Austrian border on the Inns river when we crossed the main road and had walked about half way there when we saw the bridge crossing the river being blown up by the retreating Germans. This left us unable to cross the river.

The small town on the river where we stopped, while not a large town, was quite a bit larger than the smaller rural farming settlements we had been stopping in. The German guard commander informed us they would locate another bridge we could cross and sent some men searching for one. Our commanding officer called several of us together and asked us to pass the word for the prisoners to fan out throughout the town so that If they could locate a bridge, they would be unable to round us all up in time to cross that day.

The town turned out to be a German Hospital Town. The commandant was aware that the war was drawing to a close and realized that our presence in town when the Americans arrived might guarantee better treatment for its citizens. When the guards returned saying they had located a bridge several miles away, there was quite a discussion between the guards and our commanding officer. He told them that he was a former prisoner in Poland and that he had narrowly missed recapture by his own forces two times by crossing a river during the German retreat there. Accordingly, he said, he would not order his men to cross. The German guard commander said we had to go on as his men did not have anything to eat.

The hospital commandant then joined in the discussion. He would feed the guard company as well as give the prisoners of war medical attention they had not had since the march began. He also agreed to surrender the town when the Americans arrived. The guard commander agreed.

At the intersection where we had stopped there was a German beer hall with very ornate heavily decorated beer stems hanging from the walls and ceiling. I have regretted not liberating a couple of these to bring home to show after I was myself liberated.

About the middle of the afternoon the man we had left at the road intersection to watch for our forces came running down the street informing us that the high river bluff overlooking the town was lined with American tanks and men preparing to enter the town.

A short time later a completely separate American force did enter the town, coming in from a side road immediately behind the hospital where we were standing. At the head of the column was a single American soldier, walking ahead of the vehicles with his rifle held at ready. I guess he was the sacrificial lamb when they met opposition. My impression was it takes guts to do that. Immediately behind him was a jeep (not much protection there either). Behind the jeep was an amphibious tank and behind it finally a Sherman tank with the rest of the column following.

Only a few shots were fired and since we had prearranged the surrender of the town, it was ours.

From the tanks the prisoners got some of the 10-in-one rations I had become so familiar with on our first release. They tasted as good as they had the first time. Some of us moved into a small garage type barn at the hospital to enjoy the feast.

My group of about 10 men set in a circle on the partial second floor of the garage in the hay, passing the food around. We would each take crackers, open a jelly can and pass it along, each taking enough to put on the crackers we had. When this ran out we would repeat the process. This was alternated with the cans of beans, etc in the food parcel. The candy bar had a very short life. It was a very pleasant way to spend an evening.

In conversations with the tank men who had released us I remember (even as callous as I had become) being very surprised at how hard and callous to loss of life our front line troops had become. I guess the constant chance of being killed, seeing their buddies killed, and having to see the results of their own killing of Germans forced them to adopt that attitude.

The next morning trucks arrived to transport our German Guard company to the American prisoner of war stockade. I pointed out to our troops about 6 guards that had been especially bad doing their best to make our life miserable for no apparent reason other than pure cussedness. I strongly suggested that if they did not survive the trip to the stockade, it would be no major loss, but I feel fairly sure nothing happened.

Then the trucks arrived to transport us to Moos burg, the major German prisoner of war camp to which the non-marching contingents of our camp at Hammelburg had been sent by rail when we were put on the road after our first recapture.

Arriving at Moos burg, we found the camp overflowing with our men who were being assembled there after their release. We were assigned a spot on the floor of a ball bearing factory across the street from the camp as our home away from home. It is against the Geneva Convention to put such a factory next to a prisoner camp but I am convinced the Germans followed only the portions of the convention that served their purposes, putting sensitive bombing targets where they were safest from our airplanes.

We were given showers and clean uniforms even if we did not need them. After all, it was only 4 1/2 months ago that we had had our last shower and change. Along with the cleanup came my second delousing, same distasteful experience as before but I guess, due to the other experiences I had since the first one, not nearly as nerve racking. It was here also during this exam that part of my problems for the last several weeks was diagnosed as pleurisy. I was shown the xrays showing the scars from the disease on my lungs.

There were very few restrictions on the released prisoners. Many groups were roaming the countryside looking for food, drinks, and anything else they might find. I remember one group of men from India who located a tank car of alcohol in the rail yard and proceeded to hang one on. The sad part of this is that it was wood alcohol which cannot be used as a drink and most of the group died from the poison.

The next day we were transported to a German airfield to await transportation to LeHarve, France to begin our return to the States. German airplanes were still parked on the field and in some of the hangers I saw my first German jet fighter up close. I enjoyed examining it very closely. I was also surprised that it was so small. I had seen the one that flew over our column earlier while we were marching and as a pilot was naturally very curious of this type airplane. Some of the recently freed prisoners took delight in burning up the airplanes, setting them afire just to see them burn.

It was while we were at the airfield awaiting our air transportation from Moos burg that we were informed that the Germans had surrendered, ending the European campaign.

Flying in a C47 transport we were taken to LeHarve and then to the staging ground on a high hill overlooking the harbor. The area had been a heavy forest but had been subjected to such shelling and bombing that not a tree was intact. They had been broken off as if a high wind had passed through.

Mess tents had been set up at about 100 yard intervals and I was assigned to one of these. Food still held a powerful attraction. I was on my 4th trip through the chow line when they ran out of food. I heard the mess sergeant ask one of the cooks where the men were coming from. He had been assigned a certain number to feed and he had far exceeded that already, shifted to 10-in-one parcels, and was now done. I merely shifted to the next mess tent which was still feeding men and proceeded to eat my fill.

I was assigned to a group to return home by navy transport ship with a stop in Trinidad, South America. At LeHarve we were placed on a navy passenger ship which also carried the smaller group going to Trinidad.

Though a much smaller ship than the one I went to Europe on it was actually much roomier for the individual than the larger ship. We had nothing to do but eat and sleep, both of which we undertook with enthusiasm. The food in the mess was very good but with the appetites we exprisoners had we literally bought out the commissary of all its snack food. This was gone by the time we hit Trinidad.

I had expected a Neptune ceremony or something similar when we crossed the equator but no fuss was made of this.

It took a day to unload in Trinidad but as we were not allowed to go ashore I only saw South America from the deck of the ship. The ship commander probably was afraid they couldn't control us with our newly found freedom.

Navy transports are not particularly fast but they are steady. Eventually we entered the port at New York. I had heard stories of how sentimental people get at viewing the Statue of Liberty and these stories turned out to be very true. Everyone on the ship was ready and when the grand old lady came into view everyone on the ship was on the side facing the Statue. I expected the ship to tilt with the weight on one side but we got by. My wife and I visited the statue a few years ago and the sentimental draw if anything was stronger than it was with my first viewing over 50 years earlier.

All returnees were given two months leave. I took a train to Camp Chaf fee in Arkansas and a bus from there home. We stopped for a brief time in St. Louis, Mo. and a group of us went from drug store soda fountain to drug store soda fountain, getting malts or shakes at each. I also discovered that as I got my weight back and started appreciating a pretty woman I could not find one that was not pretty. It was six months before I saw an ugly woman.

With this weakness (if you can call it that) our group met a group of young women while walking in St. Louis that were traveling around the country selling subscriptions to various magazines. We were easy marks. I bought $30 worth which covered several magazines but never saw a single one. I guess I was lucky the young woman did not try to sell me a lot of other magazines.

In the one month it took to get home after being released I went from 130 lbs to 175 lbs, more than I had ever weighed before. With the fast weight gain my face was bloated. The little boy next door can,-.- over to visit and went home telling his mother that I did not look right. With the stories of the mistreatment of our prisoners of war that were circulating at the time, this reaction was common.

Katherine Griffith, a good friend before going overseas and, although neither of us knew it at the time, the girl I would soon marry was walking on the street. She had heard when I was missing in action but had never heard that I had survived. We bumped into each other and she says she felt she was seeing a ghost. Believe you me, she did not know how lucky I was she was not seeing a ghost.

After my leave I was sent to Miami Beach, Florida for reassignment. While there the war with Japan was ended. Everyone has seen pictures of the celebration in Times Square of New York and we had one just like it in Miami. I drove over from the Beach and joined the celebration.

The government was using one of the resort hotels on the beach where we underwent our interviews and testing. The war was still going on with Japan during these interviews. When asked which airplane I would like to fly now, I very strongly stated that the only job I wanted was as an intelligence officer. I wanted to be the one who laid out the missions on a map, briefed the combat crews on the mission pointing out the route, where and how severe to expect antiaircraft fire, the fighter opposition expected, bid them good luck, and went to the officer's club to await their return. The interviewer evidently did not like my answer as I was sent to the hospital on the beach at Fort Lauderdale, Fla. diagnosed as having combat fatigue. I have teased my wife that I returned from Europe in good shape but after two months dating her while on leave I had picked up combat fatigue.

I was released from the hospital in a month and sent to Kelly Field, San Antonio, Texas for discharge. This was the same field at which I started with the military.

By the time of my discharge my weight was back down to 156 pounds according to my discharge. I was officially discharged with the rank of Captain on January 8, 1946.

With any job there is always some portion of your duties that is very hard to perform. You do it because it has to be done but it leaves a lasting impression. Such a duty is the one where you have to inform a young bride that her husband will not be coming home, he was killed in a crash.


I had this to do only on one occasion. The pilot was another instructor. He was killed in a morning crash and as we had become friends breaking the news fell to me. I did it, staying with her and helping while she made arrangements, packed and headed for home. Heartbreaking.


I also had to write a letter to the wife of my tail gunner who was killed when we were shot down which is painful but not like having to look at someone while informing them.


Between a pilot and his crew there is a final thin line that should not be crossed by friendship. His orders must be quickly followed, no delays or second guessing.


We had an incident overseas where one of our pilots was killed because of a delay in bailing out of a falling airplane. The enlisted man due to start insisted that an officer go first. Due to the delay the pilot had to remain with the airplane and was killed. I reviewed this with my crew telling them that if it happened to us, I would give the bail out order and I was leaving at my turn. I also stated that if necessary I would shoot any man holding up his fellow crew members. When we were shot down we had no such trouble.