He is an honorable, quiet, peaceful man who has endured many hard times, always with at least an attempt to smile. Here is his story:
After we got through with our bombing mission, we were out strafing targets and I was flying with him. We were by ourselves, just the two of us. We were (following) a railroad track and the railroad track were down between two big apartment buildings. (They were) about five story buildings. A railroad locomotive with a string of cars had stopped. To get under cover (between the two buildings). Mac was the lead. He went in. Of course, I`m all excited. My first mission! I started shooting way too soon. There was a German lady on about the fourth floor of one of these apartment buildings on the left side. She had her laundry out on one of those pulley-type, rope things that go across and back. Had her laundry strung out there.
And I come out there shooting at this locomotive. Instead of hitting the locomotive, I hit the lady`s laundry, shooting holes in her sheets and everything.
And the last thing I remember (was) looking up to the left. She was above me, leaning out the window, shaking her fist at me.
If you can believe it, when we had a briefing back the next day on my film, I was given a medal for being a hero! My contribution to the war effort. I expected sheets here hard to get in Germany. It is probably quite an accomplishment.
(He chuckled to himself) They laughed me pert-near off the base when they got through running that film!
Now, to get right down to the end of it. February 27th, 1945. Took off from Debden on an escort mission to Lipzig, Germany. After escorting the bombers, as usual we went back to strafe, what are called ``targets of opportunity``. We were strafing aircraft, a vemar airdrome, and on my third pass, shooting at German aircraft on the ground, I was hit by ground fire, anti-aircraft fire. I knew I was hit, so I flew out toward the west trying to go home. I knew that I wouldn`t last very long.
When I got to 6,000 feet, probably 6 minutes away from the airfield, my airplane started to burn and I bailed out the side. As I was floating down, why, a large group of German people were waiting on the ground. Some of them were Hafacore troops who were home on either sick-leave or leave. When I hit the ground, they were quite unfriendly.
They surrounded me and one of them knocked me down. But the Burgomaster from the village was with a group of people. He took me under his wing and he and a couple of townsmen took me down to town. They turned me over to a German outpost which had a sergeant and a couple of enlisted men and two German woman, the equivalent of our WACs. They kept me for one day, until they could get me out of there.
Then a Major came down from Airford. And they picked me up and took me up to Merksruhl. It was like a little, well, like a jail. They kept me in jail overnight.
The next day, a little old German soldier, one of the Volkstern, the older soldiers that were home guards came. He had been a little professor and he had a knapsack full of books. Anyway, he picked me up and took me to the train station. I was carrying his knapsack and he had a Schmeiser which is a automatic weapon similar to our tommy-gun. He put me on the train and hid me under the seat and sat on top so that nobody would see me.
From there we went chugging down the railroad track. The next morning about nine o`clock, a group of P-51`s come over, red nosed one`s, my own outfit. They shot up the locomotive. It was out of commission so my little German school teacher guard, he says ``Robert, ous``. Well a window from a railroad train is quite high off the ground so, I had his knapsack and I went out the window with his knapsack. He reached out the window and handed me his Schmeiser! And I wasn`t thinking much, I took it and started off towards the woods, and him right behind me.
I woke up and I about scared myself to death. Here I am running in the woods and I have his gun and there are German officers and soldiers all over the place! I gave him back his gun. He didn`t want to take it. He was too busy running. Anyway, we got organized and they brought another engine and put it on the train. We got back on the train and went chuggin` along. That was the first time. Two more times that morning, they shot up the locomotive on out train. Two more times he run me out the window, handed me his gun, and ran for the woods. And I got more scared every time he did it.
Anyway, we got to Frankfort on the Main, which is a interrogation center. There we were interrogated by a German sergeant who talked with an accent like he`d been educated in Oxford, England.
A few years later at a reserve meeting here in town, we got to talking about this and a visiting officer from the A.G.S. office said ``Yeah,`` he identified that man. They hung him at the Nuremberg Trials.
Anyway, from this interrogation center we were shipped a little ways away, anyway, I don`t remember the town, where the Red Cross was in conjunction with the American supplies for Prisoner of War. We all got big heavy overcoats to wear.
Of course, it was colder than heck. It was in February then, well, getting along towards March, about the first of March.
From there, then they shipped us in, what I call 40 aught 8 cars. Those boxcars on the railroad that had only two wheels in the front and two in the rear. The French called them 40 aught 8. They could hold 40 men or 8 Horses.
Anyway, we loaded into these boxcars. By this time there was quite a group of us P.O.W.s and we headed back towards Nuremberg, which would be our prison camp. On the way, one time we were in a little railroad yard. We parked in there and here come American bombers over the top and they dropped bombs down in this little railroad station that we were parked by. The yard was a cobblestone with brick. And when the bombs hit it, it just blew bricks right up through our car over our heads and blew holes in the cars. None of us were hurt except the guard. He got a broken arm out of it.
Well, we were in there for about two days and two nights with nothing to eat or drink and we were getting pretty thirsty. We stopped at a little town that had a gravely kind of platform. Standing there waiting, they let us out of the car. While we were waiting, I found a little bitty ol` gold ring and I put it on and nobody noticed it. They brought us water and it, ohhh... beautiful, cool! It looked so good! And we drank water! Starting in about two hours after that, we all had diarrhea so bad we about died.
Finally, we got to Nuremberg, the prison camp. We weren`t there very long. We got in there early in March of `45 and we here there possibly a month. We could hear the artillery coming, the Americans were advancing. They marched us down the road in groups. There was about 10,000 of us under guard. They marched us down the road toward Mooseburg. Anyway we were on the road about two weeks. There weren`t very many guards but they had vicious guard dogs, German Shepards.
One day we were marching down the road, a nice little black top road about two car lanes wide through a forest. Over the top came a squadron of P-47 fighter planes with bombs. Now, there was never a fighter pilot in the world could hit anything but the ground. Anyway, they started strafing as they came down and we all ran for the woods. The guards turned the guard dogs loose on us because they didn`t want us to run. One bomb hit the middle of the road. And it killed a man, sergeant, that I knew real well. I was in the woods. The man that had been right in front of me and I were lying on the ground. When the P-47`s were strafing, a row of bullets went right between me and him. He got hit in the leg. And that was about the third plane down. They called them off. Apparently the leader saw that we were P.O.W.`s down there. So anyway, from there on, it was uneventful. We marched on down the road. We were on the road about 2 weeks.
After this incident about a day or two later, we were going down the road in open country. It was nice sunny day and I looked up and here`s a couple of P-51`s flying back and forth up and down our line. Every day after that until we got to Mooseburg, we had at least two American fighter planes flying escort over the top of us for protection, for top cover. The German Lithuatha never bothered them, they let them patrol.
We got to Mooseburg. We got there and there was no bunks. We each had a blanket that we managed to carry along with us from Nuremberg. By this time we had body lice until it could drive you crazy. Didn`t bother you much in the day time, but they crawled all around at night.
About..... I don`t remember the date but it must have been in May.... some tanks from the Patton`s Armored Cavalry came, broke through the gate and came in and started tossing out little K-rations, they looked like little boxes of Cracker Jacks. Of course, we were all hungry and we ate it real well. The old German guards that were guarding us started trying to run away. The S.S. troopers were right behind them and shot the guards.
From there they evacuated us to a field hospital in France. They moved us out from Englestatin, Germany, to France. Camp Luckystrike was the name of it. They started giving us boiled potatoes and boiled chicken and boiled fish because we hadn`t any salt or any food and we were all starving. And do they fed us up there and then we were transported to Lahar, France, and, sent on our way home.
Our transport home was a ``Super Trooper``. It would hold 10,000 troops. It was a .... ``Marine Robin`` was it`s name. Going over it took us 10 days to get there in an old liberty boat convoy. Coming back, it took us about 4 days in this ``Super Trooper, `` so.... I`m home!