This is an account, written by my father, of his capture during WWII while flying a doomed mission over Germany. He was the pilot of a B-24 Liberator on his 26th mission to bomb the Odertal Oil Refineries in Germany when his plane was shot down by German fighters. This is an account he wrote of that incident and the days following. He was 24 years old when he was shot down and I am unsure of his age when he wrote this.

December 17th and Since

On the eve of this fateful date, I had just received my first Christmas presents, including a very nice scarf and a pair of mittens knit by my wife. Little did I realize the comfort that scarf was to bring me by Christmas as I went to be early to rest for the next day's mission.

I was up at an early hour, and went through my routine preparations for the mission. It was Sunday, and I wondered if I would ever have the Sabbath off to go to church. After briefing we all assembled at the ship and prepared "Arsenic & Lace" for her day's work. The ten of us were a smooth working team by now and everything moved like clockwork. Came the dawn and we were on our way into the air and off for Germany. Number four man in my flight aborted and I moved in to fill up his vacancy. We plowed on, higher and higher, across the Adriatic Sea, over Yugoslavia, then Hungary and into Czechoslovakia. It was almost noon now, and we had been working our way through some weather to find ourselves suddenly in the clear. I was at 26,500 feet and vapor trails were streaming past from ships ahead while a pure white blanket of undercast lay spread out three miles down.

I called Modrovsky on the interphone and told him to lower his turret before I took a good look around. My flight had become somewhat separated from the group in the bad weather, and we were slowly working back into position. I felt uneasy for some reason and tightened up in my position until my plane's nose was almost touching the tail of the lead ship. Our P-38 escort was off in the distance and I wished they were closer. Phil was flying on my left wing and he waved as I glanced over.

Then all hell broke loose!!!! The whole damn Luftwaffe had appeared out of nowhere and had singled out our flight for the first attack! I could feel our plane vibrate as all the firepower I had went to work! Tracers were everywhere and enemy rockets exploding all around us! Flying bits of glass and smoke filled the flight deck as bullets ricocheted off our seats! I glanced past Frisco out the right window and saw a Fock-Wulfe 190 break into smoke off my wing tip and go down in flames. Simultaneously, his buddies shot out my two left engines and then a third. I broke the formation in a steep glide to the left in an effort to tack onto the lower lead flight of the group. In the same second Art grabbed my arm and yelled that the bomb bay was on fire! I took a quick glance and saw a seething inferno of flame. I gave the order to abandon ship and went to work. A steep turn to the right away from the group, emergency salve of the bombs, power off on the good engine, and set up the autopilot. Arsenic & Lace was on her own and I turned to leave. Frisco hadn't moved and I yelled, "Let's go," as I cleared my seat and connections with one move. As I went through the smoke filled flight deck, I noticed Art on the right snapping on his chute and Goldman on the left doing the same. They seemed o.k. and Art gave me a grin as I motioned him to follow me and jumped down into the bomb bay. The doors were only open a short space but enough to get through and the flames were being blown toward the back. Without a moment's hesitation I dropped out the right bay and then momentarily lost consciousness. The bold blast of air revived me immediately and I pulled my ripcord in the same moment. With the jerk of the opening chute I felt a stabbing pain in my right shoulder and a popping in my left ear struck an old familiar note. I realized my eardrum had been ruptured. After all the noise and confusion I had just left, the sudden silence seemed deafening - but it didn't last. Out of nowhere a FW-190 bore down on me, its guns blazing and tracers going by too near for comfort. I grabbed my risers and started swinging - damn scared. As if in answer to a prayer, a beautiful P-38 closed in on the FW and drove it off. I could have kissed that pilot. Now I was all alone and it seemed strange to hear myself breathing heavily. I squirmed around in my chute once more searching the sky above and around me for any chutes other than mine, but I couldn't see a thing - not even a trace of aircraft - I was alone in the world and how lonely I was! I gave a prayer of thanks for my life, and thought how terribly far and yet near I was to my wife. I was almost into the undercast now and I was startled back to the present. I figured to be in central Slovakia from the time and decided to try for Russian lines once I was down. Now I was in the clouds peering intently below for my first glimpse of the ground. Will it be water? or a city? or a farm? tree? All this passed through my mind to the unrhythmic flapping of silk in damp air. I was out in the clear now and there was the ground. A drab picture of fogginess and a small village directly below me. I realized that I couldn't miss it and prepared myself for the jolt as I saw myself landing on a clear spot next to the village. I hit and rolled, coming right to my feet to notice a crowd of civilians searching in the vicinity and another group approaching me. There was no escaping them so I turned my eyes to the sky - hoping to see other chutes. There was nothing in sight so I resigned myself to the present and stripped off my parachute harness while taking stock of the situation and watching peasants milling around. My shoulder was throbbing with pain but I could feel no broken bones and diagnosed it as a dislocation. Aside from that and my ear, I was in good shape and considered myself lucky. I still had on my heavy flying boots over heavy knitted socks and electric shoes. I was wearing a shirt and pants with all the insignia under an electric suit, sweater and summer flying suit. My new Christmas scarf was wrapped around my neck and tucked in at the throat. My helmet had come off in the jump but I still had on my leather flying gloves. My escape kit and first aid kit were in my knee pockets, intact.

A peasant was smiling at me and queried, "Deutsch?" I couldn't help laughing at his mistake and answered with the few German words I knew, "Nix Deutsch, Americanish." Then the murmuring started in the small group. This was getting me no place so I started walking through the village with the crowd following. A young lad beside me mustered a few words of English and I let him lead me into a house where I dug out my first aid kit and dressed some small cuts and bruises. By this time, a young girl appeared that knew a smattering of English and acted as interpreter and informer for me. I found that the Czechs were friendly but were deathly afraid of the Germans. She told me that they would like to help me escape but that the Germans would kill the whole village if they did and pointed out pro-German Czechs in the crowd.

About this time a uniformed Czech police officer appeared and took me in a one-horse cutter to the next village, two miles away, to await the German military from Olomouc. I spent the afternoon there waiting in the local police office. The local townspeople were curious and friendly and surprised me by bringing coffee and food (later removed so the Germans would not see it). They brought in an interpreter who treated me like a long lost son. He told me that he had been deported from the U.S. back in 1931 for bootlegging, but that he had been framed by Al Capone, whom he cursed bitterly.

Toward dark, heel clicking, heiling Nazi officers appeared, and after dark I was taken in a Nazi wehrmact recon car to Olomouc. I was marched around to a couple different places there by a couple of German soldiers who finally left me in the local Bastille. A badly burned and cut up American flier, who I later learned was Jeff Hamilton from Texas, was in the jail office when they registered me and searched me again. Jeff told me that Frisco and Milt, my co-pilot and Navigator, were already in the same jail. This was my first news of any of my crew. The Germans tossed me in a cold cell by myself, and gave me a hunk of black bread (my main subsistence to be) and some water. Later they brought in a wehrmacht medical who gave my arm a twist and jerk that hurt like hell, but did throw my shoulder back in joint. He also gave me a little cloth tape to make a sling for my arm.

I saw Frisco and Milt the next day, but not to talk to. Milt was burned badly about the face and his clothes scorched. Frisco looked all right.

I also saw an ME 109 spin in and explode a few blocks away from my cell window that day. This was during an air raid alert and I could hear our bombers overhead on their way to Blechammer at Gleiwitz.

The third night they took nine of us, including Frisco and Milt and Jeff, on an old charcoal burning truck to another jailhouse several miles away. It was our first chance to talk and we found out from Frisco that Art Carlson and Morris Goldman never made it out. They went unconscious from lack of oxygen and were caught in the explosion. Frisco was blown through the top hatch on the flight deck and landed in a cemetery in Olomouc. Milt was blown clear by the explosion which also opened his parachute. He came to consciousness during the descent. He was sure that Brewer didn't get out because he was next to him at the time of the explosion. Because the three of us were all located forward in the ship, we had no knowledge of the four in the rear.

When the truck deposited us at the next jail, we were thrown into a cell and to our delight found the cell already occupied by Modrovsky and Stewart. We were really relieved and overjoyed at the sight. They told us that Eddie Howard was killed by a 20 mm cannon shell and Abe by machine gun fire early in the fight. We were all sick about our five missing buddies, but were thankful to be alive ourselves.

Phil Crossman and most of his crew were also there, as well as several other American fliers. We were all interviewed and given some potatoes and baloney, after which they loaded us on trucks and took us to a train where we began a three-day trip to Frankfurt.

Enroute to Frankfurt on the Maine River, we passed through Prague, Brux and several other cities. All were in ruin. Marshalling yards were battered and bombed out of usefulness. Several times we had to walk through towns and cities because of blown up tracks. Germany was in pathetic shape and Frankfurt was the worst I saw, with 90% of its buildings destroyed. Ten miles from there our trip ended, at Obereussel, and we were thrown into solitary confinement prior to interrogation. I really had a quiet Christmas by myself in my little cold cell, and instead of a turkey dinner I had four slices of black bread (no butter) and water for the whole day, my usual daily diet. I spent five days there, and after being interviewed on December 27 (I gave them my name, rank and serial number), they took me on another train ride to Wetzlar, Dulag Luft, where we were given some Red Cross clothing and an opportunity to shave and wash up. Ten days of nothing had made us look pretty crumby, so this was a welcome change. We were treated fairly well for the two days we spent there, which made us feel a little better about the whole thing. We left there December 30, 1944, for our present permanent prison camp, Stalag Luft 1, Barth, Pomerania, Germany. It was a four-day trip in a crowded, black, dirty car. Most of the trip we damn near froze to death, and, to get all of us in the compartment, two men had to sleep in the luggage racks, measuring five feet by eleven inches, at all times. We spent New Year's Eve in a marshalling yard at Berlin and sweated out several air raids with targets nearby.

On Saturday, January 3, 1945, we walked from Barth to Stalag Luft 1, where I became Kriegsgefangenen Smith #7022.
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