PDF The ones who got away: mighty eighth airmen on the run in occupied europe 1st edition bill yenne
Visit to download the full and correct content document: https://ebookmass.com/product/the-ones-who-got-away-mighty-eighth-airmen-on-therun-in-occupied-europe-1st-edition-bill-yenne/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant download maybe you interests ...
All those Allied airmen left their homes, their families, and their countries to come and help us. We owed them all the help we were able to provide them.
Anne Brusselmans
A celebrated helper of evaders throughout the war who coordinated the activities of a network of safe houses in Brussels.
DEDICATION
To my grandson Axel, a lover of adventure stories: I hope you’ll enjoy these tales of obstacles surmounted and challenges met, and that you will grow up and grow old never losing your love of adventure.
List of Plate Section Illustrations
Maps
Introduction
Part One: Strangers in a Strange Land
1 The Lay of This Treacherous Land
2 Herding Wildcats
3 Many Paths to Freedom
Part Two: Riding the Tail of a Comet
4 Hounded Houndsmen
5 Christmas in Limbo 6 Undocumented Fools At Large 7 A Menacing New Year
The navigator aboard the B-17 called Wulfe Hound, 2nd Lieutenant Gilbert Schowalter, was shot down in October 1942, celebrated New Year’s Eve in Paris with Dédée de Jongh, and spent most of January 1943 interned at the British Embassy in Madrid before reaching England. This photo of him in civilian garb was taken for use in his counterfeit identity papers. (USAAF)
William Whitman and Lee Fegette lived here at the Château de Breuil in the commune of Rozay-en-Brie, about 40 miles east of Paris, for two months from December 1942 to February 1943. (Author’s collection)
Tech Sergeant William Whitman was the flight engineer aboard Wulfe Hound, a B-17 that was shot down in October 1942. He and fellow Texan Lee Fegette remained in northern France until April 1943, but they were back in England via Gibraltar by May. (USAAF)
Sergeant William Claxton “Billy” Howell was the tail gunner aboard a B-17 of the 381st Bomb Group, 533rd Bomb Squadron that was shot down over France on July 4, 1943. He was badly injured but finally reached a doctor in Paris. He later walked across the Pyrenees in the company of Sergeant Otto Bruzewski of the B-17 Chug-a-Lug Lulu. (USAAF)
Like many fellow evaders, Fred Hartung and Norman Therrien passed through the village of El Serrat in neutral Andorra as they made their way toward Spain and Gibraltar. (Nisse57, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA
4.0)
This “Certificate in Lieu of a Passport” was issued to evader Sergeant Norman Therrien by the US Embassy in Madrid in February 1943, two months after he was shot down over France. Such documents were necessary, as the evaders had ditched their American papers while eluding the Gestapo in occupied Europe. (US National Archives)
A Hound in Wolf’s markings. Wulfe Hound was a Boeing B-17F-27-BO assigned to the 360th Bomb Squadron, 303rd Bomb Group. Damaged during a mission on December 12, 1942, she was crash-landed in France by pilot Lieutenant Paul Flickenger. She was the first B-17 captured by the Luftwaffe and restored to flyable condition, and was operated by the Luftwaffe until April 1944 when she was ditched in the Mediterranean. (Author’s collection)
Shot down on August 17, 1943 during the “Black Tuesday” mission to Regensburg, 2nd Lieutenant Martin Minnich was the copilot of the B-17 Our Bay-Bee. Badly burned, he was cared for by the Belgian underground and taken under the wing of the Comet Line. (USAAF)
The bombardier aboard the B-17 Our Bay-Bee, 2nd Lieutenant Henry “Hank” Sarnow, hooked up with crewmate Martin Minnich shortly after their aircraft was shot down on “Black Tuesday” in August 1943. They evaded together, and thanks to the Comet Line were back in the UK by November 23, 1944. (USAAF)
Anne Brusselmans (left) opened her Brussels home to fugitive Allied airmen and coordinated the efforts of many safe houses sheltering as many as 50 airmen at any time. In November 1957, she had a surprise reunion with one of her charges, Major Hank Sarnow (center), on the BBC studio reality TV show This is Your Life, hosted by Eamon Andrews (right). (USAAF)
Dating to the sixteenth century, the Château de Brax near Toulouse was used during the occupation by the underground Groupe Morhange as a fortress, torture chamber, and safe house for evading airmen. Among those passing through its gates were 1st Lieutenant Bill Grodi and members of his crew from the downed B-17 Old Shillelagh. (Didier Descouens, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0)
Shot down in January 1944, P-47 pilot 1st Lieutenant Joel McPherson spent most of five months on the run with the Maquis in southwestern France. His harrowing adventures culminated in his stint as a getaway driver for a
gang of Maquisard bank robbers. (USAAF)
Lieutenant Colonel Beirne Lay Jr was a prewar author, screenwriter, and aviator who went on to command the 487th Bomb Group. After his B-24 Liberator was shot down in May 1944, Lay evaded in northern France until August, when he was able to link up on the ground with elements of General Patton’s Third Army. He later co-wrote the novel Twelve O’Clock High. (USAAF)
On June 18, 1944, high on the crest of the rugged Pyrenees, evading airmen Lieutenant Joel McPherson and Lieutenant Gilbert Stonebarger crossed the border into the Spanish village of Canéjan. (Père Igor, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)
Flying with the 56th Fighter Group, Major Walker “Bud” Mahurin was the highest-scoring American ace in the European Theater through early 1944. He had 19.75 confirmed victories when he was shot down in March 1944. (USAAF)
Seen here as a US Air Force major in 1950, Jack Terzian was a lieutenant and a P-47 pilot with the 351 Fighter Squadron, 353 Fighter Group, when he was shot down over Belgium on May 22, 1944. He managed to evade capture until July, and he then escaped in a mass breakout of Allied airmen from a German freight car on September 3. His words at the time were, “then the party started.” (USAF)
The crew of the 801st Bomb Group B-24 known as C for Charlie, piloted by 1st Lieutenant Henry W. “Hank” Wolcott. Back row, left to right: Bill Ryckman, Wolcott, Robert Auda and Wallis Cozzens. Front row, left to right: Dirvin Deihl, Richard Hawkins, Frederick Tuttle, and Dale Loucks. The aircraft went down in Belgium in May 1944 while on a secret Operation Carpetbagger mission. All but Hawkins escaped and evaded. (USAAF)
The pilot of a B-24 that he named Mike, after the mascot of Louisiana State University, 2nd Lieutenant Alfred Sanders was shot down over Belgium on May 28, 1944. He met Hank Wolcott four days later and they evaded together – sometimes in the company of Russian deserters, sometimes in the company of Belgian eccentrics – until they were betrayed in midAugust. (USAAF)
Prosper DeZitter was an infamous Belgian criminal and con man who collaborated with the Nazis. He set up a faux safe house in Brussels, into
which he and his confederates lured dozens of Allied airmen before turning them over to the Germans – for a price. (Author’s collection)
The dreaded Saint-Gilles Prison in Brussels was deliberately designed to have a foreboding, medieval appearance. Taken over by the Nazis in 1940, it was used mainly to house political prisoners pending transfer to concentration camps in Germany. It is still in use, and still internationally condemned for overcrowding. (Author’s collection)
Introduction
These are stories of ones who got away, of intrepid airmen who eluded the prison camps of an enemy who controlled a continent.
These are war stories, not of great armies or even of platoon-sized units. These are stories of men on their own, or of bands of brothers in which the brothers numbered just two or three – all of them facing the challenges of occupied lands swarming with Germans.
The ones who got away, who slipped through Axis fingers in the European Theater, included more than 6,000 airmen from many Allied nations, though the great majority were from either the British Empire or the United States. In this book, though, our focus is on men of the American Eighth Air Force. The largest of the constituent numbered air forces within the US Army Air Forces, it was created specifically to conduct a strategic air campaign against the German industrial machine, and it came to be known as the “Mighty Eighth.”
Of the 350,000 personnel serving with the Eighth, 210,000 of them were aircrewmen, of whom 50,000 were downed over occupied Europe. Of these, 26,000 men died and 21,000 were doomed to terrible years in brutal German prisoner of war camps. Only around 3,000 of those who were shot down were among the ones who got away. This book tells some of their stories.
Each airman had received training, or at least briefings, on the subject of “Escape and Evasion” (E&E). Perhaps the words ought to have been reversed. A man had to first evade, often repeatedly, before he could finally escape. The fact that fewer than one in 16 of all downed airman managed to get away is indicative of how perilously difficult this was. For those who did, it was partly because of a measure of cleverness and ingenuity, but mostly it was a matter of luck. It matters not how clever or ingenious a person is. When
his luck runs out, it’s game over.
Each of these unique stories is derived primarily from the personal recollections of individual Eighth Air Force evaders. All of the direct quotes, unless otherwise noted, are in their own words. These words, quoted from documents recorded when memories were still vivid and often written in each man’s own hand, are part of Escape and Evasion (E&E) Reports produced when each airman made it back from occupied Europe. These after-action documents, nearly 3,000 of them, were filed, boxed, and shipped Stateside after the war. Eventually they came to reside in the collections of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), as part of NARA Record Group 498 (RG 498), which is entitled “Records of Headquarters, European Theater of Operations, US Army (World War II).”
The handful of stories included herein barely scratches the surface of what is contained in the folders – typed or handwritten on pages now brittle with age, but still almost literally dripping with sweat and tears, and certainly still crackling with the sparks of adrenaline from that extraordinary time so long ago.
These stories highlight men who came from all corners of the United States, and from all walks of life. There are city boys and farm boys. Among them are college students, accountants, factory workers, and a former semi-pro ball player. There is one man who had joined the Royal Canadian Air Force before the United States entered the war, and another who was a novelist and screenwriter who had previously had one of his scripts turned into a prewar Hollywood film.
Some of these tales seem themselves to be cut from Hollywood espionage thrillers, as we listen breathlessly to men shivering in fear while Gestapo officers scrutinize their forged identity papers on a train, or as they hide in the brush only inches from German troops.
We meet one pair of men taking cover during a Gestapo raid and crouching beneath the floorboards of a farmhouse in a situation reminiscent of the fearsome famous opening scene of Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds – although in our story, the two protagonists were accompanied by a platoon of Russian soldiers who had just deserted from the German Army.
We find another pair jumping from a moving train to avoid a German checkpoint – only to board a different train and be cornered in their compartment by Gestapo officers.
There is the story of two men who bailed out over Germany, and had to evade capture in the heart of the Third Reich, where troops zealously protected the Fatherland, and where civilians were known to murder a downed airman, considering him a Terrorflieger, literally a “flying terrorist.” After 100 anxious miles, they slipped out of the Reich, but still had 700 miles to go before they could taste freedom.
Some of the stories are poignant. One airman did the improbable and rode halfway across France on a bicycle. Riding through Poitiers, he passed the concentration camp where Romani people were interned. He recalled that as he passed, “a small child about four years old looking though the fence waved to me.” The fate of the child had already been sealed.
Some stories border on the tragi-comic. While most of the downed airmen made contact with underground organizations, one man described how he fell in with a band of maquis, the disrupters and saboteurs who operated in the south of France. While with them, he was captured by the paramilitary, proGerman Milice Français. Imprisoned in a French jail, he decided to fake appendicitis because it was easier to escape from a hospital than a jail. The plan went sideways, and he woke up without an appendix – and convalescing in a German military hospital.
One American was on the verge of being arrested by the Spanish police as a smuggler on a snowswept mountain trail because he had no ID to prove he was an American. Luckily, he thought to show them his pocket comb with “US Army” stamped on it. This worked, and he was allowed to face a horrible blizzard alone, but without fear of prison.
Some downed airmen wound up fighting the Germans with the underground. One volunteered to take over operating the clandestine radio for a Belgian underground group in Basècles, Belgium, and soon became a trusted advisor to a Résistance leader. Another man found himself as the getaway driver for a band of maquis who attacked and looted the châteaux of French collaborators, and robbed banks to finance their activities – because nobody else in the gang knew how to drive.
What each of these men had in common was that one morning, he had climbed out of a real bed, eaten a hot meal, and gone to work in what was then one of the most technically sophisticated machines in the world.
During that day, each man cheated death – often by the skin of his teeth –then cheated the German war machine, again just barely, and reached an immense turning point in his life.
That evening, each man faced the uncertainly of a new life in a dark and dangerous new world, alone or in the company of just a few of his own, with none of the vast resources of the Mighty Eighth.
These are the stories of how each of these men, through cleverness, ingenuity, and luck, managed to beat the odds.
PART ONE
Strangers in a Strange Land
Chapter 1
The Lay of This Treacherous Land
Their theater of escape and evasion began beneath the aerial corridor passing mainly through the air space of the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, and Germany. Through this corridor, the streams of Eighth Air Force fighters and bombers traveled from bases in Britain to targets within Germany, or German targets elsewhere in occupied Europe, especially France.
If an airman came down in an occupied country, he was surrounded by a population that was usually sympathetic, and often helpful – though not always. If an airman came down inside Germany he was, in the vernacular of the day, a Terrorflieger and liable to be killed, even by civilians. Everywhere, even in places that had welcomed Americans for generations, the rule of law was the rule of the Nazis, so locals aided airmen at their peril.
Just as Europe under the heel of the German jackboot was an alien world for the airmen who suddenly descended into it, the place was a strange land for those who had lived there all their lives. Since the German blitzkrieg conquests of April–June 1940, the people of Western Europe, their governments, and all aspects of their civil societies were no longer their own. The darkness of German occupation had descended quickly and completely across their lives and institutions.
The prewar governments of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg escaped to Britain to become governments-in-exile, but their power had abruptly become more aspirational than real. The daily lives of their people
were controlled by new masters in German uniforms and their local puppets.
France, which had been one of Europe’s prewar Allied superpowers, suffered the dual humiliations of an almost overnight military defeat and a smothering military occupation. It had no government-in-exile, except in the person of General Charles de Gaulle, but almost no one – from Allied leaders to many French citizens – really took him seriously until the middle of 1944.
A third humiliation imposed on the French people was that the Germans allowed the creation of a French government – but a puppet government aligned with the Third Reich. The French Third Republic, which had existed for seven decades and was allied with Britain until France’s defeat, was superseded by the État Français (French State). While this government ruled part of France, Germany imposed a direct military occupation across the north and west of the country.
A fourth humiliation was that Paris – the heart and soul of France for a millennium – was in the occupied zone, so the French administrative capital was relocated to the resort town of Vichy, and thus the État Français became known informally as “Vichy France.”
The fifth humiliation came in November 1942, when the Germans extended their military occupation, and their pervasive presence, across the entirety of France.
The instrument of German victory had been its powerful armed forces, the Wehrmacht. While the Wehrmacht remained as the instrument of German military occupation, it was a parallel German organization which transformed all of occupied Europe into a police state.
The Schutzstaffel (SS), created in 1925 as a Nazi party bodyguard detail, had evolved into a million-man elite force answerable only to Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler and his boss, Führer Adolf Hitler. Dressed in their forbidding black uniforms, the SS touched all aspects of life inside Germany and in the occupied countries. Three of the four principal components of the SS were the Totenkopfverbände, which ran concentration and extermination camps; the Sicherheitdienst (SD), which conducted foreign intelligence operations; and the Waffen SS (Armed SS), a full-fledged elite army which operated in conjunction with – but outside the command structure of –
Wehrmacht ground forces.
The fourth and most sinister element of the SS organization was its police forces. Most nefarious among these was the Gestapo – the Geheime Staatspolizei (Secret State Police). It spread its tentacles throughout Germany, as well as into the areas occupied by Germany. It was a constant source of fear and anxiety for those people who now found themselves strangers in their own lands, as well as for Allied airmen who became fugitives in these lands.
Meanwhile, though, just as the SS fielded its SD and its Gestapo, the Wehrmacht contained its own intelligence and secret police apparatus – the Abwehr. Commanded by Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, the Abwehr conducted both espionage and covert actions against Germany’s rivals, occasionally in direct competition with the SD. The Abwehr also contained the Geheime Feldpolizei (GFP), a secret police component that rivaled Himmler’s Gestapo.
The rival agencies both maintained a substantial presence in occupied countries, especially France, where they were involved in an ongoing turf war. In this book, we’ll see the GFP and the Gestapo competing directly with one another over custody of specific captives.
Finally, within the complex tapestry of the occupation of Europe, there were the local collaborators, both inside and outside established police bureaucracies, whose heavy hand made life dangerous for their own fellow citizens, as well as for Allied airmen.
In France, for example, the nationwide Police Nationale was led by René Bousquet, an ambitious Interior Ministry bureaucrat who worked closely with SS-Obergruppenführer Carl Oberg, the commander of all SS and German police operations in France. In January 1943, Bousquet created the Milice Français (French Militia), a zealous paramilitary group known for torture and summary execution of opponents of both Germany and Vichy France.
An abhorrent example of Vichy collaboration was the expulsion to Nazi death camps of around 75,000 Jews – both French citizens and those of other nationalities. The French police also operated more than two dozen internment camps of their own.
