The Things Our Fathers Saw—The Untold Stories of the World War II Generation-Volume III: War in the Air—Combat, Captivity, and Reunion

by Matthew Rozell

  When I got back, they had a form for a telegram to send my mother. And what it said was, ‘Am feeling fine, having a swell holiday.’ So she got the message [that I was okay], but that's how she found out.

  *

  The long anticipated D-Day invasion was imminent, and Richard was able to convey important information about the enemy.

  The Underground told me that in Metz, there was a German reinforced tank battalion that could go wherever they were needed. I told [our intelligence officers] about the configuration of the minefields that we went through, and all about the machine gun posts that we saw along the road. I noted the railroad stations that had anything of importance, where the Germans had troops with guns. I told them how many I thought were in each town that I was in. But I never tried to learn the names of the people who were helping me, because if I got captured, I didn't want to have any information I could give the Germans. If I didn't know anything [about them], I couldn't tell about them.

  When I got back to my group, coming back across the Channel, General LeMay—who afterwards turned out to be the head of the Air Force—[summoned] me and two other fellas who had just returned. He wanted to know what he could do to change anything, or what needed to be done, [for guys who landed in enemy territory in the future].

  I said, ‘Well, somebody [has just put] an order out to tie a new pair of shoes on your harness so you have a good pair of shoes [if you have to bail out]. That would never work, because the Germans would notice those new shoes right off the bat.’

  He said, ‘I'll rescind that, Sergeant. I'll put good old pair of shoes.’

  But the first thing I asked General LeMay about [had to do with my mother].

  I said, ‘What about my allotment? Was my mother getting her money while I was gone?’

  He said, ‘Sergeant, I have a mother than I have an allotment for, too.’[35]

  *

  I had a 28-day ‘survivor leave’. I went to Atlantic City, New Jersey and they processed me there. Then they sent me to the hospital in Nashville for rehabilitation—my knees and ankles were pretty weak. And so I was there for a month, and the army sent me to B-29 school in January of '45. There were nine of us who were combat returnees, and the army wanted to send us to the Pacific, but we said we didn't want to go. By then there were a lot of other people who had never been in combat, so the army didn't make an issue of it, and they put us in a mobile training unit for airplane and engines. And I stayed there in that unit until I got discharged on October 27th, 1945.

  *

  I ran into the guys who were captured by the Gestapo after I left the hospital in Nashville. I was in Amarillo, Texas, and I was in the PX. [The two of them were there, recognized me, and] hollered at me. My wife always said, ‘Don't rob a bank, because everybody remembers you.’ [Laughs] And they were kidding me about [how I got away and they were captured]. They told me about how as PoWs, the Germans kept moving them as the Americans kept getting closer, that they had them march on the outside of the formation, so if anybody was going to get shot, they were it. They were getting low on food and everything, but they made out. They got through it.

  I saw the P-47 pilot, Ken Williams, after he moved to Rochester, New York, after he retired. He became a lieutenant colonel. I found his name on a list of an ‘escapee-evadee association I joined. I called him up and I went up to see him in Rochester. My wife said, ‘Look at the two of you. You're like two midgets! You're supposed to look like John Wayne.’ [Laughs]

  I sent a letter to him a year ago, and I got no answer. So I have no idea what happened to him, whether he moved away. His wife was a teacher. I got an idea that maybe they moved when she retired.

  *

  My wife and I took a trip to France two years ago, and we got to Normandy, near the cemetery where my crewmates were buried. I only had about fifteen minutes, but I found three of the fellows who were in the plane with me. The other six, they sent their bodies back home, evidently. But those three, they were still there.

  ‘I don’t think you can understand. I'll always have a guilty feeling that asks, ‘Why me? Why did I get out, and nobody else? Why should I be still around, and not them?’ But I have talked to other people, survivors, and they feel the same way. It makes you appreciate being alive an awful lot. I just appreciate everything; it just amazes me how lucky I was.’

  Richard Faulkner passed away on August 29, 2014 at the age of 89.

  Chapter Five

  The P-38 Pilot

  George T. FitzGibbon was born in Staten Island, New York, on October 23rd, 1921. He joined the U.S. Army Air Corp in January, 1942, shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. After graduating from flight training in October, 1942, he flew the P-38 Lightening and was shot down in June, 1943, parachuting into the Mediterranean. Captured and held for a short time by the Italians, he was transferred to Stalag Luft 3 in Poland. He was a prisoner of war for 22 months. ‘The day after Pearl Harbor, I was out at the airfield applying for my cadet training, and I was accepted. I went into the Army Air Corps Program.’

  *

  George T. FitzGibbon

  At the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, I was a student primarily trying to get enough credits so I could get into the Army Air Corps Flying Cadet Program. That was my goal all along, so I had just about completed half the credits for the degree which I needed, and Pearl Harbor was attacked.

  I was in a restaurant called the Hobby House in Fort Wayne, not far from where I was living at the time. It was about 1:00 in the afternoon, and I was having a nice big hamburger. It was announced over the speaker system in the restaurant that Pearl Harbor was attacked. My first question was, ‘Where is Pearl Harbor?’ A Navy guy lived in our house, so he enlightened me as to Pearl Harbor. Boy, we got talking about this fast. ‘Boy, this is going to be serious business.’ Anyway, I used it as a catalyst to get into my flying program. Flying just always appealed to me since I was like 15 or so. I didn't have any experience other than riding in the backseat of a little open cockpit plane a couple times. I read a lot about it and thought that was what I wanted to do. This just provided the means for me to do it.

  I went down to Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama. Then after the basic training there, I went to primary flying school at Decatur, Alabama [to learn with] a PT-17, a Stearman biplane. Then I went to Greenville, Mississippi for basic training. That was the Vultee BT-13. Then back to Selma, Alabama for advanced, a North American AT-6. The last 10 hours was in a World War II fighter. They had three different types. They had a P-36, a P-39, and a P-40. You drew to see which one you were going to get, and I drew the old P-36. Anyway, I flew my last 10 hours of flying school in a P-36, [but] it was the most sophisticated thing I'd flown so far, so I thought a lot of it. It wasn't as good as a P-40, I don't think, but I got 10 hours in it, and it helped me a lot. Then I graduated and proceeded from there.

  I was assigned to Pinellas County Airport down in Florida where we had P-40s, and I flew the P-40 down there for a couple of months. I was commissioned as a 2nd lieutenant, and then got shipping instructions to New York City and then a boat over to England. We went on the Queen Elizabeth, unescorted except for the first 500 miles. They went fast, and they changed course every three minutes. That was their evasive action, I guess, and we didn't have any problem. It was a rough weather trip, but it took five days. We ended up in Glasgow, Scotland. We were assigned to a little base and airfield up there in Northern England called Shaftesbury. That was about the 24th of November of '42.

  The trouble with Shaftesbury is it was a nice little military base, but it didn't have an airfield. We were about a dozen replacement pilots. They also didn't have any P-40s in England, which we were all prepared in, so we hung around there and played cards and went down to the pubs and things like this for a couple months until they asked. They wanted five volunteers to go down to North Africa. That was all they could tell us about it. It was down in North Africa, so I volunteered. I sailed in a convoy this time, and I think one of our s
hips got torpedoed. We saw the smoke, but that was about all I could tell. We came in through the Strait of Gibraltar, a nice calm Mediterranean Sea. I said, ‘Oh, what a heavenly place for submarines.’ [Laughs] We didn't have any problem.

  We went into Oran, stayed overnight there, and then we went to a little pasture type airfield about 20 miles out of Casablanca called Berrechid, Morocco. We had a couple old trainers there that we flew for a while. Then we found out they were bringing P-38s into Casablanca by ship, partially disassembled, but they'd reassemble them right there in Casablanca Airport. About five of us finagled getting checked out in the P-38; they used us to fly airplanes up to the front, after they were assembled. We did that for four or five trips, then we got orders to stay up there and join the 82nd Fighter Group.

  P-38J flying over Southern California. Credit: USAF. Public domain.

  The P-38 was wonderful, a dream machine. The only disadvantage was it was slow to roll. If you wanted to roll into a steep turn or steep bank to evade the enemy for instance, it took a little more time to get into that position than you wanted it to. With a single engine fighter, you just hit that stick right over there and whip it right up. Anyway, it never adversely affected me.

  Combat

  Then I was assigned to the 96th Fighter Squadron flying missions right away, out of Telerghma in North Africa. We'd go out over the Mediterranean, sometimes escorting bombers to Sardinia and Sicily; sometimes we'd go out on a shipping sweep. You could attack any ships you saw on the Mediterranean, because you didn't have to worry about identifying the enemy—anything you see out there is the enemy. We'd strafe boats and ships and drop bombs on them. I'd go down when I'd strafed a ship, and it looked like all those tracers are coming right between your eyes. We carried one 500-pound bomb on one side and a fuel tank on the other side, for equalization. The trouble was, you couldn't release one. You couldn't drop your empty fuel tank without dropping the bomb, too, so you'd keep them both until you got ready to drop the bomb and then punch the button. I don't think we ever did much damage with a bomb—we didn't have a bombsite. You just dive down and hope you're somewhere in the ballpark.

  Following the Axis defeat in North Africa, the Allies pursued them to the island of Sicily. On July 10, 1943, U.S. and British forces began Operation Husky, an invasion of the island using troops deployed by gliders, parachutes, and landing craft.

  When we got around Sicily, especially, we ran into a lot of fighters, Italian fighters and Focke-Wulf 190s, German fighters.

  A captured Focke-Wulf Fw 190A. Credit: USAF. Public domain.

  An Italian Macchi C.202 fighter at Wright-Patterson Field outside Dayton, Ohio, for United States Army Air Forces evaluation.

  Credit: USAF. Public domain.

  I shot down a Macchi 202 Italian fighter that I got credit for. The day we invaded Sicily, enemy fighters were flying down to the southern tip of Sicily and strafing our troops. Then they’d go back to refuel, so we were on them when they came back to take on more fuel.

  I was on my 25th mission and we got involved in a big dogfight there. I had a Focke-Wulf 190 in my sights and I was shooting at him with everything I had, parts of him were just coming off. Just then something hit me in my left engine, and it was on fire. Black smoke just poured in through the wing root, right up into the cockpit and all of a sudden, I couldn't see a thing, just the sky straight up. My little world was coming to an end.

  I don't know [if it was part of his airplane that hit me]; I’ve been trying to figure that out for years. Possibly it was [another] fighter, but we were only about 200 feet off the ground, and I thought that I saw fire coming from places on the ground. We checked this out after the war, and nobody in Western Sicily reported shooting down a P-38 that day. I think it was ground fire. Anyway, it didn't make much difference. The smoke [was too much], there was nothing I could do but get out of the plane. I pulled it up and released the canopy and unhooked my seatbelt and rolled it over. I pushed on the wheel and I fell out.

  Now I'd say I was at about 800 feet. I was wearing a seat pack, and the seat pack caught on the canopy hinge back there, so I was hanging there out of the airplane. I couldn't do anything except kick my feet a little bit and pretty soon it broke loose. Then I watched the airplane go by, and I pulled the ripcord. I pulled it and nothing happened. I pulled it again a little harder. Sure enough, that did it, so I landed in the Mediterranean Sea about 200 yards offshore.

  Captured

  I hit the water fast. When I was coming down, I didn't have much altitude to lose. You're supposed to get yourself undone out of this harness before you get in the water if you can; [I couldn’t get out of it completely].Then the parachute fell over, and I was able to get my hand onto that, and I got it undone. I had a rubber boat in my seat pack and I had a Mae West life jacket on, but the water was only up to here [gestures chest high with hand], and I was 200 yards offshore. I stood on the bottom and looked inshore. There's these three guys in there that were waving me to come in, so they fired a couple of shots on each side of me to get my attention, I guess. Anyway, I walked in. It was like a spit out there because as I walked in, it got deeper, and then the bottom came back up again. I had a .45 sidearm right here [gestures under left arm], and didn't know what I was going to do with that, so I took it out and laid it on the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea, and I walked in. The guy says, ‘For you, the war is over.’ He was pretty near right, even though there was a lot of war left yet.

  These were Italian soldiers. We walked to the village of Castelvetrano and went to a place that I think was an officer's club. It was like 7:00 in the evening. The place was loaded and they all had drinks in their hand. I guess the commanding officer was the guy they took me to. [Other than that], there was no conversation or anything. He gave the guy some instructions, and they took me down the street and put me up on the second floor of this little building, right in the middle of the village, and left the guard there with me. About an hour later, a guy came with a dinner for me, a nice piece of Salisbury steak, some spinach and maybe a little spaghetti and some wine in the bottle. I said if I'd known the food was going to be this good, I could have come sooner, because we were eating C-rations where we came from. [Laughs] I stayed there about a couple of nights, I guess, and then I was loaded on a bus, and we drove up to Palermo. There were five guards and me and we stayed right in the airport operations building, Palermo Airport, second floor, with one guard with me all the time.

  That night, I had to go to the restroom. The guard was sitting there on the bed, leaning on his rifle. He's dozing like this [mimics drowsiness/sleep]. I indicated that I was going to the restroom. All the windows openings had no glass or anything like that. I jumped out of a window onto a landing, and I took off around two o’clock in the morning. He didn't hear me or anything—nobody saw me, so I walked west for half a mile or so. I went up through the city and there were no people around—everybody was asleep, I guess. I walked maybe three miles or so; now I was starting to think it's going to get light pretty quick and I'd better find a place to situate myself during the daytime.

  Before I could decide on exactly what to do, I walked right into an Italian gun position. They were covering the road coming up from the south, with this big gun up on the top. First thing I knew, I hear this sound of metal clicking, and this big searchlight comes on. I put my hands up. I was right in the light, so I was recaptured again. Fortunately, they didn't shoot. They sure had the drop on me that time, though I was so close to General Patton's army which would be coming through there in just two or three days’ time. While Montgomery went up the east coast, Patton came around this way, but I was back to being a PoW again.

  Then we were put on a bus and taken to Messina. Messina had just been attacked, and they were still in the war there in Messina. There were a couple of civilian bodies lying right out on the street, not military; I don't remember if we could hear the guns there or not. There were now about five or six of us, all American pilots like me, and the I
talians loaded us in a launch and took us across the Straits of Messina right in the middle of the day. I was worried we were going to get strafed out in the middle of the straits, but we made it across.

  Then we walked. You do a lot of walking as a PoW. We got to a railroad, and they loaded us in a couple of boxcars. By now, there were 66 of us; they put 33 of us in each boxcar, and we took off.

  We got up to the south of Salerno. The Salerno marshalling yards were all bombed out, so they pulled [the railcars] off on a siding and unhooked the engine, and the Italians went their own way. The guards just sat out there and laughed and had a big time talking. They had their own provisions. Nobody seemed to be putting any effort into getting us something to eat. We sat there for seven days, I think. The fourth day, they came around with a big kettle of some kind of brothy soup. It wasn't that very good, but it tasted like heaven at the time. Then the Germans evidently heard that we were there, and they came down with three lorries and loaded us all on those three trucks and drove us around Salerno to a place called Capua, just northeast of Naples. It was a barbed wire camp, and we stayed in there a week or two. Now they’re getting the prisoners all together. They must have had several hundred by then. Funny thing, only about a quarter of a mile from us was this brick factory, sitting right out in the open. It turned out to be a small arms factory. One day the B-25s came over and bombed that thing, that was exciting. It blew up for like 12 hours, boxcars and all. You just kept hearing one big blast. We'd say, ‘Well, that's it for now.’ Then another one! Boy, it lasted a long time. They had masonry ceilings in our buildings, and the masonry came down and cut up a lot of guys.