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

  ‘That's not Holland, buddy’

  You've got to remember this was three months before the invasion so the whole continent was occupied by the Germans. This was northern Germany. You come over the Channel and you fly through Holland and then you go east into Berlin. Anyway, Gordon, my copilot, the first thing he asked the guy, ‘Where are we? Where are we?’

  The guy kept saying, ‘Deutschland, Deutschland.’

  He said, ‘Hey Charlie, we're in luck. This is Holland.’ Get this, the queerest thing about this is the copilot was of German descent, but he didn't understand a word of German. I said, ‘Nice going, Gordon. That's not Holland, buddy.’

  Now I'm bleeding pretty good and these bombs start to go off and I said, ‘Well we've got to get the hell out of here.’ I start hobbling up towards the farmhouse. I jumped on one foot and I had my arm around my copilot. My foot would go this way and my toes would go that way. It was like a squirt gun, blood was coming out so bad. Anyway, I got up there and I was still trying to tie a tourniquet around my ankle where the bones are protecting your veins; I started up there where you've got more access to your vein. I'm starting to lose quite a bit of blood. As a matter of fact, one time, blood was squirting out so bad it would be like a water pistol from here to you. It just squirted right out of me and that's how it was. I had to put my finger on the vein to stop the thing from squirting. The plane's on fire and the bombs are going off and I'm saying, ‘We're about to get killed by our own damn bombs.’ I turned around and try to say something to Gordon. Next thing I know, one of the bombs goes off and he's in that trench with those old ladies, laying down. I says, ‘So much for help from him.’

  I hobbled over to this farmhouse, which was maybe fifty feet away from this trench. It was an old farmhouse with a big barn attached to the kitchen. I got into the kitchen and they had some ladderback chairs. I took two of the ladderback chairs, turned them around, leaned back and had my foot elevated and it was enough to make me come back to my senses a little bit because I was starting to feel real faint. A short time later, two German soldiers came in and I remember one was real sympathetic and the other was a little hard nose, which wasn't too bad, because one out of two ain't bad.

  One guy was saying, ‘We'll take you to see a doctor.’

  I said, ‘Well, please.’

  The other guy was telling me, ‘Well you should have thought about that before you took off,’ or something like that.

  Anyway, this one guy, here he sees my foot, so he starts sprinkling this sulfanilamide powder on it. At least he got it on there, right? They took me to a little crossroads in this little farm country.

  Now you've got to remember, we were one of the lead groups, this was at noon and we're still flying over. You've got eight hundred and ten B-17s and B-24s. If you were standing there watching the lead group go by, for the whole mission, it would take you three hours before the last plane would fly over that particular position. That's how many planes came over; it was an ‘all-out effort’. We had little spaces in between but you would have that many planes. Later on, as we got control and they produced more planes, the missions got a little heavier where you had thousand plane raids. You've got all the German Air Force shooting and it's like the Fourth of July. From the ground, it's noisier than hell, and then everything they shoot up comes down again, the artillery and flak and everything else. You could see why the people are really desperate down below.

  The Operation

  They took me to this little infirmary, and they had me on this metal operating table and some guy with a flak helmet comes in. He severed my toes and tied the foot up. My big toe and the next toe were laying there by themselves in an enamel pan, but even then I was grateful. They did it without any anesthetic, which didn't bother me, because I didn't know what the hell this was about. Those German doctors that operated on me March 6th, I never had anything else done to that foot since then, so it had to be pretty good. Today, similar circumstances with the toes still hanging on, they probably would have done microsurgery and probably would have stitched them together but you've got to remember this goes back, 56, 57 years.

  They wrapped it up and they put me in an ambulance, sent me to a hospital in Oldenburg there, which was a secondary hospital. We were practically the first prisoners that they ever saw, and this was March 6th, '44. They operated on me [again]. Of course, I had anesthetic then, they gave me some ether and stuff. I remember the two surgeons that did the operation, one was a captain and one was a first lieutenant and they were both graduates from Heidelberg Medical School. I thanked them later on and then I remember the younger guy sitting next to me while I was laying there, ‘Well, we're first doctors,’ he says, ‘then we're soldiers.’ Which meant he was going to take care of us.

  He also asked me how many missions I was on. Of course, I said, ‘Ah, that was my first one.’ It didn't make any difference. They knew more about me than I knew about myself.

  About thirty days later I was interrogated down there in Frankfurt. I remember the ride in this railroad car. For the last couple of days we hadn't anything to eat and we got into this interrogation center. One of the guards there put me in this little room, little cell. I said to him, in German, ‘Hey buddy’. I'd been there long enough to know a couple of words in German. I evidently got through pretty good with that few words, because he hollered over, ‘Hey we've got a German from Brooklyn here.’ [Laughs]

  I said, in German, ‘I'm just hungry.’

  He said, ‘Okay I'll take care of you.’ He made me believe that.

  I went in and got interrogated; this first lieutenant interrogated me. He spoke English quite well. He could have been reading the list of my whole crew.

  I said, ‘Hey, wait a minute. Tell me, did these guys pass through here?’

  He wouldn't answer me, but they didn't. I was asking him questions whether or not some of those boys were there. Of course, they weren't. They were all killed; just the three of us got out. There was no way for them to get out. I was fortunate to get out because I was in front of the hatch and we were up front, but in the back it was whipping pretty bad. In other words, he knew my whole crew and all their names and previous records before I even took off. They asked me different things and I asked him more questions than he asked me.

  Stalag 17

  They sent us to Stalag 17-B, the world famous Stalag 17. They made a movie about it.[42] It was down in Krems, Austria, 40 kilometers west of Vienna. They had some of the first PoWs of the war-there were some there who were captured in North Africa. [But] most of us in our compound were all Air Force, non-commissioned officers, mostly 8th Air Force but 15th Air Force too. They also had French, Italian, and Russian but they had different compounds.

  We had an upper and lower level with the center being the washrooms. Of course, they had double bunks. I was up in the infirmary for about 10 months, which was a break in that respect. The regular compound had these barracks, big washroom, lower barracks. Then they had a big, open field and they had a big latrine that took care of different barracks in the center. Then of course, they had the main compound where you could walk around. Of course, you were way out in no man's land; there was nothing but farmland around you.

  The conditions inside the barracks were kind of barren. I didn't get down there until about 10 months after I was a prisoner. They had some crystal sets that they were getting some information through BBC at night. What they would do is, after they turn the lights out, they would connect the antennas to the electrical circuit and use the electrical circuit as a big antenna. Then they would have this happen in maybe just one barrack or so. Then whatever news, they would come around and somebody would read it to us, that the war's going this way or that way. That was it and of course, we weren't allowed to work and we ended up with these parcels that the Red Cross gave us. We were fortunate, being down in Austria, close to Switzerland; that's where they were being distributed, through Switzerland. For the most part we were getting one package a week and th
at took care of us pretty good. Later on as things got a little hairy, you got maybe one package for two people. I don't know if you're familiar with it. It had a can of Spam, a ration of biscuits that looked like graham crackers, only very highly concentrated, and a good size package of that. They had a two-ounce can of instant coffee, a larger can of dry milk, called ‘Klim’, which is milk spelled backwards. It had a quarter pound bar of cheese—sometimes you'd get Velveeta, sometimes you'd get American along with a two-ounce can of jam or jelly, grape or strawberry or whatever. Five packs of cigarettes, and two ‘D’ bars. ‘D’ bars were like these great big Hershey bars, only they were thick and heavily concentrated—we used to have contests of how many you could eat before you threw up or something like that. [Laughs] Anyway, we used those D bars, they were our medium of exchange. Like a can of strawberry jam, which was probably the most popular jam, if somebody wanted something he may say, ‘Look I'll give you a D bar for it or a pack of cigarettes’ or something like that. The D bar was our gold standard and it was pretty good. The cigarettes were great, especially for bartering. I was a smoker but not that much of a smoker. These Russians that were in the compound next to us, and of course there was about three rows of wire between us. We could yell over and they had a warning wire and everything else. They were workers. They would send them out to the farms and they would work in the fields and of course they would bring home a package of onions, carrots, molasses, and stuff like that. I don't know where they got the molasses but we would trade and of course, they didn't have no smokes at all. We'd fling over a pack of cigarettes and they'd fling over a bag of onions or package of onions or carrots or potatoes; whatever they had, you know.

  The Germans didn't mind too much but the unfortunate thing was, you know later in the war, some of the guards were a little younger and immature. I remember one of the times somebody threw over a pack of cigarettes towards this Russian barracks. This guy was in the window and he didn't quite get it and it fell down below outside the barrack, which was inside the warning wire compound. Of course, the Russians had a more ruthless life anyway. The guy thought nothing of jumping down and picking it up and jumping back in.

  Well this particular day, this one young guard was over there and he fired from the hip and happened to hit the guy as he was crawling back into the window. Killed him and let him lay there for half a day or so. The Germans transferred the guard the next day.

  What we would [normally] do if something happened where a Russian would throw a bag of onions say, and we had 20 feet of warning wire [and it fell short], we would bribe the guard to kick it over. You know what I mean? He’d say, ‘What the heck,’ it didn't bother him, so you'd give the guard a couple of cigarettes or something like that.

  I never received any mail. For some reason it never got to me but some of my mail got to my folks; I still have them. You didn't write too much and I wouldn't worry my mother, just ‘everything's fine and I'm okay’. They would block out anything else anyway. That part of it. I know my family was telling me that they would, back in those days, they'd go up to a place like Sibley's Department Store and they used to have these packages for PoWs and they would send whatever they did. There were people that got mail.

  The End of the War

  [Near the end of the war], the Germans were fighting a defending action against the Russians, along the Danube Road there. We were just north of the Danube. They decided to move the American prisoners out of camp towards Linz, Austria. Linz was the dividing line that passed down agreement between Russia and the Unites States that General Patton couldn't go any farther than that. He was at Linz, Austria, which was 60 kilometers northwest of us.

  The reason was because these last remaining Germans that were in charge of camp, they didn't want to be taken over by the Russians naturally. They moved out the camp except for us wounded non-ambulatory people that were left, there were about 80 of us left. They moved them out and marched them out of camp. We, of course, said goodbye. We figured, ‘Well see you. We're going back with Uncle Joe,’ you know, Joe Stalin, we were naïve enough to think that was a great guy. [Laughs] ‘Well see you when we get back,’ and all that. When they moved a camp out and all the German officers left, a couple of guys went up to the headquarters and got some records. They got my service record and they got a little radio that was up there and we got listening to the news.

  We were all bunched up in this one part of the infirmary up on the hill. Of course, [the Germans] had supplies that Red Cross had sent and the mail up there that had never been distributed. There were packages that were sent to the prisoners [who were now evacuated], and I remember ending up with a couple boxes of Philly cigars and a brand new baseball uniform that the Salvation Army had sent! Here they are, these beautiful white flannel baseball uniforms, pure white; I ended up wearing one of these white flannel uniforms and I had a cigar. Then in marched some Russian or Jewish slave labor, I don't know what, to take the barracks that had been evacuated. We're on this side of the fence and we're watching these people come in. I'm a hell of a sight—here I am smoking a Philly cigar in a white baseball uniform, throwing cigarettes at these poor bastards who were coming across. You're 22 years old, what the heck. [Chuckles]

  Anyway, these Russians troops came over into camp and we were on the hillside, and they camped just on the high side. Our smiles went away pretty fast because now [the Germans] are shelling the Russians from the top of the hill, and the Russians are going to shell them, and we're right in the middle! You've got about 80 Air Force guys trying to dig a fox hole! [Laughs] That was kind of scary because the night that our GIs moved out, what they couldn't carry they decided to burn out in front of the barracks; planks, I don't know why. They just decided to burn what they couldn't take with them. So of course that night the ashes were smoldering. The Germans were still fighting this retreating action so some night fighters see this, strafed the hell out of us. They could see these flickering lights and the Russians are only a mile or two down in the same area. It got a little hairy and that's when they even killed a couple of Germans, our guards.

  The next day, we were in the top part of the barracks. Dangling out of the ceiling were all these cluster bombs that didn't go off. They looked like Christmas ornaments; that's how close it was! It got a little hairy right about then because here we are, the war's over. We listened on BBC that night, I think May 7th. ‘At 12 o'clock the war will be officially over.’ No sooner had [the announcer] gotten that out of his mouth, this night fighter comes over and drops these clusters bombs like crazy [again]!

  *

  [The war’s over.] For three or four days, we're in limbo here. The guys who went out to [try to arrange] our transportation, they didn't show up. What happened was they got to Linz and reported in, [told them] to pick up some American prisoners, so a convoy of three or four trucks was sent out to pick us up. They never notified the Russians. The treaty was ‘don't go beyond that [line on the map]’. The Russians knocked out the convoy! Then [our guys] had to go back and regroup the convoy—it was a week later, we finally got taken out of there and it's only 60 kilometers.

  I got to go into the little town [near the camp] and visit some of the local people there; the Russians had come over by then. They were in the field and we walked right by them; they hardly looked up at us. Some of those cannons they had were horse drawn. Couldn't believe it! They were sitting there eating whatever they had in their hand.

  We were looking for maybe a bottle of wine; we asked the local people. I remember one family asking us to stay overnight. It's kind of funny. We found out the reason was they had a couple of young women there, their daughters. They figured if the Americans stayed overnight those scrubby Russians wouldn't come in and do who-knows-what to them. I don't remember if we stayed the night; I don't think I did.

  Finally, we got out of there and got to Linz, Austria. We were flown out of Linz, Austria, to Camp Lucky Strike. We were supposed to fly home, but we finally went home by boat. We went home b
y an old cruise ship, the Manhattan or American or something like that. Anyway, there were a lot of experiences in between naturally, but I could stay here for a week and talk to you about it.

  *

  It's a funny thing when you get me talking about stuff like this. I can remember experiences, but if you ask me something what happened two days ago, like my wife will ask something and I say, ‘I don't remember.’ That's what happens when you're 80 years old. You have old memories….

  I think I was very fortunate. Like everything in the military you can get a medal for this, and a medal for that—it's just a matter of being in the right place at the right time, or in the wrong place. Like I just said, I received some awards and the last one I got for a state award. A young girl reporter asked me something about the war, about why did you get this.

  She says, ‘Well, you know you're quite a hero.’

  I said, ‘I'm not a hero. I have seven guys on my crew that were killed. How can I be a hero? I was lucky to get out. I was just a victim of circumstances.’

  We got on talking about I how was lucky when I got out. The Germans operated on me and saved my foot and all that.

  She said, ‘Why would they do that?’

  ‘Well, what do you mean?’

  ‘Why would they take care of you?’ That's how naïve these youngsters are.

  I said, ‘Well there's a Geneva Convention that they had and we take care of their prisoners and they take care of ours hopefully.’ She couldn't understand.

  ‘You're over there bombing them and now you want them to take care of you.’

  I said, ‘Well that's just the way it is. Stupid war. It's just the way it is. You get medals stupidly. You happen to be in the right place, you get a medal.’

  That's how I feel about it. This is one of the very few times where I even talk about this. I don't belong to the VFW, I don't belong to the American Legion, because I get tired of watching these guys parade up and down that never left the corner drugstore. You know what I mean?