I.

The McCaleb Initiative: The Beginning

Kenneth McCaleb was a 23-year old airman from Joplin, Missouri, serving as a navigator on a B-17 when, on October 14, 1943, he was shot down while on his 19th mission over Germany. He spent the next 18 months in German prisoner of war camps before being liberated on April 29, 1945. Fifty-three years later, in April of 1998, Mr. McCaleb and his wife, Margaret Baughman McCaleb, gave more than $150,000 in stock to the Missouri Southern Foundation for the establishment of the McCaleb Initiative for Peace.

The purpose of this Initiative is to examine the causes of war and to discuss ways by which war can be prevented. The focus is on student journalists at Missouri Southern who, on assignment for the college newspaper The Chart will, over the lifetime of this Initiative research war and peace, visit sites of former wars, and perhaps even sites of present wars. They will visit monuments to past victories and defeats and will visit with survivors of war, and they will write their observations. These student reporters, most of whom will be at the age Mr. McCaleb was when he was shot down, will compile memories of veterans of battles, of prisoner of war camps, of concentration camps, of resettlement camps, of refugee centers and of those who worked and officiated at these centers. They will deal in their reporting with the devastation wreaked by war. They will visit institutes where the study of war and the promotion of peace are principal concerns, and they shall report their findings.

Missouri Southern State College was chosen as the site of this Initiative because Mr. and Mrs. McCaleb are both graduates of the predecessor institution, Joplin Junior College. As a student at the junior college, Mr. McCaleb founded and named The Chart and served as its first editor.

In establishing the Initiative it was the wish of Mr. and Mrs. McCaleb that The Chart will become an instrument for peace.

From his home in Huntsville, Mr. McCaleb wrote:

I had one friend whom I knew died October 14, 1943, on the mission to Schweinfurt. Bill Bisson, a B-17 first pilot, slept on a bunk across from me in the barracks.

We rode our bicycles around in the English countryside. I learned a couple of years ago that the German civilians beheaded Bill when he hit the ground.

Bisson's bombardier, Joe Lukens, was strafed and killed in his parachute by a Luftwaffe pilot. And on Saturday, October 8, 1943, on a mission to Bremen, the 367^th squadron of the 306^th group lost two planes over Bremen.

I learned a week later that the first pilot, Kooima; the navigator, Berkey, who slept in the adjacent bunk; and the other two officers in the crew were hanged in Bremen. I remember thinking at the time that could happen, because not all our bombs hit military targets.

I have read that 50-60 million people died in WWII. The American Civil War was so deadly because of the repeating rifle. However, disease killed more soldiers than did bullets. In WWI the world had machine guns and poisonous gas. And finally, WWII produced the atomic bomb.

And now I read about biological weapons. So society must find a way to prevent war.

It would seem that any differences in societies produce the possibility of conflict.

There are differences of nationality, race, religion, and economics. Sadly, human beings have difficulty in forgiving and forgetting.

Thus, one conflict serves as a cause for another conflict. But it has been said that economics is the greatest cause of war.

One of the greatest concerns of mankind is the increasing population of the world and the demand for material things. Joplin, Missouri, is an example of the depletion of natural resources—the lead and zinc that made the area famous are gone. Pollution of our water and air is a major problem.

It is probable in past history that disease has killed more people than has war.

One final thought: the world might be different if all husbands and wives loved each other and enjoyed their children.

I have been writing this for several days, and it is disorganized. It is just some of the thoughts of an old man and an old solider.

Kenneth McCaleb,
The Chart,
September 11, 1998

In mid-June, 1998, some 50 Americans, including former prisoners of war, survivors of one of the most brutal air battles of World War II—that over Schweinfurt, Germany, on October 14, 1943—assembled again in Schweinfurt. They are members of the Second Schweinfurt Memorial Association along with Germans who were their captors and the keepers of the prisons which housed them. Kenneth McCaleb was not among those attending this particular reunion; he has been back, though, and he has seen Germany as a civilian traveler. In his place at this particular reunion was a reporter from The Chart, Ginny Dumond, who was traveling under the auspices of the McCaleb Initiative for Peace.

Marking the reunion was the dedication of a memorial to those involved in this particular horror of war.

Miss Dumond describes the day:

"Those lost in the most brutal air battle in history were remembered with tears as 'Taps" was played, and this time in Schweinfurt, the Americans and Germans mourned together.

"The first half of the memorial service, which took place June 16, was held at the St. Johannis Church in Schweinfurt. Along with the 50 Americans in attendance, more than 200 Germans gathered in the cathedral, many of them townspeople alongside the Luftwaffenhelters and Flakhelfers.

"Though the weather outside was cold and wet, the attitude was one of reconciliation. All minds were on the day of October 14, 1943.

"Grant that all people on earth may respect and love each other and strive for progress, justice, and peace, came a line from the opening prayer.

"For me, and I believe also for all those who have not experienced war, it is important and necessary to remember, said Christhild Grafe, senior minister of St. Johannis, in her address. We remember the past, the fallen, and the dead, not so that new hatred grows, but as a warning that such suffering caused by a war may never happen again between our nations and others.

"Heibert Brander, former Luftwaffenhelfer and pastor of Domdekan Church in Wurzburg, had watched from the ground as the air battle that destroyed the city took place.

"We young students stood grimly and prepared our anti-aircraft guns, Brander said. We wanted, of course, to defend our homes in which we knew were our families and loved ones.

"He went on to describe the bombing of the town and told of the 276 residents who lost their lives as well as the 60 Allied B-17s that were shot down.

"We are happy that one-time war enemies now are united in friendship, Brander said. A U.S. Army Chaplain in Schweinfurt, John S. Parker, saw the symbolism of the memorial as a sign for years to come.

"This service represents that brotherhood and peace can be a reality, he said. It is a testimony to the future Americans and Germans that our peace is as strong as our oneness is strong.

"After battling the rain for almost half an hour, the continuation of the ceremony, slated to take place in front of the monument, moved into the theatre of Schweinfurt. Georg Schafer, former Flakhelfer and initiator of German interest in the Second Schweinfurt Memorial Association, was 15 years old when called upon to defend his city.

"We do not intend to look back in anger today; rather, we would like to commemorate our lost relatives and friends in mourning, he said. Also, in grateful spirit for the fact that we survived the absurd and murderous war.

"Bud Klint, president of the SSMA and pioneers of the trip to Schweinfurt, piloted a B-17 during the air strike and said his fellow fighters had no idea of the damage done to the town.

"All of our group were appalled by the images of Schweinfurt after the war, he said. We were told that First Schweinfurt [a bombing raid of August 17, 1943] had done minimal damage and that is why we continued to bomb.

"George Glass, American consul general in Munich, called war a defining event in human history and said, Yes, we must never forget the trauma of war.

"It is therefore a truly memorable and, as far as I know, singular event that a considerable number of those who, as enemies, brought death and destruction to Schweinfurt during the attacks of August 17 and October 14, are with us today, said Gudrn Greiser, lady mayor of Schweinfurt.

"They are standing side by side with those who in their turn inflicted heavy casualties on the Americans.

"We are witnessing today a clear testimony of people who were former enemies, who have long since become friends, a testimony to their sad and bitter past which they see as an admonition to a peaceful future."

The next day, June 17, SSMA president Bud Klint and German leader Georg Schafer sat on a panel with two German high school students to answer student questions about World War II. Ginny Dumond was there, too. She writes:

"Old wounds came open and unanswered questions sought explanation as members of the Second Schweinfurt Memorial Association met with [the] high school students. . . .

"When addressing his feelings toward the war and more specifically the air battle of October 14, 1943, over Schweinfurt, Klint admitted his fear.

"I was scared, he said. We had so much opposition and we lost so many planes.

"When other planes were shot from the sky, Klint said the sky was unbelievable.

"There were big black bursts and then another one and another one, he said. I can tell you definitely it was a fearful mission for us.

"Next the airman was asked about his reason for fighting.

"We were fighting for democracy, Klint said. We wanted to curtail Nazi expansion in Europe.

"Soon conversation shifted to the motives and feelings of the airmen as they bombed villages that were certain to hold civilians unprepared for an attack.

"The discussion shifted to Coventry, England, a town nearly destroyed by German bombing.

"Coventry was also an industrial target and central to English weaponry, Schafer said.

"The panel made an effort to point out the dedication on both sides to honoring and serving their country.

"We killed a lot of innocent people on the ground, and you killed a lot of innocent people in the air, Klint said. All of us were doing what we had to do as soldiers.

"Tom Romero, SSMA, had served a ball-turret gunner in the war and was on his 25^th mission the day Schweinfurt was bombed.

"I was just ready to get home, he said. After 25 missions we could return home.

"Near the conclusion of the discussion, SSMA member George Roberts spoke to the students about democracy.

"That's something you have today that Germans did not have then, he said. When it comes to war, you have to convince people they are right.

"In the process of war, he said, tough decisions have to be made.

"When we bombed Japan we were in favor of it. I was in favor of it, Roberts said, because it meant that the war would be over faster and in the long run fewer people would die.

"Later that evening, as the SSMA members spoke of their war experiences at a local officers club, James Murray spoke to timeless imprints the war had had on his life.

"Today I don't have a very good memory, he said. I lose my umbrella and things, but this I remember."

One of the German names that appears several times in these accounts of the Schweinfurt bombing is that of Georg Schafer. It is a name which has significance for the city of Joplin, for it was the Schafer family which founded the F.A.G. bearings company which has had a plant in Joplin since 1968. Coincidentally it was the F.A.G. home bearings plant in Schweinfurt which was one of the targets of the bombing raids over that city. Schafer has visited Joplin many times and was instrumental in bringing the plant to Joplin.

McCaleb did not attend the 1998 meeting in Schweinfurt. He said he had traveled enough through Germany. But he has written for Missouri Southern a series of memories as reason for the development of the Initiative by him and his wife:

I have heard it said that there have always been wars and there will always be wars. It is our hope that in examining the causes of war and in studying ways in which war can be prevented that some of your students will develop new and radical ideas. Civilization is confronted with the problem of increasing population, the demand for things, the exhaustion of our natural resources, and the extinction of some our plants and animals. Nuclear and biological weapons make it imperative that mankind finds a way to avoid conflict. Differences in nationality, language, race, religion, economics, and culture always have the possibility of causing misunderstanding and conflict. It isn't always the sole responsibility of national leaders to find solutions. Sometimes citizens place unjustified demands on their leaders.

It was in the last weeks of WWII when several thousand of us POWs walked from Nuremberg to Moosburg that, in meeting the common people through the countryside I realized the German people were human beings also. And in a trip to Germany in 1976 to visit the sites of two of our POW camps, we were with the former deputy commandant of former Stalag Luft III and a couple of our guards, and we had an enjoyable time with them. However, I have said before that we would not have survived if it had not been for the Red Cross food parcels and clothing. Also, it is difficult to forgive the Germans for almost deliberately starting WWII when all other nations were desperately trying to avoid another world war, and for trying to destroy the Jewish race. When we visited the Dachau museum in 1976, the former deputy commandant of Stalag Luft III said that was the shame of Germany, and I think he had tears in his eyes.

There were 18 of us, plus women, who went back to the site of Stalag III in 1976. There was a POW museum built by the Poles or Russians. Most of the Russian POWs in Germany and German POWs in Russia died. There was a large number of Russian POWs at Sagan and I always wondered what happened to them after the Germans marched us out when the Russian armies approached. We also visited a mass grave and cemetery for Russians. And we also visited the very old astronomical observatory where the priest said Johannes Kepler had spent the last years of his life. Kepler had fled to Sagan because of the religious wars. Kepler devised the planetary laws which describe the orbits of the planets around the sun. We visited the memorial built by English POWs on parole for the 50 who were shot after the Great Escape.

In Breslau (now called Wroclaw) I walked down the street in the evening and found myself in the cemetery where the Russian soldiers killed in the battle of Breslau were buried. In January of 1945 we could hear the big guns at Breslau before we were marched to the west.

We also visited Warsaw and the memorial to the Warsaw Ghetto. I might mention Mila Five, the story of the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto. I also recommend the books about the siege of Leningrad and the battle of Stalingrad. While in Munich in 1976 we made a one-day trip to Moosburg, the site of Stalag VIIA. There was no trace of the POW camp. We did see the church steeple from which the American flag was unfurled about noon, April 29, 1945, after a short battle. We did not go to Nurnberg and the site of Stalag XIIID. I am sure that there is no trace there of the POW camp. The barracks were originally constructed for the Nurnberg Nazi rally. I can't but remember that we were starving and eaten up by fleas during the two months at Nurnberg. The city was bombed constantly by the RAF and the 8^th Air Force. . . .

From a letter dated April 30, 1998

Yesterday was the anniversary of the liberation of Stalag VIIA at Moosburg by the 14^th armored division of Patton's Third Army. I used to take the day off and go for a hike by myself in the woods at the nearby mountain state park. The wild flowers are all in bloom and I could fully appreciate the beauty, wonder, and grandeur of the universe and planet Earth. Yesterday, of all places, we went to a German restaurant for lunch. We ate beef roulade with boiled potatoes and red cabbage. The background music was Strauss waltzes. . . .

From the newsletter "Kriegie Klarion: Stalag Luft III Former Prisoners of War": Summer, 1995, edition

"Center Compounders Vern Burda and Jim Keeffe led 320 ex-kriegies, friends and family members back to Sagan and Moosburg to observe the 50^th anniversary of the Liberation of Stalag VIIA.

"On April 29, the actual anniversary date, the group gathered at the site of the French Compound at Moosburg for a civic ceremony led by Burgermeister Anton Neumaier. Major General (ret.) David Jones represented the Americans. Two busloads of former French POWs and friends also took part in the ceremony. The April 29^th celebration concluded with a dinner, beerfest, and entertainment sponsored by the City of Moosburg at a civic auditorium.

"Kriegie visitors returning to the site of Stalag VIIA found the area considerably changed even from its condition 20 years when the last large groups of ex-kriegies made the visit. Where once POWs wallowed in mud in crowded barbed wire compounds, a prosperous newtown section of Moosburg has grown up. The area is now a modern suburb of new, colorful, pleasant homes with gardens and hedges. There are children laughing and playing on the sidewalks, giving visitors curious, beguiling smiles. . . ."

And from the same edition, an article headlines: "Nurnberg: The Forgotten Stalag" written by William P, Maher:

In mid-afternoon, 4 February, 1945, the "Spremberg Express" groaned to a steamy halt in the marshalling yards of Nurnberg, much to the joy of the cramped, smelly, and sick kriegie passengers of the 40x8 boxcars which had been our rolling prison for the past four days and nights. We were happy to detrain but blissfully unaware of what the fates held for us the next two months in this dangerous and [from the perspective of the Geneva Accords on POW treatment] grossly illegal camp. We were less than three miles from the center of the marshalling yards which the German well realized was a prime target of the American and British Air Forces.

We found Stalag XIIID to be unspeakably filthy and vermin ridden, compounding the traditional woes of hunger, anxiety and fear engendered by the frequent bombing raids—in daytime by our own 8^th Air Force and at night by the Lancasters and Halifaxes and Mosquitos of the Royal Air Force.

My kriegie diary and printed memoir Fated to Survive record some of the bombing raids as follows:

"Two successive saturation raids by the 8^th Air Force occurred on 20 and 21 February, 1945. These were awesome displays of the fearsome power and danger of strategic bombing as viewed from the ground. Many of us had been on the delivering end of things but could not have begun to imagine what it was like on the receiving end of things.

"One horrible and memorable surprise was the risk posed by the falling to earth of spent flak and bomb metal fragments. We protected ourselves from this deadly rain by jumping into slit trenches and covering our heads with sheets of corrugated iron which formerly had served as the roof coverings of buildings—barracks, wash houses, etc.

"Also, in these day raids, we former bomber crewmen were competent to assess the progress of the formations and to note the inevitable stray B17 or B24, separated from his mates. We prayed for the crews of these strays, both for their ultimate welfare and our own. In the latter case we watched as he made progress overhead and breathed a sigh of relief as he passed by us because we knew only then that he had not released his stick of bombs upstream in his overflight path.

"As fearsome as were the day raids, I have never experienced nor witnessed such a fearsome and awesome sight as that of a night-time bombing raid by the British Royal Air Force on 16 March 1945. Target: the Nurnberg marshalling yards, less than three miles from Stalag XIIID as the crow (or a Lancaster) flies. At about 2100 hours on the 16^th, the air raid sirens went off, the lights went out, and the hundreds of 88mm flak guns encircling the camp and the rail yards commenced their firing—a terrible and deafening roar and earth-shaking rumble; we could see their fuze bursts high above at about the time that blue-white searchlights began to sweep like fingers across the black sky. Next we observed the red, green, white, and yellow flares released by the RAF pathfinder Mosquitos to demarcate the bomb run and glide paths of the Lancasters and Halifaxes in trail formations behind them.

"As the engine drone increased, so did all the other battle noises—the flak guns, the bomb bursts and the staccato of machine guns of the defending Luftwaffe Me210s. The earth rumbled and the air quivered and the kriegies burrowed ever deeper in their inadequate shallow slit trenches. is this what Hell will be like? A compelling reason to mend one's ways! I prayed that night—certainly for myself, but also very consciously for the intention that no American city would ever have to endure the terror of what I saw happening to the city of Nurnberg that February night.

"After two months to the day SouthWest Compounders again hit the road. On April 4, 1945, we headed south from Nurnberg and all of its terrors and traumas, this time under sunny skies and warming temperatures. My Kriegie Log is replete with vivid descriptions of forays into the surrounding Bavarian countryside to barter our chocolate and cigarettes for eggs, fresh white bread, and un-wormy potatoes. We found the citizenry to very amicable and anxious to please us scruffy-looking characters, perhaps in an attempt to butter us up as former enemies, but (and I hold to this viewpoint) more likely out of simple and unfettered motivations of charity and compassion. We could observe that little love was lost on the German troops guarding us. As I observed little old ladies, praying their rosary beads at the roadside crucifixes, the thought persisted that they were thanking God for their final deliverance from the clutches of their Nazi tormentors.

"We arrived at Stalag VIIA, Moosburg, just about two weeks before our liberation by the 14^th Armored Division, pretty well fattened up and, after the bugs and vermin of Nurnberg, easily disposed to pitching a few blanket tents in the mud of Moosburg."

In the fall, 1996, edition of the newsletter is the news that the formal association of the Former Prisoners of War of Stalag Luft III was to be dissolved at the end of that current fiscal year, May 31, 1997. Also in the edition is the news that the complete history of Stalag Luft III in manuscripts, photos, and documentation is preserved "for present and future cadets, scholars, and historians in the Special Collections Branch of the library of the United States Air Force Academy." The collection includes the research gathered by Arthur Durand in support of the publication of his book Stalag Luft III: The Secret Story.

B.

The reminiscences of Kenneth McCaleb going back to the beginning:

Our crew left Dow Field, Bangor, Maine, about June 6, 1943, headed for England. Two years later, I returned to New York on June 5, 1945. Two men of this original crew would not return. The bombardier would be strafed in his parachute after bailing out on the mission to Schweinfurt in October. The co-pilot would be later checked out as first pilot and would die in a take-off crash in January, 1944.

The crew had been formed at Blythe, California, in January and had trained at Blythe, and at Odessa and Dalhart in Texas. We had been issued a new B-17 at Kearney, Nebraska. The astral and magnetic compasses were obviously in error and we insisted on calibrating them before starting across the Atlantic Ocean.

We were half way across the Atlantic when we were recalled to Newfoundland because of storms over England. The next night we flew across the North Atlantic to Prestwick, Scotland. Most of the crew got a good night’s sleep. The plane was on automatic pilot and the first pilot and co-pilot took turns sleeping. As the navigator, I had to work all night.

It is interesting how one’s position on earth can be determined from the stars with a sextant and trigonometry tables. With a three-star fix, a triangle is plotted. A small triangle is an indication of accuracy. Navigators at sea have used the North Star (Polaris) to directly determine latitude since ancient times. The angle of altitude of the North Star above the horizon is a direct measure of north latitude. Longitude could not be determined until the development of accurate clocks 200 years ago. The sun and moon, the planets Jupiter and Venus, and the stars Polaris and Sirius are favorite celestial bodies used by navigators. Sirius is the brightest star in the sky.

After training for two weeks at Bovington, near London, we were assigned to the 367^th Squadron of the 306^th Bomb Group, located near Bedford, June 30, 1943. Two crews had started tactical training at Blythe, California in January and both were assigned to the 367^th Squadron. Some of us were in the same barracks and we were referred to as the two sister crews.

I celebrated the 4^th of July on my first mission—to bomb an aircraft factory at Nantes, France. I was a substitute navigator on another crew in another squadron. It was common practice to assign new crew members to an experienced crew on their first mission.

Bomb targets were Luftwaffe bases, railroad marshalling yards, aircraft factories, chemical plants, and submarine pens at Saint Nazaire, France, and Kiel, Germany. At England’s latitude, in summer the sun goes down at 11 p.m. and comes up at 3 a.m. We were alerted the night before so as to get a good night’s sleep and were awakened about 4 a.m. After breakfast, the mission briefing was at 5 a.m. and take-off was about 7 a.m. There was always a full load of bombs and gasoline. At 30-second intervals, the bombers took off, climbed, joined up as squadrons, groups, wings, and divisions and headed across the North Sea or English Channel. Oxygen masks were put on at 10,000 feet and steel helmets and flak vests were donned before reaching the enemy coast. Bombing altitude was usually about 25,000 feet.

The target on July 28 was an aircraft factory at Kassel, Germany. This was my fifth mission. Antiaircraft fire hit our two inboard engines over Kassel and we were left alone behind the rest of the formation. Rather than straggle behind the main bomber formation and be an easy target for Focke-Wulf 190s, I gave the pilot a compass heading straight across the Netherlands, headed for the English coast near Canterbury. A B-17 will fly on two engines but used much more gasoline. We were not attacked by enemy fighters or flak. The fuel gauges were reading empty crossing the Channel and we were prepared to "ditch." We did make it to an RAF airfield and were told that it was closed. The crew was assembled in the radio room prepared for ditching or a crash. The pilot asked for a heading to another air base. I told him that we were out of fuel, to immediately pick out a level pasture and to land. Ten seconds later the two engines stopped. The pilot did land the plane with wheels up, in a pasture. There were no injuries, although the plane was wrecked.

We were picked up and flown back to our base and went to bed late that night. There was another mission alert for the next day, but our crew was informed that we would not go. However, a navigator was needed for the Squadron lead ship and I had to go to Kiel (submarine pens). Our plane could not keep with the formation and aborted the mission over Denmark. The Squadron lost two planes over Kiel that morning. The entire crew of one plane died when the aircraft exploded. Two died in the other plane and eight became POWs.

I was on the first mission to Schweinfurt, August 17, 1943. Our squadron (367^th of the 306^th group) was leading and our group had no losses. Another force, led by Curt LeMay, went to Regensberg and on to North Africa.

The 367^th Squadron led the bomber stream to Schweinfurt. All of the 306^th Group returned to England. There were no losses. But the 8^th Air Force lost 60 B-17s that day, many running out of fuel over the Mediterranean Sea.

This had been my ninth combat mission. A combat tour at that time was 25 missions.

The crew had a week’s vacation in Edinburgh the last week of September. On October 4, the target was an aircraft factory at Frankfort. On the return, there was no communication with the crew in the rear of the plane. The "intercom" system was not working. It was my job to put on a portable oxygen bottle and go to the rear to see what the trouble was. I found the radio operator dead, and his hand was clamped around the "intercom" switch.

Coming down from altitude and removing oxygen masks, I sat down and cried as we crossed the English Channel.

On October 8 our group made a mission to Bremen. We lost three planes over Bremen. The flak was so thick you could hardly see. The next day, on October 9, we went to Gydnia, Poland. It was 10½ hours flying time across the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea. Diversionary attacks on Marienburg and Anklam divided the Luftwaffe defenders and the Group lost only one B-17 over Denmark on the return. On Sunday October 10 the target was Munster, but due to cloud cover, the secondary target of Goesfeld was bombed.

The Group had made three missions in the three days, and the men were tired. Monday October 11, we rested—we were tired. I had only seven more missions to go to complete my combat tour of 25 missions.

On Tuesday morning, October 12, we were briefed for Schweinfurt, but it was raining and the mission was cancelled. Wednesday we were again briefed for Schweinfurt and, again, it was raining and the mission was cancelled. Thursday morning, October 14, it was still raining and England was covered with fog. Again, we were briefed for Schweinfurt, but we did not believe we were going. With visibility only 200 feet down the runway, surprisingly the order was given for take-off and the B17s climbed through the clouds over England. We wondered how we were going to land with full bomb loads when the mission would be scrubbed. Climbing through a 5,000-foot cloud cover, 287 B-17s assembled in formation and crossed the English Channel. The clouds disappeared over the European continent—it was an Indian Summer day. The weather over Germany was clear.

Winter was coming and flying weather would be limited. The 8^th Air Force was intent on maximum efforts before the coming D-Day of June, 1944. Another force going to north Germany aborted its mission and so our force, going to Schweinfurt, received the concentrated effort of the Luftwaffe. Sixty B17s were lost that day. There would be more men and planes coming to replace the losses. The 8^th Air Force lost 176 planes in October, 93 in November, and 163 in December. On the mission to Schweinfurt the 306^th Group started with 18 aircraft. Three aborted over Holland, and 10 were shot down. Five made the mission and returned to England that day. My plane was hit on the bomb run. When I saw that only one outboard engine was still running, I involuntarily called out on the "intercom" that we were not going to get back to England this time. A few seconds later, the pilot rang the bailout alarm. The plane was in a flat spin, but all of our crew did bail out.

The ball turret gunner broke both legs when he hit the ground. I was unconscious for perhaps 30 minutes after hitting the ground. When I regained consciousness, I was surrounded by peasants with pitchforks. Our original bombardier was on another crew that day and, as I mentioned earlier, he was strafed and killed in his parachute. The first pilot of our "sister crew" died. He was beheaded by civilians when he hit the ground.

On October 4 we had made a mission to Frankfurt to bomb an aircraft factory. On Saturday, October 16, I was taken to Dulag Luft at Frankfurt (Obersual) as a prisoner of war. Dulag Luft was an interrogation center for captured allied airmen.

*

Each crewmember had been issued a parachute. There was always the possibility that it would have to be used. Each man had an exit plan. The great fear was that a shell would hit a fuel tank, or that centrifugal force from a spin would prevent escape.

The old rule was to count to 10 before pulling the ripcord. I planned to fall freely a long way in order to reach more dense air closer to the ground. I was, therefore, falling at maximum free-fall velocity and when the parachute opened, the deceleration was a shock. I was swinging violently and became airsick. About the time I started making plans to land, I hit the ground —hard.

What is the mental attitude of a soldier in combat? There is a belief that he is engaged in a struggle for that which is just and right. Fellow soldiers will have died, and the battle must continue. There is no honorable alternative. There is the fundamental hope and belief that the individual will do his duty and live.

There comes a time when, surrounded by the enemy, ammunition exhausted, or the aircraft so damaged it will not fly, it is necessary to surrender. Captured soldiers in Germany were reportedly greeted with the words "For you, the war is over." As the words were written 55 years later, it is recalled that two emotions were felt: relief that a combat tour was ended and grief for those who had died. And there was the fear of a Nazi prisoner-of-war camp.

*

About a week later, I entered the South Compound of Stalag Luft III at Sagan. The South Compound had been completed and occupied September 8, 1943. There were 15 barracks in an area of about five acres. There were eight of us in a room with four double bunks. When we marched out 15 months later, there were 15 in the room—five triple bunks.

The first activity of the day was "appell." The prisoners lined up and were counted. Breakfast consisted of hot tea and a slice of bread with a dab of jelly. Many typically made a couple of circuits of the compound’s perimeter each morning for exercise. At noon there was another cup of tea, a slice of bread, and sometimes a ration of barley porridge. The evening meal consisted of potatoes, rutabaga or Kohlrabi, and a thin slice of Spam or corned beef from Red Cross food parcels.

For the most part, German soldiers were honorable and treated their prisoners in accordance with the Geneva Convention. There were atrocities, mostly committed by the Gestapo and by civilians.

There was mail, although always several months late. We were permitted three small one-page letterforms and four post cards each month. An extensive library of books was eventually accumulated and I read Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Kenneth Roberts’ historical novels about the Revolutionary War, and Thomas Hardy novels. Some musical instruments were shipped in from Sweden and Switzerland. A man in our room had the one accordion. One Christmas Eve, on parole, I accompanied him while he played Christmas carols around the compound. The guards in the watchtowers applauded.

It is about 100 miles from Sagan to Berlin. At night, at bedtime, the windows and blackout shutters were opened. During the winter, the bombs falling on Berlin could be faintly heard—and we quietly whispered to one another, "Please, surrender, and stop the war."

A roommate had had analytic geometry textbook. It must have been the only copy of that book in Germany. It was the one text I had studied at Joplin Junior College under Martha McCormick in 1940. I again worked all the problems in the book. In the autumn of 1944, there was an attempt to start classes in college subjects. We had only one calculus textbook. I did get an introduction to differential calculus later on.

A roommate made an escape attempt one night. There was snow on the ground and his plan was to cover himself with a white sheet and crawl to the fence. There was a message next morning to send a toothbrush, comb, and books to him in the "cooler." Most escape attempts were unsuccessful.

"The Great Escape" took place in the adjacent North Compound on the night of March 24-25, 1944. The story is told in Paul Brickhill’s book and Bram Vanderstok’s War Pilot of Orange. It was planned that 200 were to escape that night. The tunnel exit was 20 feet short of the woods and only 76 escaped before discovery. Three men successfully escaped from Germany and returned to England. Fifty were killed by the Gestapo when recaptured.

Bram Vanderstok was in the Dutch Air Force and escaped to England and joined the British RAF. He had been shot down in his Spitfire. He tells how he walked to the railroad station and bought a ticket. A German woman came up to him and asked who he was and where he was going. He replied that he was a Dutch worker going to Holland on leave. His travel and identity papers were in order—he had forged them himself. And then he asked the woman who she was. She replied that she was a mail censor in a nearby POW camp and was taking her turn on watch in the railroad station. Vanderstok was eventually able to walk across the Pyrenees and return to England and again to fly Spitfires until the end of the war. He completed medical school and immigrated to the United States.

In 1990 there was a Stalag Luft III reunion in Norfolk, Virginia. Three German women who had been censors arranged to attend. One woman became ill and her husband attended in her place. He also had been a camp censor. At a meeting one afternoon with the three former camp censors, stories were exchanged and questions asked. Vanderstok stood up in the back of the room and asked the two women if either of them had been the one with whom he had spoken at the railroad station. Neither was. The man finally said, however, that it had been his wife with whom Vanderstok had spoken. Vanderstok, by the way, died in 1993.

*

Something was going to happen. The boredom of a prisoner-of-war camp was about to be relieved. The Russian Army had been driving across Poland and we could hear the big guns in the distance near Breslau. It was a question of whether our German guards would retreat and leave us to be liberated by the Russians, or whether the Germans would evacuate us by train or march us on foot to the west. The night temperatures had been below zero degrees Fahrenheit since Christmas. We had been warned that we might be marched out and our senior American officers had ordered us to be prepared.

At about 8 p.m. on Saturday, January 27, 1945, the German Commandant gave the order to march in one hour. It was almost with joy that we were to leave the barbed wire fences of Stalag Luft III and see a different countryside. Some of the English prisoners had already been in captivity for four and five years. I had been there 15 months and it was the longest period in my life. Thanks to the U.S. Army and the Red Cross, we were dressed in wool underwear, socks, and trousers, jacket, cap, and overcoat. We each had two U.S. Army wool blankets made into a roll with our few belongings and some food. The temperature was minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit; there was a 10 mile-per-hour wind blowing. The ground was covered with 12 inches of snow.

The South Compound started walking at 11:00 p.m., followed at about two hour intervals by the North, West, Center, and East Compounds. There were about 8,000 American Air Force and about 2,000 British RAF prisoners. The thrill of being outside the barbed wire fences soon abated. Cold and exhausted, we soon wished that we were still at Stalag Luft III where we ate least had a warm place to sleep.

The South Compound halted probably at about 3:00 a.m. to distribute a horse-drawn wagonload of bread. The purpose was to carry the guards’ packs in the wagon. The bread was discarded by the prisoners. We also lightened our loads. Books and papers were burned for warmth.

It is recalled that a German guard, hardly able to carry his rifle, threw it in the snow. An American prisoner picked it up and carried it before finally putting it back on the guard’s shoulder. The guard again threw it into the snow and there it remained.

In the middle of the morning, the compound stopped in a village and jammed into barns with straw to sleep. With nightfall we resumed the march. We had to keep moving or freeze to death. Because of a hernia that night, I could not move my left leg. I could only move with the aid of a pole in my right hand and by lifting my left leg with my left hand. My buddies carried my pack on a sled that they had acquired.

We arrived at the town of Muskau about 5 a.m. Monday morning, January 29. We had to stand in line outside the town for perhaps an hour while the Germans searched for shelter. One prisoner fainted and fell to the ground. I was not able to help him except by loudly ordering his co-pilot to get him on his feet so he would not freeze to death. Our group was put in an unheated warehouse. We built small fires with scrap lumber and, as a result, we all had sinusitis.

This part of Germany is called Silesia. The word Silesia means sand, and Stalag Luft III was located at Sagan because the sandy soil made digging tunnels difficult. Muskau was a center of glass-making industry. After daylight, I was put in a building with large furnaces for making glass. I suppose that I had a strangulated hernia. By lying down, and with heat, I was able to move my left leg again.

It must have been Tuesday night that the South Compound was marched toward Spremberg and there loaded into freight cars and taken to a prison camp at Moosburg, near Munich. Those unable to walk still, which included me, were moved to another glass factory and united with the prisoners of West Compound.

On Thursday night, February 1, we left Muskau to walk to Spremberg. The weather had changed; the snow was melting. Our shoes and feet were soaking wet from the slush on the road, but at least we were not freezing. At Spremberg we were put in boxcars (50 men to a car) and hauled to Nurnberg. The train stopped occasionally because of air raids and strafing. It is remembered that at one stop we had a German guard inspect the car. When the train started moving the guard handed his rifle to the prisoners and they helped pull him into the car.

The train probably passed through the city of Dresden. About 10 days later (February 13, 1945), Dresden was bombed by American and British Air Forces. About 50,000 people reportedly died in the bombing of Dresden. The city was crowded with civilian refugees from the battlegrounds to the east. We had seen some refugees in horse-drawn wagons streaming into Spremberg.

The memories of Nurnberg are of fleas, starvation, and bombs. The prison camp was originally built for the Nazi part rallies at Nurnberg. At night you tucked trouser legs into your socks and put an extra shirt over your head and tucked it into your collar. It is difficult to sleep at night with biting fleas. It was remembered that fleas and typhus killed a large part of the European population during the Middle Ages. But, fortunately, we had been inoculated against all possible diseases before leaving the United States. Disease has always killed more people than have wars.

When you stand up when starving you feel weak and dizzy, and thus you sit and lie down most of the time. There were no Red Cross food parcels at Nurnberg. Our diet consisted on "grass soup," a slice of bread per day, and a few, small, boiled potatoes. The bread crumbs and potato peel scraps were also rationed. One of the results of starvation is constant diarrhea. When starving, you dream and talk about the Thanksgiving dinners at grandmother’s house.

Several of us formed a club of sorts. We promised that when the war was ended and we returned to the United States, each of us would send $50 worth of food to each of the others. The fellow from the ranch in Texas would send everyone a side of beef; the fellow from Wisconsin would send cheese; the one from Hershey, Pennsylvania, would send chocolate, and I was to send strawberry and blackberry jam. None of us kept his promise. On the troop ship crossing the Atlantic after the end of the war, five of us each bought a 24-bar carton of chocolate candy. Six of us ate the 120 candy bars in 24 hours.

The prisoner-of-war camp at Nurnberg (Stalag XIII-D) was located about a mile from the railroad marshalling yard. The American Air Force bombed during the day and the British RAF came at night. We wondered if our fellow airmen knew about us on the ground. Slit trenches had been dug and we were permitted to occupy them during air raids. One afternoon I observed a crippled B-17 at a low altitude. Perhaps the crew had already bailed out. The plane was hit by anti-aircraft fire and exploded. Pieces of metal floated to the ground.

There were 26,000 dead and 28,000 prisoners-of-war from the American 8^th Air Force. I don’t know what the casualties were from the American 15^th Air Force in Italy and the British RAF. I believe that I had read that 280,000 Germans were killed in the air war over Europe. There were reportedly 10 million Germans (apparently that does not include the six million murdered Jews) and 20 million Russians killed in World War II.

When the American Army was about 30 miles from Nurnberg, we were again marched out to the south toward Munich. A few days before, Red Cross trucks from Switzerland had delivered food parcels. There was a massive air raid on Nurnberg that day, about April 4. We had been at Nurnberg two months. There were thousands of B-17s and P-51s overhead. There were several prisoners killed by strafing and bombing of the railroad marshalling yards.

For several days after that, we marched at night to avoid strafing. One morning after walking all night, we stopped in a village and were to sleep in a church. The church was full. I, having become quite bold, walked on down a street alone. Seeing a restaurant, I returned to the church to get a German-speaking friend and proposed that we try to trade chocolate or a cigarette for a meal at the restaurant. The proprietor refused, but a village inn did let us sleep in a food storeroom all day and gave us food that afternoon.

The greatest war in all history was coming to an end. It was springtime; the buttercups were in bloom, and we were sleeping in village barns in straw beds. The people in the Bavarian villages were friendly, and we were eating. The walk from Nurnberg to Moosburg took about two weeks for the 90-mile trip. We would walk five or 10 kilometers a day and spend the night in a village and, several times we stopped for a couple of days.

As I write these words in December of 1998 in an attempt to convey the joy we felt over the approaching end of the war, the news media are reporting bombing of weapons targets in Iraq. Several thousand years ago the Greek historian Thucydides wrote that one of the causes of war was fear. And so today we are afraid of Saddam Hussein and his weapons.

In July of 1945, I visited my Grandmother on the farm in Oklahoma. She told me about having German POWs to help in the wheat harvest and cooking them a big meal in the hopes that I would have food in Germany. A German farmwoman did prepare some barley porridge flavored with chicken bones on one occasion. It was good and nourishing. That was the farm at which I took a bath in a pond for the first time in three months. At another farm, seeing a village in the distance, a friend and I boldly walked across the fields and traded chocolate for some whole grain wheat. We boiled it in a can, and with raisins and powdered milk from Red Cross food parcels, it was one of the most delicious meals I have ever eaten.

It was possible to meet and converse with the Bavarian peasants and I recall realizing that Germans also were human beings. And I think we attempted to be friendly and to impress upon the people that we were not "luftgansters," as we were called by Goebbel’s propaganda. The British RAF pilots identified German aircraft as "bandits."

I was persuaded by a companion to make on escape attempt. One morning as the POWs were leaving a village, we hid in the straw in the barn. A German guard came in and started poking with a pitchfork and calling out "rouse." We emerged from the straw and went on down the road. I do know of one prisoner who hid in a wooded area for several days until a U.S. Army jeep appeared.

When I was young, I had a desire to return to Bavaria and again walk from Nurnberg to Moosburg. Now I am too old.

We arrived at the Moosburg prisoner-of-war camp about April 18, and again we were behind a barbed wire fenced, but not for long. It had been reported that there were more than 100,000 Allied prisoners at Stalag VIIA. On Sunday, April 29, 1945, after a short battle, we were liberated by the 14^th Armored Division of the 3^rd U.S. Army The American flag was unfurled from a church steeple about noon. There were tears flowing down many cheeks. We had survived the greatest war in history.

When General Patton's Third Army marched into the prison camp at Moosburg, they found it guarded by old men and young boys who laid down their weapons and surrendered without any fight. They, too, looked forward to liberation. They, too, were tired of the senselessness of war.

For some of those liberated from the prison camp that day in April, 1945, true liberation has perhaps never come. They bear the scars of memories and many bear the scars of wounds. One such person liberated that day was a 1^st Lt. Carter from Oklahoma. He had been the pilot of a B-24 Liberator in the 453^rd Bomber Wing of the 8^th Air Force. Flying out of Whitehall, England, on his 23^rd mission, dropping incendiary bombs on Frankfurt am Main, Germany, he was shot down. The plane was hit in the bomb bay doors just after the release of the last bombs. All of his crew survived the crash except for the tailgunner. It was found later that he had been bayoneted to death. Carter was the last to bail out of the plane, and he landed in the Main River. Nearly pulled under by parachute shrouds, Carter benefited from a strong gust of wind which made the parachute into a sail carrying him to a point near the riverbank. He was helped out of the river by two German civilians who then rejoined a crowd of men standing about 25 meters from the bank. Carter stood dripping wet, shivering from the cold water. The group of men was silent, watching him. Then one of the men, in a police uniform, stepped from the crowd, pulled a pistol and shot Carter in the face, leaving him for dead. Eventually others got him to a hospital and though he was thought to be in hopeless condition, German doctors operated on him and he recovered enough to be sent to a German prisoner of war camp in eastern Germany. He remained there for a year being forced marched to Moosburg.

His memories of the prison camp are memories of survival. He speaks of the food that was almost non-existent, of the cold, of the way prisoners worked together to survive. He remembers the conversations about "mom's home cookin'" and he remembers that the Germans were fairly kind in their treatment of the prisoners and that they, too, were hungry and cold. He remembers planes being shot down in the skies over the prison camp and two P-51s strafing a train. One of the P-51s was hit as it pulled out of its dive, and it exploded. Carter watched all this from his prison hospital bed. He also recalls seeing a B-24 hit just above the prison camp. It went into a spin. As the plane rotated he saw fire coming out of the bottom of the plane and on each rotation he would see a single crewmember come out. He saw five men get out before the plane exploded in mid air, meaning four or five others did not make it. He cried. For two days he mourned the loss of those in the plane who did not make it out.

For him and for Kenneth McCaleb on that day in April, 1945, liberation came. The memories of war, however, linger on.