No. of Recommendations: 8
My father was in the Army Air Corps, later Air Force, in the Pacific. Working on the ground for a reconnaissance/surveillance operation that flew modified P38s for aerial photography. He never talked much about the war until late in life, not because of terrible things he had experienced or seen, but because of the simple modesty that seemed so typical of that era of vets. He once admitted to me that he felt a little 'guilty' about his wartime experience because for him, not being in much danger, it was a great adventure and he loved the various south Pacific islands where he had been stationed.
My father-in-law, Jim Corson, on the other hand, was in a B-24 that was shot down over Germany. It was just his second mission. Seven of the ten crew on board died. Six went down with the plane and four bailed out. One of those who bailed out was executed by a German soldier (who after the war was sentenced to death and hung). Three were taken prisoner. After landing in his parachute, Jim was in the process of being beaten by Germans from a village near Hildesheim, Germany, when an older man stopped the beating (probably saving his life) and told the angry mob that Jim was a prisoner of war. As a result of the beating he had double vision for months afterward.
Jim turned 21 in a POW camp but here's the interesting thing: he was an exceptionally bright and verbally gifted guy and he managed to keep a diary during his captivity. It was near the end of the war, so his captivity only lasted about 8 months but as the fronts were closing in on the Germans the prisoners were forced to march away from the enclosing allied forces. It was winter weather and a miserable experience. And the German guards, now consisting of only the old and infirm who were not able to fight in the Wehrmact, were just as miserable and quite aware that the end was near. An odd anecdote that Jim tells is about one of the old guards slipping on the ice and falling down, his rifle skittering across the ice and out of reach. One of the POWs helped the old man get back up, while another retrieved his rifle and handed it to him.
My wife has that original hand written diary and we've had a number of typewritten transcriptions made. Much of it is, not surprisingly, about food and hunger. At times Jim wrote about fears for what might happen to them near the war's end. No one at this point was talking about or planning escape. Another subject was the wretched latrine situation. The pumper trucks that were supposed to clean out the latrines kept getting destroyed by allied fighters and so the overflowing latrines turned the grounds into a lake of sewage. The prisoners suggested that the Germans paint a large cross on top of the pumper trucks to make them look like ambulances and that did the trick; finally the trucks could make it through. After the war Jim wrote a humorous essay about the Scheissewagen episode.
Here's the unusual coda to Jim's story. The older gentleman who had saved him from being beaten to death had briefly had him at his home and Jim remembered seeing the man's daughter. He knew by now the man who had saved him would probably be dead and gone, but he wanted to try to thank the daughter for her father's saving his life. So, in the early 1990's he went back to the Hildesheim and did just that. And not only did the citizens there not resent him and his wartime occupation as a bomber crew, they feted him, arranged a banquet and wrote a long article in the local paper about him.
This was a turning point for Jim who had almost never talked about his POW experience and who had bitter feelings towards the Germans. It was after that that he brought out the diary and he also sat down and let me record the oral history of his wartime service.
Jim just turned 100 and is still mentally sharp with a remarkable memory. He is in a nursing home but doing well for his age.
