Welcome to Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in this edition is
Lester Shrink. He's a US Army Air Forces veteran of World War Two.
He served as part of a B seventeen bomber crew was shot down over Denmark
in nineteen forty four. And trust me when I say that's just the beginning
of his story. And Las, thank you so much for being with us.
Well, thank you very much. Where were you born and raised,
sir? Long Prairie, Minnesota, November sixteenth, nineteen twenty three. So
we are recording in early November twenty twenty three. You've got a special birthday
coming up, sir, Yes, I guess there were. There will be
one coming up fairly shortly one hundred years. Was there a history of military
service in your family? My brother served in the Pacific. Outside of that,
not really. What are your memories of learning about the Japanese attack on
Pearl Harbor. I can remember it well. I was having breakfast with my
family and my mother was just shocked when she found out, and of course
she was very fearful that both of us would be drawn into the woulder at
that point. Were you at a senior in high school. I had just
graduated shortly before that. Okay, And so did you join right away or
did you wait a little bit. I joined up my nineteenth birthday, and
so that's November of nineteen forty two. You're right, okay? And where
did you go after that? Kurt Utah for basic training, Shepherd Field,
Texas for mechanical training, Kendall Field, Florida for the gun training, Alexandria
Army Air Base for flight training. Is there any particular reason you chose the
Army Air Forces? I would imagine it because my brother was in the Army
Air Force serving in the Pacific. So once you got to training, did
you have a particular job in mind that you wanted to have? Well,
not should. Everybody wanted to be a pilot, but it didn't turn out
that way. What happened when you tried to become a pilot? Well,
I think on purpose they made a person fail some tests because they told me
my ice fight was not that good. And here I am almost a hundred
not even wearing glasses. I could see the most minute objects and I don't
even have any problems at all seeing. So I think it was just a
big excuse because they didn't want me in that position. So you were assigned
to be a ball turret gunner? Correct, yes, And how did that
happen? I was the last one chosen, and the crew everybody else with
the fraid of it. I tried to give it away, nobody would take
it, so I was stuck with it. And so for those who don't
know the layout of a bomber, explain where a ball turret gunner is bolted
midway airplane on the bottom. And so it's a pretty tight space, right,
It's a ball that's exactly three feet across. It's usually manned by somebody
quite small, usually five six five seven. I was five eleven and a
half. So how did you squeeze in there? Well? I couldn't wear
my heavy flying suit, so I had to get rid of that. Then
I was very very stretched in there, believe me. And these are long
flights ten hours sometimes right, ten twelve We have a lot of time,
twelve even fourteen sometimes could you even walk when you got out of there?
Well, you were a little bit tramped, put it that way, all
right. So when did you deploy to England? November nineteen forty three was
there any additional training there before you went on missions. Yes, they did
have some a few training sessions, not anything great. I can remember that
they had a bolter rigged up that a person could practeton, and they had
dummy airplanes projected on a wall that you could practice on. And what kind
of gun did you have in the turret? Two fifty caliber machine guns?
And did you have the ability to pivot and swing them around? Oh?
Yeah, three hundred and sixty degrees and almost a little bit above one hundred
and eighty degrees. How did you move yourself around? Did you have gears
or did you just use your own boot? All you tried to do is
you had two handles. All you had to do is tilt the handle which
way you wanted to go, either up or down or turning. Now,
one of the things that we talk about a lot with bomber crews is how
cold it was on the plane. Oh yes, it got very very cold,
sometimes minus sixty. How did you deal with that as best as I
could? Luckily, I came from a farm and I was very used to
the cold weather, So I don't think it bothered me as much as the
southern guy that perhaps didn't even see see a snowflake. I think I was
much better prepared than them. Was it tougher to not have your heavy flying
suit? Very much so, because the electric flight suit that you had was
very unreliable. A couple of times it burned out completely and I was left
with absolutely no heat at all. Did you get frostbite? Yes? That
severe? Did you get on your fingers, your feet, fingers then feet?
Yes? Did that make it hard to fire? They weren't frostbitten that
bad, but it did affect Yes. Did you have the same crew for
most of your missions? We had the same crew, the exception of the
bombiteder was shot down with another crew on his second mission, and then we
had a replacement bombaedeer. Where were you based in England? Paddington? Tell
me about your first mission. Obviously this is your first real bombing run.
What do you remember about it and what comes to mind? First bombing run
wasn't too bad. It was too ludwig to and I can't remember what we
were bombing a place. But the first bombing grade wasn't too bad. It
was the second one that by worst one. Yeah, well, let's talk
about that. Because there was a lack of communication. That led to some
trouble there right, Yes, lack of communication, but more so weather problem
because we had taken off from the air base and after we were well on
our way, the weather turned bad and they crawled all the crews back,
but for some reason, our unit didn't get the call back, so we
went on to bomb the target alone. So we faced a whole dog on
looft off, and they bore down on us and shot the heck out of
us. I'll do you escape. Well, first thing had happened, we
got to hit in our number two inch and took the horror half of the
engine out. There was the gaping hole that's or it must have been at
least four feet across. And then the next thing we received another burst back
in the tail faction and that also had a great big hole right through the
airplane. But worst of all, that was one of my missions where my
heaated electric suit went out. And when that would happen, it would get
a short and you'd get like a great big burn where the suit caught fire.
I mean you'd put it out, but then you had no heat for
the rest of the mission. So when the loof off was bearing down on
you, what do you remember about your work as a balter at gunner?
How are you confronting them? You're doing the best you can to trying to
shoot down as many as you can. But that's another thing. You really
haven't got time to tell if you really hit or mist because there was another
one so close behind that you were freeing back trying to catch the second one.
And are you talking to the other gunners so you know what you're You're
in the midst of all the fighting and everything. It's not like Hollywood.
You are not hollering back and forth. You're too damn busy. Many of
your guns you were able to get all the way back to England, though
correct we didn't make it back to England. Although we didn't make it back
to our base, we crash landed in a field that was under construction.
It was so dark and so foggy that we didn't realize under construction and we
almost collided with the pile of stumps in the middle of the wrong way.
Was anybody seriously injured in the crash landing. No, We had a wonderful
pilot. Even with all the battle damaged and everything, he still managed to
bring it down safely. I forgot to tell you the second blast that I
said within the sails section damaged some of the control surfaces. It put the
plane in the diving mode. And when we were safely over England, the
pilot called the other engineer myself to help him uh with the with the plane.
And I couldn't believe how much pressure they wasn't that uh the column.
Both both of us were braced and here the pilot and the co pilot had
been flying it like that for hours and hours. Now, once you were
safely over England, did you climb out of the ball tore once? Once
you were safe safely over England, Yes, you could get out of the
ball turret, But until you're over England, no way. Because as you're
landing, how close if you were still in there, how close would you
be to the ground About fix eate inches six to eight inches. That's not
a lot of room for air, a lot of room for air. And
of course you had to have the guns stolen away. You couldn't possibly have
him down like you had to have him you exited the turret, you had
to retract the guns. That's Lester Shrink, a US Army Air Force's veteran
of World War Two. He served as a ball turret gunner on a B
seventeen bomber crew. When we come back, Shrank takes us on the mission
where his plane was shot down and he became a prisoner of war. I'm
Greg Corumbus, and this is Veterans Chronicles. This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm
Greg Corumbus. Our guest in this edition is now one hundred year old Lester
Shrink. He's a US Army Air Force's veteran of World War Two. In
our last segment, mister Schrank told us about the mission in which is B
seventeen was barely able to limp back to England on February twenty second, nineteen
forty four. He and his crew were not so fortunate. Shrank now continues
his story with the mission that led to the men bailing out over Denmark,
Shrank himself becoming a prisoner of war and enduring vicious interrogations. Our small group
was used to fly a decoy run trying to lure the luftloff away from the
main targets in the Ruh Well. We've been attacked by quite a number of
fighters on the way in but it was almost a routine mission. Just before
we were shot down, I saw JAU eighty eight hit the airplane just throw
left, so I'm crashing into the ocean. Just about three or four minutes
later, it was our turn. The first thing I heard was a great,
big explosion. The next thing I heard with the pilot calling the navigator
asking for the nearest land and I knew right then that we have had it.
We were going down, and the navigator came back immediately and he says,
twenty minutes the landfall New East, So in other words, we had
twenty minutes with their plane being on fire. There was explosion every few you,
I would say every ten second, so there'd be another explosion. He
wouldn't believe him, and he they were so severe that they would blow the
fire completely out, but then it would real ignite and you'd have another explosion.
The wing held off all the way until we were just over landfall,
and then there was one final blast and it blew the whole end of the
wing off. What saved me is during that twenty minutes, I had plenty
of time to get out of the turret and be ready to bail out in
case we were over land and all of you got out correct. We all
got out successfully, except for the pilot and the misfortune of landing in a
frozen over lake. But the ice run that thick and he broke through the
ice and he was calling out for help. There were some Danish people that
wanted to save him, but the Germans shot at him. Wouldn't let them
save the pilot. Then after he was dead and they made the Danes go
out and get his body. Of course I didn't find that out until after
the war, or in fact, I didn't even know how he was killed
until after the war. All right, So what happened to you described the
jump? First of all, the jump was pretty much routine. One of
the waist cunners was going to exit first, and when he saw what outside,
for some reason, he froze. I gave him a big kick in
the rear and send them out. Then I jumped out. But when I
pulled the ripcord, the shoot didn't deploy, But it wasn't that big a
deal. I reached back in the covers and pulled the drugue shoot out and
the parachute up, not successfully. I hit like a ton of brick because
they had deliberately made the parachutes real small, because the Germans had a habit
of shooting men in their parachute and making the shoot small uh limited the time
that you were in the air. I landed in a muddy field and they
were already a semi circle of Germans around me, all pointing they're gun at
me. So I didn't have the least chance to escape or anything, but
to be captured. Where did they take you? It took us to a
schoolhouse that had been taken over from the Danes. That's where they kept us
for the night. Did they interrogate you? Interrogated us, but not not
that much. The real interrogation came later. How did they treat you?
Generally? When we were first captured, they didn't treat us too badly at
all. They were more curious, claiming that America wasn't even in the war,
than when we are assured them we were Americans. Then they said that
we must have been mercenaries hired by some other ally, and they were more
curious about us than anything. One incident, they took my wallet and I
had some English pounds and some American dollars in it, and I demanded a
receipt and that just infuriated the Germans that said, why would you want a
receipt? And I looked at him, I said, because we're going to
win win the war, and I'm going to collect that for the war.
Oh. He just flew into a rage and told him to get that Schweino
out of here. We'll nable him. In the morning after we got the
new log looft. This is the third day now, and we hadn't had
anything to eat and very little to drink. We were hungry. The Dickens
they took us into this great big room where they must have been at least
five hundred prisoners waiting to be interrogated. During the time you were waiting,
you heard every kind of horrible sound like beatings, screaming, cursing, begging
for mercy, and occasional gun shot. When it keme my time for interrogation,
there was this German guard. If Hollywood have picked him for a character,
they couldn't have done a bet a job. The first thing you noticed
he was missing his right arm at the elbow. The other thing you noticed
he had a scar right across his face where even his left eye was missing,
and he had what we call a burp gun, which is kind of
the equivalent of our AK forty seven, and he would punch you the way
he wanted you to go. And when I entered the room, the German
officer treated like he was an old friend of mine, and of course I
gave my name, rank and serial number. He wanted to know if I
wanted to have a chair in his cigarette, and I said, no,
thank you, sir, I don't want either. I prefer their mainstanding.
Then he says, oh, yeah, shrank, Yeah, we know all
about you. And to my amazement, he went back to a file,
went through the file, and he came back on the folder. Yeah,
we know all about you. Your mother and father, and they named their
names. You live in a dairy farm, You've got a brother and a
sistery they named their names. He says, we know all about you.
And then he says, I'm sure that you'd like to have them know that
you're safe and well, and of course I said, certainly, sir.
Well, then you fill off this red cross sheet and gave name, rank,
parents' names they could be notified. And then all the rest of them
were all military. What kind of plane you were flying, what altitude,
you're at what kind of bombs you were carrying, what your intended target were,
what other targets you We had briefed on it, so you handed back
to them all blank ooh. He just flew into a rage. He said,
you dunk off. Don't you think we know that you flew to be
seventeen? Write it down? And of course I gave my name, rank
and serial number. He took out the pistols and whacked me across the headdress
saw stars. Then every time he would ask you a question, I would
give my name, rank and serial number. He kept on beating me up.
The German guard behind me would take the gun barrel and ram into my
back. And this went on for I don't know how long. At last
he pointed the gun right at my temple and he said, you better answer
the next question or else then you think the gunshots And I composed myself give
my name, rank and serial number again, and he kicked me in the
rear that almost flew out of the door, and I breathed the thigh relief.
I found out later if you would have given even the least little bit
of information, they would have beaten you to a pulp. Trying to get
more. Germany had spies all over. The deal about my parents I think
was from when I enlisted. Apparently they've taken the newspaper and uses their propaganda,
if you want to call it that. I remember one of the crew
said, the clock in your mess hall is five minutes slow. Why don't
they ever change it? The guy said it actually was five minutes, so
they must had spies all over. With the brutal interrogations over US Army Air
Force's balterate gunner, Lester Shrink was sent to a prison camp. When we
come back, he describes the conditions there, being forced west as the Russians
moved in from the east, and the eighty six day death March he was
forced to endure. That's next. I'm Greg Corumbas and this is Veterans Chronicles.
This is Veterans' Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in this edition
is Lester Shrink, a US Army Air Forces veteran of World War II.
When we left off, mister Shrink had just endured a severe interrogation, but
never gave up more information than his name, rank and serial number. Now
Shrank tells us about the prison camp he endured, and then the eighties six
Stay Death March he survived. In German captivity. They finally gave us a
little something to eat. It was a crust of bread Spirit Spirit with a
tape of jelly made out of beets. But when you're hungry that long if
anything tastes good, How long did they keep you there? Only about a
day or so? Uh? And then they put us on a train taking
us to salid of six. But they had also taken away our shoes and
stocking, so we had to walk in this train station in the snow barefoot,
and of course that was to keep you from the steep escaping. Well,
yes, it got worse later. Oh, you went to an Uh,
Lithuania for your prison, correct, yes? So what was the prison
like? Stalar Is six was bad? You didn't occasionally get a red Cross
parcel or not steady or anything like that. You suffered more from the cold
because the barracks weren't heated or anything. It was just all the people crowded
in the same room. You got somebody from other gis. What was the
food like there? What were the conditions like you got one meal a day?
If you got that sometimes if there was any little thing that irritated Germans,
like huge the Allied vicar or something like that, they would punish you.
Or somebody did something stupid, like one time somebody desecrated the picture of
Hitler and we paid dearly for that. Now, the Soviets were a pro
coaching from the east at that points, correct, okay, And so what
did the Germans do as the Russians got closer? Well, we could.
The first place, you had to put shutters on at three o'clock every afternoon
and keep them on until I think it was nine o'clock the next morning.
And as the Russians are approaching, you could actually, even even with the
shutters on, you could see the flash of the light. And then a
week or so later you could actually hear the rumble of artillery. And that's
when the Germans decided to evacuate the camp. Now this is in July,
so it's very very warm, and they marched us to some box cars.
It started loading us around noon, and the box car got full. They
would take bayonets and jabbed the guys in the doorway so they'd go back in
make room for more prisoners. And at last there was standing room. Only
then they slammed the door shut and we were in that box car the rest
of the day, no food, no water, and of course the temperature
just soared, luckily for us, as they got dark. They moved the
train to Memble, Lithuania, and loaded this onto a coal ship, and
there too, the hole of that coal ship was so crowded that you couldn't
even sit down or anything. You stood standing for three and a half days,
no food, no water, And to make it even worse, there
was about two or three inches of coal dust on the floor, so every
time your feet could never really get a firm footing, and by the time
you got done there, your legs were just aching. Not only that,
but you were so crowded. They had no sanitation whatsoever. Everybody had severe
dysentery from the poor diet, and you relieved yourself right where you stood.
So the air was just as foul as it could be. It was hotter
than dickens from all the body heat. The only ventilation was a little about
a four foot opening where we had come down into the hold. I can't
even imagine. I can't even imagine what happened after that. When they got
the destination. They put us on box car, and in this box car
they had the Hitler Youngen in other words, the real young leither marine and
I could speak German, and I ask him how old they were. They
were twelve and thirteen years old guarding us, and I think they were more
afraid of us than but we were afraid of them. But the train ride
only lasted overnight and we ended up a place called Grosti chow Poland with them.
Ready had a German officer there and he was saying today before that when
we when we got on this box car, they made us put on our
overcoats and they shackled us in twos. So now it's the middle of the
summer, hot of the dickens and we're in an overcoat, shackled the gather.
But then you're we got this German officer thing. Today is their lucky
day. Not only are you going to get one Red Cross parcel, you're
going to get two Red Cross parcels. And my guerish, I couldn't believe
my ears, But sure enough they had it up to Red Cross parcels.
In the other words, you got one under each arm. The minute that
was done, I heard them give their order a fixed bayonets, and they
released a bunch of police dogs and they run us down the road for five
kilometers, jabbing us with bayonets and the police dogs snapping at our heels.
And no only reason that they had given us the Red Cross parcels. They
knew that you would drop them, and that way they could say that you
didn't want the parcels, threw them away. When we finally reached the destination
they had to slay in this metal, you could about imagined how famished we
are, no water or anything for it better than four days. It's about
four and a half days now, in the sweltering heat, and the Germans
would taunt us. There was some pumps nearby. They would pump water and
throw the water at us and do everything to and tagognize us. And all
of a sudden, one of the gis started singing God bless America, and
we all joined in, and that just absolutely infuriated the Germans, knowing that
we were so desperate for water, and yet we could have the nerve that
taunt them right back. They finally gave the order, either you stop or
we start shooting, And of course then we had no choice. Oh,
by the way, by with these parcels under your arm being shackled to the
neck, the other person that just you can about imagine that what that did
your risk running that distance, uh, not being in sync with your partner.
Then they had what we called the strip search. They took one prisoner
at a time and made him completely undressed and searched everything that they owned.
When my turn came, I was about one of the only gi that managed
to hang on to both of my parcels. A few of them managed to
hang on to one. And there's this great big German guard we had called
him ham Hands. He was one of our guard guards in stalag Luft six
and he was the most brutal guard. You can imagine. One thing he
would do is when you weren't watching, he would take the rifle button snap
it on you on your arch, trying to break your arch. Other times
he would come up and cuff your ear, trying to break your ear drums.
He would do everything like that. And that's the guy that was going
to going to strip search me. I hadn't taken anybody clothes off, and
he grabbed the red Cross parceled and I could speak German. I told him
not the Red Cross parcel of their mind. He took a pistol and wham
on my head. I fell on the ground, recomposed myself, kept on
that they were mine. Five different times he hit me, either on the
chin or on my head. My head was just a bloody mess, and
I finally realized that if I would keep on refusing that he would actually kill
me. So at last I let him have the parcels, and the minute
his back was turned, I grabbed my belongings and ran out and hit amongst
the guys that already been strict search and hit my head under my overcoat.
Pregending I was the sleep he came. He came out looking for me,
cursing in German. He made several passes in front of me, not knowing
who I was there, and he finally went in, and I breathed a
sigh of relief. I'm sure if he would have found me, that would
have been the end of me. Incredible. How do you keep going after
something like that as best as you can? That evening ration was too little
care. Now this is July, so that have been planted. Aren't that
big yet? Two little bit of carrots about the size of my finger.
That was I ration after four and a half days of not eating. Now,
as time went on and they forced you west right as the Russians came.
Yes, they were fourthing us west, but they evacuated the camp because
the Russians were coming, and there were no more prison camps that they could
put us into because there'd been so many of them have been taken over that
I was on the German what's called the German Death March for eighty six days.
You never saw withinside of a heated building. You've either slept in some
farmers barn or many many times just out the open and the field. You
had one blanket that you shared with five other people. They each had a
blanket, so you'd form a group of five people sharing each other's blanket.
I read that they forced you to march so much that your socks and your
shoes basically disintegrated. Yeah, my stocking didn't. There wasn't any foot left
anymore, just a kind of a little band up around my ankles. And
the shoes were so worn that I can see my toes right through the shoes.
I mean they were sticking out of the holds that's where I had more
frost bite. Even today, I've got very little feeling in my hands and
also my feet. In fact, my feet are even right now, they're
cold. They have the sensation of being cold. I should say, how
are you liberated by the English Army? They treated us very very well.
I can't imagine that feeling after what you had been through. You know,
it had been way for a year before, since I had a man.
Of course, all during that death march you couldn't shave through. I had
a great big mob of unruly whiskers, which I just hated. And we
were just filthy with lafe fleas and dead bugs and of course severe, such
severe dysentery that so many times all it would be was mucous stained with blood.
Well, in our last few minutes here less, I want to get
back to the beginning of that last mission, because one of the things that
you kept thinking about over the years is why didn't they finish us off in
the air? Why didn't they shoot us down instead of letting us exactly?
And so you decided to explore this. What did you find? When I
got my first computer, I started hunting for whatever I could find about our
crash and all that, and I got lucky. I was on a on
a website called B twenty four dot net and there were two guys discussing the
very mission that we got shot down on. So I interrupted them and told
them who I was and told them that I was looking for the crash site,
and they put me in touch with the Danish farmer where I plane had
crashed, and that was that was the start of it. I made friends
with the Danish farmer and he invited us to come visit the crash site,
which we did and one of the outings there was another Danish man there and
I had mentioned that when we were shot down, this German officer came looked
at us and I figured that he was the German pilot that shot us down,
and I had made the statement that I would liked to have talked to
him. This guy, this Danish guy, said I'll help you find him.
And it took him four and a half years. The tracked down the
German pilot, and then I started corresponding to him and he actually invited me
over to Germany. He lived in Heidelberg, and in twenty oho eight we
went to visit him and he turned out to be a very very very nice
guy. Showed us all around, showed us his medals, showed sights and
things like that. I had mentioned that I never saw the plane that was
the Tacan, the shot that's down, and he says, no wonder,
he says, because he said I made a shallow dive. He said,
there's no way you could have seen me. Then I was asking him about
other pilots, you know, shooting in the parachute, and he what He
said, Why should I? He says, I saw that you were already
out of the war and heading back to land. He said, my only
fear was that you were trying to escape to Sweden. And so because he
knew you'd be taken prisoner, he didn't shoot at you. Yep, Like
he said, why should I? What was it like to finally get an
answer to those questions? It kind of brought closure to everything. You know,
so many men like me don't want to talk about the war. And
my daughter that started asking me to write something down sheet said, Dad,
when you're gone, I won't have any idea what you went through. Well,
I reluctantly started to write a few things, and then when I met
the German pilot. That just kind of brought everything together, and I found
that the more I talked about it, the less it bothered me. And
today I can freely talk about my capture, about my combat, anything,
and it really doesn't bother me. So I feel very fortunate. What are
you most proud of from your service? Well, I think that I feel
a very very very small way I helped preserve our freedom, and so many
people really don't know what freedom is like until they actually lose it, Like
I lost it. I realize what it's like. You're not be free.
But the average, especially here in America, I don't think most of them
even give it a lot. They just think everybody is free, and that
is not the cave. Well, leus, it's been an honor to meet
you and to speak with you same here and thank you for your time and
especially your service. You went through so much for the sake of our nation.
We appreciate you well. Thank you very much. I wish I could
have done more. Lester Shrink is a US Army Air Forces veteran of World
War Two. Served as a vaulter at gunner on a B seventeen bomber crew
shot down over Denmark in February nineteen forty four, spent more than a year
as a prisoner of war. I'm Greg Corumbus. This is Veterans Chronicles.
Hi, this is Greg Corumbus, and thanks for listening to Veterans Chronicles,
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