Welcome to Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in this edition is
Richard Hamilton. He is a veteran of the US Army Air Forces in World
War Two, serving on a B seventeen bomber crew. Mister Hamilton's served on
nine bombing missions. However, the ninth mission resulted in his plane being shot
down. He spent more than a year as a German prisoner of war.
And Richard, thank you so much for being with us. All right,
You're welcome. When and where were you born, sir? I was born
in Bradlboro, Overmond, September twenty eighth, nineteen twenty two. I understand
that you became interested in flying as a child. How did that interest begin?
I don't know. I was a farm boy, and I think it
was not when I was a young child. It was probably during my high
school days. I always listened to into things about the war, and as
we went to the movies, and I thought that the Army Air Corps was
the right place to be and and that's where I ended up. What do
you remember about hearing of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December nineteen forty
one. What were you doing and how do you remember hearing that news?
Well, that is a very interesting thing. We had a radio. We
had no electricity in our home and no running water. We had a pump
at the sink. And but anyway, that gives you old background of why
we were listening to the radio. It was battery powered and the battery was
getting beyond its law should be recharged. And President Roosevelt got on the phone
and he told about the Empire of the JAP van has attack Star base at
Pearl Harbor. And at this day we'll live in infanty, but we were
all crouched down around that we meaning my three brothers, sisters, my grandfather,
and I was in a multi generational home. And so we listened to
the radio that way. And and then when it was over listening to the
president, we looked at each other and where was Pearl Harbor? So we
got over globe and started looking. And that was the conditions that I heard
about the attack on Pearl Harbor. Now, mister Hamilton, you mentioned that
you were in the Army Air Corps. Were you drafted or did you enlist?
No? I was drafted, and at that time I realized there was
a young kid that had enlisted in the Air Corps and I was in his
group. And when we left our home and in Brattleboro, Vermont, and
apparently they needed I guess, I don't know. Maybe it was after Fort
Devon's where we entered, and four or five days while we were there,
and then we went on troop train to basic training, and that's when I
realized I was in the Air Corps. So were you assigned to the B
seventeen or is that something you volunteered for Miami Beach was basic training for about
a month or so, and then to Chicago for radio mechanics and learning the
Morse code and all those things. And I can't say when I early on
that I was going to be on a B seventeen, but anyway, that's
where I ended up. So you mentioned that you were the radio man and
you had all this training to be the radio man. Explain what that role
involves. What does a radio man do. The radio man on they BE
seventeen is one who keeps in touch with the home base when the pilot gets
lost. It was the radio man that had the signal and could be located
by the home base as to where we were, and I pushed down a
key and send out a signal. They would monitor that and know just where
we were, and that could be relayed to the pilot on the inter calm.
Now, before you went off to war, you had another thing on
your mind, and that also made you very excited for the war to be
over. A certain young lady was very much in your life, and so
you decided to give her something very special. Tell me about that. Oh
yes, my first year of training from one one base to another and ended
up at Hume, Arizona for gunnery training. And then I had a two
week furlough and from there I went home and I had an opportunity to purchase
a ring. Then I gave her that ring while we were there, and
so I tied us up for the for the for the for the during ration
of the war. That is excellent incentive to do a good job and to
get home. So well done on that front. And so when did you
get deployed across the Atlantic. We had a new B seventeen and the whole
flight crew loaded our baggage on it and we flew from Kerney, Nebraska to
bang of Maine and Gander, Newfoundland and ended in Prestick, Scotland. So
from there we went by truck down through Bassingbourne, England. And so that
was in the last of May, in June of forty four, so you
got to the south of England right around the time of the D Day invasion.
Yes, we were at our face in Bassingbourne, and and there again
we all listened to the radio and as that whole thing was going on.
We weren't trained to participate in any way, but but I was listening to
foot I said on the radio, Well, that had to be a huge
boost in morale for everyone there, I would imagine, well, yeah,
it was moving us closer to actually what was going to happen and what we
were probably going to be doing. Well, mister Hamilton, let's pause right
there. When we come back, we'll start talking about your missions, the
eight that you safely returned from and also the ninth which did not return safely
and resulted in your time as a prisoner of war. Our guest today is
Richard Hamilton. He's a veteran of the US Army Air Corps serving as a
radio man on a B seventeen bomber crew. We'll be right back on Veterans
Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbas. Please stay with us. This is Veterans Chronicles.
I'm Greg Corumbas. Our guest in this edition is Richard Hamilton, a
veteran of the US Army Air Corps in World War Two, serving as a
radio man on a B seventeen bomber crew. We've talked about his training,
We've talked about him being in southern England getting ready to participate in bombing runs
around the time of the D Day landings, that his crew did not participate
in those, but soon they would be taking to the skies. And so,
sir, take me to that first mission on the B seventeen. What
do you remember about it and how did it compare to what you thought it
would be like. We were roused at three thirty or four in the morning,
and we went from breakfast and we went to a session of briefing,
and then I remember going out to the plane and it was a cloudy,
foggy morning, as most of them seemed to be in England, and we
watched people were getting the plane ready for our take off. I was inside
and didn't see much, but I realized that the things were going on.
They had to prepare the plane for takeoff, and I guess now what I
was thinking about was going down the runway with all the bombs in and with
the bumping along. And then we smoothed things out when we began lifting off
on taking off, and then we went through that mist and fog and so
forth until we circled around and I realized that we were gaining our altitude and
finally we got up to where the sun was shining, and that was an
experience that made things much better. But flying through that fog, I didn't
have much of a view of it. I wasn't up front like the bombardier
and the navigator, and so I had just that little window over the wing.
And we didn't encounter any fighter planes that day, and it was seemed
to be smooth. And let's see, I don't think I experienced flack that
first mission. When we got back, it was a matter of going back
into briefing, and it was not a rough mission as some of the others
were, and and it wasn't an especially long one either. We went through
a debriefing time and then a meal that was mighty good, because I don't
know that we properly ate, what we what I should haven't. Breakfast doesn't
give you much of an idea for our first mission was like, but I
think it was in Tours, France, but I'm not just sure if that
was the first of the second, and I'll be checking up on that.
I guess it was relatively short and you took no flak. That's a pretty
good first mission. I'd say, let's talk about general conditions on board,
because I don't think a lot of people know about some of these things.
First of all, talk about how cold it is on board the plane.
That is something that surprised me too. We get up to ten thousand feet
and the pilot says, okay, oxygen masks, and so we put on
our oxygen mask. And one of the things that I remember about how cold
it was was when a drop of moisture and the oxygen mask dropped onto my
radio desk in front of me. It wasn't immediate exactly, but I went
to rub that off the desk and had already frozen, and that was I
couldn't leave that. But of course we had heated and there was check ups.
Let's see, one would go through some of those things like make sure
heated suits were properly working. There was a check back to the pilot or
I think the oxygen mask that was the same thing, to make sure they
were properly. I don't know how that was done either, But talk about
how loud it was on board. Oh yeah, those four Pratt and Whitney
engines, twelve hundred horsepower. Each one by itself made a lot of noise,
and then they started the second one, and the third one and the
fourth one, and so that began to make some noise, and there was
no protection from outside except that layer of aluminum of the surface of the B
seventeen. When they revved up several different times to make sure they were all
functioning properly, that was a lot of noise. And then when you get
airborne, you're still in that drone of loud noise, and yet our intercornes
worked inside our helmet, and of course in the whole thing was loud,
loud, loud, and that it was the drone that we faced all the
time that we were flying. And mister Hamiltons, you mentioned that on your
first mission you did not encounter any flak, any anti aircraft fire from the
Germans on the ground. I'm guessing that on later missions you did. What
was it like to fly through that? Oh, it was a very scary
time. It was frightening and we could see it bursting around us. And
then I remember one time it was a cloudy day. We were heading from
Munich that particular day and it was a long day, and so we were
going through flack. The pilot said, you see that black cloud up ahead.
He says, that's flack and that's over the target, and he says,
we've got to go through that. And that was beginning to be scary.
But as we did fly through it, some of those bursts of traillery
fire you could heal it close enough to lift our plane as we were flying
through, and we had a few punctures in the plane, but none of
us during that time were injured. That's what it was. I mean,
some planes were hit and they went down. That of course, is the
idea of their trying to bring us down anyway, And so that's what I
remember about the flag. It was terrible. Mister Hamilton. Let's take one
more break. When we come back, we'll talk about your ninth mission,
the one that you did not return from immediately and resulted in You Becoming a
Prisoner of War. Our guest is Richard Hamilton, a veteran of the US
Army Air Corps world War Two, serving as a radio man on a B
seventeen bomber crew. I'm Greg Corumbas and this is Veterans Chronicles. This is
Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in this edition is Richard Hamilton.
He is a veteran of the US Army Air Corps in World War Two,
serving on a B seventeen bomber crew as a radio man. We've been
talking about his first eight missions, from the first one, which was relatively
short and encountering no flat back to some of the ones that were more harrowing
involving quite a bit of groundfire from the Germans. But none of that compares
to what happened on the ninth mission, which we'll talk about now. And
so mister Hamilton tell me how the flight started and how things went wrong.
The day started as as usual. We were prepared with the breakfast, and
then this day we had clear whether there was just now and then a little
cloud layer at round ten thousand feet as I remember, So we were heading
toward Leipzig to bomb the airfield there or and as we went along we expected
a fighter planes to protect us the fifty ones, but when the tail gunner
saw them coming in early on, they were tiny specks. And next we
knew he was saying, and it's coming in on the tail, and there
was sixty or more f W one nineties and any one oh nines that were
stacked in such a way that they came at us. It was that first
wave that did destroyed our plane and put the smoke and bullet holes through the
plane, and the bombay was on fire, and the right wing was shot
off at number four engine, and we began to lose altitude and to sort
of get turned so that we were going to be spinning. The communication was
knocked out of that, so we didn't know what was happening up front.
But I was down with the waist gunner at first, and then I left
my radio table and when to a gun. But later we knew that we
got to bail out. But I tried to get up through the bombay and
it was just full of flames and and there at the bomb still hanging there.
A little extinguisher didn't do anything, and so back I went, and
the waist gunner was at the waist hatch and ready to go, and I
gestured is to what was in back. We didn't know what happened to the
gunner. He wasn't standing there. And the waist gunner looked at me and
shook his head. And so there were the two of us there to go
out, and and so I I followed him out. And that was a
hard thing to do, to go out that hatch when so many times before
you'd knew just where you were going to land down on your feet, and
this time was certainly different. And so out we went. And with those
planes, I had they sense not to pull that rip cord. Our mission
is at the twenty fourth thousand feet, and I think probably when we bailed
out, it was perhaps about eighteen and so the air was light and hostile,
so no parachute was deployed, and so I just went free fall.
But I was like a rag doll out there with no bearing whatsoever. And
finally I extended my arms out straight realized that began to stabilize my flight.
It just seemed like I was flying horizontally, but all the time we were
dropping down. But I was faced down and realized that if I angled my
palms in my hand, I could move and sort of cold roll my flight.
And it just seemed like a flight. Yes, I keep calling it
a flight, and yet I was dropping. And so I went through that
little cloud layer at ten thousand feet and the air went from cold to warm.
Oh, it was so warm. And then at five thousand I'm guessing
forty five feet, I pulled my shoot and only two or three swings and
I was down on the ground. Well I landed, I drifting along,
and so I went down on my right shoulder and it's hurt. But I
didn't describe how when I did pull my shoet how I had a chest back
and so with the harness, it just bent me right in two and apparently
injured my back a little when I don't know whether it was when I pulled
the shoot or whether I hit the ground, but I tried quickly to pull
in my shoe. It was in a wheat field and hard July twentieth forty
four hot day, and it was on the sort of edge of the village.
And I saw in the window woman witnessing my landing there, and next
I say she had disappeared, and it wasn't too long before the whole village
came out with clubs and pitchforks, and the lead man was fire ring a
pistol from either hand, and I just did have a feeling that pretty sill.
I'm going to feel what it's like to get a bullet in me.
And but he wasn't firing, I guess to get me, but he was
letting me know that I wasn't a welcome visitor here on German soil. It
wasn't very long before I realized that I had lost my freedom and that was
up to them as to how they were going to deal with me. And
they surrounded me and got me to put my hands up. And I wasn't
savvy on the German language, but there were lots of allowed to talk,
and so I got my hands up. I was pushed and shoved down into
the village, and as I went by one of the mustachioed older men,
and he looked at me and said schweinehound, and he spit in my face.
And it was not just a sit, it was a whole wad.
He gave me the full amount, and so that was dripping off my face.
And I that was the way I went into the village, and they
got me into what I guess was a town hall, town eating, I
guess, and they began interrogating and looking at my outfit. I guess more
than anything else. I was had that parachute harness and took that off,
and then the May West and all the stuff was gesturing and they were talking
all the time, and I'm not knowing what was being said, and so
they wanted me to take off that Maywest, and then they looked it all
over and they wanted to know how, and I pulled a little shoot the
CO two thing that fills it with air, and that happened to squeak like
as a kid you blew up a balloon and you stretch out the nose of
it and it squeals. And that's just the way that CO two pressure going
into that Maywest. So they were oh ah. They searched me all over,
and I know we had an opportunity to take our issued forty five,
and I thought, well, what would I do with it? Going deep
into Germany? What would I do with the forty five? And I do
feel very certain even to this very day that if I'd had that forty five,
I would have realized how it was to receive a bullet, because they
were pretty rough on me, and they didn't really beat, but they shoved
and poked and pushed, and I was gathered up and with a truck that
had blood stains in it and taken to a collecting place. And then I
was putting a little cell overnight and the next morning I can just say I
can hear keys jingling and opening doors three doors before he got to my cell,
and he brought in some hot boiled potatoes. I was handcuffed behind me
and during the night, and they squashed. The handcuff sounds so tight that
circulations to my hand was cut right off to the right arm, and so
my hand was puffed way up so I couldn't hold of eating utensil. And
that was my first day. And tell me about the conditions in the prison
camp where you were sent, well, it was quite a lot of a
few days before I went to a prison camp, we went to what is
called doolud Luft. That's when we were interrogated and tried to find out who
our crew members were a list. But we had been a briefing before England
was if we became a prisoner of war, you'd only had to disclose your
name, rank and serial number and other questions. You didn't have to disclose
anything. And so there's different methods of interrogation. Some were one fellow was
spoke perfect English and he was asked me about one of the New York nightclubs
or something. He was a good guy. And then they have another one
that comes in and they opened up books and showed the different training bases in
this country and a different rank. They had everything in those books, and
they wondering where I was trained, and all listener. And so without a
response, I was put in a solitary confinement and the next day I'd be
brought out and interviewed again. And and like I say, there different methods
and different personalities. So they said, well and untill you talk, you'll
just be in solitary with your bread and water. And that's the way I
was for eight days. And then next I knew they were getting a whole
group ready to go. In that group was a young man from neighboring Putney
from Aunt who we had met in high school and couldn't believe that it was
like a bit of home to meet him, and it was just great.
But then we got on to a troop carrying train for about four days to
get to where we were going to get off and go to about four kilometers
up to the Stalacluft prison camp. And as a forerunner, before we got
off the train, there was a captain of the guards or captain or he
was, I'll call him captain, but he was yelling like a madman about
the cities that had been bombed. And then he was leading his troops,
quite a lot of guards out there, and then he gave a sharp order
and and I guess that was to fix bayonets, and they was just a
loud clatter of steel. Everything was precision, and we could see police dogs
out there. And then we were allowed to get off the train and then
to form a column on the road, and there was a column of four,
as I remember, and I happened to be then another friend that had
had befriended anyway that it was next to me in the middle, and a
big tall fellow on the outside on my left side. And I don't know
why I describe him is because when we got started to march, and then
they wanted fast pace and then they wanted double time and faster pace, and
each received a shell of a suitcase filled with red cross things, sweaters,
I mean, just toothbrush and all things that we had been missing since our
mourning at Passing Bourn, So those were sort of cherished and we tried to
hang onto them. And on the outside were the guards that were shouting,
and dogs were held back, but every now and then they'd be right next
to us. And when we got to the prison camp, there were thirty
five that came in on a flatbed horse drawn wagon. And I saw one
fellow there with his pants just crimson with blood where he'd been jabbed with the
bayonet being on the outside. And this fellow that I spoke about on my
left, he was a big fellow, and he looked at the guard and
I don't know how you can interpret the look he gave, but the guard
took his rifle and hit him in the back of the neck and he went
down, so I didn't see him again. But it was a rough session.
To get to that prison camp. We put in the barracks that were
off the ground along stills like off the ground so the dogs could walk under,
and an all around down and they knew that there was no tunnel escaping,
and that was they were trying to avoid. But that's what you asked
me, is as what it was like in the camp. Well, every
day they had to count us and know that we're all there, and so
all the barracks went out front and stood at attention out there while they counted
the whole compound and Stagluft was divided off into four different sections, and we
were in Section C, there was ABC and D, and each morning and
night we were out front and counted. And some of the days in that
hot summer it was so hot, we'd stand there until they counted everyone in
that compound. It was grueling. In the winter time, we'd just about
freeze up before they satisfied with the count and we could go back. But
I know sometimes when it was so long a wait and Ray finally would find
some guy, they'd go through the barracks and when a kid failed to come
out, he was sleeping and they'd bring out a guy and then soon after
we could be discharged and go back to our barracks. It was one of
those things that you dread going out to be counted, because you'd stand there
at their attention, and where they go up and down all the rows and
they make their tally. And but I'll tell you one thing that was very
upsetting was when they'd come in at night, get everyone out of their sacks
and and then start going through. What I guess they were looking for was
this little crystal radio that was somewhere in the compound. Periodically we'd have someone
come in with a bit of BBC news to let us be updated on the
status of the war. It was a rough time because when they'd go into
the sacks and search everything, and and then they mess up the room,
and then they'd go out. Soon the lights went out, and you just
had to do the best you could putting things back together in the dark.
But it was pretty upsetting the way they could antagonize and just make life not
so pleasant. Mister Hamilton's, let's pause your story right there. When we
come back, we'll pick up your story as a prisoner of war in Germany
and learn what happened about a year into your captivity. That was certainly not
a welcome change. Our guest in this edition is Richard Hamilton. He's a
World War Two veteran of the Army Air Corps, served as a radio man
on a B seventeen bomber crew and then spent well over a year as a
German POW. I'm Greg Corumbus. We'll be right back. This is Veterans
Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Honored to be joined today by Richard Hamilton.
He is a World War Two veteran of the US Army Air Corps. Served
on nine missions as a radio man on a B seventeen bomber crew. But
as you've heard, on that ninth mission, his plane was shot down,
he was forced to jump, and he soon became a German prisoner of war.
And mister Hamilton, it was in February of nineteen forty five that your
situation as a prisoner of war changed, and not for the better. The
next seventy seven days would be extraordinarily difficult for you. Explain what happened well
in February forty five. On February sixth, we were told to get ready
and we're going to leave the camp. Those days were cold and snowy,
and when we left the camp, we went by a whole store of Red
Cross parcels that had been opened up that food should have been hours from the
Red Cross, and it would supplement that bread ration that we got. So
some fellows opened them on the way and got their bellies full, and and
then out we went onto the road and and that first night we went into
sort of a stump field like that was where we were stopping for the night,
and it was sort of not pouring rain, but it was sort of
a spitting close to freezing. I remember the next morning I was so stiff.
I thought, oh my gosh, I'm not going to be able to
run again. But we were rounded up and on we went to walk that
day and it was just laboring to put one foot in front of the other,
but finally we did it. And we did that for seventy seven days.
Sometimes they'd find a barn for us to have shelter, and I remember
after in the dark, having boiled potatoes in my knit od cap. They
were just elegant without salt, pepper or butter, and they were pretty gritty.
They'd been cooked, I guess for farm animals, and that's why they
weren't well prepared, but they did taste elegant. But on we went,
and I remember having a cold and dysentery and well, I just describe it
as every day was just as we walked along. It was just laboring to
to continue on. But I remember going over a not a regular bridge,
but a big thing, and people were lined up, I guess to watch
these prisoners of war, and some of them, you know, had to
just pull down their pants because of the dysentery. And so he was really
a rough time. But like I say, some of the days would become
very pleasant, and we had a doctor Kaplan. He'd go ahead and negotiate
for us to get the best accommodations he could find for us. And my
friend, as he tells it, he said doctor Kaplan came along and he
told him that he was I don't know, he felt sick and he needed
some attention. And the doctor, he said, looked at him and swiped
off the lice from his chest and put his ear down and he said,
you've got pneumonia. And he says, I can't do anything for you.
I don't have anything for you. So he really had a hard time the
rest of the time, and I guess very close to not surviving at all.
As the days went by, we sometimes got acquainted with different guards.
They weren't young boys like we were. They were older guys, and they'd
got to be I think more of our guides than our guards. And because
sometimes civilians would rush out and gesture and they'd have to beat them back.
And another thing, come to think of it, when we were walking along
there was Russian captives serving on these farms, and they came out with cups
of water, and the guards beat them back. And I can see afterwards
that if they lose control of our gang, if we got that drink of
water on the way. So that was another thing that made things rough,
is to be hungry and thirsty issue have to walk. Yeah, I can't
imagine walking twenty miles a day for seventy seven days in a row. It's
it's unbelievable. Did the Nazis do to the people who couldn't keep up?
Well, I tell you we always wondered that's what would make anyone keep going
to the endurance here full existence, It is just to keep going and not
dropped back to the end. We'd heard sometimes so different ones. The rumors
were, did you hear that shot? And so we always tried to manage
not to be on the end in the back and because you never knew what
was happening. But at that time did I say? It was a quiet
morning. And I had left the marching group and fell back to this bunch
that were crouched down. They were the six dragglers, I call them,
and I joined with them, and then realized that the town was quiet.
About noontime, two Russians on horseback came into the village and U and they
wondered who we are, and and I was spoke to one. I said
American, and he yelled out Americanski. And that's our first little step to
coming back to freedom. But we were allowed to walk around in the in
the Russian territory. And but that was a long time to endure hardships,
and and there were many How much weight did you lose as a prisoner?
Well, I was one hundred and eighteen pounds. My weight when I started
out was one hundred and forty seven pounds when I entered the service. After
you were freed, could you eat regular food right away or was it a
gradual process of getting to eat again. There was a empty farmhouse right there,
and we took up occupancy and in that and there was a farm right
there and I get warm milk. You go in and these milk maids were
doing the caring for the animals, and so there was warm milk right there,
and that was very Oh, that was good. And I have another
experience. In that farmhouse where we were living, there was a chicken house
not too far away where we could get some eggs, and so we took
up living in that house. One night, we had a candle going in
there and knock at the door, and I went to the door and realized
I was facing German with his cap that you can identify him as a German
soldier. And so in walked nine heavily armed German soldiers. We were and
cooking the oven. Must house must have smelled so good. But apparently they
had deserted on the Russian front and headed west. They wanted to be taken
in by the Americans instead of the Russians. So there we were cooking for
the next day's walk where we were close to Torgau, and there was a
bridge there being repaired and we had to stay there for a day or so,
and we were cooking and the sergeant someone went right to that oven and
they were going to grab that food and that I can't believe it, but
the sergeant says, no, nine nine, hands off. But they went
down in the cellar and there was sorghum molasses and there were I suppose salt
pork and along the other provisions that were stored away in the cellar. And
they ate that stuff and came back, and then they wanted to go with
us the next day, and I said, oh, no, no,
no. They said they could change their clothes and go with us, and
I said no, no. And after a while I came up from the
cellar and went out into the night. And that was pretty a scary situation
there for a while, but they respected us, and I just marveled at
that, because I don't think we would be so disciplined. Mister Hamilton's a
last question for you, sir. The people who cherish freedom the most are
often people who know what it's like to not have freedom. So given the
fact that you know what it's like to not have freedom, how special is
the freedoms we have in this country? How special are those to you?
What I realize is that the people here we don't appreciate until freedom is denied.
Only then do you realize what freedom means and is, and I use
that in my talks to school groups, and I said that we look at
that flag, and if you don't salute it and appreciate it and worship that
flag, you don't realize the freedoms that are there for everyone as long as
you're own to that flag. And that's what we didn't have. We didn't
have an American flag to give us that protection. And that's what was the
basis of my talk all the time, was when you see that flag,
don't just sit there on the curb, get up and salute it as it
goes by, and treat it with reverence. And I'm afraid we're now losing
some of our freedoms that we cherish. Nevertheless, it's not like living without
the freedom that we have. Well, mister Hamilton, we thank you very
much for your time today, and most of all, we thank you for
your incredible service and sacrifice for our country. Thank you, sir very much.
All right, you're welcome. Chard Hamilton as a World War Two veteran
of the US Army Air Corps, serving as a radioman on a B seventeen
bomber crew. He flew on eight successful missions, but was forced to jump
after his plane was badly damaged on the ninth mission. He spent more than
a year as a German prisoner of war. I'm Greg Corumbus and this is
Veterans Chronicles. Hi, this is Greg Corumbus and thanks for listening to Veterans
Chronicles, a presentation of the American Veterans Center. For more information, please
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