Joining the Germans

Dick and Nita describe what must have been a very gut-wrenching time in their lives after his B-24 was shot down.

Dick: They got ready to put us on a train. They had carried us from Karovac by truck up to a place called Zagreb (Yugoslavia). We spent the night there (I didn’t realize that my father had been there in the war when I spent the night in Zagreb on Wednesday, July 10, 1968. I wrote in my diary that I had 12 percent beer and lettuce for dinner. Keep in mind I didn’t realize much after just graduating from college.) And they put us put us on a train, and we went up through Vienna. We changed trains in Vienna. I stayed real close to that guard too. Them damn civilians could whip you. I think the 8^th Air Force had bombed them sometime before that and they were a little bit teed off. They gave us some old black bread and I don’t know what else. (See photo of a piece of bread saved from WWII and the recipe in a future posting). I guess we went all the way through Austria and on up to Frankfort, Germany.

We went to Barth, from Frankfurt, and went through Berlin. That was kind of scary there. The eighth Air Force was bombing, but we didn’t have anything really close to us. I had met up with Red in Zagreb. I met up with all of the officers (including Phil Crum and Seymour Stutzel) in Zagreb. It was good to see them, yeh.

Nita: Particulary Stutzel because he was Jewish.

Dick: When we were in that prison camp, they moved Ol' Stutzel over to that North Compound. Of course at the time, we didn’t know what they were going to do, but he was a Jew. (See the note from Stutzel in future posting). Hell, he looked Jewish. I don’t know, but they could do just about anything they wanted to.

Nita: (When I heard he was missing in action), I had been to Aunt Ruth’s playing bridge and when I came home and got the telegram. It wasn’t April 2. It was at least two weeks from then. (The telegram was dated April 19, 1944 – note it says he is in North African Area.) It seemed like it was about six weeks when we learned he was alive. (She actually received a telegram dated May 18, 1944 stating that he was a German prisoner of war). I was able to write him. The Red Cross gave me his address. I wanted to let you know about Jim (the husband of Nita’s dear friend Ouita Smith Herring who had been in the double wedding with them and had been killed in action.)

Dick: I had inquired and they wouldn’t give me any information. *

You may have noticed in the previous posting, “April 2, 1944 from the Official Records,” that three of “The Miss Zeke” crew were able to evade the enemy. We’ve already heard about Herman Lipkin. Red McCrocklin in his book, “Combat and Capture,” tells Warren Stuckey’s story: "He received the Distinguished Flying Cross for saving the lives of two crew members and evading the enemy on the ground. After being wounded by flak (in the plane), Sgt. Stuckey un-jammed the ball turret, extracted Sgt. Eide from it, so he could bail out. He also placed tourniquets on the leg of Sgt. Lerum, the tail gunner, whose leg had been shot off above the knee, and pushed him from the aircraft. Sgt. Lerum later died on the ground from his wounds. Sgt. Stuckey was able to join a group of Yugoslav Partisans and successfully evade the German patrols eventually returning to the 456th Bomber Group base at Cerignola, Italy.

*It turns out that Jim (Second Lieutenant James W. Herring) was awarded the silver star for gallantry in action in France on June 7, 1944. According to the newspaper article, his citation said: The ammunition dump and motor pool of Herring’s battalion was bombed and staffed by enemy aircraft, which ignited a large quantity of flame thrower liquid. As the fire grew in size and intensity, mortar ammunition, which was nearby began to explode. Herring, disregarding his own safety, rushed to the fire and attempted to beat it out. Seeing that he was unable to accomplish this, he nevertheless remained at the fire, throwing ammunition away from the flames until the fire was localized. A large amount of badly need ammunition and valuable government vehicles were thereby saved from destruction. Herring’s battalion fought without rest from the Normandy beachhead to beyond Montebourg and on the road to Cherbough. The dead the boys of the “Ivy Division” left behind enemy dead as well as their own. Theirs was the unenviable mission of scrambling through the marshland flooded with Jerries before the enemy backed up from the coastal zone and they could reach the paratroupers who had landed behind the German lines. (I am guessing that my mother and Aunt Ouita (as we called her) were a great comfort each other after the death of her husband as my mother never knew if and when my father would be coming home.)