Visiting Red

When we returned home from Germany in the fall of 2013, my sister Nitalynn and I traveled to Shreveport, Louisiana, to visit Red McCrocklin in person. He was 92 then. He and his friend Ruth greeted us warmly. It was the first time that I had actually met him, but I felt like I knew him. At that time, he was the last living member of my father’s B-24 crew.

It was obvious from our conversations that Red (we learned that some people called him Claude and some people called him “Red” – for his red hair) really loved our father. They seemed to have developed a strong bond during and after their war experiences. Red entertained us with a lot of stories about our father, and he told those stories as if they had happened yesterday.

Red said one time my father was standing up on a pole in the prison camp cussing at the German guards. Remember that Dick had a habit of salty language so my sister and I could just hear our father going on and on. Red had to go out and coax him down, telling him that he was going to get shot. Red was only 23 and my father was 28, but I think that Red felt protective of my father. Zemke, in his book, said that loathing for the Germans increased after several fatal shootings of prisoners by the guards in March 1945, and “for the most part, goon baiting took the form of threats and insults to those guards who, not understanding English, were oblivious to what was being said. ‘You Nazi bastard, your corpse will soon be floating in the Baltic,’ might sound like a friendly salutation if said with a smile.”

Red told us the story of their bailing out of “The Miss Zeke.” With the intercom out, Red, standing in the clear plastic bubble nose of the bomber, looked back at Dick and signaled they should bail out by pulling his finger across his throat. At first Dick was adamant that he was going to fly the plane back to base. But then a bullet went whizzing by his head, and fortunately he decided it was time to bail.

Red said that when they were in Camp Lucky Strike, there was a lot of conflict between the white soldiers and the African-American soldiers. During the course of the war, the status of the Blacks has changed considerable. So when they arrived at Camp Lucky Strike, many of the Black soldiers were handling the delousing, and this caused a lot of trouble. Eisenhower, in his talk to the camp, had to tell the men that times were different now and that they better get used to it.

We were grateful that we made that visit. Soon after that, Red fell ill and never recovered. His nephew Mark Armstrong, and his friend Ruth, who had been his archaeology field secretary, took care of him as well as his son, Will D. McCrocklin.

Red told us not one day went by that he didn’t think about his war experiences. He teared up several times; they haunted him till the day he died. Mark Armstrong said, in Red's book, “Combat and Capture,” said, “Like so many veterans, the demons of war never fully let go, and the war continues in the mind.”

Claude “Red” McCrocklin passed away on October 18, 2014 at the age of 93. He had been a cattle buyer after the war and, after he retired, then took up archaeology, recording over 600 sites in Louisiana. In World War II, he received the Air Medal with 1 Oak Leaf Cluster and the European, African, Middle East campaign medal with three bronze stars. After the war,  he flew with the reserves at Barksdale Air Force, and in later years, he gave talks about his war experience to new air force trainees there. Several soldiers from the base attended came to his funeral.

Nitalynn and I traveled the funeral in Shreveport and met his son, his nephew and all of his family. They knew who our father was. It was a very emotional experience as we listened to stories about “Uncle Red.” We also met Linda Lesniewski and bonded over our experience as being daughters of World War II prisoners of war and especially the miracle of their survival.

As my mother said about Red, “He was something else!” We are grateful that he looked after our father.