On the 70th Anniversary of the Kassel Mission

Paul Swofford being awarded the Silver Star

 

On the 70th Anniversary of the Kassel Mission

Aaron Elson

President, Kassel Mission Historical Society

Hard as it is to believe, today is the 70th anniversary of the Kassel Mission. Paul Swofford, one of a handful of pilots who brought his badly damaged B-24 back to England that day in 1944, left a message on my answering machine the other day. I could tell from the wavering in his voice how shaken he was by the memories, and yet he stressed how thankful he was that he had the opportunity to tell his story so that it would not be forgotten.

Every veteran of the Kassel Mission, every widow or sibling of a flier killed in the battle, has his or her own personal thoughts as the 70th anniversary of the battle approaches. Some family members of Kassel Mission veterans are in Germany where the annual wreath laying ceremony carries extra significance because of the 70th anniversary.

Thanks to the efforts of people like George Collar and Bill Dewey and Frank Bertram and Walter Hassenpflug, and the energy of the members of the Kassel Mission Historical Society, including Kassel survivors John Ray Lemons and Ira Weinstein, the sacrifice of the men lost on the Kassel Mission will be honored not only by the "next generation," but by the generation after that, as exemplified by social media wiz J.P. Bertram, and generations yet to come.

As for me, I don't have a familial connection to the mission. It was while visiting the village of Heimboldshausen where a buddy of my father's was killed in World War II, that I met Walter and became fascinated by the history of the mission, some of which I've helped to preserve through a series of informal oral history interviews.

So today I'm going to watch at least the beginning, and maybe a few scenes, of "12 O'Clock High," which to the survivors of the Kassel Mission is like "Patton" was to the veterans of my father's tank battalion, and I'll get all choked up when Dean Jagger sees that silly figure in the store window, and I'll listen for the drone of the returning B-24s. And I'll read the poem "High Flight," by John Gillespie Magee, a young Spitfire pilot who died in a training crash in 1941 at age 19, and and I'll remember George Collar telling me how disappointed he was as a youth because that was the War to End All Wars, and he feared he would never get the chance to be like his boyhood heroes.

High Flight

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed and joined the tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds, – and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless falls of air...
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, nor e'er eagle flew –
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high, untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

The Watch That Went to War Part 1

Available soon at Amazon.com and for Kindle

 (My 1999 interview with Kassel Mission veteran Ira Weinstein will be available soon in a Kindle edition, with a print version available from Amazon.)

Navigator/bombardier, 445th Bomb Group

Kassel Mission survivor, ex-POW

April 17, 1999

Palm Beach, Fla.

 

 Aaron Elson: You grew up in Chicago?

Ira Weinstein: Yes.

Aaron Elson: Was there a Jewish community in Chicago?

Ira Weinstein: Oh, a tremendous Jewish community. My grandfather was the first Jewish undertaker in Chicago.

Aaron Elson: And where was your family from originally?

Ira Weinstein: My father and mother were born in America. My grandfather came from Russia.

Aaron Elson: Did you enlist or were you drafted?

Ira Weinstein: I enlisted. Since I was ten years old more or less, I was an aviation buff. I loved airplanes, so here, 70 years later, I’m still building model airplanes.

Aaron Elson: You had started studying the World War I aces?

Ira Weinstein: Yes. And when the war was imminent, and I was working, I enlisted. I filed an application to be an Aviation Cadet. In those days, you had to have either two years’ college education to get an appointment as an Aviation Cadet, or you had to take an exam. I didn’t go to college. My father went broke during the Depression. As soon as I got out of high school I went to work.

I took the exam, and out of 600 guys mine was the fourth highest grade, so I got an appointment. Then the war started, and they were processing so many guys, I quit my job. I thought they were going to take me right away. They didn’t take me for six months, because they were waiting to process people. Then I got my appointment as a cadet, and went through all the usual basic training and the pre-flight.

Aaron Elson: Did you want to be a fighter pilot?

Ira Weinstein: Every guy wanted to be a pilot. I went to primary school and I was doing really good. I was way up in the class in the ground school, but every time I got in an airplane they had to readjust the airplane. First of all, you were supposed to be 5-foot-4 to go to pilot training. I’m only 5 feet tall. So one day I’m standing in a line naked, waiting to get a shot, and a flight surgeon comes by. He says, “Mister, how tall are you?”

I said, “I’m 5-foot-2.” I wasn’t 5-foot-2. I was 5 feet tall. Next day I was in the commandant’s office, and he says, “Look. You’re through in primary training.” But I had a real high number in the draft, so I could have gotten out, because I volunteered to go in. He said, “Do you want out? I can let you out. But if you want to stay in, I’ll see that you go wherever you want to go.”

I didn’t want to get out. He said, “I could send you right away to bombardier school.”

That’s fine. As long as I’m in an airplane, that’s it. So I went to bombardier school. I went to Ellington Field in Texas, and then I went to Childress, Texas, and then they picked a whole bunch of guys and sent us to navigation school. So I had a dual rating. Before I went overseas I was already a first lieutenant; before  I was even assigned to a crew. I know that sounds like nothing, but in the service, that was big-time stuff, to be a first lieutenant instead of a second lieutenant.

I was assigned to a crew, and we went for training as a crew at Peterson Field in Colorado. I got married there, and then we went a bunch of other places to do this and that, and then finally we went overseas.

Aaron Elson: Did you marry somebody you met there or somebody from Chicago?

Ira Weinstein: This was a girlfriend that I had from Chicago. Even though the war was on, they were still treating us like cadets, it was unbelievable. The clothes we had, and the food we were getting, they treated us like kings. The invitations for our graduation, to get our commission, were on leather. Genuine leather invitations. Stamped! I sent one to my girlfriend. Next thing I know, she says, “I’ll come to the graduation.” She came. Next thing, we got married.

Anyhow, let me bring you up to the day of the battle, and then later you can go back if you want.

Okay. The Kassel mission out of Tibenham was on September 27, and you may not know it, but that was Yom Kippur. I was not supposed to fly that day. I don’t know why I went to the briefing, but I was on a lead crew. And I guess, I don’t remember, but I think maybe we had to go to every briefing, even though we weren’t going to fly that day.

I go to the briefing, and I see the mission, and I see we’re going to have fighter cover all the way. It wasn’t that far into Germany. And by that time we had pretty good fighter cover. My wife’s birthday was Christmas, and I had one more mission to fly, so I thought I’d try and go on this mission and I’d be home in time for Christmas.

I went to the colonel and I said, “Let me fly today. See if there’s an opening on a crew.”

And he said, “What are you, stupid? You don’t volunteer. It’s a Jewish holiday. You’ve got a three-day pass. Go to London. Have some fun.”

I said, “No, I want to go.”

And he really didn’t want me to go. He said, “You’re not supposed to do anything today.”

I finally talked him into it, and I was home for my wife’s birthday – a year later.

On the other hand, I’m here and I’m alive, so even though maybe God punished me for flying on Yom Kippur, he also saved me.

On the mission, I was assigned to a crew that I’d never flown with. I flew with the Donald crew. I didn’t know one person on it.

Early on the mission – once we turned off the initial point, I saw fighters. And everybody was on the radio, saying there were fighters and so forth, and in that ship that day we had a nose turret but it was not manned. So I got up in the nose turret, on the guns. I had never gone to gunnery school, but I’d flown enough missions I knew what that was all about.

The battle was quick. I don’t know how many minutes they say the whole thing lasted, but it was minutes, not hours. I’m firing the guns, and the next thing I know, I feel somebody tumble me over backwards out of the turret, and it was the navigator, a guy by the name of Eric Smith. I thought, “What’s going on?” And I turn around and he’s bailing out the nose hatch. He saved my life. That was the first I knew that our ship was in trouble, on fire, and we were going down. I didn’t know it. I was busy firing the guns. So I bailed out.

Now another interesting thing is – God’s will – I always wore a chest chute, and I never wore it on, because when I had to lean over the bomb sight, I couldn’t have that on me, so the chest chute was always by my side. That day, when I finally got permission to fly, I didn’t have a parachute because my parachute was being repacked. I went to the parachute room and they gave me a back pack. I had never worn a back pack except in the cadets. If it would have been a different mission, I wouldn’t be here today because I’d have never found that chest pack.

So I bailed out with a back pack, and when I bailed out, the straps of the parachute caught on the bomb sight. By this time the plane was going down. It was in a flat spin with a lot of centrifugal force. I could hardly get out. I chinned myself back up into the airplane, undid the strap, and bailed out a second time.

By the time I bailed out, I figure I was at the most maybe at 2,500 feet. I popped my chute and I was on the ground. That was it. I never had time enough to enjoy what it was really like being in the parachute.

I landed up in the hills, where a bunch of kids were picnicking. I got rid of my chute and ran, I was up in the hills, and I hid under some trees. My pilot – this guy Donald – must have bailed out the top hatch. When he bailed out, I’m presuming, he must have hit his feet on the rudders. I saw him come down in the valley, and I saw he couldn’t get up. And pretty soon some farmers came along and they pitchforked him to death. When night came, I went down and I got his dogtags, and they had stripped him of everything but his underpants. His shoes, everything but his underpants.

When I came back, I reported that to the War Crimes Commission, and they sent two guys down from Washington, D.C., to Chicago to interview me about it. And then maybe two or three years ago, I got a call – actually, Bill Dewey got the call – a guy was trying to find out if anybody knew anything about his brother-in-law. Dewey said, “Call Ira Weinstein. He knows all about it.” So the guy called me, and told me who he was, but I didn’t know who he was, so I asked him a bunch of questions, and I realized it was legitimate. Then I told him the whole story. I told him, “You may not even want to tell your sister about this,” because why should she know the terrible details?  I don’t know what he did, but we corresponded a couple of times. I sent him copies of all the stuff from the War Crimes Commission. That was a horrible incident.

Aaron Elson: What did you do with his dogtags?

Ira Weinstein: When I finally got to American hands a year later, I still had the dogtags. So I turned them in.

Aaron Elson: Where did you hide them?

Ira Weinstein: In my pocket most of the time. That night I hid under trees up in the forest. It was a pine forest. And the pine needles under the trees were inches thick, so I buried myself under those pine needles, and then during the day I wouldn’t move. I’d only move at night. I thought, ‘I’ll make my way to Switzerland.’ Well, I don’t swim, and every time I came to a body of water I couldn’t get across. I hid out for a couple of days, but by that time I realized that they were shooting and looking for guys. I realized I’m never going to get out of this.

I was scared, but I wasn’t hungry because at night I’d go down in the valley, I’d get some potatoes or whatever they’re growing, and that’s what I’d eat. I came to a little town, and I don’t know, Walter Hassenpflug thinks it was a town called Nesselrode [Nesselroden] or something, and there must have been 20 churches in that town. So I thought, “If I’m ever going to get a fair shake, it’ll be in a place where they had so many churches.”

I walked down into the town, and I looked like Murder Incorporated, because our plane was on fire, I was covered with soot, and I hadn’t shaved for maybe a week. And I’m walking through the center of town and a kid about 17 years old sidles up alongside of me and he said, “You’re one of the American fliers they’re looking for, aren’t you?”

I said, “Yeah.” Then I said, “How come you speak such good English?”

“Oh,” he said, “I went to high school in Milwaukee.”

I said to him,  “What’s going to happen to me?”

He said, “I’ll take you to the burgomeister.”

Sure enough, he took me to the burgomeister’s house, and the burgomeister’s wife gave me a bowl of potato soup. And I remember, that was the best thing I ever ate.

There was an SS battalion in that area, and the burgomeister said, “If I turn you over to them, you’re going to be dead. So if you behave yourself, and you don’t try and run away, I’ll call the Luftwaffe and they can come and get you. There you’ll be safe.” And about two hours later, two guys in beautiful Luftwaffe uniforms showed up with a car, and they took me to a little garrison. It was walled in, and they threw me in this room. I think there were maybe 20 other guys in it. George Collar was one of them. There were two badly wounded enlisted men, and I was the ranking officer.

I looked around – these two guys had had no medical attention, they’d been there two or three days already, and don’t ask me why I did this or how I did it, but I was always cocky. I got hold of the guard, and I told him I want to see the commanding officer. So he took me in to see the commanding officer. And it

Erich Von Stroheim

would have been a joke if I wasn’t so scared, but that guy looked just like Erich Von Stroheim, remember him? First I saluted him, and I gave my name, my rank and my serial number, and I said, “Sir, according to the Geneva Convention, we have two very badly wounded men, they’re entitled to some medical care.”

Erich Von Stroheim

He came out from behind his desk with a riding crop, and he hit me across the cheek. He split my cheek open, and he said, “I’ll tell you about the Geneva Convention. You’re bombing our schools and our churches and you’re killing our people and blah blah blah blah.” Then he told the guard to take me away. So I went back to the room, and about two hours later they came and took the two injured men away.

After you flew enough missions you thought you knew all the tricks, and one of them was that the electric shoes in the planes hardly ever worked properly. What I used to do is I’d put on two or three pairs of heavy woolen socks, and then I’d put my flying boots over them. That way my feet were pretty warm. When I bailed out, my flying boots came off,  because they were loose. I was running around in the forest for a couple of days with no shoes. But I cut a piece out of my flying suit and I made a pair of moccasins. I used the electrical wires that were in the flying suit to tie them on. So now I’m in this little room they had us in. Pretty soon the guard comes, he says, “Kommen Sie mit mir,” and he takes me back to the commandant’s office.

My parents never spoke Yiddish, but my grandparents did when they didn’t want us to know what was going on. So I knew a little bit. But a little bit of knowledge is dangerous. This is what I think I hear the commandant say to the guard: “Take him out and schissen him.” That means “Take him out and shoot him.” What he said was “schussen,” or “Give him a pair of shoes.” But I didn’t hear shoes. I heard shoot. So this guy marches me out of the little barracks we were in into the compound, and about 50 yards ahead of me there’s a gate. I thought if this asshole’s gonna shoot me, he’s gonna shoot me in the back, because I’m gonna make a run for it when I get to that gate.

Maybe 25 yards from the gate was another little room. He took me in there and got me a pair of shoes. That’s how close I came to being killed that time, let alone getting out of the airplane or in the battle.

Then they took the guys from that barrack – George and I especially – who were in good shape, around to all the airplanes, getting the guns off of them and burying the bodies. And one of the ships I came across was my own ship. I knew it was mine because I knew the insignia on it, but I didn’t know any of the kids who were in the plane. I knew the pilot got killed. I didn’t know where the navigator was but I knew he had bailed out, and there was another guy – I forget who he was – on the ship. The other five guys were all burned to a crisp in the ship. And I had to take them out and bury them, right there. When I got back to the States I said to my wife, “You know, those parents must wonder what happened. All they get is a KIA notice, nothing else, no explanation from the government. I think I’m going to go visit all those parents.”

I got the addresses and the names, and I went and visited all those parents. I didn’t tell them the gory details, but I told them that their kids were in a battle and it was terrible and they were probably shot during the battle, and that I buried their bodies and this is where it is, and so forth.

Now we go back to this little hut, and they’re going to march us to the railroad station to go to the interrogation center. And these are stories that George told me that I didn’t even remember.

They put two guys on a stretcher, and George and I were going to carry them to the railroad station. I remembered that, but I didn’t remember this part until George told it to me, then it came back to me, like when you see an old movie on television. It was real hot, and these goddamn guys have got their guns in our backs. “Raus! Schnell! Schnell!” They wanted us to walk faster. How can we walk faster? Finally, they let us sit down, and George says we sat down on the curb of the street and a lady came out and gave us a drink. When George told me that, I said, “No German lady ever gave me a drink of water, forget it, you don’t know what you’re talking about.” The more I thought about it, all of a sudden it all started to come back to me. Then when we got to the railroad station, I don’t know if George told you this story, they lined everybody up in the railroad station and they made us all stand at attention, and some SS guys took control then, and they were calling out the roll. When they came to my name, Weinstein, they made me step up in front of the group, and George says he was sure they were going to shoot me right then and there. Then they put everybody else at rest, and they left me standing at attention. I think it was about two hours till that train came, I stood at attention, and finally we got on the train.

Aaron Elson: George said that somebody said “Jude.”

Ira Weinstein: Yeah, “Judish.”

Aaron Elson: And he said he thought, “They’re gonna shoot  Weinstein.”

Ira Weinstein: He told me that. And then it came back to me. You know, you’re so young, I think you’re too stupid to know what’s going on. You’re not afraid like you should be. As you look back in retrospect, how did I get the chutzpah to go to the commandant and tell him about those two men who needed medical attention? But I thought I was a hero in those days. Nothing bothered me, I was crazy.

Anyhow, we finally get to the interrogation center, and I have to tell you a great story. I’m writing this story up for the Eighth Air Force Bulletin now.

Before I left, I had a cousin who was older than I was, who was already flying his own plane, and he was my hero. His father and mother invited me to dinner, and he gave me a watch. It was a Longines Weems watch, which was the watch that all the commercial and other aviators wore. And he said, “Here’s a watch. I want you to take this, it’s a great watch for you, and you bring it back safe.” That’s the watch I wore on all my missions. So when we got to the interrogation center – I’m jumping ahead a little bit; well, I’ll tell you the watch story first. No, I can’t. They threw us all in cells, and first they’d run the temperature way up, then they’d turn it off, but I was only there two days as I remember, maybe overnight or two nights. And then they brought me in to a guy to interrogate me. We had seen a movie that showed just what to expect when you were going to be interrogated, and it would be laughable because it was just like that if you weren’t so scared. They told us, you just give your name, rank and serial number. Don’t try and outsmart them or get in a conversation with them.

I stood my ground. Finally, he brings in a guy, and he says to me, “Lieutenant, you don’t have to tell me anything. I know all about you. Your mother is Lillian Seligman. She lives in Rochester, New York, with your sister. She lives at 47 Rutledge Drive. You were born and raised in Chicago. You worked for Goldblatt’s.” They had a dossier on me that was better than the Americans had; they knew everything about me. “You were with the 445th Bomb Group. Your mission was to Kassel. You were in the 702nd Squadron. Your squadron commander was Lieutenant Colonel Jones.” So I didn’t have to answer anything, I just kept giving them my name. “Now, all you have to tell us is, where were you flying that mission and what was your target?”

I’d say, “Name, Ira P. Weinstein, first lieutenant, 0694482.” So finally he got pissed off. Then he says to me, “You are not an American. You’re a German. Your name is Weinstein. You were my neighbor in Frankfurt. You’re a shpy.” If you’re a "shpy," you’re gonna get shot. I didn’t give. Finally, he calls in a guy. A guy comes in, about six feet tall, in a black body suit with a rubber hose. Then the interrogator’s asking me questions and this guy’s slapping that hose. But we saw that in the movie. I was plenty scared, believe me, I wasn’t gonna laugh like I can now. And he finally says to me, “Well, if you don’t want to tell us what we want to know I’m going to have to turn you over to this guy.” I stuck with it, and finally he says to the guy, “Take him out of here,” and I went back to my room.

The next day I was out of there. However, when I went back to my room – oh, and then they sent in a German officer in a flying suit with a lot of ribbons, he came in and he said, “Cigarette, Lieutenant?”

I said, “No, I don’t smoke.”

So he sits down on the couch. He says, “You know, you’re a flying officer. I’m a flying officer. I’d just like to talk to you about what it was like. Can we discuss it?”

I said, “No.”

“You know, we’re compatriots.”

“Sorry.”

So he left. Then they took all our clothes, and they gave us a shower and a delousing. I was marching up the hall to the shower, a group was coming out of the showers, and there was a guy there from New Zealand. He says to me, “Hey, Yank. If you’ve got anything you don’t want them to take, get rid of it now because they’re confiscating everything.”

I still had this watch on. I took the watch off – it was on an expansion band – and I threw it to him. I said, “Here, you keep the watch.”

“Okay.”

Two days later I’m in a boxcar in Frankfurt, in the marshaling yards, and the RAF comes to bomb the marshaling yards. It’s night, and the Germans lock us in the cars and they go to the air raid shelters. On the next track is another set of boxcars with POWs. There’s the New Zealand guy. He sees me. He says, “Hey, Yank, you want your watch back?”

I said, “Yeah.”

So he threw the watch through the slats – and I caught it. And I kept that watch all during the time that I was a POW and I brought it back. That story is in Roger Freeman’s book. But now I’m going to elaborate it on it and write it up for the Eighth Air Force newsletter, “The Watch that Went to War.”

(Part 2 coming soon)

Two Foxes and a Pocket Bible

    

Eugene George tells his story during a trip to Germany. Photo by Linda Dewey.

   Walter Eugene George was the co-pilot on Donald Brent's crew on the Kassel Mission. I interviewed him over lunch in a Mexican restaurant in San Antonio. I don't remember the name of the restaurant, but it must have been a good one because he drove all the way from Austin to meet me. Because of the background noise in the restaurant, I did not make an audio CD of our conversation.

   His is one of many dramatic accounts of the Kassel Mission I've been fortunate to have chronicled.

   Eugene George died on Jan. 16 of this year. He was 90 years old.

                                                          Eugene George

                                                San Antonio, Texas, Aug. 29, 2001

                                                                               

Aaron Elson: How old were you when you went into the service?

Eugene George: I was called to active duty in February of ’43. I’d been on a standby reserve before that. In February of  ’43 I would have been 20, 19 or 20.

Aaron Elson: Had been you been to the university yet?

Eugene George: Yes, I’d gone to the university about two years.

Aaron Elson: Of Texas?

Eugene George: Yes.

Aaron Elson: Were you called into the Army?

Eugene George: No. I joined the Air Force to go into cadet pilot training and was on standby for that.

Aaron Elson: So you were in the Army Air Force?

Eugene George: Yes.

Aaron Elson: And what position did you wind up in?

Eugene George: I ended up in pilot training. There were three groups, a pilot, navigator and bombardier.

Aaron Elson: You were a co-pilot or a navigator?

Eugene George: I was a co-pilot, but my wings were a pilot. I mean I graduated as a pilot. I flew with Brent as a co-pilot but I qualified as a pilot and logged pilot time in addition to co-pilot time.

Aaron Elson: How many missions did you fly?

Eugene George: I flew 17 missions and aborted one. We had an engine shot out, so that one didn’t count.

Aaron Elson: So the Kassel was your 18th mission?

Eugene George: 17th.

Aaron Elson: Which missions were your most memorable?

Eugene George: My first mission was to Paris. We bombed Orly Airport. The Germans were using it as a backup field, and there were some dirigible hangars, very famous ones built in  1918, and I really hated to bomb these. But the thing that was most amazing was you couldn’t see the ground because of such low fog in Paris, but the Eiffel Tower stuck straight out of that fog.

Another one was Nancy. We bombed a fuel dump there, and as we left the target, the tail gunner called me and said, “Lieutenant, you’ve got to see this.” I got up in the top turret and looked back, and this big black smoke came up through the clouds. I remember those.

One mission took us over the island of Helgoland. I never knew why they routed us over Helgoland because the reputation was that that’s where they retired the best flak gunners in the German artillery. I was flying on the wing of the lead airplane, and I saw a flak burst come up. It was 88 millimeter flak, you could tell the difference between that and 105, and there were two that bracketed right on that lead aircraft. I saw the two bursts and I knew the third burst would get him, and the fourth burst would get us, so I racked the plane out of formation, and the third burst got him and the fourth burst missed us.

On the mission we aborted, we came home on three engines. When we got on the ground, there was a fragment of something in the engine that was shot out. The crew chief said “Don’t touch that thing!” It was a nose fuse. We’d had a direct hit on that engine, and the nose fuse was still active. It hadn’t exploded. The shell had broken off before it exploded.

Aaron Elson: What happened the morning of the Kassel mission?

Eugene George: We had a briefing, of course. One was awakened, oh, as early as 3 a.m., and we went in for breakfast. We had a flying officers’ mess and we had a ground officers’ mess and we had an enlisted men’s mess. The flying officers’ mess was considered the worst of the three, and the ground officers’ mess was the best. We would take our wings off and go in there at times, and the food was better. This upset us somewhat, but on that mission, the food was so bad that morning. They did have some canned peaches, and that’s all I ate for breakfast. I had not started drinking coffee yet. I learned to drink ersatz coffee when I was imprisoned in Germany because that was the hot beverage during the cold winter.

We went into the briefing, and there would be a chart on the wall, and the target would be located. There would be possible areas of flak listed, and as I recall where our IP would be located, there’d be some possible alternatives. We would get a weather report, and be told what to expect. We would be told about fighter protection, if it was English or American and what it would be. On the long missions we would link up with P-38s which were very easily identified, and the Mustang with that big cowling was easily identified, and we could identify German aircraft. But generally we would then get our parachutes and check out an escape kit, and go out and wait under the airplane until the control tower fired a flare, then start up the engines.

As I recall the run to Kassel was at 23,500 feet. I was not aware of any mishap in navigation until I heard a discussion over the intercom among the navigators. What upset me was that they were discussing over the radio that we were off course, and of course the Germans could hear this. Now, I say the navigators, I think this was two navigators that were discussing over the lead navigator. And as part of this discussion I heard the lead pilot say “Stay in close and follow me.”

We also knew we were without fighter protection, and there was some communication to try to get to our fighters. I also remember our tail gunner saying “There are fighters coming in from the rear.”

I said, “That’s great.”

And he said, “They’re not ours.”

So I knew they were approaching from the rear. Of course I didn’t see any of this.

I was very much aware of the fact that we were under fire, and what made me aware of it was our own guns started firing. And also, the German artillery was sort of like patters of rain on the cockpit, but our own guns were making much more noise. My concentration was right on that wing. I was totally locked in to keeping the aircraft in formation. I knew we were being hit, but the first, see, I was flying the airplane and I was aware that we were dangerously hit when I was watching engine instruments and I thought the engine was burning, which it was, and I could see  the engine right next to me was burning. I didn’t know if I should put the fire extinguisher or not. I didn’t, and Brent was still just sitting there. So I pushed the bailout button, and I gave the crew time enough where I thought they would bail out and go through the procedures that we had learned when leaving the aircraft.

     I tried to raise the rear of the airplane and the front of the airplane on the intercom, and I couldn’t get anything from either direction. I knew we’d been hit, but I didn’t know whether something had happened to them. I could see flak coming on the nose of the airplane because it was in front of me, and the Germans were approaching from the rear, coming up, rolling over and doing a split S and down, coming out. I saw one of them do this when I was getting the top turret gunner out.

     After I gave him enough time to get out, I could see, in the cockpit area, the radio operator and the engineer, the top turret gunner, were supposed to leave on the sound of the alarm, open the bomb bays, and we would keep on flying the airplane until they got clear. Then we would go out. I went out and the top turret gunner was, whose name was Constant S. Galuszewski, he was from East Tonawanda, New York, and the radio operator was named Sam Weiner, who was from the Los Angeles area. But he was still in his turret, and I had to crawl up there and jerk him by the seat of the pants. Weiner didn’t even have his parachute harness on. So I jerked Galuszewski out of the turret, but in doing that I saw the German plane turning and splitting S. After having made his run, a beautiful airplane, very close, as close as to the other end of, well, three-quarters of the way to the other end of this room. And I got Weiner’s harness and shoved it at him, and opened the door into the bomb bay, and it was just a mass of flame. The fuel gauges, which were on the left, were spitting like blowtorches, and the bomb bay doors were closed and we would have been trapped if they had remained closed. They operated hydraulically. There were fires all over the place in the bomb bay. It’s amazing, I’d see areas of flame chasing up pipes and pipework. And the switch to open the bomb bay doors was right between those two blowtorches which were the fuel gauges. I thought I could hit that switch and if we had hydraulic power, I could open the bomb bay doors. If we didn’t, I’d have to wind it, and I didn’t think I could survive in the flames. But I could jump through all of this flame on the catwalk to get there, and I hit the switch on the way over to it, and I jumped through and got there. And the bomb bay doors opened.

     But I still had the responsibility of these two enlisted men. So I went back through those blowtorches. Galuszewski was just sort of standing there in a daze. I started snapping Weiner’s harness on him. Everybody had chest packs. I had a back pack. I’d been off oxygen for a while to do all of this, and I didn’t know if my parachute was burned when I walked through the fire. I’d walked through the fire and I walked back through the fire.

     While I was standing over Weiner and getting him put back together, Brent came by and told Weiner to hurry up and he went ahead and bailed out. He went through the door into the flaming area. I never knew whether he went back to check on people in the waist or whether he went on out or what happened. Or whether he was injured in going out, because the fire obstructed vision.  I was concerned about that. But he went on out. I still got Weiner put together, ready to go, and and Galuszewski, and they were behind me, so I went on out. And they went out too, as the aircraft broke up. It broke up. They told me later. The three of us were the only ones who survived of the crew.

     I never knew what happened to Brent. During the reunion at Bad Hersfeld I heard what the Germans did and things like that, but the Brent story is another story which I’ll fill you in on down the line. Now, do you want the account of my fall, of my jump?

     Aaron Elson: Oh yes! I’m spellbound.

     Eugene George: I came out of the airplane. I used to swim a lot, and I came out, I was afraid I would hit some obstruction and my safest bet would be to get into a cannonball position. I didn’t know whether I had a parachute or not. And there were three things. One, I’d been off of oxygen for quite a while, and I was concerned about this. I wanted to get lower. Two, I knew there were a lot of German fighters in the area and chances are they wouldn’t shoot someone in a parachute, but I was afraid of even getting rammed, or run into, by a fighter. We had been briefed on the fact that the Polish fighters in the RAF would have no hesitation shooting a German in a parachute, and we knew that when this had happened the Germans would retaliate. That’s what we’d been told. The other thing was, in training films, we had a Navy character named Dilbert. Did you ever hear of Dilbert?

     Aaron Elson: Just the cartoon.

     Eugene George: He was a cartoon. He was a cadet, or a pilot, who goofed every possible way. One of these cartoons showed Dilbert in a parachute with a target painted on his chest and a duck sitting on his head and a Japanese aircraft lining up his sights, and I had that vision, of Dilbert. Those three things. And I was tumbling. I was in the cannonball position. I thought I’d better get out of that, and I didn’t know quite how to do that, and I stretched out into a swan dive. I reached for my ripcord to see if everything was still there, and I started spinning, so I got back in the swan dive.

 

Robert Osborn's Dilbert the Pilot

 

     There was a solid cloud cover underneath us. I thought when I get into those clouds, I will pull my ripcord.

     I went right through the clouds, and I could see the ground. But I was still in a freefall situation. And I was curious as to whether I had a parachute or not, but actually, the swan dive situation, it’s almost exhilarating. It was fun!

     So I fell most of the 23,000 feet, and I pulled my ripcord, and I was jerked up into the proper parachute position. My parachute worked. That was the great news. And I was coming down on some trees, which I later found were beech trees. My canopy covered the top of a tree, and I was swinging in the tree.

     I was kind of reconnoitering, I could hear an air raid siren, and I could hear impacts of aircraft crashing. And as part of this I could hear a lot of small explosions which I think were ammunition on the aircraft.

     I was able to swing over to the trunk of the tree and I discovered that my boots had snapped off when the parachute opened.

     I got over to the trunk of the tree and could climb up so I could reduce my parachute, which I left in the tree. While I was in the tree I looked down and there were two foxes, they were beautiful, red foxes with white tips on their tails. And they were obviously frightened by all of this activity. I thought, they would know where to hide, I mean they would go to a dense place. So I watched their direction. I never saw them again, but I got on the ground and headed in that direction, and I did get into a very dense undergrowth. I could see the sky but I was pretty well concealed, and sort of took stock of things.

I opened my escape kit, and it had been rifled. The stuff that mostly there was some hard candies, some halizone tablets for water purification, someone had been through it and turned it in, and the map was not there, which was really the one thing I wanted.

Waitress: Coffee?

Eugene George: Yes. I would like a cup of decaf, black.

Aaron Elson: Regular.

Eugene George: I had a little pocket Bible, and with it a New Testament with psalms, and I  opened it up, it was about ten o’clock in the morning, and it fell open to the 91st Psalm.

Aaron Elson: Is that “May ten thousand fall to your left...”?

Eugene George: Yes, that’s the one. So, that was very reassuring. That was a miracle. I mean, the foxes and the psalm. I waited for quite a while. I did see three, they could not see me, but ME-109s flying low over. They were in formation, probably returning to base. Also, there was a path not too far away and I heard some people talking. There were three men, all senior citizens, and they had a little fox terrier with them. I was really worried about that, but I was downwind from them. I was enough of a Boy Scout to know about this sort of thing, and the dog never caught me, but they were sort of talking to the dog, the dog was looking up at them, they went right on by.

My plan was to head for Switzerland, walk all night and sleep all day, and before the sun came up I would find a place to dig in.

I ran into Corman Bean, and we were together on that first night, or maybe the second night, I don’t remember. It was the 27th of September or the 28^th. It was pretty chilly, and he slept all morning and he kept talking in his sleep about Millie, his wife. He would talk about her and it was quite a touching encounter. And then somehow, he decided to take off and we got separated. I don’t know how it happened.

I think we would have been together for a day or so. We didn’t have any food. We both had these little plastic water bottles that folded up and we purified our water, we had plenty of water. We tried eating raw potatoes. You’d go into a little farm, it was the fall and there was fruit on the trees, but the German dogs were really friendly, but they would start barking, and we didn’t want to risk that. So we didn’t eat.

Now, Corman’s stories may match up here some, but I think most of what I’m going to tell you was solo on my part. Somehow we got separated. We didn’t dare make a fire, or even if we had I don’t think we had any matches, but the raw potatoes were just not possible. At any rate, I found myself alone, still headed south. I was out about six days before I was picked up. I lost count. I knew it was into October some.

There were about three or four encounters that would be interesting. One is that, it’s amazing how your senses sharpen up under these circumstances, and I realized walking in the dark that I was not alone, and, you freeze. I had made shoes for myself out of part of my heated flying suit, I had a very sharp pocket knife and I used the wires in the heated suit to tie them, so I could move very quietly. So I just froze and there were two lovers, and I was very close to them. They never knew I was there, they were focused on each other.

The Brent crew

 

     Another time I found an autobahn, the main autobahn south, and headed toward Switzerland. Everything was blacked out but when you know a large, concentrated area, even though it’s blacked out, you get a feeling for the place. I could hear a railroad train. I was very concerned about bridges, because I didn’t want to get caught in the middle of a bridge. There was practically no traffic, and any traffic there was would have been military traffic, but I would often instead of walking on the bridge I’d go down and try to cross over the creek, not to get caught on the bridge. So I would walk all night and hide out all day. There was one time when I encountered a railroad going the same way as the autobahn, and the train was moving very slowly. I thought, if I can get onto this train I can hitch a ride for a while if it’s going in the right direction. It was going north. I was in timber, and I was on the edge of this forest by the railroad track, and I was secure behind a tree, it’s pretty dark, but I could make out, it was hauling something, and I could see cigarettes on these flat cars. It was an armored division, and it had tanks on this train and the crews were riding on the flatcars, now this was in the dark of night, so I thought, it was going in the wrong direction so I didn’t take that train. But those were two of the situations that I ran into.

One thing, the German forests were planted, and the trees were not at random. You could look down rows and rows of trees, and I think they could see you, so you really had to be cautious. But I was doing this at night.

About the sixth day, I ran out of cover. What happened was I was down in a valley, there were no trees, an agricultural area, and there was bridge. I thought if I could get under that bridge I could stay there all day. And so I did get under the bridge in some high stuff, but I didn’t reconnoiter at all. There was a path under the bridge also on the other side of the stream, and the Germans went to bed fairly early but they got up very early, and there were agricultural workers walking on this path. I knew they’d see me. I knew I was burned about the face and looked horrible, but I didn’t have a mirror, I didn’t know what I looked like, so I thought, well, my best plan is to just get up on the road, act boldly, and if I can find a bunch of bushes somewhere I’ll go in there, but surely they’ve seen me. I think they were so-called slave labor, I don’t know that they would have said anything, they were strange looking people. But I got up on the road and walked. A couple of military cars went by, didn’t stop. And I was getting into central Germany. I’d been walking like crazy. I put myself down as four miles per hour, because I’d conditioned myself to that pace. But I ran into an overseer of these laborers, and he saw me and he looked very stern and said “Englishman!”

I said, “Nein, nein, Amerikanische.” I was pretty hungry and tired by this time. My right eye was really hurting and I was afraid I might lose it from the burn. I could feel my face, and part of my oxygen mask had melted on my face. And he looked at me and looked horror stricken.

We had been told that the SS were dangerous, to never give up to them, that the Hitlerjugend were kids and they were dangerous, but to give up to the Wehrmacht. So I asked if he could take me to the Wehrmacht. He said yes, he would. He took me into this little town, I don’t know where it was, or what it was, I really would like to know the name of that town. He took me into what would be the equivalent of the administrative office. I had an o.d. uniform with insignia and stuff under my flying suit which had been burned in places. I took off my flying suit to show that I was in uniform. Finally they sent for someone who spoke English. So he came up and he said, “Are you from Chicago?”

And I said, “No, I’ve never been to Chicago.” And I told him I had walked for six days without food, did he have anything to eat?

He said, “Oh, you’ll get food.” They never did.

When he asked this question about Chicago I thought he was thinking about gangsters, American flyers were gangsters. So I told him name, rank and serial number, that I was a student, an architectural student, and they were amazed at how old I was. They thought I would have been much older. And I was from Texas. Now you’re just supposed to tell name, rank and serial number, but, he said, “Well, I lived in Chicago.”

And I said, “Well, you must not have liked it because you’re here in Germany.”

“Oh yes,” he said. “I’m going to go back there as fast as I can when this war is over.”

So they put me in their hoosegow, which was the top of their church, a little room in the  belfry. And I was so exhausted. And they sent for a Wehrmacht guard and a truck to take me to the railroad station.

And that little room was so filthy, I slept on the floor. But I was dead to the world, I was so tired. So I got on the train in the baggage car headed for Frankfurt. I didn’t know where it was going. And they had a guard in the baggage compartment. It had bicycles and baggage and things, and he was a Wehrmacht guard. Do you remember the Milton Caniff cartoons? He was very accurate in his drawings, and he would show Germans with Mauser rifles and actually in training, his drawings of Japanese landing craft were so accurate that those were used as training aids. But one of the things he was very accurate with was his weapons, and the Mauser, the German Mauser, was one of them. And this guard was a young guy, I looked at him, he was very curious about me, and I think the word had gotten through to him that I was from Texas and that I had been without food for six days and had walked all this distance. I did ask him how far I was from Switzerland. He said about 50 kilometers. And I went back and checked that distance after from Bad Hersfeld to see if it was possible, and it was plausible at a four mile per hour pace. Now I don’t know whether I’m exaggerating, but at any rate, that’s what I believe I heard him say. Another two nights I could have done it. And Switzerland wasn’t blacked out, so you knew when you were over the border.

My plan had been to get a boat and go to Lake Constance and go across there, if I could get a sailboat. I used to sail sailboats and I was thinking to do that. I didn’t know what sort of patrols they would have but I didn’t think they would be very severe because that was not a war zone. But anyway, I saw his rifle and I said, “Mauser?” And I looked at it, not trying to get too close, and he handed it to me. And I looked out the window, and I lifted his rifle and very carefully handed it back to him, and he realized what he had done, and then he was a little uptight. I was whistling which I think just passed the time, and I was whistling the Marseillaise. He asked me not to do it. He didn’t speak English, and he asked me not to do that, so I tried Lili Marlene and asked him to sing Lili Marlene. So we got into Frankfurt eventually. I still hadn’t eaten.

Aaron Elson: You must have been starved.

Eugene George: Well, actually with water you can last a long time. But those peaches I had back several days before had to last a long time. At any rate, I was taken into a place where there were a lot of German enlisted men, and they all knew that I had walked this distance and had been without food, and that I was from Texas. And being from Texas, it really turned them on. And I said, “No, my great-grandfather did. Not my father.” And that I grew up on horseback, and with cows and oil wells. So we talked about things like that. The big question on their minds was, “When is the war going to be over?”

And I said, “We think it’ll be done by Christmas.” And they were overjoyed at that. Everyone was sick and tired of war.

I was taken into the hospital for my burns. I had very good medical care. I asked the doctor if he went to school in Heidelberg. He said he did, and he said, “When is the war going to be over?”

And I said, “That’s one of the best medical schools in the world. Some of our best physicians went there before the war.”

And always, I think, because I was in a hospital bed, and because I behaved like an officer, these orderlies would come in, I did get some potato soup finally, and they would salute before they would ask a question, and I think this really paid off.

We went to a place called Dulag Luft, which you’ve heard about. I was there a couple of weeks and put on a train with one other person, an Australian radio operator in a Lancaster, and we headed for Stetin.

Aaron Elson: At Dulag Luft, were you interrogated?

Eugene George: Not much. You see, I looked like Frankenstein. I was all bandaged up. I was not much interrogated. The Australian and I were locked up in a compartment of a passenger car. We went through Berlin on the way, and we were locked in the car and there was an air raid on Berlin. The German officer said that the Geneva Convention says I’m supposed to warn you that I will shoot you if you try to escape and I’m now warning you, and he went to the bomb shelter. We stayed locked up in the train, and the bombs didn’t fall near us. I looked the Australian up in Australia when I went there later on, his name is Johnny Murray and he went to the College of England after the war, he studied dentistry, and we had a little correspondence.

We would go through places and there would be P-51s in the area, they would stop the train, they’d leave, running, and all the passengers would go to the woods. We would stay locked up. And we eventually got to Barth. Stetin, then to Barth, and we did do some walking with a large group of prisoners. There were very vicious dogs and guards, and we got into Stalag Luft 1 near Barth.

Aaron Elson: How did you learn what happened to Brent?

Eugene George: I never knew really what happened to Brent. To me, he was MIA, and I thought probably he was killed in the jump or he got caught by civilians who shot him and killed him on the spot or something. I never knew. He was just straight MIA.

I had a telephone call one day, he said he was from Oregon and he asked if I was Walter E. George who had been a pilot in the Air Force. And I said yes. And he said, “Did you fly with Donald E. Brent?”

I said, “Yes, he was my pilot.”

And he said, “I’m his great-nephew.”

And I said, “If you want to know what happened to him I don’t know. I think I was the last one to see him alive, he went out of the airplane before I did, but I don’t know what happened to him after that.”

He said, “He was killed and he was buried in Germany and reburied in an American cemetery.” And he said, “I really would like to talk with you. My family would like to talk ... my grandmother would like to talk with you.”

And I said, “Well, I’d like to talk with you.”

I’d always wanted to see Oregon, so I said, “I’ll come to Oregon.” So my wife and I went. I was not sure where Brent was from, but I knew he was associated with Eugene, Oregon, and he had a wife in Bellevue, Washington. So we went to Eugene. I’d been in most of the states but never Washington or Oregon, and I wanted to see the trees and other things. So it was like going to a funeral. All the relatives, two of them military, high up, colonels, who came from the Washington, D.C., area. There was another retired Air Force person. There was the family. His former wife, of course, was remarried, his sister, the grandmother of this nephew, and her daughter, and these people really rolled out the carpet but I told them all I could.

Brent was a good pilot. He was well-coordinated. He thought ahead of the airplane, and he was interested in railroads. He wanted to be a railroad engineer and he’d worked on the railroads for a while, and he was mechanically inclined.

We were in harmony as a team, as pilots. I knew what he was thinking before he said it, and he knew what I was thinking, and the way we worked, reacting on the airplane. But he was a good pilot, and I’ve flown with pilots who are dangerous. In fact, I refused to fly with two pilots because they just weren’t with it. And they were trying to be macho.

So we had a good visit. I gave Brent’s sister’s daughter the Bible that I’d had in my pocket when I bailed out, and she broke into tears. I said, “This rode next to Brent on 17 missions.”

So that’s about it. I stayed in the Reserve. I never flew a B-24 again. When we were evacuated from prison, for a lot of prisoners, B-17s came in and picked us up, and I was up near the pilot and I said, “Can I fly your airplane?”

He said, “Sure.”

So I flew back to an airfield in France at very low altitude in Germany, the low altitude being, oh, 1,500 feet, just looking at the countryside.

Aaron Elson: What was it like in Stalag Luft 1?

Eugene George: We were very crowded. We had 16 to 20 men in a room. We were stacked up in berths that were too short or worked well for Italians. We had Italian blankets which were too short. And remember, this was wintertime in Germany. We had two or three briquets of coal and a little heater, but actually our best warmth was from the fact that we had 20 people and we had body heat. But we had Red Cross parcels. We didn’t have a lot to eat, we were on very small rations, but when we got off Red Cross parcels it was pretty rough. We lost a lot of weight. I really got angry with these television programs about Air Force prisoners, all of these healthy guys who obviously ...

Aaron Elson: Hogan’s Heroes?

Eugene George: Hogan’s Heroes. To me this is the biggest farce I ever saw. It’s ridiculing the situation. I mean, these people, for what they did they would have been shot. And we had a fellow shot for chasing a baseball under the warning wire, and another fellow shot when he opened a window during an air raid. The German guards varied greatly. We had cigarettes in the Red Cross parcels and these were trade goods.

One thing that had happened, we were so out of shape if you got a scratch, it took so long healing. And then we walked around kind of bent over. In Hogan’s Heroes, these people are straight and doing things, it wasn’t like that. The Germans kept their civilian group late in the war pretty well informed about where the Russians were. We knew the Russians were coming, but we didn’t know what form this would take. And we didn’t know what the Germans would do. We would hear explosions and the Germans were blowing up motorcycles and things like this they didn’t want to fall into Russian hands. And we knew there was an airport nearby, there was an airport very close to us, and I think our prison was put close to that airport to protect the airport. And we, as pilots, were watching these Germans fly. They were flying JU-88s mostly, and they were so uncoordinated. And we thought they were throwing inexperienced pilots with very low flying time into hot airplanes, and they’ll kill themselves in these planes let alone do anything to the Russians.

But the Germans grabbed a lot of Red Cross parcels and pulled out. We heard they were headed for the English lines, and the German civilian population was very agitated. The first Russians I believe we had was a boy and a girl on horseback just sort of scouting out the territory, and they came into the area and left. And we knew the Russians were coming. And the Russians came in the form of a lot of drunk Mongolians and Orientals. I don’t know where they were from but some of them were driving very skinny horses and pulling a cart full of loot. They were dressed in parts of German uniforms and they all had German machine pistols, and they were drunk. And mostly they came in wearing black armbands and we said, “Why are you wearing black armbands?”

And they said, “Why aren’t you wearing black armbands? Roosevelt is dead.” The Russian army was wearing black armbands to honor Roosevelt. And so they got us some black cloth and that was our identification.

Aaron Elson: Had you not heard about Roosevelt?

Eugene George: We had not heard about Roosevelt being dead. But at any rate, we had numerous incidents in the camp. One of them was there were prisoners, I suppose they were officers but they were painting a stripe down the street, have you heard this story?

Aaron Elson: No.

Eugene George: And they painted right on up to the guard opening, they painted their own way out. They painted as long as their paint would last, and they were out of prison. But the Orientals just had a reign of terror. And they were very fond of German children. You’d see one with a little blond kid on his lap and just as happy as could be, they treasured these children. And you’d see children holding onto the harness of a trained German shepherd. Then there were civilian suicides in places, and the Russians didn’t bury anything. This was a problem. But finally, more regular, disciplined troops came in behind them.

Aaron Elson: Did they do anything to the children?

Eugene George: Oh no, they didn’t harm the children at all. The parents I’m sure were terrified. I don’t know that they would have harmed the parents if they were the parents of the children. The German children were extremely well fed, they were healthy. The Russians drove in, and we told them we hadn’t had beef for quite a while. And their ration was alcohol and they had little tins of sardines. They lived off the land. We told them we hadn’t had beef, and they drove in a very fine herd of Holstein cattle, and you know, to get a cow from a cow to a steak takes some in-between work, and that was attempted but it didn’t work, and we were trying to get the cows back to the owners. But their troops came in and they were a crack outfit. We had seen their reconnaissance planes, which were like 1930s biplanes coming over. Their vehicles were all worn out, their land vehicles, on the units we saw. They encountered SS and the SS had a unit somewhere around there, they went down to a little town called Zingst and made a last stand and I think the Russians killed them all. The Russians were fishing with hand grenades and things like that, they were kind of dangerous to be around. When the first ones came in they were line troops and they wanted us to tear down our barbed wire enclosures. We didn’t have any techniques to do this, and we didn’t have any tools to do it with. They sent a lot of them over with, I don’t know how, maybe a hundred vehicles, and they wanted us to demonstrate things. And they sat in squads or patrols and a lot of individual cars. I was worried about their fires because I was thinking any German reconnaissance would pick them up, but they were doing their dances and they had their little squeeze box, they were very musical, and they wanted us to join in, and they wanted us to join with them and go on and keep chasing the Germans.

They also brought in a USO, the equivalent of a USO show, and they brought in a lot of banners commemorating dead soldiers, large photographic banners. We heard they said “We’ll take you out to the Ukraine” or Georgia, and we said, “We’ll stay right here, our people will come and get us.” They couldn’t believe that.

We waited there on the ground for I don’t know, two or three weeks, and things got settled down and B-17s came into this little airport. It had been mined. We had gone over there, I was curious about the time I got shot at. I learned that you hear the whine of the bullet before you hear the report. So I went back in and stayed pretty much put. There were corpses, which was very unpleasant.

Aaron Elson: Were you married at the time?

Eugene George: Yes. I was married for about two years. I was married just before I went in. When I got my wings I got married. She was about the equivalent of Hedy Lamar in appearance, she was a beautiful young woman. She was a graduate student in nutrition. To be an architect with a lot of time in front of me, our marriage just wasn’t in place. I finished up at Texas and then later got my graduate degree. I got divorced early on, while I was a student at Texas. And I didn’t get married again for quite a while. My current wife is my third wife, and we’ve been married for 21 years.

The question of flying in the military and all of that never goes away. When we met these Germans (in 1991), we were right at home. I mean, there’s a lot of camaraderie and a fraternity, nationality is of no consequence.

Aaron Elson: Even though the two sides, you were trying to kill each other?

Eugene George: And I’ve read, of course I’ve read a lot about aviation and aviation history, I’ve read that during World War I the French pilots and the German pilots used to be at air shows together before they were enemies, and developed great friendship during this time.

 

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The Kassel Mission Memorial in Friedlos, Germany