Correction on The Melting Pot Story: The Mistake Was Mine

The man who researched and discovered the B-17 'The Meltin' Pot' in the Irish Sea was stated incorrectly in a previous blog. Here is the correct version:
Seamus Carey researched and found the 'The Meltin' Pot' in the Irish Sea.
I made a mistake in my reporting of this. My friend Jack Scoltock, in Ireland, never made the claim to have discovered the ship. The mistake was all mine, and I regret it.
Jack writes:
"I did not say I found or dived on the Meltin' Pot, at any time.Seamus and several members of the Inishowen Sub Aqua Club searched in an area where it was well known the Meltin' Pot went down. Seamus and four other members of the club found the wreck in 2001. I began to write about it and did a few years research after the discovery. A former member of the club contacted Lee Kessler and he sent a few pages of what happened to the Meltin' Pot. Then Lee and I began our contact. When he told me Curt Melton, Captain of the plane was alive I was put in contact with him. Through my correspondence I put him in touch with the teenager who rescued him and some of the crew as the plane went down.It's all there in my book."

Again, I take full responsibility for my incorrect reportage, and extend my apologies to all involved. Rob

Jack Scoltock's 'The Meltin' Pot' tells the Story of a B-17 and Its Crew

Today in the mail I got a copy of "The Meltin' Pot: From Wreck to Rescue to Recovery" by my friend in Ireland, Jack Scoltock. Jack spent many years researching this book, and it was well worth it. The book tells of the fate of the B-17 Flying Fortress 'The Meltin' Pot' that crashed off the coast of Ireland during WWII. One of the crewmen on that plane was Lee Kessler, and the crew went on to fly missions on a different plane over Europe. Lee was later shot down and became a POW, and this book covers the fate of the crew as well as the plane.

Jack is a diver and chronicles the search for and discovery of the Meltin' Pot, undertaken by divers over the past few years. A documentary is in the works.

When I visited Lee Kessler back in 2003, he was very excited about the work of the Irish divers, and was looking forward to going to Ireland to see the wreck of his old plane for himself. Lee spent several freezing hours in the sea awaiting rescue after the Meltin' Pot went down. Unforunately, Lee passed away in the fall of 2003, without ever realizing his hopes of seeing his old plane again. However, the pilot of the plane, William C. Melton, did have a chance to go to Ireland and see artifacts from his plane before Melton himself passed away June 13, 2008.

I highly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in WWII, the 8th Air Force, the lives of B-17 crews, or deep sea diving. You can order the book here from Amazon.com in the United Kingdom: http://www.amazon.com/Meltin-Pot-Wreck-Rescue-Recovery/dp/0752447254/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1228006425&sr=8-1

I give this book my highest recommendation. Buy it, read it, treasure it.

Outstanding Documentary on Lee Kessler: Free to Download

Click this link to download a full-length documentary about Lee Kessler and 'The Hand'.

http://www.northcanton.sparcc.org/~tv11/Documentaries.htm

More on Lee Kessler's The Hand

The Background for the Drawing By Lee Kessler (Artist)

"With the onslaught of the Russian Army and their advance on Austria and the Danube in late March 1945, the Germans evacuated Stalag XVII-B, marching those who could walk, on the road West. After a couple of weeks on the road, we passed a place called Mauthausen. We later learned it was a Concentration Camp, although at the time we knew little about them. Approaching us from the opposite direction was a group of prisoners from this camp who had been working in a quarry. They were Hungarian Jews and were guarded by the S.S. We were halted at the side of the road as these walking skeletons passed. Occasionally we heard the crack of pistols and knew what they were for. Those who fell and were too weak to get up were shot. The prisoners followed a wagon and loaded the bodies.

"I approached one of the bodies of a man shot in the head lying along the side of the road and noticed a crinkled photograph by his hand. As he lie, his arm stretched out as if to be reaching for the picture. I moved off the road for a better look at the photo and I was just about to pick it up, but a guard shouted for me to get back. The picture was of a women and two small children. As I glanced back, I saw that a butterfly had lit on him.

"I was obsessed with the scene. Here was this man, dead by the side of the road. The last thing he looked at was a picture of his family, probably his only possession, and where were they? Dead, or in some other camp? At that moment I could only think that everyone has the right to die with dignity, and here was a poor soul who died with such obscurity.

"Sometime in the 1950s, I started a sketch of a rough outline but put it away, since I felt no one would understand what I was trying to portray. Twenty years later, as I lie in the hospital, a nurse who knew me and my association with art suggested I do art work for therapy. I had my wife hunt for this sketch, bring me my pen and ink, and with the encouragement of the staff, I finished the picture.

"Like other pictures, I put it away feeling that no one but me could really understand it.
"In 1983, a POW Convention in Cleveland, when another POW was being interviewed, he related the story of how he saw a man fall. “While lying on the ground, he pulled a picture from his pocket, and as he kissed it the S.S. guard shot him.”

Lee Kessler

Two Idaho WWII POWs find They were both at Stalag 17-B

The following article was in Wednesday's Idaho Falls Post Register. It mentions my late friend Lee Kessler, who was also at Stalag 17-B near Krems, Austria after being shot down in WWII.

It's a small world. I plan to get in touch with Mr. Hess in the near future.

"Two men who met at the Idaho State Veterans Home were also prisoners of war at Stalag 17-B during World War II.

BOISE -- All veterans share a bond, but the one Mel Schwasinger and Francis Hess discovered while residents of the Idaho State Veterans Home was stunning.

The two 90-year-olds wouldn't seem to have much in common. Hess is a native of Philadelphia; Schwasinger grew up on a farm near Nampa. Schwasinger spent most of his working years as a sugar beet farmer; Hess was a career military man.

That the two would end up together at the Veterans Home in Boise was an unlikely coincidence. But the other thing they had in common was beyond unlikely.

Both were prisoners of war at Stalag 17-B, one of the most notorious Nazi prison camps in World War II and the inspiration for "Stalag 17," the Academy Award-winning film starring William Holden.

"I don't even want think about the odds of that," Veterans Home Volunteer Coordinator Phil Hawkins said.

The men discovered their shared history during a conversation earlier this year, while both were residents of the veterans home; Schwasinger has since moved to a private care facility.
Half a century fell away as they recalled the deprivations of POW-camp life in Nazi-occupied Austria, where the two never met.

"You got a shower every six months whether you needed it or not," Schwasinger said.

Hess lamented the scarcity of the "little coal briquettes that they gave us for heat. There were never enough, and it was always cold. Guys would rub each other's backs to try to stay warm."
The prisoners were so hungry that "we stole the potato peelings the Germans left from preparing their food," Schwasinger said. "What they gave us wasn't fit for pigs."

Schwasinger weighed 165 pounds when he was imprisoned and 105 when he was liberated 17 months later.

Hess was there even longer. His wife, Mary, said her husband became so accustomed to sleeping on a slab of wood that "when he got home, his mother found him asleep on the floor under the bed. It took him a while before he could sleep in a real bed again."

An Army Air Corps radio operator and gunner on a B-17 bomber, Hess was shot down over France on Dec. 20, 1942. He almost came out of his parachute, which snagged on his nose on the way down.

"I'd have died if I hadn't had a big nose," he said. "A Frenchman found me and stopped the bleeding. Then the Germans came."

Schwasinger's B-17, the "Luscious Duchess," was shot down a little over a year later. A turret gunner, he has said he shot down at least 10 German fighter planes that day and possibly as many as 18. His collection of WWII medals includes the Distinguished Flying Cross.

Both men were freed during the waning weeks of the war in 1945, when the camp was emptied and the Germans fled Austria in advance of invading Russian troops.

"They marched us 210 miles to the German border, where we had troops," Hess said. "That's when we saw what they had done to the Jews.

"A friend of mine did a drawing of something he saw along the way, a dead man's hand with a picture of his wife and children. A butterfly had landed on his hand."

I took these photos of Lee when visiting him in Canton, Ohio. RM

That drawing, by his friend Lee Kessler, has been displayed in Holocaust museums around the world.

Hess's WWII experience only increased his desire to serve his country in the military. He spent 25 years in the Air Force, retired as a master sergeant and worked as a civilian for the Navy, testing catapults for aircraft carriers. He moved to Idaho in the mid-1980s, following his son, Francis Hess Jr., who was serving at Mountain Home Air Force Base.

Hess and his late wife had six sons, five of whom served in the military. The youngest followed his father's career path by retiring as a master sergeant. Their only daughter married a military man, and his current wife, Mary, was a Navy WAVE during WWII.

"Serving in the war made everyone more patriotic," he said. "You couldn't see what we did and not be patriotic. It taught me that there's no place else in the world like the U.S."

Schwasinger feels the same way. Though he remembers the sky on the day he was shot down as being filled with nothing but parachutes and burning airplanes, he said he'd do it all again.
"It was scary, but necessary," he said. "There was no question that we had to do what we did."

Irish Diver Finds Lee Kessler's B-17 'Meltin' Pot'

This writing job never ceases to surprise and fascinate me. A few months ago, I got an email from a fellow writer in Northern Ireland named Jack Scoltock. Jack is a well-known author of children's books in the UK and also a diver. He emailed me to let me know he was finishing up a book about his dives to a sunken B-17 bomber named 'The Meltin' Pot', which sank in the Lough Foyle on the way to England in 1942.

Seamus Carey researched and found the plane.

I was friends with one of the crewmen, a gentleman named Lee Kessler, whom I wrote about in my book Untold Valor. Lee had the dubious distinction of having survived four plane crashes in his Air Corps career. One was stateside during his training as an aerial gunner and it killed the pilot. The second was the dangerous ocean ditching of 'The Meltin' Pot' off the Irish Coast. All aboard survived but spent hours in the frigid waters. The third crash totaled the crew's replacement B-17 after a mission, and the fourth resulted in Lee becoming a POW in Germany. It was during his time as a POW that Lee survived the infamous forced winter march and witnessed a war crime that he turned into an internationally acclaimed piece of Holocaust art.

Jack is putting the finishing touches on a book about the underwater discovery of the Meltin' Pot. I for one am excited to read it. The book is due out in June.

When I visited Lee Kessler at this home in Canton, Ohio some years back, he told me that the plane had been discovered, and he was hoping to fly over to Ireland to meet with the divers who'd found it. Sadly, Lee passed away only a few months after we talked, and never got a chance to see the plane that had carried him and the rest of the crew safely across the Atlantic, only to ditch in the sea.

Jack wrote me: "Did you know that Charles Pappy Grimes, who was on Lee's original crew of Meltin' Pot, played saxophone or relief saxophone for Tommy Dorsey before he was called up. That's why there are 120 Tommy Dorsey records and a record player on board the Meltin' Pot. Yet to be salvaged."

The tentative cover of the book is shown here, and I'm also giving Jack's personal website in case anyone wants to order a book or has a question about the recovery of the aircraft.

Here is the weblink for Jack's writing website: http://www.jackscoltock.com/





The photo above, which I took in Lee's home, shows Lee holding the cover of his wartime scrapbook. If you look closely, you can see a painting of the ditching of the Meltin' Pot near the middle. The book's cover is decorated by paintings depicting Lee's many experiences in the war. It was held shut by a captured German belt and buckle. The belt is blue and white and runs across the bottom of the book, and the buckle is circular and silver at the right of the book.