Where in the World Have I Been?

Marine Second Lt. Robert 'Bob' Crowton's Navy Cross, awarded for heroism at Okinawa.

My former teacher Pete Benavage as a Marine Sergeant before heading to Iwo Jima.

Joseph Lajzer as he appeared after over three and a half years of Japanese captivity, including the Bataan Death March and slave labor in Japan.

Have been interviewing a gentleman who was on the Clark Field Baseball Team in Philippines before war broke out. He was on the Bataan Death March, then helped build the airfield at Palawan as slave labor, then took a Hell Ship to Japan and spent a long time "digging coal for the Emperor" at Hiroshima Omine and saw the A-bomb fall thirty miles away that fateful August day. He is in the photo above. (Name withheld)

This youthful gentleman was my Western Civilization teacher in high school. He is Major Pete Benavage, United States Marine Corps (Ret.). As a young sergeant of Marines, Pete helped lead a platoon on Iwo Jima. This is a photo capture from a Japanese TV program about Iwo Jima entitled 'Island of Death'.

Pete Benavage, teacher and friend.

Marine Second Lt. Robert Crowton's "Old Breed" First Marine Division patch that he wore on Okinawa, where he won the Navy Cross for heroism.

Marine Lt. Bob Crowton's lovely wife, Marge, admires his Navy Cross, awarded at a hospital in San Diego after he had undergone surgery to shrapnel damage to his face. (Bob Crowton collection)

Bob's Purple Heart and the box for his Navy Cross.

Bob awarded his Navy Cross in San Diego, CA.

William Morrison, who as a young Marine guarded a gun emplacement at the base of Mt. Suribachi and saw the flag go up.

Navy Corpsman William 'Bill' Lynne, who served with the First Marines at Peleliu and Okinawa. The corpsmen fought alongside the Marines, and saved many lives in battle. (Bill Lynne photo)

The wounded Corpsman in this famous press photo is Bill Lynne. (Bill Lynne collection)

Greetings to my faithful readers, all 26 of you. :)

Sorry I have not written on the blog much lately. I've been very busy working on my next book, and since it is not about WWII airmen, this page hasn't gotten the attention it did before

Right now, I am deeply involved in researching a book about the Pacific War. Lately, I've been working on two chapters in depth. The first involves the men who were on the Bataan Death March and the ensuing years as POWs. The second involves men who were at Iwo. These are but two chapters but I tend to immerse in just a few at a time. I've already put a lot of time into Pacific aviators and into Okinawa, the USS Indianapolis, and Navy Corpsmen. I have also been interviewing several Pearl Harbor survivors. This on top of the fact that I work sixty to seventy hours a week in the highly lucrative field of teaching high school.

I am putting a small sampling of photos of some of the guys I'm writing about at the moment, and who will all appear in the book when it comes out next year.

Stay tuned. I will be back.

Astute Review of Untold Valor

Posting this review by Jan Peczkis of my book on Amazon. Mr. Peczkis is that rare Amazon reviewer who actually reads the book and then is provides some synthesis and analysis. Thank you, Mr. Peczkis.

Click here for Mr. Peczkis' review, which focuses on German treatment of Jewish American POWs.

Tale of a Prisoner of War: The Irv Rothman Story

Irv Rothman and I talking about his WWII experiences, Dallas, Texas, October 8, 2009. (Photo by Drix DeGuy)

Irving Rothman, POW#777, 95th Bomb Group Reunion, October 2009. (Photo by Rob Morris)

Irving Rothman looks thin and fit as he bustles behind the bar at the Red Feather Club on the seventh floor of the Marriott Solana in Fort Worth at this year’s 95th Bomb Group reunion. He and his family have been tending the donations-only bar at the 95th Bomb Group reunions for years now, bringing a vast store of good booze to keep the attendees happy and the talk flowing in the late evenings after the Fireside chats. Irv’s wife, Nina, is a para-Rabbinical and conducts the religious events at each reunion. Irv’s son and daughter-in-law also pitch in behind the bar, pouring drinks and making sure everybody is happy.
But sit down with Irv, as I did, and listen to his story, and you will see, from time to time, his eyes fill with tears and his voice catch as he remembers his wartime experiences, especially his months as a Prisoner of War in Germany.
Irv starts out by giving me his service number, 1532991, and his Prisoner of War number, 777. He has them both imprinted in his brain and in his heart.
Irv was a young engineer/top turret gunner on the J.E. Foley crew, B-17 #25918, better known as Heavenly Daze, when a January 11, 1944 bombing mission to Brunswick went bad. “We were bombing Brunswick, I believe a ball bearing factory,” he recalls. “We’d lost all power to our turrets, so I left my post in the top turret and went down to fire the nose gun. We had a runaway prop on the Number Two engine, and our plane fell out of formation. By the time we got it fixed, there were three Me 109s having fun with us. Those pilots knew we didn’t have any working turrets and they stayed in our blind spots. I couldn’t get a gun on them.” The three Me 109s poured lead into Heavenly Daze as the crew fired what guns they could bring to bear on the attackers.
“Minutes later, Keefer, the copilot, kicked out the escape hatch in the nose and yelled ‘Get the fuck out!’ My parachute was up in the cockpit, so I went and grabbed it. Then I tried to get over the catwalk in the bomb bay to check out the guys in the back of the plane. The fire was so bad that I couldn’t make it through. I figured maybe they’d already jumped so I jumped out the bomb bay.
“I was in a slow spin, and I couldn’t remember for the life of me how to stop the spin. Finally, I put my arms out in front of me and that helped. I landed in a field, a textbook parachute landing, but it just happened, it wasn’t skill. I sat up, and the first thing I saw were a farmer’s wooden shoes. ‘Good’, I thought, ‘I must be in Holland’. I’d learned all about how the Dutch wore wooden shoes. But I hadn’t known that German farmers also wore them!
A civilian cop came and got me and took me to a barn. Here, he took my coveralls. I was wearing my blue electric ‘Bunny Suit’. He pointed his gun at me and told me to march.
We went into a village. As we walked the cop yelled ‘Babi Killer’, and ‘American Luftgangster’ and ‘Juden’. Well, I knew enough German to know what Juden meant. When we got to his house, he took the chrome-plated chain off his dog and chained my hands behind my back. Then he told me to go stand in the corner, facing the wall.
He then had his friends come look at me. He didn’t think I spoke German so they spoke freely in front of me.
“’I have an American luftgangster here. See what he looks like,’ the cop told people. The people who came by cussed me out.
“Well, I’d had my coffee that morning and I had to get rid of it. I had a translation card in my pocket and found the line for ‘I got to go’, and he took me to a haystack.
“At nightfall, the Luftwaffe came and got me. One of my officers was also with them. Then we met up with James Foley, our pilot, who had been the last man out of the plane. He’d bailed out at very low altitude but survived.
“They took us by truck to Frankfurt-am-Main. The Dulag interrogation center was located there. They normally kept guys there for a week but there were so many American flyers to process that I was only there five days. We’d lost sixty bombers that day, that’s six hundred men.
“The only person I saw during that time was the jailer, twice a day, when he took me to go to the latrine. My cell was about as long as the bed, with an equal amount of space to walk next to the bed. There was a window up by the ceiling so I had a little light. After five days, an interrogator sat me down and told me he knew everything about me already. The only thing he didn’t know was that I’d been to Bremen twice. He only knew of one mission. That was the only thing he didn’t know about me. This interrogator, a major, said he’d lived in New York and knew Governor Lehman when he was governor of New York.
“’I want you to know that we are not persecuting the Jews,’ the major said. ‘That is all American propaganda.’ I knew better. All I gave him was my name, rank and serial number.
“The next day, they loaded us on a streetcar and took us to the railroad station. There were three or four of us and a guard to protect us. Mainly, he was there to protect us from the civilians. The city had been heavily bombed.
“The train took us to Hydekrug, East Prussia. This was an established POW camp, and we were the first Americans to get there. They put us in the British compound. It was well-established. We got our food parcels every week. We had books, musical instruments, Red Cross uniforms and blankets. In all, it was very livable. We were there close to a year.
“Then something bad happened. We heard the rumble of German artillery. They evacuated us by train to Memel, now known as Dnask. We got on an old tub and they jammed us into the hold so tight that there wasn’t enough room to move. There was no sanitation, only a bucket at the top of the ladder. The whole voyage, I was afraid of getting sunk.
“We got to the port at Stettin. Here, they handcuffed men together in pairs. I was handcuffed to Sol Sussman, my bunk mate. They took us to a place called Gross Teychow. On the way, I talked to one of the German guards. He had lost his only son, his wife, his daughter, pretty much his whole family, in bombing raids. He said to us, ‘Boys, it’s not your fault. It’s that corporal in Berlin. You’re only doing what you have to do’.
When we arrived at the station, there were German Marines there with dogs. They had lined up on either side of the road leading into the woods. Every so often along either side of the road was a mounted machine gun. They were trying to get us to run off the path so they could shoot us as escapees. We had no idea what was at the end of the road. Was there a camp? Was there a hole they were going to dump us into? We didn’t know.
“They made us run. We had no idea how far we’d have to go. Was it a mile? Ten miles? We ran. Sol went down. I pulled him up and we ran on. Thankfully, there was a camp at the end of the road.
“After we were in the vorlager for three days, they put us in the camp. I was one of the lucky ones. I was put in a normal barracks. A lot of the prisoners had to live in ‘dog houses’, small huts that held eight men that were so small you couldn’t even stand up in them. At this point in the war, we were losing so many men that the Germans couldn’t build the camps fast enough.
“After a while, we heard the heavy artillery again. It was time to leave. They put some of us on a train to Stalag Luft III. The rest of us marched. They told us the march would take three days. Before we left, we took extra clothing and cut it up to make pockets, and we sowed the pockets onto our pants to carry stuff for the trip. Some of us also had made knit caps out of extra sweaters, using a toothbrush handle as a knitting needle. They didn’t look good, but they helped keep us warm.
“The first couple of nights, we had barns to sleep in. After that, nothing. Most of this is a blur to me. We slept on the ground. Two men, back to back, for warmth. It was the coldest winter in Germany in fifty years.
“I marched with the slow marchers. This group left earlier in the mornings and the men who were unable to march slowly, were put in wagons. These were farm wagons, with steep sides. Only the men on the edges could lean against the sides. The men in the middle had to stand. Can you imagine that? These wagons had no springs. You would feel every bump, every pebble. The Germans would requisition horses from local farmers, and then return them the next day and get new ones. When we were unable to get horses, men were harnessed to the wagons and men pulled them. We lost between five and ten percent of our men on that march.
“We finally arrived at the Elbe River. We never traveled on the main roads because they needed those for troop movement. A doctor showed up. His name was Dr. Cantor, and he was a POW as well. We had two guys who had swollen feet as big as footballs. The doctor had me administer the chloroform and he cut holes in these men’s feet and wrapped the slices with gauze bandages so they could drain.
“On the march, either you couldn’t go at all or you went all the time. Dysentery was the worst. The diarrhea drained your body and killed you. We had no medicine for it. So we made charcoal, and ground it up into a fine powder, and then we ate it. It was terrible.” Irv’s eyes fill with tears. He raises his hands to imitate a man eating out of cupped hands. “Men eating dust. Dust. To stay alive.”
“We got to Stalag 11-B. This was an international camp. There were a lot of American soldiers there who had been captured in the Battle of the Bulge. They put us in a huge tent with straw on the floor.
“While I was there, I celebrated my 21st birthday. I was there from March 29 to April 16, 1945. We hadn’t had a bath or shaved in weeks. I tried to rub the dirt off my face after breaking a hole in the ice, but it didn’t come off.
“Finally, on April 16, a tank pulled up to the camp. It was a British tank. A guy got out and told us, ‘Sorry, guys, we can’t get your out for about three days.’ That was fine by me. They took us to Halle, and we were deloused. They gave us C-rations, which are essentially just a rich stew. If we ate more than one cup of it, we got violently sick. Our bodies were not used to the rich food.
“From there, we were flown to Brussels by the British. The deloused us again, we were able to take a bath, and they issued us clean British uniforms. This included Eisenhower jackets, the kind General Eisenhower wore, and they were really sharp. After they gave us a medical checkup, they took us by train to Namur, where we were turned over to the Americans. They took back our British clothes. I really wanted to keep that Eisenhower jacket but they took it back.
“We then went to Camp Lucky Strike. We had another round of checkups. While I stood in line, a doctor shoved a thermometer in my mouth and told me to get out of line. All I wanted to do was go home, but he insisted, and it turned out I possibly had the beginnings of rheumatic fever. They checked me into the hospital for rheumatic fever and malnutrition, and put me on a series of penicillin shots.
“Finally, they book me on the ship John Erickson and I came home.”
“We lost two guys in the camp. One guy went nuts and climbed the wire. They shot him. The other incident was strange. We were locked into the barracks at night and the only thing we had to go to the bathroom was a five gallon milk can for sixty men. Naturally, we tried not to use it if we could help it. One kid had to go to the bathroom pretty badly, and that morning, the guards had unlocked the doors twenty minutes early. The kid didn’t know and he went out of the barracks to go to the bathroom. The guards shot him. And then, they would not let anyone go out and help this guy until it was time to come out. By that time, he’d bled to death.
“My experiences are with me, every day. They have colored my life, but they have not controlled my life. Life just has to go on.”

Dan Culler's New Flag

Just received word from former POW Dan Culler that his congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords sent him a flag that had flown over the United States capitol after reading about the vandalism to his American and Prisoner of War flags in front of his home in Green Valley, Arizona, (as reported on in this blog). Nice to know politicians do something worthwhile once and a while.

Old Glory Flies Again at the Culler Household

You can't keep a good man--or a good flag--down. Dan Culler with his repaired Prisoner of War and American flags yesterday, September 8.

Interview with Pacific B-24 Pilot Kay Morris

8/7/09-- It’s a long way from Rigby, Idaho to the war-torn skies over Okinawa and Japan, and many years have passed since young Kay Morris flew as a B-24 pilot in World War Two, but thanks to good health, a good memory, and a mother who liked to scrapbook, Morris’s war experiences are as meticulously recorded as if they’d happened yesterday. Every letter Morris wrote to his future wife, from basic training through the end of the war, maps, photographs, chits, dog tags and patches, they’re all there, most bound up in a scrapbook covered with white silk from the parachute Morris brought back from the war.
Kay Morris started life on the Snake River Plain, in Idaho’s premier potato-growing region, and went off to school at nearby Ricks College, a Latter-day Saint-run school now known as BYU-Idaho, before transferring to Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. Morris joined the Army Air Forces in April, 1943, and was selected for the Aviation Cadet program. He trained at San Antonio, Texas, deciding to go into multi-engine aircraft because “I didn’t like aerobatics particularly”. After earning his silver wings on August 4, 1944 in Altus, Oklahoma, Morris was assigned to the 494th Bomb Group, 865th Squadron, a B-24 Liberator outfit that flew medium altitude bombing missions against the Japanese.
Angaur Island is located South of Peleliu at 6 Degrees 55 Minutes North Latitude 134 Degrees 8 Minutes East Longitude. Angaur Island is about 2 miles long and one and a half mile wide Morris’s photo of Anguar during the war, airstrip at upper right. (Courtesy Kay Morris)

The 494th Bomb Group was nicknamed ‘Kelly’s Kobras’, in honor of General Laurence B. Kelley, who led the group. Created in 1943, the 494th was assigned to the U.S. 7th Air Force, the 494th arrived in the combat zone in August 1944. The group history describes the arrival of the advance echelon in less than idyllic terms. The group was dumped on the island of Angaur, “the meanest of the Palau Group...Though all organized resistance had ceased in the estimation of the communiqué writers, there was still plenty of the unorganized variety, and few if any of that first echelon will forget the first weeks of trying to cope with Jap snipers, land crabs, pup tents, K rations and the jungle growth separately and collectively. Pelelieu Island, on this 30th of September '44 was still in the process of being separated from its Japanese defenders, and the strip at Angaur was far from complete. The Advance Echelon wondered if it would ever see the rest of the Group again.”
(484th Unit History, http://home.att.net/~kelleys_kobras/494history/written.htm)


By October, the group was flying missions, bombing targets in the Phillipines.

A 494th B-24, photo courtesy of Kay Morris.

Initially a copilot, he ended up as the aircraft commander of his own Liberator, flying out of Angaur, Palau. The island had been taken by American forces in fierce fighting in September and October 1944, a battle that cost 264 American lives and over 1,300 Japanese lives. The strategically important island gave the Americans a vital airfield from which it could bomb Japanese targets in the Philippines. Photos show a small island with a runway and not much else. “We were in tents,” he recalls, “four officers to a tent and six enlisted men to a tent. There wasn’t any entertainment or anything to do, really. It was pretty boring. We spent a lot of time resting between missions. Sometimes there were movies and of course there were card games. Morris also did his best to practice his Mormon faith, and wrote letters to his sweetheart and family back home.

Morris remembers that the missions from Anguar to the Phillipines were relatively short ones. However, they were not without their dangers. Morris remembers one plane in his formation going down after its wing was shot off.

Map of 7th Air Force Operations. (Courtesy Kay Morris)
Later, as the war moved closer to Japan, the 494th flew out Okinawa and bombed Japan proper.
In the Pacific, the B-24 was classified as a medium altitude bomber. The B-24 was a four engine bomber that normally carried a crew of ten—four officers and six enlisted men. Officers included the pilot and copilot, bombardier, and navigator. The enlisted personnel was comprised of the flight engineer, radio operator, ball turret gunner, two waist gunners and a tail gunner. High altitude bombing was the job of the advanced, pressurized Boeing B-29 Superfortress. The B-25 Mitchells handled the low-altitude bombing.

According to Morris, the most important man on the crew was the navigator. “Most of our missions were eight hundred miles over water,” he remembers. “You had to rely on the navigators pretty heavily.” Not only that, but unlike their counterparts who flew over Europe, the Pacific bomber boys of the 494th flew in formations of only six airplanes, with limited fighter support.

1st Lt. Charley Wilcox was a bombardier in the 494th, and describes some of the differences between the Pacific and Atlantic bomber wars. “There are many differences between the European Theatre and the Pacific Theatre. For instance; in the European Theatre the planes were subjected to ‘Flak and Fighters' from the time they crossed the channel until they returned (if they were lucky); whereas in the Pacific; we generally had a peaceful flight over vast stretches of water; generally encountering ‘Flak & Zeros’ only when near the target area. A good indication of how the Brass compared the two theatres is by the number of missions required to rotate home. In the European Theatre, you needed 20 [actually 25] and in the Pacific Theatre, you needed 40. I have pulled some missions with more than 12 hrs of flight time; all over water. I can recall a General who was traveling from a Pacific base to another base - he never made it and to this day no one knows just where he was lost or what happened to him - "Lost in The Pacific" would be a good title for that story.”

Morris agrees. “We didn’t try to think about going down in the ocean,” he says. “The plane had two lifeboats under the wings, and there was an escape sub in the inland sea of Japan if we went down”, but the odds of rescue were very slim in such vast expanses of water. The bomber crews flying over Europe could bail out, for the most part, knowing that they would end up on land and have a decent chance of survival. The Pacific bomber crews knew that death was the most likely result of an ocean ditching, followed by imprisonment by the Japanese, who treated captured prisoners much more harshly than the Germans.

"Blood Chit, requesting protection and safe conduct to downed airmen in multiple languages. Courtesy Kay Morris.
In July, 1945, the 494th moved to the island of Okinawa for attacks on the Japanese heartland. His first really scary experience was over the Japanese island of Kyushu, the first time he encountered flak. The second was a particularly memorable mission on July 28, 1945 to bomb the Japanese battleship ‘Haruna’.

Battleship Haruna (class Kongo) under air attack. Kure, July 28, 1945. (Source: www.ww2incolor.com/japan/haruna.html)

“We used two-thousand-pound bombs on that mission,” he says. “That was the biggest bomb we ever used in the war. We were over the harbor at Kure, and one of our bombs got hung up in the bomb bay. The nose dropped far enough to arm it, and the navigator and flight engineer went back into the bomb bay—without parachutes—and physically kicked the bomb out. It was said that only one-sixty-fourth of an inch of movement could detonate one of those bombs, and it was one of the two times overseas that I was really, really scared.” After jettisoning the bomb, the manual release stuck the bomb bay doors open, and Morris’s plane began to lag behind. Finally, the crew was able to close the bomb bay doors and catch up. In addition to the hung-up bomb, the group history notes that two B-24s were lost and that “Jap gunners threw up the most terrific curtain of flak ever experienced by our crews. Participating personnel declared that was one mission they would not soon forget.” (Unit History)
Fighter escort was ‘iffy’ at best, according to Morris. P-51 Mustang fighters occasionally failed to show up, even when the ‘Kates’—Japanese fighters—did.

“We had to worry about flak from time to time,” Morris remembers. “And the Jap Air Force would come up and visit to see us once in a while.” On one mission, the pilot behind Morris’s plane was killed by a Japanese ‘Tony’ fighter. The co-pilot managed to bring the plane home. “Missions from Okinawa could be eight hundred miles,” says Morris. “The navigator was a very important guy when flying that far over open water. We normally flew at about 11,000 feet all the way to and from the targets—quite a bit lower than the bombers in Europe—and bombed from that altitude as well. We didn’t go on oxygen unless we were at fifteen thousand feet.” He remembers that the temperature in the planes was quite nice, compared to the heat on the ground back at the base.

With all the missions over water, I was curious as to whether Morris was a good swimmer. He shook his head, and told me he preferred to rely on the Mae West life jacket. In fact, he recalled an incident in training where the crew was pushed from a dinghy to simulate a ditching. Another crewman also couldn’t swim, and grabbed at Morris, who promptly pushed him away. Both men passed.

“We were getting ready to invade Japan. And it would have been bloody, for the United States and Japan. We were very grateful when President Truman dropped the bomb in August,” says Morris. Unfortunately, several 494th crews who had been previously shot down, were prisoners of war at the Military Police Barracks at Hiroshima, Japan on August 6th, 1945, when the A-bomb was dropped on the city. Charley Wilcox writes that “the families [of the twelve POW crewmen] from the aircrafts ‘Taloa’ and ‘Lonesome Lady’ were told their loved ones were ‘missing in action’ and some 3 years later were told they were ‘killed in action’ and never told they died from friendly fire—the A-Bomb.”

The war was over, much to the relief of the men of the 494th. But they were not going home just yet. On September 26, 1945, Okinawa was hit by a serious typhoon that destroyed much of the base and cut off the island from civilization for several days. “The storm was so strong that it bent the flagpole at Headquarters a perfect ninety degrees about six to eight feet up, with no wrinkle in the tube,” says Morris. Miraculously, Morris’s tent did not blow down during the typhoon, though many tents did and the base was wrecked.

Morris’s photos of the typhoon damage at his base(Courtesy Kay Morris)
Finally, in December 1945, Morris was sent home. He went back to BYU, and got married in January of 1946. He’d brought a parachute back with him, and the family used the silk fabric to make a wedding dress for his bride.
A news article from the Rigby, Idaho paper about the parachute-silk wedding dress. (Courtesy Kay Morris)
After finishing school, he worked for a few years before joining the 116th Army National Guard in Idaho as a liaison pilot. He was serving with the Idaho Falls unit when it was called up to go to Korea. However, as a surplus pilot, he ended up in Germany instead. He was there for three years, his main duty was to fly the commander of the 11th Engineer Group around Germany to inspect bridge sites in the early days of the Cold War.
(Source: http://www.aviation.army.mil/aircraft/h-13_oh-13.jpg)

He then went to San Francisco, California, and flew the Bell H-13 helicopter—one of the U.S. military’s first-- in support of the 30th Topo Battalion, which spent the summer making a thorough mapping survey of the territory of Alaska. While there, he was promoted to Captain.
Morris followed that with a stint at the Army Aviation School at Fort Rucker, Alabama as an instrument flying teacher. While he was stationed there, his daughter Marcia remembers going to the parades on base as a favorite activity. Someone came up with the idea of putting square dance costumes on the H-13s—shirt and tie for the ‘boys’, skirts for the ‘girls’—and the chopper pilots would then ‘square-dance’ over the parade ground, to the delight of all in attendance. This activity was cancelled after a few years due to safety concerns.

Morris and family were then off to Iran, where he supported construction efforts for the Shah of Iran’s airfields and other projects.

Morris lives in the same house he bought back in the Sixties, and his memories are safely stowed in the parachute-silk scrapbook and several others. A shadow box on the wall displays his many military decorations. The movie-star-handsome young bomber pilot is older and has less spring in his step, but Kay Morris still lights up when remembering the days, so many years ago, when he flew the unfriendly skies over the Pacific in World War Two.

Berga WWII POWs Honored: Survived Hellish Nazi Death Camp--CNN Report

BOSTON, Massachusetts (CNN) -- The U.S. Army says it will honor the "heroism and sacrifice" of 350 U.S. soldiers who were held as slaves by Nazi Germany during World War II.

Bernard "Jack" Vogel died in a Nazi slave camp in the arms of fellow U.S. soldier, Anthony Acevedo, in 1945.

The decision by the Army effectively reverses decades of silence about what the soldiers endured in the final months of the war in 1945 at Berga an der Elster, a subcamp of Buchenwald where soldiers were beaten, starved, killed and forced to work in tunnels to hide German equipment.

More than 100 U.S. soldiers died in the camp or on a forced death march. Before they were sent back to the United States, survivors signed a secrecy document with the U.S. government to never speak about their captivity.

"The interests of American prisoners of war in the event of future wars, moreover, demand that the secrets of this war be vigorously safeguarded," the document says.

CNN last month reported the story of Anthony Acevedo, who was a 20-year-old medic when he was sent to Berga with the other soldiers. Acevedo kept a diary that details the day-to-day events inside the camp and lists names and prisoner numbers of men as they died or were executed. See inside Acevedo's diary »

That story prompted a chain of events, including hundreds of CNN.com users urging their congressional leaders to honor the soldiers of Berga. Two congressmen, Reps. Joe Baca, D-California, and Spencer Bachus, R-Alabama, wrote U.S. Army Secretary Peter Geren and asked him to recognize the 350 soldiers.

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The Army recently responded to the two congressmen, saying it is working "to determine an appropriate way to honor the heroism and sacrifice of these soldiers. We expect this review to be complete by March 6, 2009."

After learning of the Army's decision, Bachus said in a press release, "The courage and perseverance they demonstrated in enduring such inhumane conditions is awe inspiring, and I am pleased the Army has opened a more extensive investigation into honoring these men."
For the dozen of Berga survivors who are still living, the news came as a shock. Many had long ago given up hope that their country would ever recognize them for what they endured.
"It's amazing," said Morty Brooks, now 83, when informed of the Army plans. "It's a recognition that's many years past due. No particular notice was ever given to us by the government, and it should be part of the military's annals."

Acevedo, now 84, noted the ages of the remaining survivors -- all of whom are in their 80s. Some are in failing health. He said he hopes the Army can reach its decision before March, because of the possibility some could die before then.

"If they can do it a lot sooner, we would appreciate it much," he said. "I thank God I'm still able to communicate and express myself with dignity, and I'm hoping the other fellas are able to communicate also.

"I've always been proud to be a U.S. soldier. It did me some good, with God's help and faith. I'll pray for everybody, all my other fellas."

He said the 350 soldiers are heroes who "exposed our lives for our country, for democracy and freedom of speech." The soldiers, all of them survivors of the Battle of the Bulge, had originally been sent to a POW camp known as Stalag IX-B in Bad Orb, Germany. From there, the Nazis separated the 350 soldiers based on being Jewish or "looking like Jews" and sent them to the slave camp around February 8, 1945. Watch Acevedo describe treatment in the camp »
In Boston, Martin Vogel sits quietly in his home. His brother, Bernard "Jack" Vogel, died in Acevedo's arms at the age of 19 in April 1945. Bernard Vogel had tried to escape from Berga with another soldier named Izzy Cohen. Both were captured and forced to stand in their underwear outside the barracks for at least two days until they collapsed.

The last words Bernard Vogel ever uttered were "I want to die, I want to die." Listen as Acevedo tells brother of victim: "I held him in my arms" »

Martin Vogel, 82, said that "since learning of my brother's death in 1945, a week has not passed that I don't think of his untimely death. Many questions had gone unanswered during this time."
After talking with CNN.com and the few remaining survivors, he said, "My thoughts have come into a clearer focus. I have learned of the last few days of [Bernard's] life and what horrendous event took place prior to death. This has at least crystallized the uncertainty of his death and brought a close to this chapter."
Vogel still gets emotional talking about his brother's death. He wrote his thoughts so he wouldn't cry talking about it.
He continued, writing that questions remain on many issues, including the fate of his brother's captors and "the unwillingness of the Army to publicly document the capture and imprisonment of these soldiers. ... The least is I now know Jack died with friends near him, giving him comfort in his last moments."
The two Berga commanders -- Erwin Metz and his superior, Hauptmann Ludwig Merz -- were tried for war crimes and initially sentenced to die by hanging. But the U.S. government commuted their death sentences in 1948, and both men were eventually set free in the 1950s.
Charles Vogel, the uncle of Bernard and Martin, was outraged at the decision. At the time a powerful Manhattan attorney, he petitioned President Harry Truman, Secretary of State George Marshall and Defense Secretary James Forrestal to overturn the commutation.
Charles Vogel also helped form a group called "Berga Survivors" after the war in which some of the slave camp soldiers would meet to discuss the best way to pressure the government to honor them and allow them to testify against Metz and Merz.
In a bulletin from one of their meetings in early 1949, the "Berga Survivors" appeared optimistic the government would act. "Your cooperation now is doubly important, for things are beginning to break our way," the bulletin says. "A little enthusiasm, a little more cooperation, a little more action will accomplish a great, great deal now."
It adds, "You can aid in the campaign to get Washington to procure full justice for us."
More than six decades later, it appears the work of the original "Berga Survivors" group was not in vain. Most have since died, but the few who remain alive say they will never let their fellow soldiers be forgotten.
"It's finally gotten to a point where the Army is coming to their senses after they had ignored us in the past," Acevedo said. "Why the silence all these years? It's time to recognize all these soldiers who sacrificed their lives."
CNN.com has located 14 Berga soldiers who are alive and will keep working to find if any others are still living.

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

Great Escaper Eric 'Digger' Dowling Passes Away in England at 92

'Great Escape' veteran Eric Dowling dies at 92

By JILL LAWLESS – 1 day ago

LONDON (AP) — Eric Dowling, who helped plan the mass wartime breakout from a German prison camp that inspired the movie "The Great Escape," has died at 92.

Peter Dowling said his father died at a nursing home near Bristol in southwest England on July 21, a day before his 93rd birthday. The Aabletone Nursing Home on Thursday confirmed the death.

Seventy-six Allied prisoners escaped from the Stalag Luft III prison camp on March 24, 1944, in a daring breakout. All but three were recaptured, and 50 were shot on the orders of Adolf Hitler to deter future attempts.

The escape attempt was one of the most celebrated incidents of the war, recounted in a 1963 film starring Steve McQueen and Richard Attenborough.

Dowling played a key role in planning the escape. He forged documents, made maps and was nicknamed "Digger" for his work helping to excavate the three escape tunnels, code-named Tom, Dick and Harry.

Over almost a year, prisoners surreptitiously dug the tunnels 30 feet (9 meters) underground, shored up with bedboards and wired with stolen electrical wire. Tom was discovered by guards and Dick was abandoned, but the 300-foot (90-meter) long tunnel Harry was eventually completed.

Dowling was not among the more than 200 prisoners chosen by lottery to make the escape attempt on the cold and moonless night. By the time German guards discovered the breakout, 76 men had crawled free.

Many of the film's characters were composites of real people. Peter Dowling said the one that most resembled his father was a flight lieutenant nicknamed "The Forger," played by Donald Pleasance.

But he also said his father was not a fan of the movie.

"He wasn't the greatest admirer of Americans and it didn't go down too easily that one of them should be playing the starring role," Peter Dowling said. "A lot of the reality of digging tunnels was left out too."

He said his father felt the scene in which McQueen attempts to race to freedom on a stolen motorcycle "was well over the top."

Born in southwest England in 1915, Flight Lt. Eric Dowling flew 29 missions as a navigator with the Royal Air Force's Bomber Command. He was shot down in April 1942 and sent to the prison camp for Allied airmen near Sagan in eastern Germany — now Zagan, Poland.

After the war, Dowling served as an RAF air-accident investigator and later worked for British Aerospace on the supersonic Concorde jet.

Dowling's wife, Agnes Marie, died in 1997. He is survived by a son and a daughter.

John Chaffin--From Copilot to Kriegie Chef

One can see the weariness in this photo of the Broman Crew taken after a mission. John Chaffin stands at right rear. Four of the enlisted men went AWOL right before the Munster Mission, when 'Fritz Blitz' was shot down, and were court-martialed.

One of my first friends back in 1999 when I began research for my book Untold Valor was John Chaffin. Originally from Grapevine, Texas, John became a pilot in the 95th Bomb Group, and flew as co-pilot on the Eldon Broman crew for over twenty missions on 'Fritz Blitz' before being shot down on the Munster Raid, October 10, 1943. He ended up a POW (better known as Kriegies by the men themselves) at Stalag Luft III in Sagan, Germany.

Today I've been working on a chapter for the 95th BG history about POWs, and am using a privately-published book John sent me back in 2000. John had a dry sense of humor, and it comes through in his writing. He was also unfailingly honest in everything, a dedicated Christian to the end. He was a hard-working perfectionist, and his harsh critiques of some of my early writing forced me to dig deeper in my writing and never take the easy way out. But he was also an intensely warm, giving man and when he passed away seven or eight years ago, it left a void that will never be filled.

I laughed as I read his book today, as I could hear him saying the things that are now left only on paper. In his POW chapters, he talks about the importance of food in the lives of the men. There was never enough, even supplemented with Red Cross parcels, but the men came up with ingenious ways of creating tasty dishes, going to great lengths to do so. Some of the kriegies shared favorite recipes. John did, and put some in his memoirs. Here are some snippets from the late, great John Chaffin.

"The Geneva Convention defines the food that is to be supplied to Prisoners of War in terms of minimum calories per day per POW. We could probably have survived on just what the Germans gave us but we would have been very, very hungry all of the time. The rations which we got from the Germans included black bread, potatoes, kohlrabi, carrots, ersatz jam and honey, blood sausage and on rare occasions, fresh beef."

The German rations were supplemented by Red Cross Parcels. These came from various Allied nations and had foods such as powdered milk, chocolate, coffee, cigarettes, SPAM, a dry powdered milk called KLIM, and more. “The Red Cross food gives us variety, keeps us healthy, and does more to make our life bearable….Full rations are one parcel per man per week but we never had beter than one-half rations and most of the time we received only one-fourth the normal allowance.”

"Early in our kriegie life we did not do too well. Most of these guys had never learned how to cook or plan a meal. A certain number of them had seen in Boy Scout programs and learned how to cook over camp fires and a efw, like myself, had not only the benefit of scouting experience but also a mother who believed that boys as well as girls should grow up with some knowledge of cooking.” Quiet, please...chefs at work. Conditions were tough as several hundred men had to share just a few stoves.

"Flour was made by crunching up Canadian crackers. No parcels have yeast, so tooth powder, which contains baking soda, is used.

Some of John’s favorite Kriegie recipes:

Pie Crust:--- Grind crackers into a fine powder. Over about ½ bowl of the powder, pour ¼ lb. of melted butter. After mixing this well, add milk until the dough is pliable; then put it in a pan and bake until brown and fully dried out.

Chocolate Pie:-- (Serves Eight)
Ingredients: one (1) Klim can of milk (dry)
One ‘D’ Bar or ½ can of chocolate
Four tablespoons of sugar
Make pie crust. Shave ‘D’ Bar into a fine powder; mix thoroughly with milk power and sugar; then add enough water to make a thin paste. Boil mixture until it is thick; then pour into a crust and let set until cool.

John describes this recipe with his usual dry humor:

Kriegie Cake:
The Kriegie Cake is likened to a sandwich in that it is built and not made. It is not unlike a stew, since almost anything sweet in the pantry can be thrown in.
The bulk of the cake or rather the usual starting point is one bowl of bread scraps. Soak these in hot water for fifteen to thirty minutes and then pour into a dishpan. You are now ready to start.
Throw in about one Klim can of cracker crumbs; add sugar to suit taste—about ¾ lb. should be close to right. Put in ½ can of Nestles milk if you have it handy; a can of any kind of jam helps and ½ can of chocolate powder is one of the few necessary ingredients. A half can of New Zealand coffee doesn’t hurt anything, and, if you like, a box of raisins may be added. An apple pudding or Yorkshire pudding (from British parcels) will help immensely but if you are not fortunate in having one, don’t fret. When you have tired of throwing things into the pan, roll up your sleeves and work at the mess with both hands until it is well mixed. (If it is obvious that there is dirt on your hands and the weather is not too cold to run out to the latrine/washhouse you probably should wash your hands first—especially if any of the picky other Kriegies in your combine are watching.
Work the mess with both hands until it is well mixed. Pour the batch into a buttered pan and bake in the bottom of the oven until done. It should be baked slowly.
Almost any kind of icing will suffice for your cake. If you are lazy or pressed for time (rare even for a Kriegie) a little jam or honey will do. Should you feel more industrious, here are a couple of ideas for your use:
Take ¼ Klim can of milk, three spoons of sugar; mix well then add enough water to make a thick paste. Spread slowly and there you are.
To make a chocolate icing just add cocoa into the already-mentioned mixture and there you are—chocolate!
Some of John’s other recipes, meticulously saved in his POW log, include Barton’s OO—LA—LA Cookies; Blood Sausage Sandwich Spread; Delta Delight; Kriegie Style Grapenuts; and Prune Whip Pie

Another Hero Flies Final Mission; Jake Deshazer: Doolittle Raider and Christian Teacher

Another of my heroes flew his final mission last week--Jacob 'Jake' Deshazer. Mr. Deshazer was one of the Doolittle Raiders and ended up a POW in Japan for the entire war. Several of his crew-mates were executed by the Japanese, and his treatment was abysmal. His captivity strengthened his Christian faith, and after the war, he returned to Japan as a missionary. In one of history's intriguing stories, one of the men he converted to Christianity was the pilot who led the attack on Pearl Harbor.

I did not know Mr. Deshazer well, but had correponded with him over the years. He was a gentle, quiet, and friendly man who knew the Lord and whose greatest joy was serving Him. What follows is his obituary from the New York Times:

Obituary written by: RICHARD GOLDSTEIN
Published: March 23, 2008
Jacob DeShazer, a bombardier in the storied Doolittle raid over Japan in World War II who endured 40 months of brutality as a prisoner of the Japanese, then became a missionary in Japan spreading a message of Christian love and forgiveness, died on March 15 at his home in Salem, Ore. He was 95.

Jacob DeShazer
His death was announced by his wife, Florence.
On April 18, 1942, crewmen in 16 Army Air Forces B-25 bombers, commanded by Lt. Col. James H. Doolittle, flew from the carrier Hornet on a daylight bombing raid that brought the war home to Japan for the first time since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The raid resulted in only light damage to military and industrial targets, but it buoyed an American home front stunned by Japanese advances during the war’s first four months.
Corporal DeShazer, a native of Oregon and the son of a Church of God minister, was among the five-member crew of Bat Out of Hell, the last bomber to depart the Hornet. His plane dropped incendiary bombs on an oil installation and a factory in Nagoya but it ran out of fuel before the pilot could try a landing at an airfield held by America’s Chinese allies.

Below, Jake Deshazer stands at far right with the rest of Crew, Navigator George Barr; pilot Lt. William Glover Farrow (executed by a Japanese firing squad on October 15, 1942); Engineer-Gunner Sgt. Harold A. Spatz (executed by a Japanese firing squad on October 15, 1942); Co-pilot Robert Hite (POW); and Bombardier Cpl. Jacob Deshazer.

Hite, Barr, and Deshazer were liberated August 20, 1945.

The last plane off the flight deck, Deshazer's crew takes wing for Japan.

The five crewmen bailed out over Japanese-occupied territory in China and all were quickly captured. In October 1942, a Japanese firing squad executed the pilot, Lt. William G. Farrow, and the engineer-gunner, Sgt. Harold A. Spatz, along with a captured crewman from another Doolittle raid plane. Corporal DeShazer and the other surviving crewmen from his plane, Lt. George Barr, the navigator, and Lt. Robert L. Hite, the co-pilot, were starved, beaten and tortured at prisons in Japan and China — spending most of their time in solitary confinement — until their liberation a few days after Japan’s surrender in August 1945.

Amid his misery, Corporal DeShazer had one source of solace.

“I begged my captors to get a Bible for me,” he recalled in “I Was a Prisoner of Japan,” a religious tract he wrote in 1950. “At last, in the month of May 1944, a guard brought me the book, but told me I could have it only for three weeks. I eagerly began to read its pages. I discovered that God had given me new spiritual eyes and that when I looked at the enemy officers and guards who had starved and beaten my companions and me so cruelly, I found my bitter hatred for them changed to loving pity. I realized that these people did not know anything about my Savior and that if Christ is not in a heart, it is natural to be cruel.”
Corporal DeShazer gained the strength to survive, and he became determined to spread Christian teachings to his enemy.

Upon returning home, he enrolled at Seattle Pacific College (now Seattle Pacific University) and received a bachelor’s degree in biblical literature in 1948. He arrived in Japan with Florence, also a graduate of Seattle Pacific and a fellow missionary in the Free Methodist Church, in late December 1948. A few days later, he preached his first sermon there, speaking to about 180 people at a Free Methodist church in a Tokyo suburb.

In 1950, he gained a remarkable convert, Mitsuo Fuchida, the Japanese naval flier who had led the Pearl Harbor attack and had become a rice farmer after the war, came upon the DeShazer tract.

Jake Deshazer with Pearl Harbor lead pilot Mitsuo Fuchida, who he brought to Christ.
“It was then that I met Jesus, and accepted him as my personal savior,” Mr. Fuchida recalled when he attended a memorial service in Hawaii in observance of the 25th anniversary of the attack. He had become an evangelist and had made several trips to the United States to meet with Japanese-speaking immigrants.

Mr. DeShazer spent 30 years in Japan doing missionary work, interrupted only by a sabbatical to earn a master’s degree at Asbury Theological Seminary in Kentucky in 1958.
In 2001, he was a guest at the premiere of the movie “Pearl Harbor.”

In addition to his wife, he is survived by his sons Mark, of Winston, Ore.; John, of Coos Bay, Ore.; Paul, of Salem; daughters Ruth Kutrakun of Seattle, and Carol Dixon of Chicago; a sister, Helen Hindman of Iowa City; 10 grandchildren; and 6 great-grandchildren.
Over the years, Mr. DeShazer met on several occasions with Mr. Fuchida, who died in 1976.
“I saw him just before he died,” Mr. DeShazer once told The Salem Statesman Journal. “We shared in that good wonderful thing that Christ has done.”

This April, there will be one less upturned glass at the Doolittle Reunion, a tradition begun in 1946 when General Doolittle celebrated his birthday with the Raiders in a hotel. The Raiders have met every year since. In 1959, the city of Tucson , Arizona , gave the Raiders a set of silver goblets, one for each of the 80 men on the mission. Doolittle presented the goblets to the Raiders and a sacred ceremony for the crews began. The goblets hang in a display case at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs with each name of a “Raider” inscribed right side up and upside down on it. After reading the names of each man in roll call fashion, the Raiders who are left answer “here” for those still living or go and turn a goblet upside down for those who have gone. They then toast “To those who have gone,” and sip their wine. When the last two men living remain for the ceremony, they will open a 1896 bottle of cognac (the year Jimmy Doolittle was born) and complete the ceremony for the last time.

POW Remembers Hitler Visiting Camp and Honoring FDR

An aged Adolph Hitler, shown here in the years before his death, visited a small camp of American POWs in Berlin and informed them of the death of FDR, then stood at attention while the camp honored FDR, in a story related by POW Dan Culler.

Here is an amazing story I'd never heard about before, related by good friend Dan Culler, who was himself a POW. I quote Dan's story in its entirety.

"Roosevelt and Hitler

Here is a story you all might find interesting. I learned of it at our weekly POW
meeting at the VA which ended sometime in 2001 because not many of us were left,
and Sam Atterbury our councilor retired. It was told by Harold, one of our POWs who was shot down over Berlin in Jan. 1945 and was placed in a small POW
camp in the Berlin area, with Americans and British.

He mentioned the camp was close to Hitler's last bunker, and they let the allies
know of the camp hoping the allies wouldn’t drop bombs in that area.

Harold said several times Hitler with several guards would come to
the POW camp and would just stand next to the wire and look at the
prisoners.

Then when Roosevelt passed away on April 12, 1945 Hitler
came to the camp and had the guards inform the Americans of
Roosevelt's death and had them assemble in the yard and stand at
attention for a short time in honor of Roosevelt. Hitler and his
guards outside the wire, also stood at attention, and as you know
Hitler committed suicide on April 30, 1945.

How about that gentlemen, here was Hitler a maniac dictator who was responsible for
million of death paying homage to a ruler who help being him down.
Harold said the Russians freed them."

Remembering Gale 'Buck' Cleven, 100th Bomb Group

In artist Scott Nelson's painting, Gale Cleven mans the left seat as his plane goes down over Germany and his crewmates bail out.

I recently bought an outstanding art print by North Dakota artist Scott Nelson. Scott knew 100th Bomb Group commander Gale 'Buck' Cleven quite well through a mutual friend, and Mr. Cleven told Scott his story. Scott in turn made a painting of the shooting down of Cleven's B-17, which was made into a limited edition print and signed by both.

When Scott sent me this print, he also sent more information about Mr. Cleven. As a former Wyoming resident with strong ties to the state, I was suprised to learn that Cleven was a Wyoming native, from the Sheridan area. And I was disturbed to find that when Scott sent the Wyoming papers an obituary about the passing of this great WWII veteran, none of the Wyoming papers ran the obituary, ostensibly because they had never heard of him and didn't think the obit was of any interest.

As a former Wyomingite, I am going to try to rectify this great wrong to a good man by running his story here. I will be adding the obituary Scott wrote in a day or so, plus more photos of Mr. Cleven.


GALE W. "BUCK" CLEVEN

ORIGINAL 100TH PILOT

350TH BOMB SQUADRON

COMMANDING OFFICER

ORGINAL 350TH SQ COMMANDER

WENT OVERSEAS WITH CREW #A-3 IN AC #42-29738. POW 8 OCT 43 BREMEN (INFO ON MISSION BELOW). ESCAPED AND RETURNED TO THORPE ABBOTS APRIL 1945, STANDARD PROCEDURES PROHIBITED HIS RETURN TO OPERATIONS.

Medals:Distinguished Service Cross- Sept. 10, 1943 for Regensburg Mission August 17, 1943 Distinguished Flying Cross- Nov 30, 1943 for Paris Mission Sept 3, 1943 Air Medal-Aug 6, 1943 OLC to Air Medal-Aug 22, 1943 OLC to Air Medal-Sept 24, 1943 OLC to Air Medal-Oct 20, 1943 Major Gale Cleven passed away on Nov 17, 2006 at the age of 87 years old.
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