In a surprise attack, the Germans invaded Norway on April 9, 1940, and quickly secured the capital of Oslo as well as other major cities along the east and west coasts of the country. The underequipped and unprepared Norwegian military fought the Germans in the interior and in the far north but even with the assistance of British troops and ships was unable to withstand the German onslaught.
After running from the enemy for two months, the Government, King and Crown Prince of Norway fled to Britain, and the Germans took complete control of the country.
The Nazis appointed Josef Terboven as the Reich Commissioner, and all of Norway came under his control. Approximately 1700 Jews lived in Norway at the time of the invasion, and about 200 of them had fled from the Nazis in Central Europe. Although Terboven placed restrictions on the Jews and their property, it wasn’t until one year later, in the spring of 1941, that arrests and imprisonments were stepped up. Most of these arrests took place outside Oslo, in locations where Jews were small in number.
In early 1942, Terboven required all Jews to have a “J” stamped on their identity cards and the word “Jew” stamped on their identity papers. Also in 1942, Vidkun Quisling, a Norwegian collaborator, was named prime minister. He and Terboven executed the main persecution of the Jews.
Vidkun Quisling & Josef Terboven Courtesy of Flikr: The Commons via Wikimedia Commons
In the fall, the Norwegian police arrested the seven hundred and sixty-three Jews they could locate, including women and children, and transported them by ship to Germany. They were immediately sent to Auschwitz where most of them perished in the gas chambers.
The Norwegian Resistance had facilitated the escape of about nine hundred Jews to Sweden, where they survived the war as refugees. Hans Mamen was one of those resistance members. Hans grew up on a farm outside Oslo and was a student at the local Lutheran seminary. He learned of the persecution of Norway’s Jews and felt called as a Christian to help protect them. Hans’s mission began when a seminary professor asked him to help find a hiding place for a Jewish family who had requested the professor’s help.
Hans established a network of seminary students and other friends and contacts to assist. Some hid Jews, some shared food and supplies, and a few of them led Jews safely across the border into Sweden. Hans led many rescue efforts, usually taking only three people at a time to reduce the risk of capture. He led his charges through sparsely-populated areas of dense forests. They crossed these difficult areas on foot, often at night. Hans arranged for a Swedish lumberjack who lived just across the border to keep a lantern lit at night so they would know when they had arrived in Sweden.
On one journey, Hans accompanied a mother and her three-year-old son across the country, and then they hiked to the border. He carried the child on his shoulders into the dense forest, and the sudden, complete darkness frightened the young boy. His cries echoed across the landscape, and nothing Hans or the child’s mother tried would calm him.
With dawn approaching and the threat of their footprints in the snow leading a Nazi patrol to them, Hans feared capture. Finally, he whispered to the boy that he shouldn’t wake up the birds, and the child immediately quieted. Once across the border, they enjoyed the sunrise and the opportunity to speak aloud again.
Celia Century, a Jewish refugee from Norway, sits on the deck of a summer camp in Ronneby Sweden next to a non-Jewish friend. Courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
In December 1942, the Norwegian police, working for the Nazis, arrived at the Mamen’s farm and demanded to see Hans. His mother explained that he was at the seminary in Oslo. After the police left, she telephoned the seminary, and her coded message was passed to Hans during class—“‘Pack your suitcase.’”
Hans rushed to the home of a trusted friend and sent a message to his fiancée, Ruth. Although her parents were afraid and didn’t want her to leave, Ruth packed a small bag to escape with Hans.
Hans and Ruth traveled by train from Oslo but disembarked before reaching the border. He had called ahead and arranged for one of his contacts, a licensed woodcutter, to meet them. The couple rode under a tarp in the back of the man’s old truck. They stopped at a safe house; however, Nazi agents were searching the neighborhood. Hans and Ruth climbed back into the truck, and the woodcutter drove them to a border checkpoint, where he knew the lone Norwegian guard was loathe to leave his hut at night.
Although the woodcutter turned resistance fighter was willing to use his gun if necessary, the truck rolled across the border without incident. The couple’s benefactor didn’t stop until they were far from the border. After he did, Hans and Ruth climbed out of the truck, fell on their knees, and thanked God for bringing them safely through.
Hans and Ruth married in Sweden and had the first of five children. Before the war ended, Hans finished his seminary studies and assisted the Norwegian resistance by helping Allied agents cross from Sweden into Norway to conduct operations. After Norway was liberated, Hans and Ruth returned home, and he served as a Lutheran pastor for many decades.
Villa Grande in Oslo. Site of the Center for Studies of Holocaust and Religious Minorities and former home of Vidkun Quisling. Credit: Leifern, Wikimedia Commons
More than sixty years later, Hans was asked to speak at the new Holocaust Center in Oslo. A tall, bearded Norwegian “greeted him with unusual affection for a stranger.” The man identified himself as “the Jewish toddler who decades earlier had quieted down in the dark, snow-covered forest so he would not awaken the birds.”
Sources:
Gragg, Rod. My Brother’s Keeper. Center Street, 2016.
Today’s story is the miraculous account of how the Norwegian’s saved their gold reserves from the Nazis and spirited them out of the country right under the enemy’s noses. If the Germans had obtained these reserves, they would have gained more wealth to supply their war machine.
Although Norway was neutral during WWII, Nicolai Rygg, the director of Norges Bank where the nation’s gold reserves resided, made preparations in case Norway should fall or a crisis develop. Early in 1940, Rygg brought in volunteers to pack bars of gold in white painted boxes and seal them with iron bands. Bags of gold coins were packed in smaller kegs. Of the 421 million Krone stored in the bank, 300 million was shipped to the United States. The rest was left in the vault because Norwegian law did not allow all the gold to be removed from the country at one time.
After Rygg learned that German warships were headed up the Oslo Fjord on April 9th, Rygg contacted General Laake, the Commander-in-Chief of military forces, who ordered Rygg to immediately evacuate the gold to the bank in Lillehammer. Moments later, Rygg learned that the Germans already occupied major cities but hadn’t reached Oslo (the sinking of the Blücher kept the Germans from seizing the capital for an extra eight hours).
Norges Bank at Oslo 1906-1986. Courtesy of Norges Bank.
Twenty-six trucks were chartered from local merchants, and the drivers were directed to the side entrance of the bank but were not informed about what they would be carrying. Bank guards were placed close to the bank to keep inquisitive eyes away, but the military was not used in order to avoid drawing attention to the operation. The bank employees loaded the gold.
Each truck, along with two armed bank guards, drove away immediately after loading so there was no convoy to draw the attention of the Luftwaffe. The first truck left at 8:15 AM and the last truck shortly before 1:30 PM. German soldiers marched down the main street of Oslo at exactly the same time, and the Norwegian commander of the Oslo garrison surrendered the city at 2:00 PM at the Akershus Fort, only a couple hundred yards from Norges Bank.
A Gold Bar from the Norges Bank. Courtesy of Norges Bank.
The gold shipment totaled 818 large crates, 685 smaller crates, and 39 kegs of gold coins. Lillehammer was 115 miles from Oslo, and the trucks traveled over snow-laden roads. Vehicles and pedestrians fleeing the capital slowed down the trucks, and people became angry because the trucks didn’t stop to help them. The last truck arrived at the bank in Lillehammer at 8:00 PM.
The bank employees in Lillehammer tucked the gold away in their vault; however, they could only unload the cargo when the Luftwaffe wasn’t flying over them. The media picked up on the activity and broadcast that trucks of gold were arriving in Lillehammer. A Trondheim newspaper also reported on the shipment, but the Germans did not pick up on the reports. The Royal Family, the Norwegian government, and the Norwegian gold had escaped for the time being!
The gold remained at Lillehammer for ten days while the Norwegians barricaded the roads and kept the Germans from advancing. Rygg checked on the gold twice and on the second trip, he asked the bank manager, Andreas Lund, to memorize the numbers to the vault lock. Frequent bombing raids forced the bank to close and wait to reopen until the planes disappeared.
Norges Bank at Lillehammer. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons – Public Domain
On April 14th, 15 German transport planes dropped about 180 lightly armed paratroopers in the Dombås area, northwest of Lillehammer. They were spread over a wide area, and the Norwegian troops successfully killed or captured them over a five-day period. This kept the railway lines to the north and the west coast open.
In the mean time, it became obvious that the Germans could overtake Lillehammer at any time. Oscar Torp, the Norwegian Minister of Finance, tasked Fredrik Haslund, Secretary of the Labour Party, with transporting the gold from Lillehammer to the port of Åndalsnes where the British Royal Navy could take it safely away. On April 17th, the British—determined to assist the Norwegians in ousting the Germans—had landed a large number of troops and equipment at three Norwegian ports—Harstad, Namsos, and Åndalsnes.
United States Military Academy Dept. of History – Courtesy of Wikipedia – Public Domain
At midnight on April 19th, orders came to open the bank vault door. Unfortunately due to fear and anxiety, Lund had a difficult time getting the lock to the brand new vault open—it had only been opened once before and Lund was operating by memory. He finally succeeded with the code a little past 1:00 AM.
Haslund had recruited the Lillehammer chief of police who assembled 30 volunteers who met at a secret location at 10:00 PM. They were armed with spades and shovels so they would appear to be preparing to dig trenches. Instead they were quietly transported to the bank and loaded the trucks which took the gold to the railway station, a short distance away. The gold was loaded onto the wooden railcars. A small group of soldiers was ordered to accompany the train, but the men weren’t told what they were guarding. They soon figured out the contents because of the Norges Bank initials displayed on the outside of each container.
Lillehammer Train Station. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons – Public Domain
The train left Lillehammer at 4:00 AM with its lights dimmed in case any Luftwaffe aircraft flew over. When dawn approached, the bullion train stopped at Otta and pulled onto a siding to wait for a safer time to proceed. Later, a train arrived at Otta Station from the north with three carriages full of British soldiers who had their thumbs in the air. The Norwegians were encouraged. Little did they know what dangers lay ahead.
The gold train sat undetected on a railroad siding in Otta. It didn’t run during the day because the German bombers loved to target anything moving. After a twenty-four-hour wait, the gold train left at 10:00 PM and arrived at the port town of Åndalsnes at 4:30 AM on April 20th.
View of the innermost part of the Romsdalsfjord with Åndalsnes up to the left in the picture. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain.
Åndalsnes is located at the head of a fjord – a long narrow inlet which connects to the Norwegian Sea. The British had landed troops and secured Åndalsnes two days before, and at 9:00 AM on the 20th, the Germans commenced bombing the port, the British ships, all transport routes, and the town of approximately 2000 people. In spite of their intelligence, the Germans were not aware of the presence of Norway’s gold, which remained at the station awaiting transportation out by British warship to the United Kingdom.
At 11:00 PM, Fredrik Haslund, the official tasked with conveying the gold out of Norway, sent the gold train to a siding at Romsdalhorn, a few kilometers away. Towering mountains guarded the tiny station, making it a perfect place to hide a train. Due to the constant daytime bombing, a crew of railwaymen worked in twelve-hour shifts to repair the area’s rail lines.
On the night of April 24th, Mr. Haslund ordered the gold train to be brought down to the dock in Andalsnes. Norwegian soldiers loaded 200 boxes of gold onto the HMS Galatea which had just unloaded British troops and equipment. The cruiser carried sixteen tons of the gold along with Norwegian officials to Scotland, and from there, the gold was transported to London and the Bank of England. Thirty-four tons of gold remained in Norway, awaiting transportation to the Allies. If the Nazis took possession, the precious metal would provide a tremendous boost to the enemy’s war chest.
A Modern View of Åndalsnes from the Romsdalsjjord Courtesy of Creative Commons via Wikimedia. Author Ludovic Peron.
The Norwegians expected German soldiers to come up the valley into Åndalsnes at any moment. Only hours remained to move the gold. An army captain obtained twenty-five trucks and drivers, and in two hours’ time, all the gold was removed from the train and loaded on the trucks. The convoy navigated over poorly paved roads that were covered with melting snow and mud. Unfortunately, the Luftwaffe returned to Åndalsnes and attacked the convoy. The soldiers and drivers ran for cover and no one was injured during the forty-five minutes of strafing. The convoy continued its journey, and when the next attack commenced, the drivers sped up. The Germans weren’t successful at hitting their targets. After reaching a ferry crossing, some trucks were hidden and some were camouflaged until dark.
A ferry arrived but could only carry two trucks across the water at a time. It took six hours to convey all the trucks to the other side. Because of deep ruts and potholes caused by the winter weather, the road ahead had to be repaired in places before the convoy could pass through. Trucks broke down and had to be replaced, and the crews became exhausted unloading and reloading the gold. Local farmers utilized their horses and equipment to drag one truck out of a ditch and back onto the road.
Eventually the convey arrived at the port of Molde where the Norwegian Government, King Haakon, and Crown Prince Olav were taking cover. They had arrived on April 23rd, and Molde had essentially become the new capital of Norway. The gold was unloaded into a large vault in the basement of the Confectionsfabriken building (clothing factory) in town.
Confectionsfabriken Building – Molde
The people of Molde were very helpful. They assisted with unloading the gold, providing security, and feeding the exhausted soldiers. But the Germans were intent on capturing or killing the King, Crown Prince, and Government. The Luftwaffe attacked Molde and it’s surroundings with bombs and incendiaries. The townsfolk set off the air-raid alarms as soon as they spotted aircraft, which allowed everyone time to escape to the woods.
On April 28th, the German Government announced that they were at war with Germany and that King Haakon was wanted ‘dead or alive.’ This was no surprise to the king or the Government. The relentless air strikes forced the British to send the cruiser HMS Glasgow to Molde and plans were made to evacuate.
The Germans bombed Molde for the first time at night. With debris littering the roads and fires raging, Norway’s gold was loaded on any available truck and transported to various locations at the harbor. Not all the trucks were immediately able to find a safe path through the destruction.
Before the HMS Glasgow could pull into port, a fire had to be extinguished on the dock. A portion of the gold was carried on board from this dock, and some was ferried by smaller ships from other points and loaded by crane onto the ship. The King, Crown Prince, members of the Norwegian Government, and the French, Danish, and British embassy members and staff joined British soldiers aboard the ship.
The Ruins of Molde – 1940. Courtesy of Flickr. No known copyright restrictions.
After the Germans unsuccessfully attacked the ship, the Glasgow left port and sailed down the fjord in reverse for at least an hour. It was too dangerous to turn around in the fjord at night. Not all of the gold had been loaded and not all of the gold had even made it to the dock before the Glasgow was forced to sail.
Along with the gold, the Glasgow carried King Haakon, Crown Prince Olav, members of the Norwegian Government, and diplomatic officials from Britain, France, and Denmark to the Tromso area in the far north of Norway. From here, the Norwegians hoped to form an offensive against the Germans and drive them out of the country.
Summer Night in Tromso (2012). Photo Credit: Mark Ledingham via Wikimedia Commons
After delivering its precious human cargo, the Glasgow turned south and safely landed the second installment of Norway’s gold in Scotland. Norwegian officials accompanied the shipment by train to London where it was stored in the vault of the Bank of England.
Back in Molde, Fredrik Haslund, the official in charge of rescuing the gold, searched for a way to remove the 18 tons which the Glasgow had been forced to leave behind due to the bombings. While Molde was burning, Haslund loaded eight tons of the gold on the steamer Driva, and the ship set off at 2:00 AM, only one hour after the Glasgow had pulled away.
The Luftwaffe dropped a stick of bombs in the water near the Driva, but she wasn’t damaged. During her trip north she was attacked by a German seaplane, and to avoid being sunk, the Driva’s first mate beached the craft on a flat shoreline. Bombs fell but landed in the sea. As the tide came in, another steamer pulled the Driva back out into the fjord.
Molde Under Attack in 1940 Painting by Rolf Groven
In the meantime, near Molde, Haslund decided the gold should be moved to fishing vessels because the Driva was too much of a target for the Germans. Word was sent to the Driva to rendezvous at the village of Gjemnes. The remaining ten tons of gold was transported by truck to Gjemnes and loaded onto fishing boats (puffers) there. Five hundred and forty-seven boxes of bullion were loaded in the dark, including the gold from the Driva. By this time, Norway’s fight against the Nazis was over in southern Norway but still continued in the far north of the country.
The puffers sailed through the fjords, laying over at coastguard stations and villages but not staying in any one place for long. Unfortunately, the captains of the puffers weren’t comfortable moving into unfamiliar waters farther north along the dangerous coast, and Haslund was forced to find other sources to move the gold to Tromso where the new capitol had been established.
Bodo at the time Haslund visited before it was bombed by the Germans on May 27, 1940. Courtesy of Hundholmen
The gold was again unloaded and reloaded on two different fishing boats. The boats split up but rendezvoused at a small port north of Bodo on May 7th. Hasland left the boat and traveled by car to Bodo where he located the local military commander and learned where the British had placed the minefields in a fjord they must pass through. After safe passage through the fjord, they obtained the services of the commanding officer of a Norwegian guard ship who boarded and piloted them safely to Tromso where they arrived on May 9th.
The gold was combined on one of the puffers, and that boat went out to sea with the other fishing boats each day. On May 21st, the gold was loaded on the HMSEnterprise, a Royal Navy cruiser. The Luftwaffe had previously attacked the Enterprise with 150 bombs, and she was in poor condition. She left on May 23rd on a zig-zag course for the UK. She was attacked again, but none of the bombs hit their target. The Enterprise traveled down the west coast of England without destroyer protection and docked at Plymouth in the south. The gold was transported by train to London and deposited in the Bank of England.
Expecting a German invasion of Britain at any moment, the Norwegians made plans to move its gold once again. The British had already removed all of its own gold reserves before the war started in September of 1939. The Norwegian precious metal was split into several shipments and sent across the Atlantic to the Federal Reserve Bank in New York and to the Bank of Canada in Ottawa. A small portion of the gold remained with the Norwegian Government-in-Exile established in England. This allowed them to function independently throughout the war.
Source: Gold Run by Robert Pearson. Casemate Publishers, 2015.
Norway didn’t expect to be drawn into World War II. Just as in World War I, the Norwegian government had declared its neutrality and worked hard to maintain this status. But early on during WWII, two major factors made this position untenable.
Iron ore dug at Kiruna and Malmberget was railed to Luleå and Narvik. Courtesy of Wikipedia & Creative Commons
To maintain its war machine, Germany needed uninterrupted access to iron ore from Sweden. The only year-round ice-free port was at Narvik, Norway, to which the iron ore was shipped by train across a short distance. It was vital for German ships to travel safely down the Norwegian coast from this northern port, but England was determined to end German access.
Narvik, Norway. Public Domain. Courtesy of Wikipedia
The Germans were concerned that the British would not only interfere with iron ore shipments but that the Allies would also gain access to Norwegian airfields and ports from which they could launch attacks on Germany. The Germans didn’t believe the British would allow Norway to maintain its neutral status, so Hitler ordered his military to draw up plans to invade before the Allies could gain a foothold.
In early April 1940, the British navy laid mines in the waters off the Norwegian coast at Narvik in an effort to force German ships into international waters where the Allies could attack. Unfortunately, the British waited too long. The German invasion was on.
Part 1
Part 1 is based on the firsthand accounts of Mrs. Florence Harriman who was U.S. Minister to Norway (now called Ambassador) before and during the early months of World War II.
On the morning of April 8, the U.S. Legation (Embassy) in Copenhagen, Denmark, phoned Mrs. Harriman in Norway and reported that a large body of German ships was passing through the Great Belt. This is a strait north of Germany, between two large islands in Denmark. Most officials, including the Norwegian government, thought the fleet was heading to the North Sea to engage the British Royal Navy in battle. The British even withdrew all their ships from Norwegian waters.
The Blücher Which Led the German Fleet into Norway Courtesy of Wikipedia
At 11:30 PM, the air raid alarm sounded in Oslo, but the street lights remained on for some time, and most assumed it was just another practice air raid alarm. Mrs. Harriman went to bed. However, at 3:00 AM, she was awakened by a phone call and notified that German warships were coming up the Oslo Fjord (a long narrow waterway connecting the capital with the North Sea). Mrs. Harriman was unable to call or cable the United States – Nazi collaborators had already taken control of communications.
Between 5:00 and 6:00 AM, Mrs. Harriman and others who had joined her at the American Legation made several trips to a newly-built bomb-proof room in the building. German bombers circled the city with Norwegian planes in pursuit. Anti-aircraft fire penetrated the early morning air.
The Norwegian Foreign minister notified Mrs. Harriman that the Court and Government were fleeing Oslo on a special train, and they wanted her to join them. Although she began packing, she was only given a twenty-minute notice of the 7:00 AM departure time, so she left in her Ford automobile at 9:45 AM along with other Americans.
German Troops Marching Through Oslo on April 9, 1940 Courtesy of Wikipedia and Creative Commons
On the route north to Hamar, those fleeing Oslo passed Kjeller Airfield, which the Germans had bombed, and the hangars were still burning. Behind them, the Nazis occupied Oslo, but their arrival was delayed by eight hours. Coastal guns from the Oscarsborg Fortress sank the German flagship Blücher, which slowed down the invasion and allowed the King and Government to escape the Nazis.
After six hours, Mrs. Harriman and her party reached the city of Hamar, but no accommodations were available under any roof. When word came that the Nazis were headed to Hamar, the Norwegian Government, and the U.S., British, and French Legations traveled in a long line of automobiles to Elverum. After the King and Royal Family passed by, soldiers erected a barrier south of town. Later two hundred Germans were killed at this roadblock, including the German air attache.
Dept. of History United States Military Academy. Courtesy of Wikipedia.
Upon reaching Elverum, the town was blacked out except for the brightly lit schoolhouse where the Norwegian Parliament, the Storting, was meeting. The King and Royal Family continued on to Trysil, seventy miles north, and Mrs. Harriman found lodging with a family outside Elverum. By 5:30 the following morning, German planes were attacking Elverum. The Germans flew at low altitudes and terrified the inhabitants with their deafening roar. When the bombing ended, only a church and Red Cross hospital remained. The Government escaped safely and retreated to Nybergsund.
The Norwegian Foreign Minister urged Mrs. Harriman to follow, but a barrier stood in her way and deep snow made the forests impassible. The Norwegians maneuvered her Ford around a barricade, and only the frozen ice kept her vehicle out of the nearby river. Upon reaching Nybergsund, Mrs. Harriman found the town wiped out and no walls standing. She had no idea where to find the King and Government. She later learned that the King and Crown Prince had run for their lives into the forest when the Nazis attacked.
King Haakon and Crown Prince Olav Hiding in the Woods During Bombing Public Domain. Courtesy of Wikipedia.
Mrs. Harriman crossed the border into Sweden to make contact with the U.S. Legation in Stockholm and report that she and other U.S. officials were still alive. Although she remained close to the border and intended to cross back into Norway after learning the location of the Norwegian Government, she was never able to return. In her memoir, Mission to the North, she shared a portion of King Haakon’s speech to his people, which he broadcast while on the run.
“‘In this hour, the most difficult our country has ever known in a hundred years, I send the most pressing appeal to each of you to do all in your power to save the liberty and independence of Norway. We have been the victims of a lightning attack from a nation with which we have always maintained friendly relations. That nation has not hesitated to bomb the civil population, who are suffering intensely….They have employed against us, and against the civil population high explosives and incendiary bombs and also machine-gunned us in the most savage fashion….I thank all those who are today with me and the Government, and who are fighting at their posts of duty for the independence and preservation of Norway. I pray you all to treasure the memory of those who have already given their lives for this country. God protect Norway.'”
Part 2
Part 2 is based on the firsthand accounts of C.J. Hambro, President of the Norwegian Parliament, as shared in his book I Saw It Happen in Norway.
The Germans attacked Norway on April 9, 1940 and took the country by surprise. Norway had maintained a strict neutral status in World War II and was on excellent terms with both Germany and the Allies.
The German attack on Norway, planned months in advance, was executed with simultaneous invasions by ship and air at every strategically important point in the country. Also, soldiers had been secretly loaded on German commercial ships which were already in Norwegians ports. Unfortunately, the Norwegian army had not been mobilized, and the country was completely unprepared for war.
The first inkling of trouble came when the air raid alarm in Oslo started at 1:00 AM and continued incessantly. At 2:00 AM, Mr. Hambro reached the War Office and the Prime Minister by telephone and then received updates every fifteen minutes. Reports came in from all over the country—the Germans were invading.
Between 4:30 and 5:00 AM, the German Minister met with the Norwegian Minister of Affairs. He presented a list of demands which actually called for the complete surrender of Norway. The Government rejected the proposal and made plans to flee the capital. Mr. Hambro traveled by taxi to Hamar, one hundred miles north of Oslo, to prepare for the arrival of the Royal Family, the Government (Cabinet), the 150 members of the Storting (Parliament), and others supporting them. Most of these traveled on a special train which left Oslo at 7:23 AM that morning.
The sinking of the German flag ship Blucher in the Oslo Fjord postponed the occupation of Oslo, the capital of Norway, by eight hours and prevented the Germans from ever capturing the Royal Family or the Government.
That afternoon while the Storting was in session in Hamar, word arrived that the German motorized troops were advancing toward the city – one group was only ten miles away. A special train left for Elverum with most of the members aboard about ten minutes later. Norwegian soldiers barricaded the roads leading to Elverum and established a line of defense. The Storting met for the last time before the German occupation and unanimously gave the Government the full power to make all necessary decisions under war conditions.
The king sent his daughter-in-law, the Crown-Princess, and her three children to Sweden to stay with her parents, Prince Carl and Princess Ingeborg. The King and Crown Prince traveled with them as far as Nybergsund, which was twenty miles west of the border with Sweden.
The German Minister demanded a meeting with with the King, so he made the 45-mile trip back over frozen roads to Elverum the next day. Dr. Brauer, the German Minister, set forth the ultimatum which was tougher than the one he had presented the day before. The King stated he would abdicate rather than dissolve the Government and appoint a new one headed by Hitler’s man. The Government supported him and refused to accept the German demands.
The Germans replied by bombing Elverum and nearly destroying it. Nybergsund, which was smaller than a village, was also raided by bombers, but the deep snow reduced the impact of the explosions. The King, Crown Prince, and the Government passed through the Gudbrandsdalen Valley to the town of Molde on the west coast. They were constantly on the move, running from German bombers.
King Haakon and Crown Prince Olav hiding in the woods during a German bombing. Courtesy of Wikipedia.
British, French, and Polish troops landed at three points along the west coast to assist the Norwegians in their fight. The first British troops reached Norway on April 19th, but by April 28th, they were forced to evacuate southern Norway. The fight moved to the northern counties. The King and Government sailed above the Arctic Circle to Tromso, which became the provisional capital. The plan was to drive the Germans farther and farther south, and the implementation started to succeed when the Germans slowly lost ground in the north. Nevertheless, the King, Crown Prince, and Government only stayed in Tromso for five weeks.
After the Germans invaded the Low Countries and France, the Allies were forced to evacuate Norway – the troops were needed to defend their homelands. The British offered safe passage to the Royals and the Norwegian Government, and on June 7th, they departed on the British cruiser Devonshire for England.
In August, the Crown Princess, her three children, along with Mrs. Harriman, the U.S. Minister to Norway, and hundreds of others journeyed by train up the length of Sweden to the far north. They crossed into Finland and proceeded to the port of Petsamo on the Arctic coast. There they boarded the American Legion, a troop ship, sent by Roosevelt to take them to America.
The Return of the Royal Family to Norway – June 7, 1945 Courtesy of Oslo Museum via Wikimedia Commons
On June 7, 1940, five years to the day that the King and Crown Prince had fled Norway, the King and Crown Princess and her children returned to Norway by ship to cheering crowds welcoming the Royal Family home. The Crown Prince had returned a few weeks before to prepare the way.
Sources:
Mission to the North by Frances Jaffray Harriman. J. B. Lippincott Company. 1941.
Many books have been written about the atrocities that occurred at the notorious Auschwitz Concentration Camp during the German occupation of Poland in WWII. Survivors of Auschwitz and the death march west in the dead of winter have shared their heartbreaking stories, and each one holds a valuable lesson for readers. But one Auschwitz prisoner who was chosen for execution managed to escape.
Klara Lutkovits was a teenager from Sighet, Hungary (part of Romania before the war). She, her parents, and five of her siblings lived in the Sighet ghetto, which was formed in early 1944. One very hot day in May, Klara and her family were told to pack a few clothes and some food—they would be taken to a work camp and would not return home.
The Hungarian police loaded Klara, her family, and hundreds of others into railroad boxcars, and the Nazis transported them to Auschwitz, just one year before Germany’s surrender. They reached the notorious camp on the third night of travel. Dr. Joseph Mengele, a medical officer at the camp, met them on the selection ramp. He was tall and handsome, only thirty-three-years-old, and resembled the Hollywood actor-type. He had a magnetic personality. Mengele talked and joked with the deportees and then sent them to the gas chambers.
Because Klara’s transport arrived during the night, German soldiers grouped their flashlights around Mengele, and he made his selections. He sent Klara’s sister and brother and her parents to the right and Klara with her two other sisters to the left. He smiled and said they would see their family members the next day. The guards led Klara, Rose, and Hedy to a barracks in B Camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau. The rest of the family went immediately to the gas chambers.
Auschwitz-Birkenau 1944. Selection of Hungarian Jews for work or the gas chamber. Public Domain. Courtesy of Wikipedia.
Over the next several months, Klara and her sisters worked eleven-hour shifts in the surrounding fields and factories. They were fed three meager “meals” a day. The girls endured the cold and SS beatings and observed hundreds of new arrivals herded into the gas chambers daily.
Klara’s mind as well as her body began to break down, and she stopped eating. In November, Dr. Mengele announced that he would conduct a selection among the prisoners. After he viewed Klara’s emaciated body, he chose her and others in the same condition to die in the gas chambers.
The Nazis knew they were losing the war and needed to eliminate the evidence of their atrocities, so they pushed their extermination efforts to the maximum. A backlog of prisoners awaited execution, and Mengele could no longer send those housed at Auschwitz directly to the gas chambers whenever he wanted. New arrivals had priority. Klara and the other women selected were taken to the bath house, given black dresses to wear, and told to wait. Klara wanted to die rather than continue suffering in the camp. Her sisters, Rose and Hedy, came to the window of the bath house to comfort her, but they were pulled away and beaten for their efforts.
The guards moved Klara’s group to another holding room, a smaller brick-style building next to the gas chamber. Once the others fell asleep, Klara inspected her surroundings. The walls were made of inferior brick, and she noticed someone had dug around the bottom of one of the bricks. She pushed and pulled until she freed it and then used the brick to chip away at the others. After pulling out more bricks, she slipped through the small passage and into the night. The fresh, cold air and Klara’s newfound freedom awakened her. She decided she wanted to live.
Klara moved through the camp, staying close to the buildings. The wet, snowy rain and very cold weather, kept the guards indoors. She noticed lights on in the bath house. Thick steam covered the windows. Klara found an open window and climbed inside, hidden from detection by the steam. After taking a shower, the girls were given dresses and shoes and were told to line up outside—the Nazis has chosen one hundred young women to work in a factory in Czechoslovakia. The guards counted one hundred and one prisoners and started to drag the last girl in line away. She objected, so one of the other girls volunteered to stay behind with her family and returned to the barracks.
After traveling for three days and three nights, Klara’s train arrived in Weisswasser, Czechoslovakia, the home of a Nazi slave labor camp and the privately owned Telefunken Company. Klara lined up with the other girls but collapsed before making it to the camp gates. She awakened later in a hospital bed in the infirmary, where a female Jewish doctor nursed her back to health.
After six weeks, Klara went to work in the town factory, putting wire transmitters and radio relay systems together. She began to eat again, but the process was painful. Those in charge fed the workers three meals a day, including bread and meat with each meal.
A few months later Klara and her co-workers were ushered to their job site as usual but nobody brought work for them to do. The girls discovered the Germans and their soldiers had left. They were free! The next day Russian soldiers arrived, and their captain arranged transportation for the girls to the nearest operating trains—two days away. The girls were all allowed to board without paying, and Klara traveled home to Sighet.
Several weeks later her sisters, Rose and Hedy, arrived home. They thought Klara had died in the gas chambers. What a reunion of crying, laughing, and screaming took place!
Klara met Ezra Wizel in Sighet, and they married in 1947. Having no desire to live under communism, the Wizel’s escaped and emigrated to America. They eventually settled in Los Angeles, California. Source: Auschwitz Escape – The Klara Wizel Story by Danny Naten and R. Gifford, 2014.
Source:
Auschwitz Escape – The Klara Wizel Story by Danny Naten and R. Gifford, 2014.
Walter Rosenberg, who later changed his name to Rudolf Vrba, and fellow prisoner Alfred Wetzler escaped from the infamous Auschwitz Death Camp on April 7, 1944. Their method of escape was rather unique, and the comprehensive report they wrote about the mass executions taking place at Auschwitz helped to save the lives of thousands of Hungarian Jews.
Walter was fifteen-years-old when he was forced to leave school and study at home due to the anti-Jewish laws passed by the pro-Nazi German protectorate of Slovakia. Three years later, at age seventeen, he’d had enough. He tore the Star of David off his clothes and left home in a taxi, hoping to make it to Great Britain.
At the Hungarian border, frontier guards captured Walter and sent him to a transition camp. Hoping to improve his situation, he volunteered for a “Work Farm” assignment, which was in reality a one-way trip to Auschwitz. He held various jobs at Birkenau (Auschwitz II), where the gas chambers and crematoriums were located.
By April of 1944, about ninety percent of the new arrivals to Auschwitz (6000 people) were sent straight to the gas chambers each day. One day drunken SS guards spilled the news to the prisoners that Hungarian Jews would soon arrive.
Auschwitz II had a very active underground resistance organization made up of prisoners who worked in various departments in the camp. After the group learned that Rosenberg and Wetzler wanted to escape, the members aided their plans. It was past time to expose the Nazi’s secret crimes to the outside world.
Confiscated clothing in the “Kanada” section of Auschwitz Courtesy of Wikipedia. Public Domain.
The underground organization gathered data from the central registry, a list of the SS officers working around the crematoria, drawings of the layout of the gas chambers and crematoria, records of the transports gassed in two of the crematoriums, and a label from a Zyklon B canister. In one department, the prisoners’ job was to sort through the large quantities of items confiscated from the new arrivals and package the goods to send to Germany. From this supply, the underground gathered suits, socks, underpants, shirts, a razor, a torch, glucose, vitamins, margarine, cigarettes and a lighter for Rosenberg and Wetzler.
A barbed wire perimeter surrounded the barracks where the prisoners slept at night. The Nazi guards erected another external perimeter during the day. A stack of wood for constructing new buildings had been placed in a construction area between these two perimeters.
The men created a hollowed-out space in the wood stack, and on Friday, April 7, 1944, Rosenberg and Wetzler, clad in suits, overcoats, and boots, climbed inside their hiding place. A Russian POW had previously told them to soak strong-smelling Russian tobacco in petrol and dry it out to hide the men’s scent from the guard dogs. Their underground helpers piled wood around the escapees and sprinkled the area with the prepared tobacco.
Rosenberg had observed that after someone went missing at Auschwitz, the SS would hunt for them for three days and three nights before calling off their search. The two men stayed in the wood pile undetected for three nights and throughout the fourth day. After nearly 80 hours, they crawled out of their hiding place at 9:00 PM on Monday, April 10th. The external perimeter had been removed for the night, leaving the men free to escape the camp.
Rosenberg and Wetzler headed south to Slovakia, eighty-one miles away. Polish civilians assisted them with food and shelter, and the men crossed the border after eleven days. A peasant family in Slovakia put the men in contact with a nearby Jewish doctor who sent them by train to the Slovak Jewish Council in Žilina.
Although the Slovakian government had turned over thousands of its Jews to the Nazis who deported them, part of the Jewish community was left alone to operate its schools and synagogues as a show piece for German propaganda.
Vrba and Wetzler’s Escape. Courtesy of Wikipedia and Martin Gilbert.
Rosenberg and Wetzler wrote a full report of the atrocities taking place at Auschwitz, including drawings and detailed facts to back up their testimony. Rosenberg signed the report with his new name – Rudolf Vrba. The report was translated from Slovak into German and completed on April 27th. It was copied and taken to Hungary, Switzerland, the UK, Romania, and the United States.
International newspapers eventually picked up the men’s story, and leaders of several countries pressured Hungary to stop the deportations. The United States and Great Britain bombed Budapest on July 2 and dropped leaflets stating those responsible for the deportations would be held accountable.
Although the Nazi’s had invaded Hungary in March 1944 to prevent the country from withdrawing from the war, the Germans had left Hungarian Regent Miklós Horthy in power. After the Allies bombed Budapest, Horthy reasserted his authority and ordered an end to the mass deportations. Prior to that, 437,000 Hungarian Jews had been sent to Auschwitz between May 15 and July 7. The order to stop the deportations spared the lives of 200,000 Jews in Budapest.
Vrba and Wetzler survived the war, wrote books about their experiences, and lived to an advanced age. Vrba argued to the day he died that more lives could have been spared if the report had been disseminated immediately. He maintained that politics had played a part in keeping their account quiet for a time. Over the years many theories have been presented for why this may have happened, but that’s a story for another time.
Over a million Allied airmen flew missions over occupied Europe during WWII, and many of their planes were shot down. The parachute played a pivotal role in saving the lives of tens of thousands of these troops. Fascinating stories of miraculous parachute drops abound. Here are some of the experiences of Royal Air Force (RAF) flyers.
WWII Reenactment of the 82nd Airborne Division – Public Domain
First, a little information about the process of parachuting during WWII is in order. Once a soldier left his aircraft, either by jumping or being blown out, he fell at about 175 feet a second – 120 miles an hour. After his parachute fully opened, his descent slowed to 19 – 21 feet per second – about 11 miles an hour. If the parachute was dry and had been freshly packed, once he pulled his ripcord, the parachute fully opened in one to two seconds. The faster the aircraft traveled, the quicker the chute opened.
The closer the soldier was to the ground, the more dangerous his landing and chance of death. If a man jumped from an aircraft that was diving, he would fall at a faster rate, and a thousand feet above ground might have been too low for his parachute to open.
RAF Flight Lieutenant Dudley Davis defied these odds. On July 21, 1940, he flew his Hampden aircraft over the Wilhelmshaven harbor at fifty feet above the water and dropped a mine under the German battleship Tirpitz. It was timed to explode an hour after release.
Two other Hampdens flew in separately for the same purpose. A high-level diversionary bombing attack was scheduled for a few minutes before their arrival. However, unexpected winds interfered with the operation, and the diversionary attack was over when the Hampdens arrived. The flak guns gave the three enemy aircraft all of their attention. Davis’ plane was the last to arrive, and streams of flak set his plane on fire before he arrived at the docks.
The Hampden continued flying with fuel tanks ablaze, and Davis dropped the mine close beside the Tirpitz. By this time, flames were spurting up through the cockpit floor, and the plane was too low for Davis to order his crew to jump. With the cabin behind him on fire and heavy smoke in the cockpit, Davis open the hood, crouched on the starboard wing, and clung to the cockpit edge. As the aircraft began to roll to starboard, Davis pulled his ripcord. He was no more than fifty feet above the water.
Davis’ canopy filled and snatched him backwards off the wing. His back hit the plane, bounced off, and hit something else. He discovered he was lying on his side on a stone pier. He stood up and was unhurt except for a few bruises and a minor face burn. He was immediately captured and spent the next five years in a German prison camp.
The Germans were outfitting the newly launched Tirpitz at the time, so the explosion from the mine delayed its completion. Crew members from the other two Hampdens also survived by parachuting from their planes which were shot down.
During the Battle of France in the spring of 1940, Flight Lieutenant Crews and wireless operator/air gunner Evans flew out of their base at Rheims, France, to bomb a vital bridge on the German invasion route at the German-Belgian frontier. About thirty miles from their target, they encountered heavy fire from German antiaircraft gunners from the convoys below. The ack-ack smashed the plane’s instrument panel.
When Crews flew within sight of the target, anti-aircraft fire blasted a big hole behind the engine, causing burning gasoline to stream back under his seat in the cockpit. At this point, Crews was flying over rolling wooded country with no place to land. He shouted for his men to bale out. He slid the hood back, and flames gushed up, burning his legs and face. They were no more than 200 or 300 feet above the trees, and the plane would go no higher.
Crews didn’t doubt that he must jump, but he didn’t expect to survive. He stepped out on to the wing root and pulled his ripcord as he dove off. He closed his eyes, hit the trees seconds later, felt burning on his face from pine needles scraping his skin, and then experienced a tremendous jolt.
Crews discovered “he was hanging on his rigging lines held from the top branches of a pine tree by the half-opened canopy” only six feet above the ground. Two yards away, Evans was suspended in another tree in the same way. They stared at each other. “Apart from minor cuts and bruises neither was injured.” Their plane was burning on the ground only thirty feet away. Crews and Evans tried to escape through the German lines but were captured and held prisoner for the next five years.
Deploying Parachutes (Public Domain)
Rear gunner Ken Downing served on an RAF Hampden on April 18, 1941 when he and his fellow crew members bombed a German airfield in Cherbourg, France. Downing’s aircraft was protected by a cloud blanket over the French coast until it broke through the clouds at 900 feet. The plane dropped to 850 feet, bombed the fighters sitting on the airfield, and pulled up to escape into the cloud. A shell of anti-aircraft fire hit the port engine which burst into flames. The pilot announced he would try to land the Hampden, but gave permission for everyone else to bale out.
Downing pulled the jettison wire on the main door of the Hampden, but it would not release. He lost valuable time kicking the door until it finally gave way. Downing pulled the ripcord on his parachute as he slid out of the Hampden. His head just missed the horizontal stabilizer, and his chute, which was streaming, cleared the aircraft. Because he was facing up, Downing didn’t know how close he was to the ground. His body jolted, his harness tightened, and he blacked out for a few seconds.
When Downing opened his eyes, he discovered he was sitting on the ground in deep soft mud, the only patch of mud in the vicinity. “Less than ten yards away on the other side of a hedge was the burning wreck of the Hampden.” Downing’s parachute lay close enough that the top of the canopy caught on fire. There were no other chutes near him – he was the lone survivor. Ammunition from the Hampden exploded, forcing Downing to crawl away on his broken right thigh and leg.
German airmen ran across the field and took Downing to the naval hospital at Cherbourg. The next day the German commander at the airfield visited Downing and congratulated him for his successful jump from 130 feet (almost unheard of). He spent the next four years in captivity.
RAF Seafire (Public Domain)
Lieutenant Commander P.E.I. Bailey and another pilot flew their RAF Seafire planes across the English Channel on the second day of D-Day. Their job was to spot for “the naval ships whose guns were supporting the ground forces in their drive inland” between Boulogne and Dieppe. “No sooner were they within range of the first ships than they were vigorously fired upon. Quickly they turned round and flew out to sea again.” The gunnery officers on the ships had mistaken them for the enemy. Bailey later learned that German fighters had strafed the fleet only minutes before.
Bailey reached one of the headquarter ships by radio and was promised his message about being fired upon would be passed along. The two pilots flew in again, were shot at again, and retreated again. Bailey radioed the headquarters ship once more and was told to wait ten minutes before returning. Ten minutes later, Bailey returned. As he passed directly over a heavily armed anti-aircraft cruiser, the ship opened fire, spraying the two planes with metal. The tail of Bailey’s plane broke off, and the nose went down. At 400 feet above the sea, he couldn’t get his damaged hood to open more than nine inches. The plane continued diving toward the beach. At about 250 feet, although he was still trapped in the cockpit, Bailey pulled the ripcord on his parachute.
Next, the drop tank on Bailey’s plane exploded, and as the aircraft disintegrated, Bailey was blown out. His chute opened and jolted him right before he bumped onto the beach. “The wind filled his canopy, and he was hauled off along the beach, dragged on his back over the sand.” The canopy of Bailey’s parachute detonated small anti-personnel mines attached to stakes near the water’s edge before Bailey reached those areas.
Bailey succeeded in stopping his runaway chute, undid his harness, and discovered he was uninjured. A group of British beach commandos surrounded him, thinking they’d captured a German airman. After all, a British ship had shot him down, and he was wearing black flying overalls. The commandos pointed their guns at Bailey. He didn’t have any proof that he was British, so the soldiers marched him off to a temporary wire cage, housing 150 disgruntled-looking German prisoners. By this time Bailey was quite disgruntled. He protested the whole way, but no one listened to him.
A captured German officer, who spoke perfect English, was also in the cage. He told the British soldiers that Bailey wasn’t a German airman, but no one listened to him either. Finally, after two hours in the cage, Bailey drew the attention of a British officer who took him to a brigadier. The brigadier telephoned and established Bailey’s identity and ordered him released. He returned to England the next day.
Blenheim Aircraft Used by the R.A.F. Courtesy of Canadian Forces via Wikipedia. Public Domain.
In July 1940, Sergeant Roger Peacock’s Blenheim was seriously damaged by flak when returning to Britain after a bombing run near Wilhemshaven, Germany. Peacock was the mid-upper gunner on the flight. (See the gunner turret midway back on the aircraft pictured above.)
After both engines stopped on the Blenheim, the pilot gave the order to bale out at 6,500 feet, and he and the observer jumped. Unfortunately, Peacock didn’t hear the order. The aircraft went into a slow spiral dive at about 4,000 feet, and Peacock didn’t know if the pilot would recover in time.
Twice Peacock called over the intercom, asking if he should bale out, but no one responded. He figured the guys up front were too busy to reply. After waiting until the plane had descended to 1000 feet above the ground, he asked again if he should bale out. No reply. So he removed his parachute and moved forward to the cockpit. Finding he was the only person left on the aircraft, Peacock returned for his parachute, clipped it on and looked out the escape hatch. The altimeter registered he was at 450 feet.
Peacock jumped. Even though it was dark, he detected the black carpet of the ground below him. His parachute began to stream; however, he knew he’d jumped too late. Then a miracle unfolded. “The Blenheim crashed under him and exploded. A blinding orange flash lit up the ground for hundreds of yards.” This caused “a great upsurge of hot air. A few feet from the ground the blast snapped his canopy fully open and blew him upwards and sideways away from the blazing aircraft. When he landed safely a few moments later he was some distance from the wreckage, in another field.”
Because Peacock stayed with his aircraft for so long, he overtook the pilot and observer who had baled out much earlier, and he reached the ground before them. The pilot came down close to Peacock five minutes later, and the observer landed in a ditch several miles away.
R.A.F. Vickers Wellington
On a training flight in a R.A.F. Wellington, Sergeant F. W. R. Cumpsty baled out right before his aircraft crashed in the Welsh mountains. He was only fifty feet above a mountain top. A gale-force wind carried him away from the top and into a valley, allowing time for Cumpsty’s chute to open. “He landed safely 200 feet below the peak.”
The British Stirling Heavy Bomber (Public Domain)
After his Stirling Bomber was shot down by flak over France in 1944, Flight Engineer Joseph Cashmore baled out from below 300 feet. The flight was halfway across France and traveling at 300 feet to avoid radar detection when searchlights revealed its presence to the enemy. After the ensuing bombardment destroyed the plane, the pilot ordered his men to bale but then rescinded the order while he attempted to bring the Stirling higher. He wasn’t successful.
Each crew member prepared to jump. Cashmore went to the rear floor escape hatch and kicked the locking handles that were preventing the hatch from opening. They broke off. Cashmore and the flight sergeant beside him each insisted that the other jump first. By the time Cashmore exited, the bomber was in its last dive.
After pulling his ripcord, Cashmore “felt a sharp jerk as the harness tightened between his thighs and a thud, after which he knew no more.” He came to but had no injuries. “He had landed in a depression which contained the only patch of deep snow in the whole field.”
The French Underground rescued Cashmore, but the Germans captured him escaping near the Swiss frontier. After the war, he returned to England and was appointed Warrant Officer-in-charge of an enemy prisoner-of-war camp. Unteroffizier Heinz Ulrich was a prisoner there and, after learning that Cashmore had flown in Stirlings, bragged to Cashmore that he had earned an Iron Cross for shooting a Stirling down in 1944.
The date was March 4th, the same night Cashmore had been shot down. Cashmore grabbed a map of France and had Ulrich point out where the kill had taken place and at what time. Both answers, along with other descriptions, matched up with Cashmore’s ill-fated flight. Ulrich was the man who had ended Cashmore’s active participation in the war. The two became friends, and after Ulrich’s release, they corresponded for several years.
WWII British Halifax Bomber (Public Domain)
Flight Sergeant Eric Sanderson served as Rear Gunner on a Halifax named ‘R’ for Robert. On the night of March 22, 1944, Sanderson flew on the last operation of his tour. On their way to bomb Frankfurt, Germany, a strong force of enemy fighters attacked Sanderson’s bomber group. After watching the fighters go after the bombers behind them, Sanderson was ready. Sure enough, he spotted a Ju88 lurking under their tail, and he notified the crew.
Sanderson’s pilot initiated several maneuvers, diving, climbing, turning, performing a corkscrew, but the enemy fighter stayed with them, below and just out of reach of the bomber’s guns. As a desperate measure, the pilot rolled the Halifax on its belly so the mid-upper gunner could shoot down at the fighter. The fighter took advantage and hit them with his cannon fire, igniting the incendiaries on the “R.” With the wing root on fire, the pilot ordered all bombs to be released, but the mechanism didn’t work.
The fire moved to the fuselage, and the pilot called for his crew to jump. The other members left through the main door and the nose hatch, but Sanderson was left to wind his turret 90 degrees by hand and attempt to tumble backwards out of the turret. Unfortunately, when he swung down, his legs caught under the dashboard. He dangled upside down and could not swing back up into the turret to release his legs. Flames from the aircraft poured over him, searing his hands and face.
Diagram of the British Halifax. Note the Rear Gunner Turret. Courtesy of Author Martin Čížek via Creative Commons and Wikimedia
Sanderson expected to die. He didn’t know how close he was to the ground, but by this time, the “R” had descended from 16,000 feet to 1,000 feet, which he later learned. Suddenly, Sanderson decided to pull the ripcord on his parachute, hoping he’d be snatched clear. He was now below 400 feet. His chute rapidly filled and Sanderson felt as if his body had been torn in half. He saw the trees below him and then passed out.
Sanderson, lying on his back, awoke to utter darkness and silence. He thought he had died. But his vision and hearing slowly returned, and joy filled him when he realized he was alive after all. He moved his head and his arms, but he had no feeling in his legs. He sat up, but only saw a tangled twisted mass where his legs should have been. Upon further inspection, his legs and feet were intact but tangled up in his Mae West and harness. After untangling himself, he was able to stand.
Next Sanderson pressed a patch of snow to his face, which was bleeding from severe burns. A flap of loose skin hung from the his burned hand holding the snow. He crawled on his hands and knees to where he could observe the burning Halifax. Sanderson called to four German soldiers nearby. After running over to him and flashing a lamp in his face, they carried him off to a village.
Sanderson’s face and hands and broken collar bone healed in a prison hospital. “The only damage his legs suffered in their violent exit from the turret” were torn ligaments and muscles in his legs. All of his fellow crewman who bailed from the “R” for Robert landed safely, and Sanderson met them in captivity.
A Row of Halifax Bombers Being Assembled in Britain (Public Domain)
Source:
Mackersey, Ian. Into the Silk: The Dramatic True Stories of Airmen Who Baled Out – and Lived. Sapere Books.
Many have heard about the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of Allied troops from Dunkirk in May-June of 1940, but few know the story behind this miracle. In May 1940, the approximately 400,000 strong British Expeditionary Force waited on the continent of Europe in anticipation of German hostilities. On May 10th, the Germans invaded Holland and Belgium, and the bulk of the Allied forces moved into Belgium to meet the attack.
Dunkirk Beach in 2012. Courtesy of User: Eporte in Creative Commons via Wikimedia Commons
What the Allies didn’t expect was that the main thrust of the German forces would come through the Ardennes Forest to the south of their position. The Allied military leaders didn’t believe it was possible to move a large amount of soldiers and equipment through this area, but the Germans proved them wrong. By May 13th, the first German troops crossed the River Meuse into France at a place poorly defended by the Allies. A total of nine German Panzer divisions rapidly headed west in what is known as the Blitzkrieg, “Lightning War.”
The enemy trapped a half million French, British, and Belgian soldiers between the German troops to the north and the German troops streaming to the coast in the south. So effective was this maneuver that on May 15th, French Prime Minister Paul Reynaud phoned British prime Minister Winston Churchill and said, “We are beaten. We have lost the battle.”
On May 20th, the first German division reached the coast near Abbeville. On May 23rd, General John Gort, commander of the British Expeditionary Force, defied the orders of the British Imperial General Staff. Instead of conducting an all-out assault on the German army, Gort sent his troops to the coast and instructed them to form a defensive perimeter, allowing thousands of troops scattered over hundreds of miles to funnel through to the little-known town of Dunkirk. Thousands of French troops also took positions along the outer perimeter.
Before it was all over with, Churchill thought he would be forced to announce the grim news that a third of a million British soldiers had been captured or killed. He couldn’t envision evacuating more than 20,000 to 30,000 soldiers before the Germans moved up the coast and cut them off.
Churchill shared the hopeless situation with British King George VI, and the king appealed to the British people in a radio broadcast on May 24th. He asked the nation and all within the empire to pray for deliverance and announced a National Day of Prayer for Sunday, May 26th. He implored, “‘Let us with one heart and soul, humbly but confidently, commit our cause to God and ask his aid, that we may valiantly defend the right as it is given to us to see it.’”
The British people answered the call and met in churches throughout the country to pray for their troops and their nation. Long lines formed outside many cathedrals, including Westminster Abbey where King George and his cabinet went to pray.
The British Lined Up Outside Westminster Abbey on the National Day of Prayer – May 26th. Public Domain
On May 24th, the same day King George appealed to the British to pray, General Guderian and Adolf Hitler ordered the German Army to halt. The Panzers were less than fifteen miles from Dunkirk. Hitler and his generals were concerned their tanks would be needed in case of an Allied counterattack, and they wanted to prevent the loss of equipment they would need for the march to Paris.
In addition, Herman Goering, commander of the Luftwaffe, had requested that Hitler allow the airforce to prevent the evacuation of British troops instead of the army. It wasn’t until May 26th that the German army was allowed to move toward Dunkirk. By then, the British and French defenses were well entrenched.
The British Expeditionary Force Evacuating at Dunkirk. Public Domain
On May 26th, Vice-Admiral Bertram Ramsey commenced Operation Dynamo, the evacuation of British troops from Dunkirk. The Luftwaffe had already destroyed the port facilities, so the British destroyers loaded men at the East Mole, a flimsy wooden pier five feet wide, which extended 1400 yards into the sea. The loading process proceeded slowly, so Ramsey also requisitioned small boats from England to shuttle the troops waiting on the beaches to bigger ships anchored in deep water. The Luftwaffe continued to attack, strafing and bombing the beaches, the Mole, the ships, and the men backed up around the port.
On May 27th, General Halder, Chief of the German General Staff proudly boasted about the impending destruction of the British Army, but the Germans didn’t reckon with the prayers of the British. On May 28th, a terrible storm developed over Flanders, grounding the Luftwaffe and allowing more British troops to move to the coast unhindered. The defensive perimeter held the German Army back.
Following the storm, the normally turbulent waters of the English Channel calmed. Ramsey called for hundreds of small boats to head to Dunkirk. Many of these vessels wouldn’t have made it safely across and back if it hadn’t been for the unusual stillness of the waters. These boats carried thousands of troops back to England and saved their lives.
Small Boats Taking Troops Back to England from Dunkirk. Public Domain.
Despite the loss of six destroyers, eight personal ships, and over two hundred small craft, about 330,000 British and French troops were evacuated from Dunkirk between May 26th and June 3rd. The British were so grateful that they held a National Day of Thanksgiving on Sunday, June 9th. Choirs and congregations all across the country sang the words to Psalm 124.
“If the Lord himself had not been on our side, now may Israel say: if the Lord himself had not been on our side, when men rose up against us; They would have swallowed us up quick: when they were so wrathfully displeased at us. Yea, the waters of the proud would have gone over our soul. But praised be the Lord: Who has not given us over for a prey unto their teeth. Our soul is escaped even as a bird out of the snare of the fowler: the snare is broken, and we are delivered. Our help standeth in the name of the Lord: who hath made heaven and earth.”
Many of the troops saved at Dunkirk lived to return across the Channel and help the Allies win World War II. God heard and answered the prayers of a people who humbled themselves and sought His face.
In the last two months, we learned about the spiritual awakening which spread across Eastern Europe prior to WWII. If you missed those posts and would like to read them, here are the links:
Courtesy of Professor John L. Heineman, Boston College
Today the story moves to . . . Hungary.
Dr. Alexander de Csia, the chief physician for the Hungarian Railway, witnessed the changes taking place in the churches of Czechoslovakia (See the story “A Message of Hope in the Time of Need – Eastern Europe, 1936–1939”), so he invited Evangelist James Stewart to Hungary to hold evangelistic meetings on behalf of the Evangelical Alliance of Hungary. Dr. Csia was burdened to see God work in his country and refused to accept the attitude of many that revival in Hungary was impossible.
Hungary, Spring of 1939
Stewart enlisted Christians to pray “around the clock,” and they each dedicated one hour a day for prayer. The first meetings were held in a small Methodist hall in Budapest, but after two days the services moved to the larger building of the German Baptist Church. After two or three more days, the crowds overflowed this location, and the meetings moved to the big Reformed Church, which boasted seating for 2000 people. Soon the overflow crowd had to stand in the center aisle during the entire service.
Just like he had done in other Eastern European countries, Stewart had scripture choruses and gospel songs translated and printed in booklets so everyone attending the meetings would have a copy. He introduced “Into My Heart,” “Jesus Never Fails,” “Yes, I know,” “Wounded for Me” and other songs. It wasn’t unusual to hear these tunes hummed in shops and whistled by delivery boys riding their bicycles down the street.
Stewart shared the message of John 3:16 and invited those who wanted to give their hearts to Christ to leave their seats immediately and go to the front. Hundreds of people surged forward, making their way through the overflow crowd in the aisles.
More prayer meetings formed in other parts of Budapest, and many Christians attended morning meetings on the topic of God’s plan for living a holy life. They left these meetings “determined to make things right in their own lives.” The revival campaign ended before Christmas but began again in 1938. The organizers rented the biggest concert and dance hall in Budapest, the “Redoubt.” In a few days, the crowds outgrew this location.
And the results . . .
Many Hungarians turned to Christ.
Many Christians confessed the sin in their lives and renewed their relationships with God and with each other.
New converts attended discipleship meetings.
School officials, including those from Roman Catholic schools, invited Stewart to speak to their students.
Students from the Baptist Seminary and Training School in Budapest went home to their villages and spread word about the revival.
Interested folks from all over Hungary extended invitations to hold meetings in their towns and cities.
Campaigns were set up in many locations throughout Hungary.
Andi Ungar, a Christian Jew, interpreted for Stewart at many of the meetings, and the two men spoke as if one person. Anti-Semites criticized Mr. Ungar’s role in the meetings, but Stewart and the other leaders ignored the criticism.
A great outpouring of the Holy Spirit took place in the city of Debrecen in eastern Hungary. Debrecen had long been called “The Geneva of Hungary” and “The Calvinist Rome.” Services were held at the Reformed Seminary, which had been established 300 years earlier. In addition to the evening gospel services, meetings carried on day after day for women and girls, for children, for prayer, for youth, and for Bible study. Many people shared about the work God was doing in their hearts.
In the spring of 1938, Stewart held his last campaign in Budapest in “The Tattersall,” a horse riding academy. At the end of each day, “hired laborers quickly cleaned the huge arena, put down fresh shavings, and arranged four thousand chairs which had been rented for the purpose.” The chairs were gathered and stored after the meeting each night.
Members of the Salvation Army and various Baptist groups formed a brass orchestra, which accompanied the revival songs. Several thousand people attended the meetings each night during the two-week campaign. On the final Sunday, over five thousand young people from Budapest and the surrounding towns and villages gathered for a youth rally.
James Stewart left Hungary in 1938, but the revival led by the Hungarian people continued to spread across the country. More souls turned to Christ. More hearts and lives changed. Stewart returned to Hungary for short visits in 1939, 1940, and in 1946 after WWII. He was overjoyed to witness the revival fires still burning, despite the ravages of war.
Buda Castle and Danube River – Budapest. By Costel Slincu.
Source:
Stewart, Ruth. James Stewart Missionary, A Biography. Revival Literature, 1977.
Last month, we learned about the message of faith and hope which spread through Latvia, Estonia, Eastern Poland, and Czechoslovakia from 1934 to 1936. If you missed that post and would like to read it, here’s the link: A Pre-WWII Great Awakening in Eastern Europe.
Today we continue the story in Czechoslovakia in late 1937.
Prior to WWII, Czechoslovakia consisted of four regions – Bohemia, Moravia, Slovakia, and Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia. Young Scottish evangelist James Stewart, invited and backed by the Czech Brethren, held revival meetings in Bohemia and Moravia in western Czechoslovakia.
Map of Czechoslovakia and northern Austria, 1928-1938. Created by PANONIAN [public domain] via Wikimedia Commons.
Following the great revivals seen in the cities of Kutna Hora and Kolin (see the story “A Pre-WWII Great Awakening in Europe”), people from all walks of life filled large rented halls in the nearby capital city of Prague, Bohemia, to hear the gospel preached. Many surrendered their hearts to Christ as a result of these meetings.
Next, Stewart was invited to hold meetings in a large rented hall in the city of Brno, Moravia. Members of a Brno church were greatly concerned for the state of their congregation. The church was dying as a result of differences of opinion, hard feelings among the members, and a generation gap. Stewart challenged the believers to trust God for revival, for the salvation of their own children, and for the salvation of hundreds more.
Before the meetings began . . .
Round the clock prayer meetings were organized – each volunteer prayed for an hour.
Believers made sure their hearts were right with each other. They righted wrongs.
And the results . . .
God worked and the church experienced:
Love among the believers
A warm atmosphere
Life among the young people
Many souls won to Jesus Christ
A prodigal son in the church gave his heart to Christ, his behavior completely changed, and he became the leader of the young people, who willingly followed him.
From 1936 to 1939, Stewart held nine campaigns in large halls in Brno for two to three weeks at a time. He was only 26-years-old, preached simple messages, was of plain appearance and dress, but was joyful, earnest, enthusiastic, and spent hours in prayer each day.
In March of 1938, Hitler annexed Bohemia and Moravia and sent thousands of German soldiers and government workers to set up and maintain the new order. Despite the fact that every fifth person in and around Brno was German, the young people who were reached through the revival campaigns . . .
Held gospel services in hospitals, nursing homes, and prisons
Held gospel meetings and Bible studies in the nearby villages where many accepted Christ
Forty years later, Ruth Stewart, the widowed wife of James Stewart, traveled to Czechoslovakia and visited with some of these former young people, who were then in their 50‘s and 60’s. They had survived the war and their faith was strong in spite of having lived under communism for many years. Over and over again the former young people told her, “‘God knew what was coming to us of sorrow and suffering, and He brought revival into our midst to prepare us for standing strong in the faith in those difficult times.’”
Source:
Stewart, Ruth. James Stewart Missionary, A Biography. Revival Literature, 1977.
Eastern Europe was heavily impacted by WWII. Millions of civilians and soldiers lost their lives when Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union initially invaded and then reconquered these lands later in the war. Both countries massacred many civilians and soldiers and deported hundreds of thousands to either Germany or Siberia, where the deportees often died of starvation.
What was the emotional and spiritual state of the general population in these countries prior to WWII? Did the people expect such widespread devastation, and were they prepared for the suffering ahead? Did they think about their spiritual welfare?
It so happens that a great spiritual awakening took place across denominational lines in Eastern Europe in the 1930‘s and continued into the war period. God, in his love and mercy, sent witnesses and opened the windows of heaven prior to the great calamities which followed.
In 1934 a young evangelist from Scotland traveled to Riga, Latvia, a small northern country bordered by the Baltic Sea on the west and the Soviet Union to the east. Even though he didn’t personally know anyone in the country, James Stewart clearly felt God had called him to this land. He arrived almost destitute and penniless, his clothing inadequate for the harsh winter weather. He found refuge in the home of Pastor Robert Fetler and held a revival campaign in Fetler’s church. Twelve hundred people attended the meetings nightly, which often lasted until three o’clock in the morning.
Fetler’s brother, William, pastored the Salvation Temple Revival Church, also in Latvia, and the church was holding a revival convention the week Stewart arrived in the country. The congregation had prayed for revival for many years and hundreds of believers participated in a twenty-four-hour-a-day prayer circle for that purpose.
Stewart preached in the Salvation Temple’s services where over two thousand people gathered every day for weeks and months. The meetings continued sometimes all day and all night, and those attending attested to the “awful sense of the majesty and holiness of God.” The Russian, German, and Polish churches which met in the building were “touched by the power of God.”
ESTONIA
Physically exhausted from ministering daily in Latvia, Stewart went north to the little country of Estonia to rest. It wasn’t long before he made contact with a pastor whose people had also been praying for revival. They began gospel meetings and soon had to move the services to the largest Protestant building in the capital city of Talinn. They ran out of space in that church and asked church members to stay home to make room for the visitors. Then it became necessary to rent the largest public hall in the city, which seated thousands.
Stewart arrived at the new location one night and found a crowd waiting outside. When he asked the people why they hadn’t been allowed inside, they answered that the hall was crowded and there wasn’t any more room.
During the course of the meetings, Stewart lost his voice and went to another town to rest. After his voice returned, he conducted meetings entitled “Lectures on the Bible” and gave each attendee a New Testament. As he both taught and preached from the Scriptures, the listeners gave their hearts to Christ, including his interpreter, a university professor.
POLAND
Creative Commons
In 1935, James Stewart left for Warsaw and met with the Russian Missionary Society to receive instructions on how to assist pastors ministering in the small towns and villages among the Russians of eastern Poland. Stewart visited and encouraged these pastors, arranged for the systematic distribution of Scriptures in the villages, and conducted evangelistic meetings in rented public halls and theaters.
Stewart was especially burdened for the large number of Jews he encountered, so he held special meetings for them. Both orthodox and liberal Jews attended, packing the buildings so tightly that the gas lamps went out for lack of sufficient oxygen.
The films of actor James Stewart played in the same cities and towns where missionary James Stewart led people to Christ. Some folks traveled to town to watch the movies but went to the wrong hall by mistake. After listening to the gospel message, they gave their hearts to Christ. Stewart held ten-day campaigns in the larger towns of Rowne, Baronowicze, Vilna, Pruzana, and Lutsk, and the rented cinema buildings filled to overflowing.
CZECHOSLOVAKIA
Map of Czechoslovakia and northern Austria, 1928-1938. Created by PANONIAN [public domain] via Wikimedia Commons
James Stewart returned to Warsaw, and an associate asked him where he planned to go next. “Czechoslovakia,” he said without a pause. His friend asked if Stewart knew anyone there. No, he didn’t. But that same day, Mr. Zdened Koukol, a chocolate manufacturer from a town near Prague, Czechoslovakia, walked into the associate’s office. He met Stewart and asked him when he planned to come to his country and hold revival meetings.
Stewart traveled to Czechoslovakia and, under Koukol’s sponsorship, held meetings starting in October of 1936. After two weeks of speaking to a cold and unresponsive congregation in Kutna Hora, the young preacher packed his bags, planning to move on. Koukol urged him to stay longer. James prayed and the Lord convicted Him for his impatience.
Koukol encouraged the believers in the towns of Kutna Hora and Kolin to pray and believe that revival was possible, starting in their own hearts. Koukol rented a large public hall in Kolin, and young people flocked to the meeting. No one responded the first night. However, very late that same night, a Christian woman who held an important position in the Kolin church appeared at Koukol’s home.
The woman feared that sin in her life had prevented God’s blessing upon the revival meeting. Stewart counseled with her, and she left determined to make things right. A very different atmosphere was evident at the meetings in the following days. Many heard the gospel for the first time and accepted Jesus Christ as their personal Savior.
Source:
Stewart, Ruth. James Stewart Missionary, A Biography. Revival Literature, 1977.
During my summer 2022 trip to Europe, I toured the Palais Garnier Opera House in Paris, which will play a part in one the WWII books I’m currently writing. During the German Occupation, the show went on.
Palais Garnier Opera House (Deposit Photos)
The Palais Garnier was commissioned by Napoleon III but opened in 1875 after his death. It’s located in the 9th Arrondissement and sits at the intersection of several wide boulevards. The architect, Charles Garnier, utilized several different styles to create the exterior of the opera house. When Empress Eugenie asked Garnier what architectural style he was using, he replied that “he’d created a new Napoleon III style.”
Garnier experienced a few setbacks during the building of the opera house. A lake was discovered under the site, and it had to be drained. A cistern was built to collect water, which is still in use today. French firefighters train to swim in the dark in this huge cistern or underground lake below the opera house. Although the ornate exterior was completed in 1869, the Franco-Prussian War brought construction to a halt.
The Grand Staircase (Deposit Photos)
The interior of the opera house is so opulent that it earned the moniker “Palais” from the beginning. The steps of the Grand Staircase are made of white marble, and the railing and its supports (balustrade) are made of red and green marble. The stairway leads to various floors and foyers of the theater.
The Grand Foyer (Deposit Photos)
Garnier designed the Grand Foyer to rival Marie Antoinette’s Palace at Versailles. The foyer is absolutely gorgeous and breathtaking.
A Closer View of the Ceiling of the Grand Foyer. Courtesy of Author isogood via Wikimedia Commons
The auditorium, which seats just under 2000, was designed in the classic Italian opera house style. The horseshoe shape allows patrons to view each other as well as those on stage. An enormous eight-ton bronze and crystal chandelier hangs below a colorful painting, and the stage curtain is painted, providing the illusion of many curtains.
The Auditorium (Deposit Photos)
Several legends about the Palais Garnier inspired The Phantom of the Opera book and later the musical. Some of these legends are based on real events which took place long ago. In 1896 during a performance of the opera Helle, one of several counterweights holding up the chandelier in the auditorium broke off and fell through the ceiling. It killed one person in the audience and injured several others. A fire on the stage of the Paris Opera’s former location killed a ballerina and disfigured her fiance, a pianist. He supposedly went to live underground at the new opera house for the rest of his life. There’s also the rumor that a faceless man lived in the lake.
In the summer of 2022, I was blessed to take a research trip to Europe with fellow author Rebecca Davie. We visited many cities and areas where my works in progress (books) are set.
Deposit Photos
One of the places we visited was the Hôtel des Invalides (English: “house of invalids”) or Les Invalides in the 7th Arrondissement of Paris. French monarch Louis IV built the extensive complex to provide a hospital and retirement home for French veterans. Although these services are still provided on a small scale today, the buildings are primarily utilized for several museums and memorials dedicated to the military history of France. Two WWII museums are housed at the Invalides, so we spent the better part of a day viewing the exhibits but also couldn’t resist visiting Napoleon’s tomb.
Dôme des Invalides
Napoleon’s ashes reside in an elaborate tomb made of red quartzite, resting on a green granite base.
Napoleon’s TombThe Dome above Napoleon’s Tomb
The Museum of the Order of the Liberation
The Musee de l’Ordre de la Liberation contains three sections – the Internal Resistance, Free France, and Deportation. Dozens of artifacts, including uniforms, stories of Resistance members, British transceivers, and many other items used in the fight for liberation are on display.
After Nazi Germany crushed France, the French government of Marshal Petain signed the armistice, allowing part of the country to be occupied. General Charles de Gaulle, who had led a command during the Battle of France, fled to Britain and, over the BBC radio in London, called for France to continue the fight. Some Frenchmen who hadn’t been evacuated by the British or captured by the Germans took up the call and found a way to escape to England to join de Gaulle. Others stayed in France and participated in the Resistance. French women volunteered as well.
In July 1940, de Gaulle established Free France, a military and political organization supported by Winston Churchill. “Between 1940 and 1945, the Free French forces fighting on the land, on the sea, and in the air distinguished themselves on several continents by maintaining France’s presence in the world war.” (“Discover the Permanent Collections of the Museum of the Order of the Liberation” pamphlet distributed by the museum)
The Legion of Merit Medal
President Harry S. Truman awarded the Legion of Merit, one of the highest distinctions of the American armed forces, to General de Gaulle on August 30, 1945 for leading Free France in the fight alongside the Allies.
The Deportation section of the museum details the Nazi regime’s concentration camp system across Occupied Europe. “Victims were mainly resistance fighters, politicians, people who refused to work, and people rounded up in reprisals.” Seventy-four thousand Jews were transported from France to extermination camps with most assassinated upon arrival. The Nazis also deported 70,000 people from France for slave labor, many of whom died of hunger and exhaustion.
The Army Museum
The Musée de l’Armée contains many artifacts from France’s wars. The section on WWII contains many interesting items.
WWII BombsAmerican Light Artillery PieceGerman Underwater MineA U.S. Army Soldier’s KitDies and Stamps for Producing Forged Papers and LeafletsA Fake Identity CardInternment Camps in France (Expand bottom left key for descriptions)The German Cryptographic Machine – The “Enigma” – used to transmit military information by code, which was cracked by the Allies
Sources:
Information on display and in print at Les Invalides
Christmas 1944 found the United States Army fighting its largest and costliest battle in U.S. history – the Battle of the Bulge. Hitler’s last major offensive in WWII was motivated by the hope that his troops could drive toward the coast and seize the port of Antwerp, Belgium, effectively cutting off British supply lines to their army in the north and from the Americans to the south. The Germans would then crush the isolated British troops. When this was accomplished, Hitler thought the Allies would sue for peace and leave the Nazis in power in Germany. This would leave the Germans to concentrate on defeating the Soviet Union on the Eastern Front.
Under cover of night and radio silence, the Germans amassed an attack force of thirty divisions (more than 200,000 troops) and over 2000 tanks. On December 16th before dawn, they launched their surprise attack through the Ardennes Forest, the least expected place and the lightest defended area (85 miles of dense woods). This move both surprised and created alarm and confusion among the Allies. For the first three days, the Allied air forces were grounded due to mist and rain.
American soldiers captured by German troops in the Ardennes between December 16 and 22, 1944. Courtesy of the Imperial War Museum.
The Germans initially bypassed the city of Bastogne, which was defended by the 101st Airborne but later besieged the city. The German commander demanded the Americans surrender, but the American commander responded “Nuts!” On December 26th, Patton’s 3rd Army relieved Bastogne.
A dugout built under snow in the Bastogne area. Courtesy of the Imperial War Museum.
On Christmas day, the 2nd U.S. Armored division stopped the German tanks before they reached the Meuse River. British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery had brought reserve troops south quickly and shored up the defense at the Meuse River crossings, which the Germans never reached. The “Allied lines bulged but did not break.”
On January 3rd, the U.S. 1st Army began their counteroffensive. Realizing the Allies were attempting to surround and pinch them off, the Germans retreated. The battle lasted for six weeks (12/16/44 – 1/25/45), until the Allies pushed the Germans back across the border.
The battle was costly on both sides. Germany lost 120,000 men. Out of the 600,000 U.S. troops who participated, more than 23,000 were taken prisoner and 19,246 died. There were well over 80,000 casualties. This battle accounted for approximately 10% of all combat casualties for the U.S. in World War II.
Germans captured during the allied counterattack. Courtesy of the Imperial War Museum.
British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill stated, “This is undoubtedly the greatest American battle of the war and will, I believe, be regarded as an ever-famous American victory.”
During WWII, thousands of citizens in the Netherlands, Belgium, France, and the Basque region of Spain hid Allied soldiers and delivered them along various escape routes to British consulate officials stationed in Spain. From there, the men flew back to England so they could continue their fight to free Europe from the grip of the Nazis.
The Comet Line was established by Belgians in August of 1941 and continued to operate until the end of 1944. The line ran from Brussels, through France, and across the Pyrenees to northern Spain (red line on map below). How did this line start, and who was behind its formation?
After Belgium surrendered to the Germans in 1940, Mademoiselle Andrée De Jongh, known as Dédée, cared for wounded British soldiers in Brussels. By 1941, she decided to find a way to help the many soldiers and airmen hidden in Brussels to escape back to England. Many were survivors from Dunkirk who hadn’t been caught by the Germans.
Dédée and her father, known as “Paul,” formed an escape line from Brussels to St. Jean de Luz in southwest France. In August of 1941, Dédée escorted a Scottish soldier and two Belgians who wanted to fight for the Allies to the British Consulate in Bilbao, Spain. At first the Consul didn’t believe that the twenty-five-year-old young woman had crossed the Pyrenees on foot, but she convinced him otherwise. She offered to bring more soldiers but asked for financial support to feed and house them on the long trip from Brussels to Bilbao and to pay the Basque guides who would lead them over the mountains. The Consul petitioned the British Foreign Office to support Dédée’s plan, and the Comet Line was born.
Courtesy of Sherri Greene Otis
Meanwhile, back in Brussels, Dédée’s father Paul began plans for collecting the Allied servicemen and young Belgians scattered across the country. He sought aid from likeminded friends – some gave money and others offered to house soldiers.
Early on, one of Dédée’s guides and the servicemen he was escorting were arrested at the train station in Lille, France, and the Germans learned of Dédée’s participation in the escape line. The Gestapo visited the De Jongh home and questioned Dédée’s family at length on her whereabouts. After the Gestapo left without answers, Paul sent word through a trusted messenger that Dédée must not return to Belgium but run the line from France. He took over the Brussels operation.
The De Jongh Home in Schaerbeek, Brussels Courtesy of Lumixbx via Wikipedia
Paul escorted the servicemen to the Brussels train station and handed them off to Charlie and Elvire Morelle, a brother-sister team, who guided them into France. Dédée met up with them just across the border and traveled with the men on a series of trains to Paris and then immediately on the overnight express to Bayonne in the far south of France.
The southern end of the Comet Line was run by the De Greef family. They had fled Belgium when the Germans invaded and then settled in an empty villa in the village of Anglet above the bay of St Jean de Luz, close to the Spanish border. Once recruited, the whole family worked tirelessly for the line. Elvire De Greef, known as “Tante Go,” established a black-market enterprise, which provided good food for the escaping soldiers and their guides before making the arduous crossing of the Pyrenees. Tante Go bribed the Germans with her goods, and her black-market activities provided a good cover for her resistance efforts with the Comet Line.
Tante Go’s husband, L’Oncle, obtained a job as interpreter at the German headquarters in Anglet. This gave him “access to special passes and certificats de domicil required for visitors to the forbidden zone established by the Germans along the Atlantic coast.” L’Oncle was also responsible for billeting German troops in the area, which gave him access to other headquarters of German units. He stole official stamps and blank identity documents and forms in small enough quantities that the theft went unnoticed. These items were then sent to the branches of the escape line in Brussels and Paris.
Tante Go recruited helpers in Bayonne, Anglet, Biarritz, and St Jean de Luz and located those who were willing to provide safe houses for the parties before their crossing into Spain. She and her seventeen-year-old daughter, Janine, regularly bicycled to these locations. Tante Go also hired Basque guides to take the groups over the Pyrenees.
In the fall of 1941, Dédée escorted a group of Allied airmen (two Polish and one Canadian) on the express train from Paris to Bayonne, near the Spanish border. At the train station, they met up with Tant Go’s daughter, Janine, in the refreshment room. When it was time to leave, the airmen went one at a time to the lavatory where there was a door to the outside, allowing them to avoid passing the ticket barrier. Someone in the escape network had made a duplicate key – this door was always locked. Dédée left the station through the main exit.
Janine de Greef
Janine and the airmen bicycled to St. Jean de Luz, left their bicycles at the station, and walked up the stony road to a farm at Urrugne. During their walk, “a young Basque peasant on a bicycle came down the hill towards them. As he passed, he shook his head significantly and pointed up the road.” Janine led the airmen to a hiding place, and then she climbed a wooded slope and observed the road to Urrugne. There she spotted German troops on bicycles at a barricade. Janine led the Allied airmen on a long detour, and they safely arrived at the farm in Urrugne, where their Basque guide, Florentino, awaited them. Florentino and Dédée led the party across the mountains and into the hands of British diplomats in Spain. This was Dédée’s third group of servicemen who made the eight-hour hike to freedom.
Florentino, Basque Guide for Comet
The Basque guide, Florentino, was a tall man, with a broad back and strong muscles. He wore espadrilles, rope-soled shoes necessary for navigating the Pyrenees safely. He provided these shoes for the airmen. Florentino was most at home in the mountains and knew the paths well. Darkness and fog didn’t slow him down. He hated fascism, as did many of the Basques, and he was happy to work for Dédée and Tante Go. He managed to evade the police on both sides of the frontier (France and Spain) who suspected him of smuggling and working for the Allies. In reality, Florentino delivered documents and photos to the British, making constant trips across the mountains from 1941 until France was liberated in the fall of 1944.
Dédée and her father, Paul
Meanwhile, back in Brussels, the Secret Police of the Luftwaffe paid a visit to the De Jongh home, seeking Dédée’s whereabouts. They questioned her mother for an hour. Her father, Paul, was in Valenciennes and escaped the interrogation. Upon learning from a neighbor that she had been questioned about Paul, he moved his headquarters to another location. Six weeks later his wife and daughter, Suzanne, were arrested in their home but were released the same day. With a price on his head of a million Belgian francs, Paul’s friends convinced him to flee to Paris, and he left Belgium forever on April 30. Just six days later, the two men who had taken charge of the Brussels operation were arrested.
In early May of 1942 after Paul De Jongh had fled to France, and the two men who had taken charge of the Brussels end of the Comet Line were arrested and imprisoned, Paul’s daughter and Dédée De Jongh’s sister, Suzanne, worked with Baron Jean Greindl Laan, codenamed “Nemo,” to continue operations. Paul stayed in Paris, and Dédée continued her dangerous trips escorting airmen to the south of France, across the Pyrenees into Spain, and into the hands of British consular officials.
Dédée De Jongh, Founder of the Comet Line Courtesy of the Imperial War Museum
A few months earlier, Nemo had become director of a canteen run by the Swedish Red Cross in Brussels. He ran the Comet Line from this location. Madame Scherlinck, a Swedish lady, was the canteen’s patron, and through this agency food and clothes were provided for the poor and ailing children of the city. Nemo supplied bags of rice and flour from the Swedish Red Cross to the families sheltering the airmen.
Peggy van Lier helped with feeding the children at the canteen and became Nemo’s assistant in the Comet Line. The canteen became a cover for several young people who helped in the secret work. They were adventurous and eager to participate in facilitating the escape of Allied airmen.
In an attempt to penetrate the rescue network, the Germans planted young English-speaking men into the countryside who posed as downed Allied airmen. This led to arrests and imprisonment. To counter the problem, eighteen-year-old Elsie Maréchal, who spoke perfect English, started testing the stories of the supposed airmen before taking them to homes in Brussels. The Belgian guides brought the men to St. Joseph’s Church where Elsie asked them about their units, the planes they flew, and where they were stationed. While they waited inside the church, Elsie would report to Nemo at the canteen for further instructions.
St. Joseph’s Church in Brussels Public Domain
One wintry day in November of 1942, two German imposters were brought to St. Joseph’s Church. Normal protocols weren’t followed, and Elsie didn’t know to meet the airmen. The Belgian guide from Namur took them to a house of a friend where he was given the Maréchal’s address by people unaware of their underground activities. The two Germans who claimed to be Americans didn’t act like Americans. Elsie noticed several red flags but thought she was overreacting. After fixing a meal for the men, Elsie went to the canteen. Nemo sent her back home with instructions not to allow the men to leave the house. In the meantime, the young men asked Elsie’s mother if they could go for a walk. They left the house and returned shortly after with guns pointed at Mrs. Maréchal.
One by one the members of the Maréchal family returned home and were arrested along with others who showed up at their house, including Elvire Morelle who arrived from Paris early the next morning. The enemy agents reported on all the guides, shelterers, and helpers they had encountered in the Belgian line “from the Ardennes and Namur to the very center of the organization in Brussels.”
In two days, nearly 100 people were arrested, including innocent relatives thrown into prison as hostages. Many of these never survived to return home. In the previous six months, the Comet Line had rescued sixty airmen, but their operation wasn’t over. New leaders reorganized the line and recruited more Belgians to carry on the work.
After Peggy van Lier successfully convinced the Nazis that she was not a participant in the operation, she was released and fled to England with a group of Allied servicemen on the Comet Line. Mr. Maréchal was executed by the Germans. Mrs. Maréchal, her daughter Elsie, and Elvire Morelle were sent to concentration camps in Germany, but they each survived and returned home after the war ended.
Dédée De Jongh and her father, Paul, continued to work out of their apartment in Paris. She escorted the Allied airmen south across the border to Spain, and Paul stamped forged identity cards. Fearing that her father would be captured by the Nazis, Dédée convinced him to leave France. On January 13, 1943, the two of them along with Franco and three pilots left Paris on the night train and traveled to Bayonne.
Franco returned to Paris to prepare another group to escape. Tante Go, who organized the southern section of the Comet Line, led Dédée and the airmen on bicycles to St. Jean de Luz through the pelting rain. Then they navigated the steep slopes to Urrugne on a road that had become a river of mud. Upon arrival at Francia’s farmhouse, they were treated to hot milk and soup.
Francia’s House in Urrugne
Florentino, the Basque guide who would lead them over the mountains, decided it was too dangerous to make the treck in the tempestuous weather, and the group would have to wait until the next evening to leave. He returned to the town of Ciboure. The storm passed through and was gone by the next morning. The airmen enjoyed Francia’s hospitality and played with her children while they waited.
Soon the sound of an engine stopping in front of the house caught everyone’s attention. The shadow of a gendarme in uniform passed across the window of the farmhouse, and the door burst open. Ten gendarmes invaded the house and searched everywhere, lifting floorboards and casting furniture and pictures aside. After an hour, the gendarmes marched the group to police headquarters in St. Jean de Luz. It is believed that a disgruntled former guide for the Comet Line had betrayed the group.
Dédée was transferred to the Villa Chagrin prison in Bayonne the next day. The Gestapo interrogated her, and later moved her to the Maison Blance prison in Biarritz and then to Paris by train under armed guard. Her father Paul returned to Paris under a fictitious name. The safe houses in Paris were overflowing, and he worked to move some of them out through another organization.
After Dédée De Jongh’s arrest in January of 1943, her assistant, Franco, took over her responsibilities. Dédée’s father, Paul, with a price on his head, refused to leave France as long as Dédée remained imprisoned. He resumed escorting airmen from train station to train station in Paris. In May, Paul hired Jean Masson, a Belgian who worked with the resistance in northern France, to be a guide for the Brussels to Paris route. Masson was described as a short man with untidy blond hair and fierce eyes. He was in his early twenties.
Masson brought his first group of seven airmen down from Brussels to the Gare Montparnesse (train station) in Paris to the delight of Paul and others working with him in Paris. Masson was eager to please, polite, and treated Paul with deference. In early June, Masson warned Paul to be prepared for a large party arriving from Brussels on June 7th. He stated that all Paul’s helpers would be needed.
Gare Montparnesse – Station for Trains to and from Belgium
On June 7th, two women workers were sent north to Lille to meet Masson and the pilots and help escort them to Paris. When they arrived, Masson met them and handed over an airman to each of the women. One couple went to a little café across the street while they waited for the train back to Paris. They were promptly surrounded by the Gestapo and arrested. The other couple was arrested after the train left the station.
Late that same day, Paul and two other team members arrived at the Gare du Nord and were waiting on the platform as Masson had requested. Masson arrived with a number of Allied airmen and greeted Paul’s group, shaking hands and smiling. Soon the group was surrounded by at least twelve gendarmes (police). They were all handcuffed and led to the headquarters of the railway police, including Jean Masson.
Gare du Nord Train Station at the End of the Street
The three people in Paul’s group were taken to the Gestapo office on the Rue des Saussaies. Jean Masson was not with them, but he soon showed up, smiling and free of handcuffs. He spat on the floor in front of them, and called them fools. Paul and his helpers were shocked to discover Masson was a traitor.
Franco returned to Paris from Spain eight days later and went to Paul’s apartment on the Rue Vaneau. He discovered rotting fruit and moldy vegetables. He gathered up all the false papers and money he could find and loaded them into a suitcase and hurried away. Franco and another operative checked the apartments of other helpers and discovered their doors had been sealed by the Gestapo. Realizing Paul and his helpers had been arrested, Franco and his helper grieved the loss of their friends. This didn’t stop Franco, however. He was more determined than ever to keep the Comet Line running.
After Franco returned to Paris and discovered that Paul De Jongh and other Comet agents had been arrested by the Gestapo, Franco worked even harder to facilitate the transfer of airmen out of France. He travelled back and forth from Paris to Bilbao, Spain, with a different group of airmen every two weeks during the summer of 1943. Allied bombings in Europe were increasing and more airmen than ever needed assistance.
It was no longer safe for the airmen to ride the train straight from Paris to Bayonne in the far south of France. Gendarmes and plain-clothes Gestapo agents were watching for escapees taking the routes to the coast from the Gare d’Austerlitz train station in Paris. The airmen now rode a fourteen-hour night train to Bordeaux, then a local train to Dax, near Bayonne.
Franco, Tante Go, and Janine took turns escorting the airmen on bicycles from Dax to Anglet. On one trip, an American airmen didn’t know how to ride a bicycle, so Franco had to teach him before they could make the twenty-six-kilometer trip to Bayonne. After falling on the pavement in town a few times, on the outskirts of town, the poor soldier collided with two German officers riding their bicycles toward him. Franco pretended the American was drunk and hollered at him in front of the Germans, saying he deserved to be shot. This satisfied the officers, and they all went on their way.
Comet Line Route from Southern France to Spain
Franco was so exhausted by the fall of 1943 that the British Consul at Bilbao sent him by car to Gibraltar to meet with British intelligence. There in the shadow of the Rock, Franco found new courage. Observing the great fortress and its orderly calm gave him confidence that for the first time that Hitler’s forces could not win this war. Franco was informed the British were sending someone to replace Paul in Paris. His code name was Jerome.
After three days, Franco left Gibraltar refreshed and within the week had crossed the Pyrenees and returned to Paris. Jerome arrived and set up his headquarters in a flat on the Rue de Longchamps, near the Trocadéro, in Paris.
In December, Franco led a group of American pilots and a Belgian Comet leader to Spain. Their Basque guide, Florentino, was down with the flu and unable to accompany them. Unfortunately, the Bidassoa River on the border between France and Spain was high because of heavy rain the day before. An American pilot and the Belgian leader were carried away in the torrent and drowned.
By January 1944, the Gestapo was closing in on the Comet Line in Brussels and in Paris. The traitor Jean Masson who had led the Gestapo to arrest so many Comet operatives the previous year had resurfaced. Jerome returned to Paris from a visit to Brussels on the evening of January 17th. His intention was to prepare to return to England. The Gestapo was waiting for him at his flat. He was taken to headquarters and tortured. Franco returned to the same apartment the next day and was also arrested. Franco would survive the war.
Jacques Desoubrie Alias Jean Masson. Public Domain
Michou Dumont, codename “Lily,” was away from home in nursing school when her sister Andree was arrested in Brussels for her work in the Comet Line. Like her sister, Lily was also a friend of Dedee, the founder of the escape network. Lily admired Dedee and was determined to carry on the work in Brussels after so many others had been arrested and it was no longer safe for Dedee to remain in Belgium. Lily began working on the Comet Line in 1942.
Micheline Dumont “Lily” Courtesy of Wikipedia. Fair Use.
Lily was only five feet tall and appeared no older than fifteen, although she was in her early twenties. She often dressed as a school girl to hide her activities as she ran around Brussels. She worked with the Comet Line and continued with her nursing duties. One day the Gestapo came to the clinic where she worked, looking for her. The receptionist called her floor and warned her to escape before the agents found her.
Lily fled by way of the outer fire escape and a crossover leading to the building next door. She called to an acquaintance with an office near the outside door to let her in. He complied, and she was able to run down the stairs and out the building without being detected. From then on, Lily stayed on the move. She didn’t remain in one place for long and spent the night in various homes of Belgians she knew.
Lily’s work with the Comet Line kept her very busy. She coordinated transportation for the Allied airmen brought from the country to Brussels and found temporary homes for them. She distributed ration coupons, supplies, and food to the many safe houses in Brussels. She checked on the welfare of the airmen hiding in the city and worked with photographers to produce identity cards. Lily also recruited new individuals and families who were willing to provide safe houses for the airmen, especially after other were arrested for housing the soldiers.
Lily’s shrewdness kept her one step ahead of the Nazis, but in the winter of 1944, one year after Dedee’s arrest, Lily fled Brussels because the Gestapo was getting too close to her. Two of her close associates had been arrested, and instinct told her that the time to leave her native land had arrived. Before she left, Lily recruited trained agents to take her place escorting fliers and securing safe houses.
Lily traveled to Paris and then to Bayonne in the far south of France. She rendezvoused with Jean-Francois (Franco) who’d just crossed back into France after delivering airmen to the British diplomats in Spain. Lily explained the deteriorating situation in Brussels, and Jean-Francois immediately took the express train to Brussels to check out the situation. He planned to return south and coordinate a new operation for Lily. Eight days later, Jean-Francois was arrested and spent the rest of the war as a prisoner in France, Belgium, and Germany.
Meanwhile, Lily waited in Anglet at Auntie Go’s house. Auntie Go, who was from Belgium and knew Lily previously, had been running the southern end of the Comet Line from the beginning.
Views along the Comet Escape Line in the Pyrenees. Courtesy of Pyrenean Experience.
After fleeing Belgium when the Gestapo was closing in on her, Lily went to Bayonne in the far south of France and met with Jean-Francois, the leader of the Comet Line. She warned him of serious problems with the network in Brussels. Jean-Francois, codename “Franco,” travelled to Brussels to check out the situation and upon his return to Paris walked into a trap set by the Gestapo. Meanwhile, Lily awaited word from Franco at Auntie Go’s house in Anglet, near Bayonne.
Several weeks later, Michael Creswell, the British attaché in Spain who took charge of the rescued airmen after they crossed the border, called Auntie Go, Lily, and Max, another operative, down to Madrid for a planning session. Lily was assigned to work with Max in Paris and also to work the line from Dax (north of Bayonne) to the Spanish border. Max would continue bringing airmen by train from Paris to Dax.
After crossing the Pyrenees for additional meetings with Creswell in February, Lily returned to Paris. She was to coordinate escapes in Paris along with Martine Noel, a dentist. Lily stored her belongings in Martine’s apartment. Lily wanted to speed up the escape procedures, so Martine set up a strategy session at a local restaurant for the new team of helpers.
The fellow who sat directly in front of Lily seemed vaguely familiar. “He was short and sandy-haired, with close-set eyes, strange and intense. He wore a garish purple coat along with a polka-dot tie. Abbé Beauvais, a priest who gave sanctuary to pilots when they came to Paris,” introduced the young Belgian as Pierre Boulain. Lily didn’t recognize the name, but she didn’t like the man. His polka-dot tie bothered her – it could be a signal.
The next day Lily left Paris with two British agents in danger of capture. They crossed the Pyrenees safely, and Lily returned to Auntie Go’s in Anglet. Because of the increased Allied bombings, main rail lines were damaged, and Lily arrived in Paris many days later than expected. When she called Martine’s apartment, a strange woman answered the phone and called Lily by her real name, Micheline, which Lily had not used in almost a year. No one in Paris knew her real name, or so she thought. The woman encouraged her to come by Martine’s apartment, but Lily knew better.
Lily headed to Martine’s dental office in the suburbs, but the concierge stopped her at the door. After informing her that Martine had been arrested, the concierge sent Lily to one of Martine’s friends. She learned that everyone at the restaurant had been arrested and sent to Fresnes Prison just outside the city of Paris. Fearing her own capture, Lily caught a train for Bayonne. She considered her options and decided to find out who was betraying the Comet Line to the enemy.
Lily returned to Paris and went straight to Fresnes Prison. At the prison gate, she asked to visit Martine and was promptly arrested. Although she was confined to a room by herself, Lily figured out the communication system used by the prisoners. They communicated at the sides of the walls and around corners using taps, echoes, and shouts. The jail was built in a classic hub-and-spoke design,” so the inmates tracked down Martine and brought her close to Lily’s room. Martine revealed that the traitor was Pierre Boulain. Lily finally remembered where she had seen the man before – in Brussels when he went by the name of Jean Masson.
Masson had obtained false identification papers for airmen traveling from Brussels to Paris and specialized in border crossings. He had attended a meeting at a safe house in Brussels two days before the Comet leader Monsieur de Jongh was arrested in Paris. “Up to now, Masson had protected his identity because all those who knew him were always arrested. Lily was the only one capable of breaking his cover.”
After spending two nights at the Fresnes prison, Lily was led to the prison warden. The birthdate on her French identification card indicated she was only seventeen, and he couldn’t accept the imprisonment of someone so young. The warden ordered Lily out of the prison immediately and told her the Gestapo was on the way. Lily left through the front gate. Shortly after, a German staff car passed her on the road, but the Gestapo officers inside didn’t even notice her.
After Lily’s release from her two-day stay in Fresnes Prison, she met with two MI-9 operatives in Paris who had recently returned from England. They had been assigned the task of setting up camps for downed Allied Airmen in Belgium and France. The airmen would gather and wait in these camps until they were liberated.
Lily informed Thomas and Daniel, the MI-9 operatives, that Pierre Boulain was Jean Masson, the traitor causing the arrest of Comet Line agents and helpers. Lily had learned this from Martine, her friend who was imprisoned at Fresnes. Thomas and Daniel were incredulous. Not only had Masson come to them highly recommended, but he had provided expert assistance to the Comet Line, and they’d hired him to help establish the escape camp in Belgium.
Thomas and Daniel wanted more proof of Masson’s treachery than just the word of Martine. Daniel had already arranged to meet with Masson at an outdoor cafe near the Place de la Concorde the next day, so Lily arrived early and sat a ways off, reading a magazine. Daniel reached the cafe, and then Masson showed up with a woman. Lily knew without a doubt that Pierre Boulain was Jean Masson. After he and the woman left, Daniel found Lily, and she confirmed her previous accusation regarding the traitor. Daniel still wasn’t convinced and told Lily to follow Masson and see what happened. She agreed.
Lily crossed the Seine River and walked in the direction she had seen Masson and the woman go. Lily spotted them by the Chamber of Deputies, a place where Masson shouldn’t be. He looked up and their eyes made contact, and it was obvious in his expression that he’d been caught. Lily turned back the way she had come, and Masson followed. They both increased their pace, but when Lily reached an entrance to the Metro station, she raced down the circular stairway. A train came into the station, and she was able to gain entrance without being spotted.
Part of the Comet Line Path across the Pyrenees
The next day Lily returned to Auntie Go in Bayonne and crossed the Pyrenees into Spain on May 11th. Personnel at the British consulate drove her to Madrid to meet with Creswell, and he convinced her to leave for England. “MI9 gave her a commission as an officer in the British Army. They told her she was needed in London to help organize for intelligence operations once the invasion started.” Creswell did not want her to return to France and be arrested by the Nazis.
Lily stayed in England, working for MI9, until after the Germans left France. She met a young Belgian who also worked for British intelligence, and they married while they were both still in uniform. She returned to Paris to help locate MI9 agents and missing airmen in the fall of 1944.
Masson met with Daniel one more time after his confrontation with Lily. Gestapo agents and French Resistance members surrounded them, although they remained in the background. Masson was hoping to get the money promised him to set up the Belgian camp for Allied Airmen, which he would have pocketed and then turned the airmen in. Daniel reported Masson to the French Resistance who sent an agent to kill him. A man was killed, but it wasn’t Masson.
Dedee, Lily, and Auntie Go in England Several Years After the War
Nadine, Lily’s sister who was imprisoned in 1942, survived her time in Ravensbruck and returned home to Belgium after the war.
Jean-Francois was convicted by a German military tribunal and sent to concentration camps in Germany in 1944. He survived the war.
Dedee was held in prisons in France and Belgium and then sent to Ravensbruck. She survived the war and later became a missionary to Africa.
Jean Masson continued to capture Allied Airmen and turn them over to the Gestapo even after D-Day and the Germans were retreating from France. The Germans sent many airmen to POW camps, but some were sent to concentration camps and died there. Masson made a fatal mistake when he resurfaced and volunteered to work as an agent for the Allies. His photo was obtained, and Lily identified him. He was captured, convicted, and sentenced to death. His last words before he was executed were, “Heil Hitler.”
The Comet Line was responsible for leading over one thousand Allied Airmen safely out of Belgium and France and into the hands of the British in Spain. Hundreds of members of the organization were imprisoned and killed by the Nazis, but those who survived the war testified that they had aided the Allies because . . . it was the right thing to do.
Resources:
The Freedom Line by Peter Eisner. HarperCollins Publishers, 2004.
Little Cyclone by Airey Neave. Biteback Publishing Ltd, 2013, 2016.
During the early years of WWII, the Soviets invaded and occupied the independent country of Lithuania in the Baltics. In June of 1941, the Germans turned on their ally and invaded the Soviet Union, including Lithuania and its capital, Vilnius. Twenty-five percent of the city’s population was Jewish.
Vilnius, Lithuania Old Town Skyline. Photo by DAVID ILIFF. License: CC BY-SA 3.0. Courtesy of Wikipedia
By late summer 1941, the SS Einsatzgruppen, Hitler’s elite killing squads, began escorting Jewish men, women, and children to large pits in the Ponary Forest outside Vilnius to shoot them. The Nazis murdered tens of thousands of Jews as well as Poles and Russians in this forest.
When World War II began, thirty-nine-year-old German shopkeeper Toni Schmid from Vienna, Austria, was drafted into the German army. Schmid did not support the Nazis or Hitler but was a deeply committed Christian. Schmid was a sergeant and ran an army post behind German troops for soldiers who were stragglers or were separated from their units. In 1941 he was sent to Vilnius where he witnessed SS troops murdering Jewish children. Horrified, he wanted to help the Jews but didn’t know how.
One night Sergeant Schmid walked down a dark street in Vilnius, and a desperate, young Jewish woman stepped out of the shadows and begged him to protect her from the SS death squads. He took her to his apartment for the night and the following day to a Catholic priest he knew.
The priest issued the woman a certificate of membership from his church. Schmid helped her obtain an official identity card and an apartment to rent. He told the German officials that she was a civilian employee from his military unit and the Soviets had taken her documents when they retreated.
Sergeant Schmid helped a young Jewish man also hiding from the death squads. Schmid gave him a German army uniform and the military identity papers of a German soldier who’d died, but his death hadn’t been reported. Then Schmid installed the young man as a military aide in his office.
One of Schmid’s duties was to oversee workshops manned by convalescing German soldiers, Russian POW’s, and Jews with skills needed for the war effort. Although he was only allowed to employ fifteen Jews, Schmid hired dozens to work in the shops.
Site of the Ponary massacre, where the German Nazis and their collaborators executed up to 100,000 people of various nationalities. About 70,000 of them were Jews. Photo by Avi1111 DR. AVISHAI TEICHER. License: CC BY-SA 3.0. Courtesy of Wikipedia.
Under the cover of darkness, Schmid visited the Vilnius ghetto and supplied the Jews with food, medicine, and baby bottles filled with milk he had kept warm in his pockets. He warned the ghetto residents when Nazi raids were about to take place. Some of Schmid’s Jewish workers were caught in roundups, but he went to the local prison and obtained their release. He hid Jews in the back of covered trucks headed for German-occupied areas of the Soviet Union, hoping they would be safer there than in Lithuania.
Sergeant Schmid secretly advised the leaders of a Jewish resistance movement in the Vilnius ghetto. He helped transport Jewish resistance fighters out of the city, warned them of pending German operations, and even supplied them with stolen German weapons. He also permitted resistance members to meet in his apartment.
Schmid’s good deeds did not escape the notice of the Gestapo, and agents began following him. One day they raided his apartment while he was visiting the ghetto. Some of Schmid’s soldiers located him before he arrived home and warned him that Gestapo agents were waiting at his apartment. Schmid fled, but the Nazis caught him after several weeks and sentenced him to death.
Prior to his arrest, Sergeant Schmid had assisted almost 300 Jews to escape the Nazis in Lithuania. On April 13, 1942, he was executed by a Nazi firing squad. The last words out of his mouth were the Lord’s Prayer.
The night before his execution, Sergeant Schmid wrote a letter to his wife and daughter in Austria.
“‘I am informing you, my dearest that I must depart from this world, I am sentenced to death. Please remain strong and trust in our dear God, who decides the destiny of each of us….Now I close my last lines, the last I can write to you, and send my love.’”
Sergeant Schmid took to heart Christ’s teaching that “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” But Sergeant Schmid went one step further – he gave his life for strangers.
Source:
Gragg, Rod. My Brother’s Keeper. Center Street, 2016.
Did anyone help free prisoners on their way to the death camps during WWII? If so, did any of them successfully escape and survive the war? The answer is “Yes!”
In April 1944, Nazi soldiers herded eleven-year-old Simon Gronowski and his mother onto a waiting train, along with more than sixteen hundred other Jewish prisoners living in Belgium. The Gronowskis crowded into a wooden boxcar with one single, small, wired-over window and no food, water, or seats. The train’s destination was the notorious Auschwitz death camp in Poland, more than seven hundred miles away.
Around 9:30 PM and less than ten minutes after the train left the station, the transport slowed and then stopped. Three members of the Belgian Resistance—Robert Maistriau, Jean Franklemon, and Youra Livchitz—had placed a lantern covered with red paper on the railroad tracks in an effort to stop the train. They wanted to help as many prisoners escape as possible, and their ploy worked. The engineer halted the train for the “danger” signal.
Armed with only a small-caliber handgun, Livchitz attempted to bluff the Nazi guards into thinking a large force was attacking the train. He fired his revolver repeatedly at the rear of the train where the guards were stationed.
Maistriau and Franklemon used wire cutters to open the boxcar doors and yelled at the prisoners to get out. Many jumped off and tried to run away, but the guards on top of the train fired at them. After a few minutes, the train moved forward, but the engineer deliberately accelerated at a slow pace so more prisoners could escape.
After opening as many boxcars as possible, Maistriau, Franklemon, and Livchitz retrieved their bicycles from the bushes and quickly rode away. They had not reached the Gronowskis’s boxcar, but men inside pried open the door. The train had started forward, but some inside jumped out anyway.
Items used during the attack, now in the collection of the Kazerne Dossin Museum in Belgium. Courtesy of Author Jessica Dommicent and Creative Commons via Wikimedia Commons.
Simon’s mother gave him money to hide in his sock then led him to the door. She held him by the shoulders outside the car but was reluctant to let go when the train’s speed increased. After the engineer slowed down, the boy’s mother finally released him, and Simon landed on the ground safely. He was the last person to escape his car.
The German guards shot other jumpers, but when Simon spotted the guards heading his way, he rolled down a small slope and ran for the trees. He didn’t stop until he was deep in the woods. Because Simon was a scout and had camped in the Belgian forests, he was quite comfortable in his new surroundings.
The eleven-year-old walked through the night and reached the edge of the woods at daybreak. He stopped at a small house and told the woman who answered that he had lost his way in the woods while playing with friends and needed help getting home to Brussels. The woman took him to the home of a policeman who was also a secret member of the Belgian Resistance.
The policeman was aware of the train ambush and assumed Simon had escaped. The officer’s wife washed and mended Simon’s clothing, fed him breakfast, and gave him a bath. The officer took the boy to a remote train depot and paid for his return to the city. Simon made it safely to Brussels, and, miraculously, no one requested his identification papers along the way.
Simon returned to his former neighborhood where a close family friend, Madame Rouffart, housed and cared for him. She arranged a reunion for Simon with his father, who was in hiding. Fearing they would be captured if they stayed together, Madame Rouffart sent Simon to another safe house where he survived until the Allies liberated Belgium. Sadly, Simon’s mother was sent to the gas chambers as soon as she arrived at Auschwitz, and Simon’s older sister later met the same fate. Simon’s father died of a heart attack shortly after the liberation.
Prisoners Arriving at Auschwitz. Courtesy of Yad Vashem.
Simon’s train achieved notoriety as the “Twentieth Convoy.” It was the only Nazi train carrying deportees to a death camp that was ambushed by a Resistance group during the Holocaust. Two of the three Resistance members who freed the escapees survived the war. More than two hundred and thirty Jewish prisoners escaped, and more than a hundred were not recaptured. Simon grew up in the home of his aunt and uncle and became an accomplished Belgian attorney, father, and grandfather.
Source: My Brother’s Keeper by Rod Gragg. Center Street, 2016.
Poland became a killing ground for both Jewish and non-Jewish citizens during WWII, but the Germans specifically targeted Poland’s three million Jews. Those who weren’t immediately shot during the German invasion in 1939 were relocated from the countryside and placed in dozens of ghettos in cities all over Poland. Gradually the SS death squads emptied the ghettos by deporting the residents to death camps or by shooting them on the spot.
On July 26, 1942, an unusual confrontation took place between German Wehrmacht officers and SS troops in the city of Przemysl in southern Poland.
General Curt L. Freiherr von Gienanth, district commander of the Wehrmacht (regular German troops) had just appointed Major Max Liedtke to command the German garrison in Przemysl. Liedtke, a WWI veteran and son of a Lutheran pastor, was opposed to the Nazis and their treatment of the Jews.
In civilian life, Liedtke had lost his post as editor-in-chief of a daily German newspaper and was blacklisted because of his stand against the Nazis. In spite of this, in 1939, Liedtke was recalled to serve as a major in the Wehrmacht. He’d most recently served in Greece.
At Przemysl, Major Liedtke promoted the humane treatment of Jews. General von Gienanth supported Liedtke’s position and put four thousand Jews from Przemysl to work in local armament factories, protecting them and their families from the SS.
Liedtke’s adjutant, Oberleutnant Albert Battel, also despised the Nazi persecution of Jews. Battel was a middle-aged attorney and veteran of WWI who’d been reprimanded by the Nazis for befriending Jews and for treating the Jewish leaders of the Przemysl ghetto with respect. On July 26, 1942, Battel informed Liedtke that a large death squad of SS troops was approaching the bridge over the San River for the purpose of rounding up Jews.
Liedtke and Battel devised a plan to delay the SS long enough to rescue the Jewish workers and their families and to notify General von Gienanth of the situation. Liedtke hoped the general would agree with their plans not to cooperate with the SS death squads. Under Liedtke’s orders, Battel sent Wehrmacht troops to the bridge, erected barricades, mounted heavy machine guns, and put a tough army sergeant major in command.
Truckloads of SS troops arrived at the bridge and halted. Their commanding officer was told that no traffic would be admitted because the city was under a military emergency. The commander protested and ordered that the barricade be removed, but the sergeant major stood firm. He informed the SS officer that he would order his troops to fire on anyone attempting to break through the roadblock, so the SS left.
Major Liedtke ordered Battel to lead Wehrmacht troops into the Jewish ghetto, load the Jewish workers and their families onto trucks, and bring them to the Wehrmacht garrison for protection. Battel succeeded in moving more than one hundred families before new orders arrived from headquarters. General von Gienanth had argued with the high command that the Jews were needed for war labor, but Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler overruled him.
Himmler’s response was ominous. “‘I have ordered that ruthless steps be taken against all those who think that they can use the interest of war industry to cloak their real intentions to protect the Jews.’”
SS troops arrived at the Przemysl Ghetto the next day and deported more than fourteen thousand Jewish men, women, and children to death camps. Eventually the Jews at the Wehrmacht garrison were shipped to death camps as well.
The Nazis forced General von Gienanth to retire. They discharged Oberleutnant Albert Battel from the Wehrmacht and drafted him into the German homeguard, the Volkssturm. They sent Major Liedtke to the Eastern Front in the Soviet Union. He was captured by the Soviets in 1944, declared a war criminal, and sentenced to life in prison. He died in a Soviet labor camp. The stand taken by these officers is the only known time that German regular army troops stood up to SS troops to protect the Jews.
Source:
Gragg, Rod. My Brother’s Keeper. Center Street, 2016.
Early on the morning of April 9, 1940, Germany attacked Denmark. The invasion was executed so swiftly that the Danish military surrendered after only four hours. Many Danish citizens were furious that their government gave up without a fight. Because Hitler wanted to make a good impression on the many foreign correspondents in Denmark at the time, and he wanted the country to be “a model of Nazi occupation rule,” he allowed the people more freedom than in other occupied countries. The elected government continued functioning, but under Nazi supervision, and the Nazis didn’t persecute the Jews.
The boat of Gilbert Lassen, a fisherman from Gilleleje, Denmark, used to smuggle Jews to Sweden. Courtesy of Yadvashem.
The Danish Resistance slowly strengthened over the next three years, and in 1943, after the Allies had put the Germans on the defensive on several fronts, the Danish Resistance stepped up their activities and sabotaged the German war industry in Denmark. The German occupation troops were already concerned about an Allied invasion through Denmark, so Hitler placed the country under a dictatorship. He also ordered occupation commanders to arrest the 7,800 Danish Jews and send them to concentration camps.
Georg F. Duckwitz, a German diplomat serving in Denmark, privately warned the Danish government of Hitler’s orders. Duckwitz went to Germany and tried to get the orders reversed. When he didn’t succeed, he traveled to Sweden and asked the Swedish government if they would grant asylum to the 7,800 Danish Jews. Sweden agreed and Duckwitz returned to Denmark. Hitler was shocked when the Danish government leaders and citizens rose up together and refused to hand over their Jews.
The Danish government encouraged its citizens to hide the Jews from the Nazis. The Danish Resistance led the efforts and recruited captains and crews to take the Jews on boats across the waterways to nearby Sweden. Thousands of refugees made their way to the departure points. They rode on trains, in hospital ambulances, by automobile in a fake funeral procession, and in caravans with Danish police officers “looking the other way.” Even the universities shut down so students would be available to help in the rescue operations.
The leader of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Denmark sent a letter to all the Lutheran Churches in the country and urged its church members to fight for the freedom of their Jewish brothers and sisters. The bishop challenged them with the New Testament scripture that states they should “obey God more than man.” On October 3, 1943, in the tiny fishing village of Gilleleje, about thirty-five miles north of Copenhagen (Denmark’s capital), Reverend Kjeldgaard Jensen read the letter to his congregation. He then led them in assisting the Jewish refugees arriving by the hundreds in their seaside village.
Jensen’s church members helped purchase fuel for the local fishermen to carry the refugees ten miles across the Oresund Strait to Sweden. They fed the Jews and hid those awaiting transportation. The fishing boats traveled late at night and at times were hindered by bad weather or German patrol boats. Some ships were swamped and sank, drowning their refugees. The church members worked with the Resistance, some of whom were arrested, imprisoned, sent to concentration camps, and shot to death for assisting the Jews.
Jewish refugees from Denmark upon arrival in Sweden. Courtesy of USHMM
Two days after Pastor Jensen read the aforementioned letter to his congregation, a train arrived from Copenhagen with hundreds of additional Jewish refugees. This brought the total number of Jews awaiting escape in their village to five hundred, and they were in imminent danger if the Gestapo arrived. Because of a storm that same night, a large schooner sheltered in the Gilleleje harbor, and the villagers raised fifty thousand Danish kroner to lease the schooner. Eager to leave, the refugees rushed to the dock, but during the slow boarding process, a fisherman yelled at those out of line, and the people up front thought the Gestapo had arrived. The schooner captain panicked and cast off with only half his passengers aboard.
The villagers immediately loaded all the refugees they could on local fishing boats and took them to Sweden, but they were forced to leave more than one hundred behind. These refugees sheltered in the church, but an informer alerted the Nazis, resulting in a late-night raid. The Gestapo and German soldiers surrounded the church and threatened to burn it down unless the Jews surrendered. The doors were opened, and the Nazis sent all of the men, women, and children to a concentration camp except for one young boy who hid in the belfry.
The Gestapo threatened Jensen and his church members but didn’t arrest them that night. Pastor Jensen collapsed after the raid. However, the villagers leased another large schooner available nearby and safely ferried the remaining Jews sheltering outside Gilleleje to Sweden. Over a three-week period, rescues took place up and down the coast of Denmark, and about 95% of Denmark’s Jews escaped safely. No other Nazi-occupied nation matched this percentage of Jewish survivors.
Danish-Jewish children living in a Swedish children’s home after their escape from Denmark. Courtesy of USHMM.
Resource: Gragg, Rod. My Brother’s Keeper. Center Street, 2016.
At the start of WWII, the Germans began housing prisoners of war at Colditz Castle in the province of Saxony. The castle and town, located between Dresden and Leipzig in the heart of Germany, was about four hundred miles from the closest territory not controlled by the Nazis. The castle had survived for 1000 years and stood as a symbol of German strength. The fortress, with seven-foot thick outer walls, resides on a sheer cliff which drops two hundred and fifty feet to a river below.
Modern-Day Colditz Castle (Deposit Photos)
Allied prisoners-of-war who made multiple escape attempts at other camps were sent to Colditz, because, of course, it was considered escape proof. Putting so many escapees together in one place made for interesting entertainment. The POW’s constantly concocted new escape plans and worked together to ensure their success. It’s believed that thirty-two prisoners escaped and fifteen made it to Allied territory without being captured. Today we’ll look at the first British soldier to escape Colditz and return to Britain successfully (made a homerun).
Airey Neave – between May 1940 and May 1941 (Courtesy of National Archives – Britain)
Airy Neave studied law and completed his education at Oxford University in 1938. He was mobilized when the war broke out and then sent to France in February 1940. He didn’t make it to Dunkirk but was part of the group which kept the Germans occupied in Calais to the south. On May 23rd, Neave was wounded and captured. He landed at the Oflag IX-A/H POW camp near Spangenberg in central Germany and was later sent to Stalag XX-A, near Thorn in western Poland.
Neave and a fellow POW escaped but were caught trying to enter Soviet-controlled eastern Poland. After a brief experience with the Gestapo, they were both sent to Colditz. In August that same year (1941), Neave made his first escape attempt from that POW camp. He dressed up in a German uniform and attempted to leave the castle just as any German officer would. The problem was that the scenery paint used to paint the former Polish army tunic and cap green changed to bright green under the searchlights.
Airey Neave’s German POW Card Obtained by the Allies at the Colditz Surrender (Courtesy of National Archives – Britain)
Here’s a translation of part of Airey Neave’s German record card shown above, describing his escape attempts thus far:
“Stalag XXA: on 16 April 1941, N disappeared on route to the dentist from Fort 15 and on 26 April 1941, he was recaptured by the Gestapo at Plock.”
His punishment – ten days confined arrest
“Oflag IVC on 29 August 1941, N tried to escape from the camp after evening roll call, using a fake German uniform, but was stopped at the gate post and seized.”
His punishment – three weeks close confinement
Colditz. Photo taken in 1945 by U.S. troops (Courtesy of Department of Defense)
Neave was better prepared for his next escape attempt. He and Dutch officer Anthony Luteyn left together, dressed in better German uniforms and with a better plan. A total of four officers, two British and two Dutch, escaping in pairs, dropped through a specially cut hole in the British theater floor into an unoccupied room. They took a corridor “that led over the main gate of the prisoners’ yard and into an attic over the German guardroom.” From there they walked under the archway into the German courtyard and through the main gate. Instead of continuing to the final gate beyond the moat where they could be caught, they turned east and climbed “over the unguarded wall along the park road” under the cover of darkness.
The two pair of escapees parted ways. The other pair was caught eventually. Dressed as civilians and claiming to be Dutchmen working for the Arbeitseinsatz Luteyn and Neave travelled by train and on foot to the Swiss border. They chose to cross at Singen and were successful. Another Dutch POW at Colditz had attempted to cross in the same area in 1940 and had been caught. A Gestapo, who thought Germany had almost won the war, told the Dutch soldier what he’d done wrong and what he should have done instead to make a successful crossing. This information helped many other escapees get across as well.
After arriving in Switzerland, Airey Neave’s ordeal wasn’t over. To get back to England, he had to make it across southern France and cross the Pyrenees into Spain. From there he went to Gibraltar, which was a British colony and arrived home in April of 1942. In May he was awarded the Military Cross. He was recruited to serve as an intelligence officer in MI9, the top secret British agency delegated with the task of supporting the escape networks for Allied military personnel in Europe.
He wrote several books about his experiences:
After the war, Neave served at the Nuremberg Military Tribunal and met individually with some of the top German war criminals. He went on to serve in the British House of Commons and later as Margaret Thatcher’s campaign manager. He was instrumental in her rise to lead the Conservative Party in Britain. He was also appointed Shadow Secretary of State for northern Ireland. On March 30, 1979, the Irish National Liberation Army assassinated Neave with a car bomb.
This is Margaret Thatcher’s tribute to Airey Neave when she spoke to the press right after his murder: “He was one of freedom’s warriors. No one knew of the great man he was, except those nearest to him. He was staunch, brave, true, strong; but he was very gentle and kind and loyal. It’s a rare combination of qualities. There’s no one else who can quite fill them. I, and so many other people, owe so much to him and now we must carry on for the things he fought for and not let the people who got him triumph.”
Přemysl Pitter served in the Austro-Hungarian Army during WWI. After returning home to Prague, he became a Christian and helped establish a children’s home in the city’s poorest neighborhood. The local children, many of them Jewish, stopped by Milíč House after school “where they would be fed and could safely play, read, listen to music, learn crafts, or participate in gymnastics.”
After German troops occupied the western half of Czechoslovakia in the spring of 1939, Nazi laws prevented Jewish children from attending public school, and Milič House became a place for them to study. Later it became a place to hide. Parents took their children to Milíč House to protect them from deportation. After other parents were arrested, Pitter rescued their children.
As conditions worsened for the Jews of Czechoslovakia, Pitter took food to Jewish families in Prague, the capital. He sent children to safe houses in the country about fifty miles away. One day Gestapo agents picked up Pitter and took him to their headquarters. The Gestapo chief questioned why he would risk his life to help Jews. Pitter’s response was simple. “‘From a human point of view, I’m sure you can understand why I’m helping these children.’”
The Gestapo released Pitter, and he and the staff who’d prayed together for his safe return, rejoiced at their answer to prayer. He continued to assist Jews by raising money and warning those who were about to be deported to hide.
Pitter hid Jewish children for over six years. The exact number of children he saved from the Holocaust is unknown, but his job didn’t end with the fall of the Third Reich. After the war, the newly formed Czech government requested that Pitter find and take care of Jewish orphans from Czechoslovakia. He located hundreds of orphaned children from several European countries and housed them in sprawling, abandoned chateaus around Prague.
Many of Pitter’s orphans were concentration camp survivors, including hundreds rescued from Theresienstadt in May of 1945. These children were traumatized and physically weak and ill. Under the care of Pitter and his assistants, the orphans healed in spirit, mind, and body and began to trust people again.
Pitter’s goodwill extended to the children of incarcerated Germans living in deplorable conditions in Czechoslovakia after the war. Pitter petitioned the government not to behave as badly as the Nazis had but to treat the Germans better. In the end, Pitter rescued German children too. He brought them to live with the Jewish children who put aside their fear and hatred and showed compassion toward their former tormentors.
Eventually, Pitter placed many of the Jewish children in adoptive and foster homes and organized the departure of others for Israel. Seven hundred children were sent to Great Britain at the request of Jews there.
After the Soviets imposed a communist government on Czechoslovakia, Pitter was forced to flee his native country and continued his refugee work in West Germany. He later settled in Switzerland where he wrote several books and worked for Radio Free Europe.
Pitter expressed great concern over Western culture’s postwar shift from a God-centered worldview to a man-centered worldview. He had witnessed the tragic results when the German people turned from God and relied on the government to save and provide for them. He spread the biblical message that “without Jesus Christ, man’s inherent sinful nature would inevitably draw him toward a darkened heart.” He believed that this darkness had opened the hearts of many to the swastika.
Sources:
Gragg, Rod. My Brother’s Keeper. Center Street, 2016.
If you’re not familiar with the story of the Kindertransports which took place during WWII, you can find more information by reading my earlier post here: “The Kindertransports: Nearly 10,000 Children Saved from Nazi Territory.” Today, I’m sharing a special ending for one of the children who rode on a Kindertransport that originated in Austria.
Jews seeking emigration visas line up in front of the Polish consulate in Vienna. Austria, March 22, 1938. Wide World Photo. Courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
The Germans marched into Austria in 1938 and immediately instituted the same Nazi racial policies they had gradually established in Germany during the previous five years. Kurt Fuchel was seven years old, and his idyllic life in Vienna changed rapidly. Kurt’s father was dismissed from his position as a mid-level bank manager, Kurt was dismissed from his school, and tensions mounted in the Fuchel home.
Kurt’s parents spent many hours visiting consulates, making phone calls, and studying maps as they endeavored to escape their homeland. Kurt, accustomed to being the center of attention, coped by pulling the tablecloth off the table, dishes and all.
Kurt’s Mother in Their Vienna Apartment, 1930. Courtesy of USHMM
The German occupiers passed a law that Austrians in good standing with the Nazis could “appropriate” Jewish apartments. The Fuchels lived in a very nice apartment in Vienna, and on the morning of Kristallnacht (November 9-10), when other Jewish businesses and homes were raided, a Frau Januba with some officers arrived at the Fuchel home and claimed their apartment. She showed the Fuchel’s an official paper and gave them one day to move out. When Kurt’s father told her she was stealing what he and his wife had worked for, she threatened to send him to a concentration camp.
The Fuchels packed what they could but had to leave the rest and move in with a neighbor the next day. The Fuchel’s situation became so grave that they sent Kurt to England on the Kindertransport. He traveled by train through Germany and Holland and then by ship across the English Channel to Harwich. Percy and Mariam Cohen chose to become Kurt’s foster parents and met him in Harwich on a bitterly cold morning. Dirty and smelling of seasickness, Kurt and the other children straggled off the gangplank into an unknown land. The Cohens took Kurt home, gave him a bath, burned his old clothes, and provided him with new ones.
Kindertransport Refugees Arriving at Harwich, England, 1938 From Institute of Contemporary History and Wiener Library Limited. Courtesy of USHMMKindertransport from Vienna, Austria, Arriving at Harwich, England. From Wide World Photo – Courtesy USHMM
According to Mariam Cohen, Kurt was very well behaved and became a happy member of their family. He gained a little brother – five-year-old John Cohen. Kurt learned English from a German man hired by the Cohens, and then he attended a small, private school with John. Kurt promptly forgot how to read, write, and speak German and never relearned it.
Kurt recalls hiding under the grand piano in the living room and listening as the adults gathered around the radio and heard England declare war on Germany. To an eight-year-old, the beginning of the war was exciting. When the air raid sirens went off, he and the Cohens hid in the downstairs coat closet, and in the mornings, they picked up shrapnel outside. The fear and horror came later.
Kurt’s biggest worry was that the Cohens would send him away. Other children he knew from the Kindertransports had not adjusted well to their new families and had been forced to move to other homes. Kurt worked hard in school and worked hard to please the Cohens, but he was jealous of John and paid close attention to whether the two boys were treated the same. After a time, Kurt concluded that the Cohens were very fair with both of them.
Kurt Fuchel
Meanwhile, Kurt’s parents escaped Austria through Italy and settled in the south of France. Kurt was able to correspond with them for the first two years he lived with the Cohens. Wonderful people in southern France hid Kurt’s parents, and, after the war, the Fuchels reestablished contact with the Cohens. Kurt was so settled in his new life that he was horrified by the thought of going back to live with the Fuchels.
Mr. Cohen convinced Kurt’s parents to wait to send for him until Kurt had earned his English school certificate and the Fuchels had reestablished themselves. Kurt’s father obtained employment, and he and his wife found a place to live in Toulouse, France. Kurt was sixteen years old when he and the Cohens left for France.
When Kurt saw his parents for the first time in nine years, he was overtaken by a strong sense of love, which he both felt and fought. He couldn’t speak German or French and his parents spoke little English. When the Cohens left to return home to England, Mr. Cohen cried. Most of the children from the Kindertransports had lost their birth parents to the Nazis, but Kurt had two sets of parents who loved him.
Kurt’s parents had sent a seven-year-old off to England and now they were confronted with a sixteen-year-old. This required an adjustment for all of them, but Kurt and his parents rebuilt their relationship. In 1956, the Cohens’ quota number came up to emigrate to the United States.
Even though Kurt was now a Frenchman and was comfortable with life in France, he and his parents moved to America, and Kurt fell in love with New York. And, of course, he could already speak the language. Kurt corresponded with the Cohens over the years but regretted not seeing Mr. Cohen before he died. Later, Kurt was able to enjoy many visits with Mrs. Cohen and John.
Source:
Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport by Mark Jonathan Harris and Deborah Oppenheimer, 2000.
For the past two months, I’ve posted individual stories about children who fled the Nazis and survived the Holocaust by taking the Kindertransport to England. An earlier post explains how the Kindertransport program was created. If you missed that post and would like to read it, here’s the link: The Kindertransports: Nearly 10,000 Children Rescued from Nazi Territory.
Lory Gruenberger lived a happy childhood with her brother and parents in Breslau, Germany, close to the Polish border. To her doting father, Lory could do no wrong. Mr. Gruenberger, a partially paralyzed WWI veteran, had a flourishing law practice and refused his government disability pension. After the Nazis took power in 1933, they didn’t harass Mr. Gruenberger due to his veteran status.
By 1937, Lory’s parents recognized the rising danger for Jews and searched for a way to leave Germany. They applied for quota numbers to the U.S., but the wait was long. In the meantime, Lory’s aunts in South America sent papers for the family to emigrate there. The Gruenbergers sold their house, bought passage for South America, and shipped all their belongings ahead. Two days before their scheduled departure, the Argentine consulate informed them that Hitler would no longer allow siblings to sponsor each other to emigrate from Germany. They were unable to find a way to leave.
Map Showing Location of Breslau, Germany, near Poland in 1938 Courtesy of Dr. John Heineman – Boston College
The Gruenbergers had money, but very few stores would sell to Jews. They lived in a hotel in Breslau and started over, purchasing what they could. Lory’s brother completed secondary school three years early, and the family sent him to a small university in Czechoslovakia to get him out of Germany. During the summer break, they sent her brother to stay with Lory’s uncle who taught at Cambridge and Oxford in England. He never returned to Germany.
One morning in November, 1938, Lory road the trolley car to school as usual. During the trip, she passed store after store with smashed windows. In the center of town merchandise littered the sidewalks. She realized all the damaged businesses belonged to Jews. After leaving the trolley car, she could only see the top of their synagogue, but she spotted flames shooting from the edifice. She was so frightened, she crossed the street and took the next trolley back home, refusing to look out the windows on the return trip.
Lory arrived home, and the family maid, with tears running down her face, grabbed onto Lory. German officials had just arrested Lory’s father and taken him away ten minutes earlier. Lory’s mother was also distraught. But three or four hours later Mr. Gruenberger returned home in a police car. The Iron Cross belonging to a WWI veteran still provided protection for some Jews.
German WWI Iron Cross (Wikipedia – Public Domain)
Lory applied and was accepted for the Kindertransport. Her father wanted her to go to England, but at the same time he didn’t want her to leave. On the prearranged day, the Gruenbergers boarded the Kindertransport train with Lory and put her suitcase up. Her father lowered her window all the way down so she could lean out of the train – the German passenger trains had very large windows. They hugged and kissed, and Lory’s parents disembarked. While waiting on the platform, her father’s face turned whiter and whiter, and her mother couldn’t hide her suffering.
As the train started to move, Lory’s father asked to hold her hands through the window. Before the train gained speed, Mr. Gruenberger pulled Lory out the window. She fell on the train platform, causing injury and bleeding. Her father was extremely happy to have his little girl back, but Lory was devastated. After arriving home, her father admitted he probably shouldn’t have pulled her off the train, but after losing his son, he didn’t want to live without her.
Mr. Gruenberger chose to believe that nothing would happen to their family and stated as much to Lory and her mother. Lory was no longer allowed to attend school or the movies, but Lory and another Jewish friend decided to defy part of this order. Neither girl looked Jewish, so they removed their yellow stars and went to see Shirley Temple movies. When Lory’s father discovered from the other girl’s parents where she was, he went to the theater with a light and pulled her out. He slapped her, which he had never done before.
Most stores posted signs informing Jews they weren’t allowed to shop in their establishments. When Lory and her mother entered stores where they were welcome, they were greeted with “Heil Hitler.” They responded with “Drei Liter,” which means three liters, and because it sounded so close, no one challenged them.
In 1940, the authorities called women up for forced labor. Lory was fifteen years old and was assigned to clean the streets in another part of Breslau. She wasn’t allowed to ride on the trolley car because she was Jewish, so she had to get up at 4:00 AM and walk by herself in the dark almost 45 minutes to the assembly place. Lory was next assigned to work in a uniform factory where she mended and cleaned dirty uniforms. She did this until close to the end of 1941.
Various judges and lawyers visited Lory’s father and warned him that he and his family would eventually be arrested. The SS came at 4:30 one morning and nearly broke the door down. The Gruenbergers were only allowed to take what they could put on and nothing else. Lory’s father had a very high fever, and he was taken out on a stretcher and loaded on a truck.
Lory and her mother were taken on another truck to the huge yard of a synagogue and, along with hundreds of others, waited outside in the March cold for about two days and nights. They were then taken by truck to the railroad station and loaded into cattle cars. Thirty-five to forty frightened people traveled in the cattle car, in complete darkness, with no food, for two days.
After two days of traveling in the dark cattle car with 35 to 40 people and no food, the guards opened the door and ordered the prisoners to quickly disembark. The daylight blinded their eyes. Lory’s father waited outside the train for Lory and her mother, and he appeared perfectly fine. The prisoners traveled by truck to their final destination—Theresienstadt, a Jewish ghetto in Czechoslovakia. Because of his WWI service, Mr. Gruenberger had been given the opportunity to pay the German government to send him and his family to Theresienstadt, rather than to another camp or ghetto.
Theresienstadt – Prisoners Wait for Food Rations Courtesy of YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York & the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Lory and her mother lived in a barrack with 300 other people. They slept on straw mattresses in bunk beds with three people per mattress. Lory’s father lived in a house with older, sickly prisoners.
Lory contracted spinal meningitis and stayed in the camp hospital for four months. The doctors were also prisoners, but they were able to get medicine for her through the Swiss Red Cross.
The Germans “beautified” the ghetto, dressed up the prisoners, and put on a good show for the representatives of the International Red Cross, visiting from Switzerland. Lory performed for them in a children’s choir. After the visit, more prisoners were crowded into Theresienstadt, and it became necessary to sleep in shifts, one group sleeping during the day and the other at night.
Theresienstadt Photo Taken During Red Cross Inspection Courtesy of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
One day Lory was ordered to report to the railroad station and meet with an SS officer. He informed her she wasn’t going on the transport and sent her back home. This happened four times, and each time she said goodbye to her parents. The fifth time she was called she told the SS officer that she wanted to go. He gave her the chance to back out, but she had made up her mind. He crossed her name off the list and loaded her on a cattle car. Her trip ended at Auschwitz.
Selection of Jews for the Gas Chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau Courtesy of Yad Vashem & the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
The guards opened the door, and Dr. Josef Mengele stood outside the car with his stick, hollering and cursing at the prisoners. The officers chased the prisoners out of the train, and Lory’s glasses fell off and broke. Since having spinal meningitis, Lory wore glasses to take the pressure off her nerves. Her inner voice told her not to pick up the glasses, and she obeyed. Mengele divided the prisoners, sending those with defects to the left, including those wearing glasses. This group went directly to the gas chambers, but Mengele sent Lory to the right, and she lived.
After a six to eight-week stay at Auschwitz, the Nazis transferred Lori to several different camps—Buchenwald, Dachau, Kurzbach and Gross-Rosen. At the beginning of 1945, she arrived at Bergen-Belsen where people died by the hundreds.
Courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
One month before Lory’s twentieth birthday, the prisoners hollered and many ran outside. The English Army had arrived to liberate Bergen-Belsen. Lori only weighed fifty-eight pounds and was so weak she could only crawl halfway out on her hands and knees. She lay on the ground and prayed to God. A soldier approached and asked if he could assist her. The liberators wanted to help the inmates and gave them chocolate and chicken soup, but more people died from consuming the rich food.
Survivors & British Soldiers outside Bergen-Belsen Courtesy of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum & Lev Sviridov
Attachments of soldiers from the French, Russian, and American Armies accompanied the British Army when they liberated Bergen-Belsen. They put together lists of the names and nationalities of the internees. Lory was fascinated when an American soldier from Germany spoke to her in German. The soldiers took her to a hospital for treatment, and she was surprised to see many people she knew, even folks from her hometown of Breslau.
One month after liberation, the British soldiers burned the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp to the ground to prevent the spread of Typhus. The survivors were relocated to a former German Army camp nearby.
The British Burn Bergen-Belsen Courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Lory traveled by bus to Hanover, a city nearby, to register as a survivor. There she found a man who had lived in the same building with her father at Theresienstadt. He recognized her but said she didn’t look too good. He shared that her father was still at Theresienstadt, but her mother had been transported to Auschwitz three months earlier and had gone to the gas chamber. He pointed out a bus driver whose route went to Theresienstadt once a week. Lory spoke with the driver, and he promised to ask about her father on his return trip. Lory wrote her name on a slip of paper so Mr. Gruenberger would see her handwriting and believe the bus driver.
Lory took the bus back to Hanover the day before the Theresienstadt bus was scheduled to return. She didn’t have a watch, so she waited on the street all night long to meet her father’s early morning bus. The bus arrived, but Lory’s father didn’t. The driver had checked on him and learned that he had left on a bus for Berlin two or three days earlier. Lori had no way to travel to Berlin and didn’t know how she would ever find her father.
Bergen-Belsen Displaced Persons Camp Courtesy of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum & Herbert Steinhouse
Lory met two young men who’d been traveling around Germany on foot, looking for family. They had come across a little town in Bavaria that wasn’t damaged, and the officers at the American military installation in charge of the area told the young men they’d be happy to have Jewish people locate there. The fellows asked Lory and her girlfriend to join them, and they traveled for a couple of days, begging for food along the road and sleeping with animals, including pigs, to stay warm.
Lori and her group rode into the Bavarian town on an army truck and were sent to a very nice furnished house. Jewish American soldiers, originally from Germany, brought them food the next morning. One of the soldiers was Walter Cahn, and Lory recognized him as the soldier who had taken her information right after the Bergen-Belsen liberation. She was astounded to see him again.
Walter helped Lory locate her father through the Red Cross and Military Intelligence, but it took eight months. After four more months, her father traveled to see her. They had been apart for four years. Lory was thrilled to receive his hugs and kisses.One year later, in 1947, Lori immigrated to the United States and married Walter Cahn. Over the years she corresponded with her father, but they didn’t see each other again until Lory returned to Germany with her son in 1962. She and her family visited her father two or three more times before he died in 1972.
Lory often pondered what would have happened if her father hadn’t pulled her off the Kindertransport and if she hadn’t been able to help her parents through the tragedy they had faced. She didn’t want to hurt her father, so she never brought the topic up with him. But Lory realized she wouldn’t have a normal, happy life if she hated the Germans. She spent many years speaking at universities, schools, and organizations, encouraging others not to forget what the Germans had done, but not to hate them. Lori had a wonderful, happy marriage to Walter Cahn for sixty-one years. She passed away in 2008.
Lory often pondered what would have happened if her father hadn’t pulled her off the Kindertransport and if she hadn’t been able to help her parents through the tragedy they had faced. She didn’t want to hurt her father, so she never brought the topic up with him. But Lory realized she wouldn’t have a normal, happy life if she hated the Germans. She spent many years speaking at universities, schools, and organizations, encouraging others not to forget what the Germans had done, but not to hate them. Lori had a wonderful, happy marriage to Walter Cahn for sixty-one years. She passed away in 2008.
Source:
Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport by Mark Jonathan Harris and Deborah Oppenheimer. Warner Bros., 2000.
In 1938 and 1939, the British provided homes for nearly ten thousand children and teens from the Nazi occupied countries of Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia, saving them from sure death in the ghettos, concentration camps, and gas chambers of WWII Europe. To read how this amazing endeavor began, click on the link to my earlier post: The Kindertransports: Nearly 10,000 Children Rescued from Nazi Territory.
Who were these rescued children and what are their stories?
Jack Hellman lived in the little village of Tann, Germany, population fifteen hundred and eight percent Jewish. His parents owned a general store where they sold feathers and down, piece goods, and ready-to-wear items. Jack’s family observed Jewish holidays, ate strictly kosher meals, and attended the local synagogue faithfully.
Anti-Semitism was evident in the late 1920’s, and it increased with the rise of unemployment in the district where Jack lived. Shortly before Hitler came to power, the SS entered Jack’s home and beat his father unconscious. The Nazis held torchlight parades in Jack’s village. He lay in bed haunted by the shadows flickering across the walls of his room and the marchers’ songs of violence against the Jews.
The local schoolmaster unmercifully beat the Jewish children with a cane, including Jack who managed to receive said discipline at least every other day. Most of Jack’s friends had been non-Jewish, but now they would no longer talk to him or his parents. When he was nine-years-old, a group of boys attacked him, throwing him through a plate-glass window, leaving him with severe cuts. In 1935, after Jack’s sister was also attacked, their parents sent her to live in a large Jewish community in Hamburg, and they sent Jack to live in a children’s home and attend the Philanthropin School in Frankfurt. Ironically, Jack’s Jewish headmaster was just as sadistic as the schoolmaster in Tann.
Boernestrasse Synagogue in Frankfurt on Kristallnacht Courtesy of USHMM
One November morning while riding his bicycle to school in Frankfurt, Jack observed two big synagogues on fire. Every Jewish business he passed had broken windows, had been looted, or merchandise had been deposited in the streets. School was cancelled and he was sent home. A message from Jack’s uncle awaited him—he was to tell his parents who were visiting him not to return home. Their store back in Tann was ruined, their car had been pushed down the hill, and their apartment had been looted and their furniture thrown in the street.
Jack quickly rode his bike to the train station and warned his parents, but they refused to stay in Frankfurt. After arriving home in Tann, Jack’s father was immediately arrested and sent to the Buchenwald Concentration Camp. He wasn’t released until early January.
That evening the Nazis broke the windows of the children’s home and took away the house father and everyone sixteen to sixty-five years of age. Jack was twelve years old and knew he and his family needed to leave Germany as soon as possible. His sister had already emigrated to the United States earlier that year (1938). The rest of the family had received quota numbers and had secured an American who guaranteed they wouldn’t become a burden to the U.S. government, but the number allowed into the country from Germany was so small that they had a five to six-year wait before they could leave.
The daughter of Jack’s house parents wrote to Baron James de Rothschild in England, requesting his assistance. Rothschild sent an emissary to Germany who arranged for the house parents, their children, and twenty-six of the boys in their care to move to England under Rothschild’s sponsorship. They left with the Kindertransport on March 16. Some parents refused to let their boys leave the country without them, but none of the boys who stayed behind survived.
Jack Hellman’s Teddy Bear He Carried on the Kindertransport Courtesy of USHMM
The boys and their house parents lived on the 6000-acre Rothschild estate at Waddesdon. The manor house reminded Jack of a castle he’d seen in pictures. His group lived comfortably in the eight-bedroom servant’s house called the Cedars. The boys played soccer on the lawn the first day they arrived, and the village boys came out to join them. When the villagers left for dinner, they told the newcomers they would see them the next day. Jack was so excited he ran in and told his house mother, ”’Somebody who’s not Jewish wants to see us tomorrow.’”
Jack commenced a campaign to convince his first cousin in London to get his parents out of Germany. The cousin agreed to get visas for Jack’s parents if Jack’s father had a work permit. Jack went to the manor house and personally asked to see Baron Rothschild. Rothschild asked if Jack’s father would be willing to work on the chicken farm, and Jack told him his father would do anything. The Baron went to the local notary, wrote out the work permit, and Jack’s parents soon received permission to enter England.
When they tried to leave Germany on August 30, 1939, only Jack’s mother was allowed across the border because his father didn’t have a “J” for Jew on his passport. Jack’s mother refused to leave without her husband, and together they went to a local bureaucrat. After Jack’s father emptied his pockets, the official corrected the passport. Jack’s parents arrived in Harwich, England, on September 1st, 1939, the day World War II began. Jack was one of the few children from the Kindertransports to ever see his parents again.
Jack found a place for his parents to live—a little six-foot by eight-foot flat with an open stairway. They were more happy and content living in that little flat than Jack remembers them being at any other time in their lives. Jack’s father also enjoyed his job at the chicken farm.
After two years in England, the Hellman’s emigrated to the United States where they were reunited with Jack’s sister and his mother’s brother. Their quota numbers came up much sooner because they moved from England to the U.S. rather than from Germany. Jack went on to become a building contractor in New York City.
Sources:
Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport by Mark Jonathan Harris and Deborah Oppenheimer.
In 1938 and 1939, the British people rescued nearly ten thousand children from the Nazi occupied countries of Germany, Austria, Poland, and Czechoslovakia. The background information can be found in last month’s post – The Kindertransports: Nearly 10,000 Children Rescued from Nazi Territory.
Who were these young people and what are their stories?
Ursula Simon and her family lived in the small town of Quakenbruck in northwest Germany. Her mother sent extra rolls and sandwiches to school for other less fortunate children — those who were hungry because their families didn’t have enough food to feed them. Unfortunately, the recipients grew to resent these acts of charity and the Jews in the town who always had enough to eat.
After the Nazis took power in 1933, anti-Semitism flourished in Quakenbruck. The Simons’ old friends stopped visiting them, isolating the family from the community. Yearly birthday parties were normal in Germany, and Ursula’s mother prepared one for her when she turned eight. Not one child attended. Ursula now understood that she was different from the other children.
Ursula’s father, a loyal, patriotic German, had fought in WWI as a volunteer. He wouldn’t consider emigrating—not from the country he had fought for, not the country to which he belonged. He sincerely felt that the German people would remove the Nazis from power, that the problems were only temporary. But the persecution gradually increased and Mr. Simon had a nervous breakdown. He spent a long period of time in a psychiatric hospital.
Attending school became more and more difficult. Ursula was forced to sit alone in the back corner of the classroom, and the other children threw ink over her work. Her classmates terrorized her during playtime.
On the morning of November 9, 1938, soon after Ursula arrived at school, flames flickered in her classroom window. Fire engulfed a small, ordinary house across the street which served as the local synagogue. The students streamed outside to join the onlookers who clapped, jeered, and shouted. A family lived in one of the downstairs rooms of the synagogue, and their belongings had been thrown out a window into the street. Ursula made it home only to discover that her father had been arrested along with all the Jewish men in their town. They were sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp.
Role Call for Buchenwald Prisoners, Mostly Jews Arrested on Kristallnacht Courtesy of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
At Buchenwald, the guards took away the men’s shoelaces and braces. When Ursula’s father objected to the treatment of the older people, the officials beat him to death in front of the other prisoners to stamp down further opposition. Ursula’s family learned the truth from men who were later released from Buchenwald.
After the events of November 9th (Kristallnacht), Jewish children were no longer allowed to attend German schools. At the end of November, Ursula’s mother sent her and her sister, Hella, to a Jewish orphanage in Hamburg, Germany. The girls were thirteen and fourteen years old. By the summer of 1939, Ursula and Hella were placed on the list for the Kindertransport. Their mother prepared their clothes and embroidered their names on each item.
The girls had mixed emotions—they wanted to go to England but didn’t want to leave their mother behind in Germany. Even if she could find a position and sponsor in England, their mother needed to stay and take care of the girls’ blind grandmother in Quackenbruck. Mrs. Simon travelled to Hamburg in July of 1939 to send her girls off on the Kindertransport. Normally very controlled, she couldn’t hide the hurt and agony welling up from deep within. Her face contorted with grief as she and the girls parted for the final time.
The Simon sisters and fellow Kindertransport passengers arrived at the Liverpool Street Station in London and were taken across the street to a gym to wait for their foster parents to arrive. Ursula, Hella, and three others did not find homes that day and felt that nobody wanted them. They were sent to a hostel near Kensington to spend the night, and the next morning they were directed to the Refugee Committee in Bloomsbury.
The girls traveled unaccompanied in a country where they couldn’t speak or understand the language. Nevertheless they found their way to the Refugee Committee, and Ursula and Hella were assigned to live with a widow in Sussex. They were given a ticket, but they had to find their way to Sussex on their own. Their luggage was lost and the Committee promised to forward it to them, which they did—three months later. In the meantime, the girls wore one set of clothes and washed their underwear and blouses once a week while wearing a bathing suit their mother had put in their rucksacks.
Kindertransport Children in England Courtesy of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
The girls arrived at their new home only to discover that their host had expected little girls, and she only had a single bed for them to sleep in. Ursula and Hella were now fourteen and fifteen. The widow was very nice to them but didn’t understand that teenagers needed more food than she did (she had a very small appetite).
She told the girls that the Refugee Committee didn’t pay her enough for them, so they gave the widow the sixpence pocket money the Committee sent each week. Ursula wrote to her mother but wasn’t able to mail all her letters because she couldn’t afford pay the postage. One month later, WWII began, and she could no longer send or receive mail from Germany.
Ursula and Hella attended school in England and loved it. Ursula learned to speak English by devouring books from the school library, and she developed a love for English literature. But the girls desired to be independent. After Hella turned sixteen in November of 1939, she found work in a fever hospital (for those with infectious disease) and earned enough to provide for herself. Ursula attended school for nine months and then apprenticed with a very high-class dressmaking establishment. The Refugee Committee continued to support her, and Hella secretly contributed to Ursula’s rent. She also took evening classes to continue her education.
After the war, Ursula and Hella learned through the Red Cross that their mother had been deported to Minsk, Russia, where she was probably killed. The girls never obtained more information. On June 1, 1946, Ursula married Peter Rosenfeld, a fellow refugee from Germany. They raised four children and made England their permanent home. Ursula’s recorded testimony can be found on YouTube.
Kindertransport Memorial at Liverpool Station. Courtesy of Loco Steve from Bromley, UK in Wikipedia Commons
Resource:
Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport. Mark Jonathan Harris and Deborah Oppenheimer.
The tragedy of Kristallnacht, Night of the Broken Glass, took place in Germany, Austria, and the Nazi-occupied section of Czechoslovakia (Sudetenland) on November 9-10, 1938. The Nazis damaged or destroyed 1000 synagogues and 7500 Jewish businesses, sent 30,000 Jewish men to concentration camps, and beat ninety male Jews to death.
These events shocked the world. However, many countries, including the United States, only permitted a small percentage of Jews to immigrate, regardless of guarantees of financial support from relatives, friends, and acquaintances in those countries.
Shortly after the events of Kristallnacht, a delegation of prominent Jews in England met with Prime Minister Chamberlain and requested that he allow young German children and teenagers to temporarily enter Britain, retrain, and return to their home countries at a later time.
The Jewish representatives were most concerned about teenagers threatened with arrest and those already in concentration camps. Jewish and non-Jewish agencies assured the British Home Secretary that they would meet the financial needs of the refugee children, apart from government funds, and their stay would only be temporary.
As a result, the British government gave permission for unaccompanied refugee children under the age of seventeen years to enter Britain and didn’t announce a limit to the number of children who would be admitted.
The non-Jewish groups consolidated and formed the non-denominational Movement for the Care of Children from Germany (later called the Refugee Children’s Movement, RCM). Agents of the organization traveled to Germany and Austria and set up the selection, processing, and transportation plans.
A representative of the Jewish refugee agencies met with Jewish leaders in Berlin, and volunteers gathered the names of the most threatened children. These included teenagers in danger of arrest or already in concentration camps, children in Jewish orphanages, children whose parents were in concentration camps, children who could no longer be financially supported by their parents, and Polish children or teenagers at risk of deportation.
Through radio broadcasts, the BBC Home Service appealed to the British people to provide foster homes. Five hundred people answered the call. Jewish and non-Jewish volunteers visited the homes of these potential foster parents and reported on their suitability.
Several hundred immigrant applications from Germany arrived in London each week, demonstrating the urgency of the situation. British volunteers processed the applications, many of them working around the clock, grouping the children in lists and sending travel arrangements to the parents and guardians in Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia.
The Nazi government only permitted the refugee children to take a small amount of money out of the Reich, but it wasn’t unusual for parents to place valuables in their children’s luggage. Some children were excited about the journey, but others were angry with their parents and felt rejected. Later on, guilt plagued these children for how they had responded.
The first Kindertransport left Berlin on December 1, 1938, and the first transport from Vienna left ten days later. The trains traveled across Germany and into the Netherlands and then Belgium. At the border crossings, German guards terrified the children by looting their baggage. After reaching the coast, they boarded ferries and sailed to either Harwich or Southampton, England. The German adults who had accompanied them returned to Germany as required by arrangements made between England and Germany. One of these adults was later imprisoned in Auschwitz and lost his own wife and child to the gas chambers.
For the first three months, most of the Kindertransports were from Germany, but later the number of transports leaving Austria increased. Nicholas Winton, a twenty-nine-year-old stockbroker from Britain, witnessed the plight of the refuge children in Czechoslovakia and organized Kindertransports from Prague. Many of these children had previously fled with their families from Germany, Austria, or the Sudetenland and were living in squalid refugee camps.
The transports continued after the Germans occupied Czechoslovakia in March of 1939, but they were halted when Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. Hundreds of children waiting to leave Nazi-occupied territory could no longer escape. Most of them did not survive the war.
Close to ten thousand lives (70% Jewish) were saved through the Kindertransports, but the majority of these children never saw their parents again. Some of the rescued teens eventually joined the Allied armed services and fought to free their homelands from the vicious grip of the Nazis. Many remained in Britain after the war, but others emigrated and settled in various countries around the world.
Source:
Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport by Mark Harris and Deborah Oppenheimer
Many of you are familiar with the movie “The Great Escape,” depicting a major attempt by American and British soldiers to escape from a POW camp in Germany. Although the movie is based on a true story, elements are fictionalized for the sake of the film.
The escape I’m sharing today took place in 1943, months before the Great Escape but in the same prisoner of war camp, Luft Stalag III. The plan was simple – dig a tunnel from the exercise yard to the outside of the camp rather than from the barracks or other structures, which were far from the fences. Three British officers, Lieutenant Michael Codner, Flight Lieutenant Eric Williams, and Canadian Flight Lieutenant Oliver Philpot, with the help of many other POWs, put the escape plan into action.
Life in Luft Stalag III. Public Domain.
The POWs built a large wooden horse from crates used to transport Red Cross packages. They added four handles and carried the horse out to the exercise yard each day under the guise of practicing their vaulting skills. In the beginning, the Germans thoroughly inspected the horse and didn’t find anything suspicious.
Lt. Codner and Lt. Williams took turns hiding inside the horse before it was hauled outside. After it was put in place, the man inside began digging a tunnel. He scooped dirt into sacks and hung them inside the horse. At the end of practice, the digger placed a wooden cover over the hole and spread a layer of topsoil on top. Then the prisoners carried the horse back to the barracks. To throw the Germans off, sometimes no one would hide inside, and the POWs “would knock the horse over to demonstrate that nothing was going on underneath.”
Lt. Philpot’s job was to arrange for men to carry the horse outside, practice vaulting (for many hours), and dispose of the dirt at the end of each day. The yellow sand, which the diggers encountered a few feet below ground, had to be mixed into the soil of the prisoner’s garden and the topsoil of the yard without detection by the guards. As they worked, Codner and Williams suffered from stale and unhealthy air due to the build-up of carbon dioxide in the tunnel. Eventually they used a pipe to poke air holes to the surface only a few feet above them. The finished tunnel was less than three feet wide and three feet high.
Drawings of the Wooden Horse Escape on display at the Museum of Allied Forces Prisoners of War Martyrdom, Sagan, Poland
After three months, on October 29, 1943, Codner, Williams, and Philpot escaped from the completed tunnel dressed as French laborers. After they were in the tunnel, a fourth POW hid inside the horse “to cover the entrance one last time.” The escapees waited until dusk to exit the other end of the tunnel and slip into the woods. Philpot split from the others and traveled by train to Danzig in Poland. His false papers, created in the prison camp, satisfied the inspectors who checked his documents along the way.
Codner and Williams made it to Stettin on the north coast of Germany, hid in the bilge of a ship heading to Copenhagen, Denmark, and then were smuggled on a fishing boat to neutral Sweden. Philpot located a sympathetic Swedish captain in the port of Danzig, Poland, who agreed to take him to Sweden. The captain bribed the German inspectors who checked departing ships and delivered the POW safely to Sweden a few days before Codner and Williams. The three soldiers reunited at the British consulate and were sent by plane back to their home base in England.
The Swedish merchant vessel Aralizz that Philpott smuggled himself onto in Danzig Harbor Courtesy of Creative Commons via Wikipedia
Source:
Strange and Obscure Stories of World War II by Don Aines. Skyhorse Publishing, 2020.
In February of 1944, American fighter pilot Bob Hoover was shot down over the Mediterranean Sea south of France. A German patrol boat rescued him, and he was sent to Luft Stalag I in northern Germany. Hoover wasn’t happy confined to a prisoner of war camp, awaiting the Soviet Army to liberate him. In the closing days of the war, Eisenhower sent a message for Allied POW’s to stay put, but Hoover’s never-give-up attitude won out over playing the waiting game.
The prison guards at Luft Stalag I had become lax, so when hundreds of prisoners staged a fight, Hoover and another POW escaped the camp. A German farmer’s wife fed the men the first eggs they’d had in over a year. Down the road, another woman gave them a handgun, saying in broken English that they needed it more than she did. The two men confiscated a pair of bicycles and made their way to an airfield, full of damaged aircraft.
Hoover located a Focke-Wulf 190 single-seat fighter with a lot of damage but a full tank of gas. They confronted a German mechanic with their pistol, but he didn’t try to stop them. Hoover’s companion chose to continue his journey by bicycle rather than risking his life in the damaged craft. Hoover didn’t waste time using the runway. He taxied across a grassy field and lifted off. He didn’t have a parachute or a seat cushion and could barely see out the canopy windscreen.
A Restored Focke-Wulf 190. Courtesy of Wikimedia by Kogo – Own work, GFDL.
Hoover didn’t know where he was going, but he had a compass, so he headed west, hoping to stay aloft until he reached Allied territory. He was concerned that an American or British pilot would spot the German aircraft and finish him off, so he flew low, below the cloud cover. After Hoover spotted the windmills of Holland, he landed in a plowed field and was immediately surrounded by “an angry group of farmers armed with pitchforks.”
Hoover tried to explain to the Dutchmen “why an American was flying a German warplane.” Fortunately for him, British soldiers pulled up in their truck and translated. Hoover hitched a ride with them and ended the war safely. Incidentally, the other escapee on the bicycle survived the war also and he and Hoover met up many years later. After the war, Bob Hoover became a civilian test pilot and later an air show display pilot, flying for nearly fifty years before he retired. He died in 2016 at the age of 94. Jimmy Doolittle dubbed Hoover “The greatest stick and rudder man who ever lived!”
Bob Hoover in 2011 Courtesy of Flikr via Wikipedia
Sources:
Strange and Ocscure Stories of World War II by Don Aines. Skyhorse Publishing, 2020.
Have you heard of film star Wayne Morris? If you answered in the negative, we had the same response. But after reading his story, I had to tell it. He is one of those little-known war heroes who played an important role in the Pacific during World War II.
Bert DeWayne Morris was born and raised in Southern California and played football for Los Angeles Junior College. While acting at the Pasadena Community Playhouse, he was discovered and recruited by Warner Brothers Studios. Beginning in 1936, Morris played supporting roles in films with actors, such as, Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson, Bette Davis, Ronald Reagan, Eddie Albert, and Jane Wyman. Playing the second lead in Flight Angels, a story about pilots and stewardesses training for commercial airline service, spurred him into earning his pilot’s license.
Morris joined the Naval Reserve before Pearl Harbor and later became a primary flight-training instructor in Hutchinson, Kansas. With his acting career on hold, Morris had no intention of riding out the war in a comfortable position. He wanted to be in the thick of the action, so he asked his wife’s young uncle, David McCampbell to get him into a fighter squadron. McCampbell was the commander of the VF-15 fighter squadron.
McCampbell told Morris to write a letter with his request, but because of his six-foot, two-inch height and muscular build, Morris was transferred to a patrol-bomber unit and assigned to Catalina amphibious aircraft based in Jacksonville, FL. The cockpit of a fighter plane was built for a person of average height and weight. McCampbell and Morris ran into each other in FL, and Morris repeated his request to be a fighter pilot. McCampbell made it happen, and Morris transferred to the “Fighting Fifteen.”
Hellcat F6F which Morris flew from the USS Essex Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
In addition to learning to takeoff and land from a carrier deck and shoot down bombers while tangling with enemy fighters, Hellcat pilots were expected to bomb and strafe sea and land targets. All of these lessons were taught in a short time frame and were dangerous. During training, Air Group 15 lost a dozen pilots and crewman. The group deployed to the Essex in 1944.
With three other Navy pilots, Wayne Morris (second from Left) poses for a picture aboard their carrier after a strike against Formosa in 1944. Courtesy of WWII in Color.
Lieutenant Morris shot down his first Zero (Japanese fighter) in the “Great Marianas Turkey Shoot” off Guam on June 20.
On September 9, Morris and two other pilots took down a Japanese patrol plane over Mindanao.
The next day he led a group of fighters who attacked two airfields and destroyed camouflaged fuel dumps hidden in the woods.
On September 13, Morris shot down another Zero.
A few days later he and another pilot hit a docked Japanese submarine with rockets.
On October 10, Morris led another group of fighters over Okinawa and sank an eight-thousand-ton freighter.
He took out a Tony (Japanese fighter) during the same battle.
On October 24, he shot down two Zeros that were escorting Japanese bombers attacking the American fleet.
Wayne Morris in his Hellcat aboard the Essex Courtesy of Military Wiki.org.
Lieutenant Commander Morris participated in fifty-seven missions during his six-month combat tour on board the Essex. In total he was credited with downing seven enemy aircraft (five downs were needed to become an ace) and for sinking an escort vessel and a flak gunboat and helping to damage a heavy cruiser and a mine layer as well as the wins listed above. Morris was awarded four Distinguished Flying Crosses and two Air Medals.
What was Wayne Morris most afraid of? “Every time they showed a picture aboard the Essex, I was scared to death it would be one of mine.”
The actor turned soldier was one of twenty-six aces in VF-15. Together these aces shot down 310 enemy planes in combat and sunk or damaged half a million tons of Japanese shipping. Can you pick Morris out in this photo?
The Aces of VF-15 with their victorious scorecard at the end of their six-month tour of duty . Photo dated 12/1/1944. Courtesy of Naval History and Heritage Command.
Morris played in over two dozen films before the war and another three dozen after, including a supporting role in Gary Cooper’s 1949 aircraft-carrier film,
Task Force. He went on to star in westerns, a 1957 WWI film,
Paths of Glory, and played for television series.
In 1959, Morris visited his former commander and uncle-in-law Captain David McCampbell aboard the USS Bon Homme off the coast of Monterey, California. While watching air operations from the bridge of the carrier, Morris collapsed and died of a heart attack. He was forty-five years old. He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors.
Sources: Strange and Ocscure Stories of World War II by Don Aines. Skyhorse Publishing, 2020. The
Pasadena Independent newspaper, September 15, 1959.
The V-2 rocket was a much more sophisticated bomb than the V-1 and was enormously expensive to build. The Germans launched the first V-2 to hit London on September 8, 1944, three months after D-Day, in a last-ditch effort to turn the war around in their favor. They fired more than thirteen hundred V-2’s at England and hundreds more at Belgium and France as the allies advanced toward Germany.
The V-2 was forty-six feet high, as tall as a 4-story building. Launched from a mobile unit and propelled by a powerful rocket engine which burned a mix of alcohol-water and liquid oxygen, the bomb blasted more than fifty miles above the earth— to the edge of space—and returned to earth at supersonic speed, hitting its target five minutes later. Each one carried a ton of explosives and was equipped with an automatic guidance system—an on-board analogue computer with a pre-programmed destination.
Unlike the buzzing noise of the V-1 engine which alerted those on the ground to its impending arrival, the V-2 crashed and exploded without warning. No one heard it coming—only the bang after it had landed and exploded. The V-weapons caused immense suffering in Britain—30,000 casualties and hundreds of thousands homeless. Despite these statistics, the V-weapons caused less destruction than the bombing during the Blitz (1940-1941).
The V-2’s were manufactured at Mittelwerk, a huge underground factory. Slave laborers who possessed the needed skills were brought from concentration camps to perform the work. Conditions were so bad that an estimated 20,000 died from starvation, a lack of sleep and proper sanitation, and torture as well as frequent executions.
Wernher von Braun Public Domain
The V-2 bombings came to an end when Allied troops overran the last launch sites in March of 1945. According to the BBC, the V-2 was “the world’s first space rocket” and was responsible for launching the space age. Wernher von Braun, the engineer who helped design and develop the V-2, surrendered to the Americans and later “developed the rockets that launched the United States’ first space satellite Explorer 1” and became “the chief architect of the Saturn V super heavy-lift launch vehicle that propelled the Apollo spacecraft to the Moon” (Wikipedia).
In an effort to terrorize and demoralize British civilians, the Germans unleashed a new weapon on England just one week after Allied troops landed in France on D-Day in 1944. The V-1 flying bombs were launched from ramps on the northern coast of France until the Allies overran the launching sites. The last one left France on September 7, 1944. Later the Germans launched the V-1’s from other locations, including from special mounts attached to bombers, although this proved dangerous to the German airmen.
A German Crew Rolls out a V-1 Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1973-029A-24A / Lysiak / CC-BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Each V-1 was twenty-five feet long with a wingspan of about twenty feet. The bombs, resembling small airplanes, traveled at a speed of 400 miles per hour and crossed the English Channel in five minutes. They had a range of 150+ miles and were capable of reaching London from northern France. The Germans launched 25,000 V-1’s at targets in England and later Belgium, but only about 2,400 hit the capital city and its environs. Because the bombs flew straight and level, gun batteries posted along the southern and eastern coasts of Britain, Allied fighter planes, and barrage balloons successfully stopped thousands of V-1’s from reaching their targets.
Barrage balloons on the south-eastern approaches to London to combat V-1 flying bombs, 1944. Courtesy of Bellamy W (Flying Officer) Royal Air Force Official Photographer via IWM
A Bofors gun battery fully manned, situated on the South Coast of England. Courtesy of O’Brien (Lt.) War Office Official Photographer via IWM
Powered by a jet engine, the V-1 could be heard ten miles away, and it was nicknamed “doodlebug” and “buzz bomb” because of its noise. An air-driven gyroscope and a magnetic compass controlled the bomb’s course, and a barometric altimeter controlled its altitude. Once the V-1 reached its programmed target, a device mounted in the rear caused it to pitch nose-down and the engine quit. Once the buzzing engine died, those on the ground knew they had twelve seconds to seek shelter. The warhead exploded on impact.
Back in Germany, the Nazis called the V-1 a wonder weapon (Wunderwaffe) and tried to convince the German people that it along with other weapons could turn the war in their favor. Although Hitler was advised to launch the V-1 at southern England where the Allies were gathering ships and equipment to invade France, he was intent on targeting London.
In an effort to fool the Germans, the British publicized inaccurate information and recruited double agents to send back false reports on where the V-1’s had landed. The Germans believed the reports and adjusted the flight patterns, causing the bombs to fall short of their targets.
Searching for belongings in the rubble of a home Ministry of Information Photo Division via IWMCivil defense rescue workers dig survivors out of collapsed buildings. Ministry of Information Photo Division via IWM
In all, fifty-five hundred people were killed, sixteen thousand were injured, and more than a million were forced to evacuate due to the V-1 flying bombs.
Have you known anyone who was personally impacted by the V-1 bomb?
Today I’m sharing information on several WWII museums located in France. Of course, there are many more than the five below, but these museums stand out as some of the most informative. The quoted material and photos are taken from the websites listed below (click on the names of the museums for the links).
“Located right in the heart of Paris in the prestigious setting of the Hôtel national des Invalides, the museum is home to one of the largest military history and art collections in the world, and offers a unique overview of the history of France.””A remarkable site full of history, the Hôtel des Invalides was founded by Louis XIV to house veterans and wounded soldiers. It now forms the unique, prestigious setting for the Musée de l’Armée.” –Information quoted from musement.
The Army Museum Invalides (also known by the two names shared above) contains three rooms dedicated to WWII.
The Nazi’s officially surrendered on May 7, 1945 at 2:41 AM at this location.
“Discover this historic event which took place, in secret, in the ‘card room’ set up in the modern and technical college (now high school Roosevelt), within the headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe, commanded by General Eisenhower. Archives, uniforms and objects put the months leading up to the signing of the Nazi surrender in Reims into perspective. Relive the night that changed the face of the contemporary world, by entering the signature room, a major European memory, where the end of a tragedy also heralds the beginning of a long reconciliation.”
Many consider this enormous museum to be the best WWII museum in France. Although located in Normandy, its exhibits focus on all of WWII as well as D-Day.
“Located just a few kilometers from the D-Day beaches, the Memorial Museum of the Battle of Normandy shows visitors all the key phases of the fighting and the day by day advances of the forces involved. It is essential preparation for visiting the memorial sites of summer 1944.”
This unique museum opened in 2016 for the purpose of sharing what life was like for the civilian population of Normandy during WWII. Testimonials of how civilians in this area of France lived and survived during the occupation, including their resistance, Jewish persecution, and the allied bombings are both informative and thought-provoking.
There are many WWII museums and memorials to be found throughout the USA. I’ve included many of the major ones in this blog post. Be sure to check out the links to obtain detailed information.
“Ranked by TripAdvisor as the #1 Attraction in New Orleans, named by USA Today as a top-ranking Best Place to Learn US Military History, and designated by Congress as America’s official museum about World War II, The National WWII Museum features a rich collection of artifacts that bring history to life” (The National WWII Museum Website).
“Discover the human story of World War II in the Pacific in more than 55,000 square feet of exhibit space spread over three galleries located on six acres in the heart of Fredericksburg, Texas. The National Museum of the Pacific War is the only museum in the continental U.S. solely dedicated to telling the story of WWII in the Pacific” (National Museum of the Pacific War Website).
The museum documents the Holocaust, “the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its allies and collaborators” (USHMM website). Photos, artifacts, and testimonials give evidence to Holocaust events.
WWII artifacts, including over 15 tanks, are displayed as a part of the museum’s exhibitions. “At the American Heritage Museum you explore America’s conflicts, beginning with the Revolutionary War to today. You’ll discover, and interact with, our heritage through the History, the national effort developing new technologies of warfare, and the Human Impact of America’s fight to preserve the freedom we all hold dear” (American Heritage Museum Website).
Exhibits display aircraft flown by the Eighth Air Force, including a B-17 in the process of being restored. The mission of this museum is “to preserve for all Americans the stories of courage, character and patriotism displayed by the men and women of the Eighth Air Force from World War II to the present” (National Museum of the Mighty Eighth Sir Force Website).
“The Florida World War II Heritage Trail, a 72-page guidebook, includes color and archival photographs of Florida sites related to World War II, and biographical sketches of many men and women who played a significant role during the war. Produced by the Florida Department of State, Division of Historical Resources in association with the Florida Department of Veterans Affairs World War II Memorial Project, Florida World War II Heritage Trail features more than 150 Florida World War II-related sites and military assets in 74 Florida cities from Pensacola to Key West” (Florida Division of Historical Resources Website).
Have you visited any of these museums shared today? Have you enjoyed visiting other WWII museums which are not included in today’s blog?
World War II is full of many miraculous acts of bravery and survival, but the encounter of Franz Stigler and Charlie Brown over the skies of Germany in 1943 is one of the most profound. This is their story.
Restored B-17 Bomber – Creative Commons via Wikipedia – Author Airwolfhound
The German Pilot:
Franz Stigler was born and raised in Bavaria, southern Germany. His father, a former WWI pilot, instilled a love of flying in his sons. At the age of twelve, Franz soloed in a home-built glider. Because he didn’t weigh enough, the plane crashed, and Franz sustained minor injuries. Several months later, with a sandbag tied around his waist, he successfully launched and landed the rebuilt glider. By the time Franz was seventeen, he knew he wanted to fly every day for the rest of his life. The German government provided his training, and Lufthansa, Europe’s largest airline, hired him when he was only eighteen years old.
In 1937, two years before WWII started, Franz received orders from the new German Air Force, the Luftwaffe, to train pilots how to fly long distances using instruments. One day Franz’s older brother surprised him by showing up for flight training. Franz did everything in his power to prepare his new student for war because it was obvious that Germany was preparing for one. Franz’s family was anti-Nazi, but German young men weren’t given the option to avoid the military, not unless they wanted to end up in a concentration camp.
Franz Stigler – Luftwaffe Fighter Pilot
In 1940, after Germany had occupied most of Europe, and the Luftwaffe was bombing English cities at night, Franz’s brother’s plane crashed at takeoff in France. Upon learning of his brother’s death, “Franz’s grief chilled into hate.” He had believed Hitler’s lies that Germany had invaded Poland in self-defense, and now Franz blamed the British for enlarging the conflict into a world war. Franz resigned as an instructor and volunteered to be a fighter pilot.
In 1942, Franz was sent to North Africa to backup General Erwin Rommel and the German Wehrmacht as they fought to capture the Suez Canal from the British. Franz flew a Messerschmitt Bf109 against the P-40s of the British Desert Air Force. The British pilots outnumbered the German’s five to one. Franz’s commanding officers taught him to fight with honor – not to shoot a defenseless enemy in his parachute, not to count “kills” but count victories, to shoot at a machine and not a man. A highly decorated young ace fighter pilot told Franz that once a person enjoyed killing, he would be a lost man.
Franz Stigler in North Africa
Franz’s squadron followed Rommel east into Egypt “far from their ports and supply lines while pushing the British closer to theirs.” The German pilots and their fighters were worn to the bone. The pilots slept in 6-foot holes they’d dug in the desert for protection from British air attacks. After being hit by ground fire while escorting German bombers, Franz was forced to belly land in the desert. A Bedouin rescued and escorted him back to base on a camel. In September of 1942 Franz was ordered home on leave. While in Germany, several ace pilots of his acquaintance were killed in Africa. The British launched a counter attack at El Alamein, Egypt, that Rommel couldn’t stop, and the Americans landed to the west in Casablanca. The Germans were trapped between them.
Messerschmitt Bf 109G-10 at the National Museum of the United States Air Force Public Domain. Courtesy of Wikipedia.
Franz’s unit withdrew from Africa, and in March 1943, they deployed to Trapani Airfield, Sicily, where he encountered the Four Motors, which the Americans called the “B-17 Flying Fortress.” The German mission – defend the island and the supply convoys to Africa; the Allies’ mission – cut off the supply line. In May of 1943, 275,000 troops of the Afrika Korp surrendered to the Allies. Only an Italian garrison stood in the way of an Allied invasion of Sicily. After the Italians sent a distress message for fighter support to pick up their downed pilots, Franz volunteered to go, even though he’d already flown a combat mission that day.
Forty-five minutes later Franz coaxed his severely damaged ME 109 toward the coast of Sicily. Three miles from shore, the fighter’s engine gave out, and Franz decided to ditch rather than bail out. He steered the 109 as if it were a glider landing on the ocean surface. The plane bounced on the waves and then dove under the sea. Franz forgot to jettison the canopy before hitting the water, and as the fighter sank into the sea, the water pressure kept the canopy from releasing. Franz opened a side window pane, allowing water to pour in and equalize the pressure so he was able to flip the canopy open. His life preserver pulled him to the surface where he inflated his life raft. He drifted to shore and convinced an old fisherman to take him back to his base. Two weeks later Franz was shot down by Spitfires, and he bailed out behind friendly lines. This was the fourth fighter he lost in the war.
After the Allied invasion of Sicily, Franz’s squadron was sent home to defend Germany. By mid-August 1943, they had settled into a routine. Every other day they battled the Four Motors (B-17’s) from England “to stop the bombs from dropping and killing the German people.”
The American Pilot:
During the summer of 1943, twenty-year-old pilot Charlie Brown and his co-pilot Spencer “Pinky” Luke flew their final mission of B-17 training school. They were required to stay in the air for seven hours but were allowed to plan their own route. Charlie aimed for his hometown of Weston, West Virginia. After circling the area, Charlie and Pinky buzzed the town, sending fishermen running from a bridge, the river water over its banks, and forcing dust to billow in the streets. His father, knowing only one young man from Weston piloted B-17’s, watched the disturbance from the sidewalk.
Later, Charlie and Pinky headed for Texas where they picked up the other eight members of their crew and trained together. They dropped practice bombs and shot at wooden targets on the base’s thirteen-thousand acre range. In late October, the crew left for England where they joined the 379th Bomb Group of the United States 8th Air Force. Charlie flew his first mission over Germany as co-pilot to a veteran pilot so he could acclimate to combat before heading out with his own crew. German fighters beat up the bombers behind Charlie’s formation, but after bombing the submarine pens in the German port city of Bremen, Charlie’s plane made it back to England without a scratch.
One week later, on December 20, 1943, Charlie piloted his own crew on a return bombing run to Bremen, but this mission would end differently. Return on October 1st to learn about the extraordinary outcome of that fateful day over the skies of Germany.
Boeing B-17 Flying Fortresses of the 91st Bomb Group, 8th AF, enroute to Bremen, Germany, fly high above heavy cloud banks at 27,000 feet altitude. 20 Dec. 1943. Courtesy of American Air Museum in Britain.
On the morning of December 20, 1943, twenty-year-old Lieutenant Charlie Brown piloted his B-17 crew into combat for the first time. “Ye Olde Pub” flew in a twenty-one-plane battle formation and led most of the 8th Air Force’s bomb groups to Germany (475 B-17s and B24s). They were told to expect five hundred or more bandits (German fighters) to intercept them.
The Crew of “Ye Olde Pub.” Kneeling, L to R: Charlie, Pinky, Doc, and Andy. Standing, L to R: Frenchy, Russian, Pechout, Jennings, Ecky, and Blackie. Courtesy of the American Air Museum in Britain.
The bomber group flew twenty-seven thousand feet above the icy sea. Three and a half hours into their flight, the bandits attacked and flak from the ground soon followed. After four separate explosions just ahead of The Pub, Andy, the navigator, and Doc, the bombardier, reported a big hole in the Plexiglas nose of their plane. One of the engines on the left began to smoke and pinky, the co-pilot, shut it down. A shell passed through one of the wings, leaving a large hole. The Pub reached the target area and released twelve five-hundred-pound bombs on the Focke-Wulf aircraft plant five miles below and turned north to escape Germany as quickly as possible.
The bomber group didn’t know it yet, but their fighter cover had already departed for England because they feared running out of fuel. One of The Pub’s right engines began to run wild, and Pinky cut power and restarted the engine. The bomber fell back as the rest of the 8th Air Force passed overhead and left The Pub behind.
Five German 109s leaped from below, and eight German 190s trailed ahead, blocking the path to the North Sea. Two enemy fighters dove straight for the cockpit of The Pub, so Charlie, the pilot, climbed directly up and into their path. Frenchy opened up and hammered one of the 190s before it could break away, putting it out of the fight. The other fighter scored hits on The Pub, but Doc fired at its belly and scored another win.
The controls for The Pub’s third engine was shot out, and the engine froze at half power. Five 109s headed for the tail of The Pub, but Ecky’s guns in the tail jammed. Then Blackie’s guns in the ball turret froze. “Charlie threw the bomber into a bank,” and bullets from the 109s “ricocheted off the bomber’s frozen belly and clanged against Blackie’s turret, cracking its glass but not penetrating.” More guns froze, welded shut by ice. Only three of the bomber’s eleven guns were now operational. Charlie twisted and weaved while the 109s continued to attack, but the pilot’s maneuvers threw them off.
A 20mm cannon shell tore into The Pub and “blasted the bomber’s skin outward,” almost severing the right waist gunner’s leg. Other shells struck the tail, destroying the tail gun position and killing Ecky. Pechout, the radio operator, frantically calld for help, but several 20mm shells blew the radio into pieces but spared the operator. Meanwhile, Charlie banked the bomber into a near vertical turn of eighty degrees and aimed at any fighters he saw coming in. He flew in circles. Bullets tore through the cockpit’s ceiling, and one embedded itself against Charlie’s left shoulder blade. Bullets punctured the oxygen tanks behind the pilots’ seats, slowing the flow of oxygen into their masks.
The enemy shot off The Pub’s horizontal stabilizer and shortened the sixteen-foot rear wing to three feet. Charlie, needing a new evasion tactic, tilted the bomber until its left wing pointed to the sky, but without the stabilizer, the plane “flipped and entered a slow, upside-down, flat spin.” Oxygen stopped flowing to the pilots, and the last thing Charlie remembered was viewing the German farm fields five miles below as he and the co-pilot hung upside down in the cockpit. Then he passed out.
B-17 Bomber
When The Pub reached 10,000 feet, “its spiral broke into a nose dive.” The oxygen-rich air at this low altitude brought Charlie back to consciousness. He gripped the controls and hauled back. He toggled the bomber’s flaps, but
The Pub continued her dive. At 3000 feet, “her wings began to flutter,” something a B-17 in this kind of condition shouldn’t have been able to do. “Charlie dug his heels into the rudder pedals and pulled back on the yoke with his whole body.” “The wings began flying again,” but the bomber was now below two thousand feet and still dropping. Just in time, “her nose lifted to the horizon and she leveled out” over the suburbs of Oldenburg. Pinky, the co-pilot, regained consciousness, spotted the treetops below them, and asked if they were in England.
Charlie had Doc, the navigator, “figure out where they were and establish a course for home.” He sent others to assess the damage to the bomber and check on the status of the crew. Doc mapped out a plan to head thirty-five miles north to the sea, but his map showed flak batteries all along the coastline, known as “the Atlantic Wall.”
The German Pilot:
Meanwhile, German fighter pilot, Franz Stigler, had landed at an airfield to refuel and continue the fight. If he could nail a bomber, he would have enough points to receive the Knight’s Cross, a badge of honor, indicating “that he had done something good for his people.” While waiting at the airfield, the low drone of an approaching bomber caught his attention. A B-17 skirted the airfield, flying low and slow before disappearing behind the trees. Franz took off without waiting for clearance from the tower. He had a bomber to catch and a Knight’s Cross to earn.
Stigler approached the wounded B-17 but noted the missing stabilizer and the dead tail gunner leaning over his machine gun. Through the torn fuselage, he saw the airmen tending their wounded crew members. He thought of his commander’s words that if Stigler ever shot an airman floating down in his parachute, the commander would shoot Stigler himself. He remembered his dead brother and the grief these enemies’ families would face.
Kimbolton at Sunset – Airfield Where Charlie Brown & His B-17 Crew Were Stationed in England Courtesy of American Air Museum in Britain.
Franz’s superiors had taught him “to fight with fearlessness and restraint, to celebrate victories not death, and to know when it was time to answer a higher call.” Realizing the bomber held no threat to him, Stigler pulled up close to the co-pilot’s window and stared at Brown.
Charles “Charlie” Brown had sent his co-pilot, Pinky, to give the crewmen permission to bail out. They would be taken as POW’s, but they would live. He planned to attempt a return flight back to England with Russian who was unconscious. Charlie viewed the approaching coastline where Germany met the North Sea and knew the soldiers manning the coastal defenses would shoot them down. He looked out the co-pilot’s window to check on engine four and spied Stigler’s 109, flying three feet from The Pub‘s right wingtip, as if it owned the B-17. Charlie’s heart stopped for a moment. Franz nodded at Charlie, but Charlie thought he’d imagined it.
Pinky returned to the cockpit, announcing that none of the men wanted to jump. They planned to stay together and help fly The Pub home. Pinky turned to see what Charlie was staring at and claimed they were living in a nightmare. Charlie and Pinky expected Franz to destroy them. Franz noted the shock and fear on the pilots’ faces and pointed to the ground. Charlie and Pinky shook their heads. This angered Franz, but he felt that leaving the B-17 to face the coming flak alone would be the same as shooting it down. He moved his 109 a few feet away so the guys at the coastal defenses would recognize his silhouette and hold their fire.
John D. Shaw’s painting of Ye Olde Pub Being Escorted Out to Sea by Franz Stigler’s ME-109. Valor Studios. Used by Permission.
As Stigler and Brown approached, the battery commander recognized the Messerschmitt 109 and shouted for his men to hold their fire. The Germans used captured B-17’s for training, so it wasn’t out of the question for the two planes to be flying together. “Side by side the 109 and the B-17 soared over the soldiers defending the Atlantic Wall then over the beach obstacles and the crashing surf. The sight was a beautiful one, the little fighter protecting the big bomber.”
Charlie still thought the German pilot was a threat and that he’d escorted them out to sea to finish them off. Franz, however, waved at the pilots and pointed to the east, mouthing, “Sweden,” which was only thirty minutes away. Neither American pilot could figure out what Franz was trying to tell them. Given the damage to the B-17, Franz was certain they would not make it home alive. Charlie sent the turret gunner to swing his gun toward the 109, hoping to chase the German away. When Franz spotted the movement in the turret, he wasn’t surprised. He saluted Charlie, who responded with surprise, and then Franz flew over the B-17 and dove away.
With a hole in her nose, her skin frayed, and only two and a half engines operating, The Pub headed toward Kimbolton Airfield, three hundred miles away. She was steadily losing altitude when engine four began acting up again. Pinky initiated shut-down procedures and successfully restarted the engine, but the bomber’s altitude dropped further during the process. Charlie ordered his men to dump everything that wasn’t nailed down. The Pub dropped below 1000 feet of altitude and was only halfway home. Charlie told his men that all they could do was pray.
Three-fourths of the way home, The Pub dropped below five hundred feet. Charlie prayed and touched the Bible in his pocket. Shortly after, two fighters zoomed past his window, and the crewmen were afraid the enemy had come to finish them off. The fighters turned and passed in front of the bomber, revealing the emblem of the U.S. Army Air Corp. Then they returned to the B-17, and one parked beside the pilot’s window, just as Franz Stigler had done. The fighter pilot pointed to his headset, but Charlie shook his head. Then the fellow pointed down, and Charlie spotted a bit of land between the clouds. Soon the clouds parted, revealing an ever widening band of land. The Pub had reached England.
Charlie searched for a suitable field to land his bird, but they were dotted with stone fences. The Pub dropped below two hundred feet, and Charlie told his men to prepare for a crash landing. Up ahead, the two fighters were circling at one thousand feet, so Charlie turned the bomber in their direction. A military airfield appeared below them. He made the approach to land and attempted to lower the landing gear. Unfortunately, the hydraulics weren’t functioning. Frenchy, the flight engineer, went down and lowered the wheels by hand, but the flaps were frozen. Alerted by the fighter pilots above, emergency vehicles pulled up along the runway. Soldiers crowded around the tower and watched the wounded bomber come in.
Frenchy fired red flares from a ceiling window of the bomber, notifying the base that wounded airmen were aboard. Charlie kept The Pub’s nose up and brought her front wheels down. Once the tail wheels settled on the runway, Charlie and Pinky jammed on the brakes, and the undefeated bomber slowed and came to a stop. The pilots shut the plane down. “The crew and The Pub had completed their first mission together.”
Charlie and most of his original crew completed their twenty-eighth and final mission on April 11, 1944. Charlie returned stateside and became an instructor. He wondered for over forty years if the German pilot who’d spared them had survived the war. At the same time, Franz Stigler wondered for over forty years if the men of the B-17 he’d risked a court-martial for had ever made it home.
After returning to England, Charlie and most of his original crew continued bombing Germany. They completed their twenty-eighth and final mission on April 11, 1944. Charlie returned stateside and became an instructor for the remainder of the war. Later he graduated from college and joined the U.S. Air Force as an intelligence officer. He retired early in order to work for the State Department during the Vietnam War. After retiring again, Charlie and his family moved to Florida.
Franz Stigler continued to shoot down Allied planes on bombing runs over Germany. In late October 1944, a one-inch copper bullet from a B-17 pierced the windshield of Franz’s 109, hit him in the forehead and bounced off. Franz managed to make it back to base, sporting a black hole of dried blood and a nasty dent in his head. The copper bullet was secure in the palm of his hand.
Franz was sent away to recuperate but later convinced his commander to send him to jet school. Franz learned how to fly the jet-powered Me 262 and, in March of 1945, joined General Adolf Galland’s newly formed fighter unit, JV-44, dubbed “the Flying Sanatorium” or “the Squadron of Experts.” Franz and other ace pilots made their last stand from a base just outside of Munich. He surrendered to the Americans shortly before the war ended, having achieved 487 combat flights. In 1953, Franz immigrated to Vancouver, Canada.
Franz had a good life in Canada. After retiring, he flew a Me 108 in air shows, with Allied planes chasing him, which delighted the crowds. He came to the notice of the Boeing Company, and in 1985 they invited him to their 50th Anniversary party for the B-17 Flying Fortress. This led him to tell his German wife about “the one he had let get away.” Still curious whether the B-17 he’d risked a court-martial for had ever made it home, he attended the party and much to his amazement was embraced by the former American B-17 pilots and crewman he met. He asked if any of them knew of a bomber that had been escorted to safety by a German fighter, but no one did.
After debriefing on that fateful day in 1943, Charlie and his crew were ordered not to tell anyone about their escort out of Germany, and the records were classified. Charlie wondered for over forty years if the German fighter pilot who’d spared him and his crew had survived the war. Most of them had been wiped out. Now, many years later Charlie began to think about his war experiences and had nightmares that “always ended with The Pub spinning to earth in a death dive from which he could not recover.” He always woke up before he crashed.
Charlie decided he needed closure, so he joined the 379th Bomb Association and attended a reunion for pilots. He shared the story “of the German pilot who had spared him and his crew.” Nobody had heard the story until now, and Charlie’s fellow pilots encouraged him to look for the German. He searched the archives in the U.S. and England and located his crew’s after-action report but after four years was no closer to locating the pilot he sought.
Several years after WWII, the Allies allowed West Germany to re-establish its air force as a deterrent to the Soviet Union. Several of the ace fighters Franz Stigler had served with became leaders in the new organization. These were the pilots who’d served their country with dignity and hadn’t joined the Nazi Party. The Association of German Fighter Pilots published a newsletter called Jagerblatt. Charlie wrote the editor, asking that a short letter be published in the newsletter about the December 20 incident, but the editor was not interested in helping a former bomber pilot. Charlie wrote to Adolf Galland, Germany’s most famous pilot and former president of the Association. Galland ordered the editor to publish Charlie’s letter. Galland was Franz’s former commander in JV-44.
General Galland – Public Domain
A few months later, the Jagerblatt arrived in Franz Stiger’s mailbox. He was so excited when he read Charlie’s letter that he immediately wrote to him. Charlie was equally astounded when he received Franz’s letter. He obtained Franz’s phone number from directory assistance and called him. In the Jagerblatt letter, Charlie had left out information about The Pub’s exact damage and the fact that they had flown out of Germany over the North Sea. Charlie began asking Franz a series of questions. Franz shared details about The Pub’s damage that Charlie had not included in his Jaggerblatt letter, and when Franz said he thought they’d never make it across the sea after he let them go, Charlie couldn’t hold back the tears.
Charlie wrote a thank you letter to Franz, but he still didn’t know that the German was an ace or why Franz had allowed the B-17 to escape. The two met for the first time in Seattle in June of 1990. When they saw each other in the hotel lobby, they hugged and cried. The fact that they’d found each other was miraculous enough, but the fact that they were both living after forty-six years was incredible. The two spent a couple days together, sharing about their lives. Contrary to what Charlie had thought, Franz’s guns had been full of ammunition when he’d encountered Charlie’s plane. He learned that Franz had served in the “Squadron of Experts” and was one of Germany’s great aces. After that meeting, Charlie never suffered another nightmare.
Ten years prior, Franz’s former commander General Galland had visited Franz in Canada, and Franz took him hunting. They’d kept up with each other by phone ever since. After meeting with Charlie, he confessed to Galland about sparing the B-17. Galland’s response was “‘It would be you.'” The reunion soon made the headlines and hit the TV news stories. Later that year, Franz met Charlie at the 379th Bomb Group reunion in Massachusetts. Charlie introduced his old ball turret gunner, “Blackie” and his former radio operator Pechout to Franz, and they hugged and cried together. Blackie sobbed and thanked Franz for sparing his life because it had allowed “his children and grandchildren to experience life.”
Watch a short documentary about this story on You Tube here.
Source: A Higher Call by Adam Makos with Larry Alexander – Berkley Caliber, New York, 2012.
Hurricane Harvey pushed ashore Friday, August 25, 2017, the first category four hurricane to hit Texas in many years. Sharing part of its western border with the Gulf of Mexico, Texas has been pummeled by many hurricanes, some especially vicious.
When and where have other devastating hurricanes landed in Texas?
In the 1800’s, Indianola, TX was a thriving seaport on Matagorda Bay, located in the area of present day Victoria, TX. Indianola competed with Galveston for supremacy in shipping and trade. Also, many immigrants to the U.S. disembarked at Indianola, most notably German immigrants making their way to the western lands. In September of 1875, many visitors filled the city to witness an important trial when a hurricane with 100 MPH winds pushed the waters of Matagorda Bay into the city.
The storm lasted two days, left only eight buildings undamaged, and took approximately 270 lives. The city and port recovered but not to the same level of greatness. In August of 1886, another hurricane of equal strength hit the port city, completely destroying it with water and fire. Indianola became a ghost town.
Late on September 8, 1900, a category 4 hurricane, with winds of 130 MPH came ashore south of Galveston and sent storm tides of 8 to 15 feet across Galveston Island. Approximately 8000 people died, although estimates range from 6000 to 12,000 lives lost. No other weather disaster in U.S. history has been as deadly. Property damage was estimated at $30 million. The hurricane went north over the Great Lakes and Canada and emerged in the north Atlantic on September 15th.
Track of Galveston Hurricane of 1900 Public Domain – From National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration Courtesy of Wikipedia
Floating Wreckage Along the Waterfront for Miles Public Domain – Courtesy of Wikipedia
In August of 1915, another category 4 hurricane, but with winds of 140 MPH, spun ashore at Galveston, causing 275 deaths and $50 million of damage. The recently built seawall protected many lives.
Flooding in Galveston After the Hurricane of 1915 Public Domain – Courtesy of Wikipedia
The Great Corpus Christi Hurricane of 1919 (Atlantic Gulf Hurricane)
On September 14, 1919, a category 4 hurricane, with winds of 140 MPH, hit the coast south of Corpus Christi, causing a storm surge of 12 feet and swamping the city. Before moving into Mexico, the hurricane left $22 million in damage and 284 deaths. Robert Simpson, a young man who survived the storm, later became the director of the National Hurricane Center and co-founded the Saffir-Simpson Scale. This hurricane is classified as the third most intense to land on the U.S. coast.
On June 27, 1957, Audrey came ashore at Sabine Pass, near the Texas-Louisiana border, as a category 4 hurricane with wind speeds of 145 miles per hour. The storm took 390 lives in Texas and Louisiana. Storm surges of 8 to 12 feet pushed water 25 miles inland in Louisiana.
Early on the morning of September 11, 1961, Carla became a category 5 hurricane, with winds of 175 miles per hour. In the afternoon, her winds dropped to 145 miles per hour, and her eye passed over Port O’Connor and Port Lavaca. Prior to landfall, a mandatory evacuation was issued, and half a million people made their way to safety—the largest evacuation in U.S. history up to that time. Tides of 15 to 17 feet above sea level devastated Port O’Connor, Indianola, Palacios, and Matagorda, and the storm surge continued inland for 10 miles in places. Eighteen tornadoes formed, including an F4 in Galveston. The category 4 storm was responsible for only 46 deaths, but 465 injuries.
When the Soviet Union invaded and occupied Poland at the beginning of WWII, the secret police (NKVD) immediately began arresting and deporting Polish citizens identified before the invasion. They simply pulled out their prepared lists . . .
These initial arrests focused on individuals holding leadership roles in the government, in the church, in education, in the military, as well as foreigners and those who had visited foreign countries. In February 1940, hundreds of thousands of landowners and their families were sent to labor camps in northern Russia and Siberia.
In April 1940, family members of individuals previously arrested were transported to camps in Kazakhstan. Smaller numbers of Ukrainians and Jews were also deported.
Over one million people “rode the rails” to exile.
Maria Zareba Andrzejewska was deported with her mother and sisters during one of these mass roundups. Prior to WWII, Maria’s father served as mayor of a small town in Eastern Poland where Maria and her sisters lived peacefully, enjoying skiing, hiking, playing sports, reading, and picking mushrooms.
After the Soviets occupied Eastern Poland, they arrested, imprisoned, and then deported Maria’s father in October 1939. Six months later, in April 1940, Soviet soldiers pounded on the Zareba’s door at 4:00 AM, demanded entry, and gave the women only fifteen minutes to pack. They gathered many clothes but only a little food and rode by horse and buggy to Kolomyja where they were deposited in a cattle boxcar holding fifty to sixty people. The guards bolted the windowless boxcar from the outside, and the occupants were only allowed to leave their quarters one time during their month-long train journey.
Deportation to the Soviet Union. Courtesy of Official Composite.
Maria and her family prayed and sang as they traveled to Kazakhstan, hoping they would be able to return home soon. Upon arrival, the Zareba women were assigned to a dirt hut with no stove or furniture. Thirty people slept side by side on the clay floor. They dug water ditches for field irrigation, gathered hay during harvest season, and subsisted on very small rations of food.
Knowing little work would be available during the cold winter months, and the Soviets only distributed food to those who worked, Maria’s family bartered clothes for food in the villages. In the fall, they moved to a small chicken coop and endured the cold, dark, and brutal winter which followed. Snow built up until it covered the entire dwelling.
The Zarebas survived by melting snow for water and making a thin soup, which they ate once a day. To entertain themselves they sang and played instruments made of combs.
After walking to the local villages, Maria’s feet froze, causing festering boils on her toes. Maria’s sister developed large black sores all over her legs that spread to her torso, and she lay unconscious for weeks. Maria developed a milder form of the disease.
In the spring of 1941, the Zarebas worked in the fields and later in huge stables, caring for cattle. The deportees were told they could gather leftover sunflower seeds after the harvest, but other officials arrived and told them they were committing a crime against the state and could be arrested. The officials confiscated the bags of seeds the hungry children and teens had collected, much to their sorrow.
In June of 1941, the Germans invaded Eastern Poland and attacked the Soviet Union. Two months later the Zareba’s manager revealed that the Soviets and the Polish government-in-exile in London had signed an agreement granting the deportees amnesty so they could form an army to help the Allies fight the Germans.
The exiles were free to leave, so the Zarebas sold everything possible and purchased train tickets to go south, where General Anders was gathering and training the Polish Army. Traveling for weeks and suffering more hunger and disease, the Zareba women hoped to find their husband and father if he was still alive.
The women arrived in Samarkand, Uzbekistan and lived on the streets for three weeks. They were attacked and robbed.
A friend helped the Zarebas move to Zirabulak, where Maria worked in a cotton factory and her older sister labored in the mines. They stayed in the factory’s little living quarters. Maria’s older sister met her future husband, a Polish Army officer, and he helped the family arrange transportation to Krasnowodsk, a port town on the Caspian Sea. From there they crossed over to Pahlavi, Persia, on an overloaded dilapidated ship, full of hungry and ill passengers.
A ship carrying Polish soldiers and civilian refugees arrives in Iran from the Soviet Union, 1942. Courtesy of Wikipedia.
The Zareba women sheltered temporarily in tents on the beach until relocating to Tehran.
The British occupied part of Iran at this time, but the Iranians assisted the Polish exiles and treated them warmly. In Tehran a miracle took place . . .
Maria’s father had survived his imprisonment in the Soviet Union and after his release was searching for his family. What a joyful reunion took place in Iran! All the Zarebas were together again except Maria’s oldest sister who had fled with an aunt to Romania at the beginning of the war.
While waiting in Tehran for the war to end, Maria, her sisters, and thousands of other Polish youth attended school.
Maria’s father was sent to England, and the family later followed. At a Polish Military Resettlement Camp near Liverpool, Maria met her future husband Antek who had fought in the Polish Home Army, survived Auschwitz, and escaped to join the Polish Army in Italy.
After, Maria and Antek’s engagement, Antek moved to Alberta, Canada, and Maria followed six months later. They married the next month in February 1950. Maria’s sisters and their families also immigrated to Edmonton, Alberta, where many other Polish immigrants had settled after the war. After the death of Maria’s dear father in England, Maria’s mother joined the girls in Canada. Maria and Antek were blessed with three children and four grandchildren in their adopted land.
Two months after WWII began, German mathematician and scientist Hans Ferdinand Mayer checked into the Hotel Bristol in Oslo, Norway. Dr. Mayer was an anti-Nazi German, and he purposely planned a trip to Scandinavia to leak information about the Nazis’ weapons systems and latest technological development projects.
Mayer was employed by Siemens & Halske AG, an electrical engineering company specializing in communications engineering and headquartered in Berlin, Germany. He directed the communications research laboratory.
Oslo, Norway Today. Photo by Sean Hayford O’Leary via Flikr & Wikipedia
Dr. Mayer borrowed a typewriter from the Hotel Bristol and typed a seven-page report, detailing German military secrets for the purpose of bringing down the Nazi regime. He sent a letter to the British Embassy in Oslo on November 1. Mayer asked the British military attaché to request that the BBC World Service use a coded phrase at the beginning of its German-language program if the attaché wanted the report. The code was given in the broadcast, so Mayer mailed the report.
Because of its origins, the British entitled the communication the Oslo Report. Considering it was sent anonymously and included detailed facts about many types of German weapons, the report appeared “to good to be true,” and British intelligence was very skeptical. They assumed the report was planted by the Abwehr, the German military intelligence, to distract or mislead the Allies.
It was providential that a young British scientist, Dr. R. B. Jones, recently placed in charge of scientific intelligence, believed the report and forwarded it to MI6 in London. Mayer’s account detailed information about German methods of attacking fortifications, newly developed air-raid warning equipment, and the location of the Luftwaffe’s laboratories and development centers. Mayer also shared about the development and location of Germany’s first aircraft carrier and the ongoing development of remote-controlled long-range rockets.
HMS Royal Oak in 1937. Public domain. Courtesy of Wikipedia.
Dr. Mayer described two types of new torpedoes – acoustic and magnetic – and how to counteract them. Only a few weeks earlier, the Germans had torpedoed and sunk the HMS Royal Oak battleship when it was anchored in British home waters at Scapa Flow, and 835 men were killed. Dr. Mayer instructed the Allies on how to protect themselves from this type of attack. Because many of the weapons were still in development, some of the information was incomplete and some later proved to be inaccurate; however, the Oslo report allowed the British to develop countermeasures and contributed to their victory in the Battle of Britain the following year.
After delivering his report, Dr. Mayer returned to Germany. He was arrested by the Gestapo in 1943 for listening to the British Broadcasting Network (BBC), which was strictly forbidden, and for criticizing the Nazi regime. He spent the remaining years of the war in five concentration camps until the Allies freed him. The Nazis never learned about the existence of the Oslo Report, and Mayer’s authorship wasn’t revealed until after he and his wife had died, as stipulated in his will. Mayer lived to be eighty-four years of age and died in 1980.
Germany and the Soviet Union defeated and divided Poland between them in September of 1939. The Soviets quickly arrested and deported University professors, police officers, border guards, lawyers, doctors, pastors, priests, physicians, engineers, journalists, pilots, teachers, landowners, writers, chaplains, civic leaders, and any other person deemed a threat to the establishment of a communist society. The Soviets arrested anyone wearing a uniform, even boy scouts!
A column of arrested Polish police officers, civilian public servants and other “enemies of the people,” being escorted by the Red Army in “liberated” Eastern Poland in September 1939. From the Soviet Cinema Newsreel.
The fascinating story of Mietek Rymaszewski begins in the small town of Malkowicze in Soviet-occupied Eastern Poland during the winter of 1940. Mietek belonged to a youth cadet organization but had been too young to fight at the outbreak of WWII. After a number of families from his town were deported to Siberia in February, word came of his own impending arrest due to his youth organization ties.
Mietek packed underwear, food, and a little money, bade farewell to his mother and younger brother and left during the night with two female school friends. He never returned to Malkowicze. The train ride toward the border was interrupted twice by NKVD (secret police) passenger checks. At the first check he was questioned about the contents of the suitcase he carried for one of his friends.
Mietek replied that he was taking the items to his sister at college, and the NKVD let him pass. The two girls said they were traveling to college, and they were allowed through. At the next passenger check, Mietek and his friends moved to a group that had already been processed, avoiding another search. The threesome arrived safely in the city of Łomża, near the border between Soviet occupied Poland and East Prussia (Germany).
Mietek and his companions went to a prearranged address where they waited for an opportunity to cross into German-controlled territory. The moon was full and the nights were too light to avoid detection in the open, flat country covered with deep snow. Growing impatient, Mietek left with a guide who took him to within three kilometers of the border. Before parting, Mietek questioned his guide thoroughly about nearby villages, landmarks, woodlands, and the best places to cross the border. Later when he was intercepted by a Russian soldier, he posed as a local citizen, accurately describing the area. The soldier let him pass, but Mietek returned to Łomża because of the impossibility of successfully crossing the border. The Russian patrols were too active at the time.
Łomża, Poland
Mietek’s two schoolmates sold some of their jewelry and returned home, but the jewelry dealer sold out the owner of the house and the other potential escapees. The NKVD surrounded the house, arrested everyone, and took them to the NKVD station in an old seminary. The officers plied the prisoners with questions. Who were they? Where were they from? And what they were doing in Lomza? The prisoners were put in separate cellars at the old seminary so they couldn’t talk with one another but not before Mietek let his companions know he had changed his name. He was determined to protect his mother.
Fifty men shared the cellar with Mietek, including smugglers from Warsaw who bragged about their exploits. They described their route in detail, and Mietek memorized everything he heard. Since the penalty for those coming into the Soviet occupied section of Poland was less severe than for those caught escaping, Mietek prepared his story. When he was questioned, he said he had come from Warsaw and was headed to Bialystok (about 80 km/50 miles away) to find his uncle. He described his journey, including a detour at the river Narew where the bridge had been blown up. He had crossed an improvised bridge and took another train.
When Mietek’s interrogators asked him how he had crossed the border (from German-occupied territory into Russian-occupied territory), he claimed he didn’t know he’d crossed the border. The NKVD believed him. An army officer came in to report the arrival of new captives, and the NKVD berated the officer for not having stopped Mietek at the crossing.
Mietek’s interrogation lasted for several weeks, and the NKVD officers used a variety of methods to coerce confessions from the prisoners for whatever they were accused of committing—usually spying. The prisoners were forced to sit on a small stool with sharp edges and corners, which cut into their spines. The NKVD used special handcuffs, tightening them until the prisoners’ hands turned blue, causing pain and then numbness. They stood the prisoners against a wall and pointed a gun to their heads. Another interrogator would enter and gently question the prisoners and then pretend that he was going to shoot them also. Prisoners were pulled in for questioning at two o’clock in the morning, submitted to a volley of rapid-fire questions, and suffered if their answers were inconsistent.
A well-known engineer in Mietek’s cellar was accused of spying, and the NKVD tortured him for hours at a time. He would come back covered in bruises, bleeding, and unable to walk.
Someone scratched a hole in the wall, allowing communication with the women prisoners in the next cellar. The women collected a matchbox full of lice, and when an inspector visited, they complained about the conditions. The inspector said the lice problem was their own fault, so they threw their collection at him, and he raced out of the cellar.
Mietek was transferred to the Łomża Prison and later taken with hundreds of other prisoners to the railway station and loaded into cattle trucks. Destination – Siberia.
The next morning the train pulled out of the station headed east. The prisoners united to sing a patriotic Polish song, vowing to “defend the Polish spirit” from the Russians. The guards riding between and on top of the cattle cars unsuccessfully tried to quiet the prisoners.
After passing through five cities and into Byelorussia, the train stopped at Gomel near the Ukraine, and the prisoners were escorted in groups of fifty to the local prison. Mietek saw the largest rats he’d ever seen. They ran along the top of the wall and fed on corpses in the mortuary.
Fifty men shared the 4 by 5 meter cells (13 x 16 feet). They were only allowed to exercise in the yard for ten minutes each day. As they marched down the winding stairs, a number of prisoners committed suicide by jumping down head first, forcing the Russians to install netting on the bannisters to prevent these deaths. One prisoner hid in an outbuilding and escaped over the wall after dark. Dogs tracked him, and the Soviets beat him up, put him in a penal cell, and reduced his food allotment.
An epidemic of dysentery passed through the prison—those with the worst cases went to the hospital on the ground floor. They were stripped and given only a blanket so they wouldn’t climb out the bathroom window, jump onto the wall and attempt to escape.
In August of 1940, the NKVD (Soviet Secret Police) sentenced Mietek to serve three years in corrective camps of the Northern Railway in Kotlas, Northern Russia. He refused to sign the paper, so the NKVD officer signed the documents for him, using Mietek’s false name since the NKVD had never discovered his true identity. He was taken to a new cell, and one of the occupants jumped up calling out Mietek’s name. To everyone’s surprise, Mietek’s cousin Edward was also a prisoner. The two remained together for the rest of their captivity.
Again the Soviets separated the prisoners into groups of fifty, escorted them to the railway station, and loaded them in cattle trucks. They traveled through Minsk and then Smolensk where Mietek’s grandfather had been wounded during WWI.
Soviet Deportation Train
Between Leningrad and Kotlas, a Bielorussin cut a hole in the floor of a cattle truck with a piece of flint and dropped between the rails. Unfortunately the guards saw him, stopped the train, and beat the prisoner black and blue.
They arrived at Kotlas to find a camp holding a few huts, a high barbed wire fence with a tower in each corner, soldiers brandishing rifles and machine guns, and knee-deep mud. There were two ditches – one for drinking water and one for a latrine. After a short time at this camp, the prisoners were taken in groups of fifty about eight kilometers through the taiga to the Northern Dvina River. They sailed north on barges for a few days, stopping at night. They were given 300 grams (10.5 oz.) of bread and a small piece of boiled fish during the journey.
The new camp was a completely empty square piece of ground, so Mietek and his fellow prisoners used tools lent to them and cut down trees to build shelters and fires. Since Mietek had grown up in the forest, he built a safe shelter for himself and a small group of fellow prisoners; however, others built inadequate shelters which collapsed during the night, killing the occupants.
Mietek and the other prisoners decided to escape while they were out of camp collecting firewood, but on the planned day Mietek woke up with legs so swollen his flesh hung over his boot leggings. He had scurvy and the escape was called off. The prisoners later learned to boil pine and spruce needles and drink the brew to fight scurvy. They boiled willow bark and twigs to make a drink substituting for aspirin. They also boiled the twigs of bilberries to cure diarrhea. The water in the ditches overflowed and mixed with the drinking water, causing dysentery, so the prisoners learned to only drink water from melted snow.
After a few weeks the prisoners moved to a new camp where they found marquee type tents pulled over a wooden frame-work with a small metal stove and firewood inside. A group of Estonian sailors shared Mietek’s tent. These strong, healthy, intelligent, and good-looking young men needed lots of food, but they didn’t get it and were the first to die. The old and weak perished next. A group of Lithuanians in the tent also died – the last one with his head frozen to the tent. From November, 1940 to February, 1941, 300 of the 360 captives died.
The prisoners built a railway line from Kotlas to Vorkuta by digging soil from the hillside and taking it in wheelbarrows to the embankment. If they didn’t obtain the required cubic meters of soil each day, their food rations were reduced – 300 grams (10.5 oz.) of bread and some watery soup twice a day.
A Russian railway supervisor, also a prisoner, asked to buy Mietek’s jacket and boots – hunting boots with high leggings made of very good leather. Mietek agreed, although the items were worth much more than the supervisor paid for them. But he did reward Mietek with a new job – measuring and recording the soil in each man’s wheelbarrow. It was wise Mietek was meticulous in his measurements because a supervisor checked his work. Later he heard that six million cubic meters had been overbooked and two Russian engineers were shot for it.
One morning after a heavy snowfall in late December, Mietek strode to his worksite in the frigid temperatures and worked up a sweat. Finding a hole that had been chiseled in the ice of a nearby river, he drew a cup of water and drank from it. A nasty chill resulted, and by the end of the day, a 102°F fever gripped him. On December 31st, Mietek was taken to the hospital, a deep dugout located outside the prison camp. At first he was delirious, but soon he lost consciousness.
Sometime later, Mietek awakened but couldn’t lift his head. After drifting off, he woke again and asked how long he had been at the hospital. The doctor pointed to a calendar tacked to a post. The day was February 5th. He’d been unconscious for thirty-six days! Lena, a nurse and also a prisoner, brought bread, dipped it in tea, and fed Mietek by hand. She had kept him alive in the same way all the weeks he was unconscious.
Mietek gradually gained strength and helped the nurses by carrying food to the other patients. Later when the doctor examined him, the doctor told Mietek he was all right but just needed food. To help solve the problem, the doctor hired Mietek to keep a fire going in his dugout at night. When the doctor came in, he shared food brought from the kitchen with Mietek.
On May 11th Mietek was escorted back to camp and returned to work the next day – cutting firewood for locomotives. A nasty blizzard struckand left a case of frostbite on Mietek’s face. The male sickroom nurse provided him with a mixture of surgical spirit and glycerin, and his skin began to heal after a few weeks.
Mietek and his fellow prisoners moved on to build an embankment to support bridge timbers for a rail line spanning a deep river. Next, they relocated to a camp on the River Pechora where they pulled timber out of the river, cut it, and rolled it to a small sawmill to be cut for railway sleepers. Here Mietek saw eskimos and reindeer for the first time.
Many young Russians lived in this camp, and some of them stole whatever they wanted or took the items by force. One Russian demanded Mietek’s soup, so he quickly drank it and rammed the bowl in the Russian’s mouth, causing his mouth to bleed. The same fellow approached Mietek as he was lying down that night, so Mietek struck him a few times with a stick, and the Russian walked off holding his ribs. The fellow didn’t bother Mietek again.
After the ice on the Ust Usa River melted, the prisoners sailed up the river on barges and crossed the Arctic Circle. They passed an area where many human bones protruded from the melting snow. Some of the Russians thought these were the remains of eight hundred slaves who’d been trapped by an Arctic storm while they were marching on foot to Vorkuta (an area where prisoners slaved in the uranium mines).
It was thought that the whole convoy had frozen except for the escort commander who’d escaped with a pack of dogs. Since Mietek and his fellow prisoners were heading to the same place, he expected the Soviets to force them to work the mines until the radiation finished them off. Meanwhile, the men in his convoy continued to die from malnutrition.
But . . . another miracle transpired.
Before arriving in Vorkuta, an official boarded and pulled all the prisoners from Poland off the barges. Because Germany had invaded Russia, the Soviets were joining the Allies in their fight against the Germans and had agreed to release all Polish citizens held in the Soviet Union. They released Polish POW General Anders from prison to immediately gather and train a Polish Army in the east to aid the Allied fight.
The Soviets sent Mietek back to camp and tried to persuade him to join their army, but he carefully responded that he hadn’t been educated in Russian and wouldn’t feel right in the Russian Army. Instead, Mietek and a group of other former prisoners boarded a cattle truck and rode south to join the Polish Armed Forces in the East. They rode the same rail line they had previously built and relished the freedom of travelling unguarded in Russia for the first time.
Obtaining food became an immediate priority. Along the way, the former prisoners were occasionally given boiled fish and a piece of bread, and at some stations they obtained all the boiled water they wanted. At one stop Mietek exchanged his shirt for a small bantam hen and a few potatoes. He plucked and cleaned the hen, confiscated a large can by a well, gathered nettles, and made four gallons of soup. Since the train never stopped for long, Mietek built a fire at each stop, gradually cooking the broth until it was ready to eat.
Mietek traveled from Kotlas in northern Russia through Svierdlovsk and Kyubishov to Buzelluk on the southern Russian frontier, each time expecting to find a Polish recruiting station but only to discover the offices had moved. He and his companions travelled through the Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan and entered Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, also under Soviet control.
While waiting at a stop further south, Mietek attempted to do some trading. He went to the closest hamlet and knocked on a door. He was invited in and discovered a poor Russian family of three sharing a meal of tiny potatoes. Observing their plight, Mietek only asked for water, but after the family learned that he had been recently released from the labor camps, they insisted he share their meal. With tears in her eyes, the Russian woman gave Mietek a half glass of milk from their meager stores.
Continuing south, Mietek and his companions arrived in Samarkand (outer Mongolia) and slept outside for a few nights, until barges arrived and took them to Nukus near the Aral Sea. They walked behind an Uzbeki riding an oxen-driven cart to a collective farm 120 kilometers away and stayed with the Uzbeki families. They slept in a tent-like accommodation covered with homemade felt, ate sesame flat bread, rice and sesame meal noodles with some meat, and drank boiled water. Mietek’s host was the local school teacher who was embittered because the Red Army had killed his father, confiscated his father’s lands, and eaten his herds of livestock without compensation. He vowed to one day get it back.
After news arrived that the Polish recruiting office had reopened in Bukhara, Mietek and his fellow travelers spent a day and a night walking back to Nukus where they soaked their blistered feet in the river. They sailed on barges down the River Amudarya to Farab near Samarkand and were encouraged by the majestic flight of three white eagles above the river. Mietek also witnessed the reunion of a Polish husband and wife who’d been separated since 1939 and had survived the labor camps. In Farab, they stayed in rail trucks and were given a dead dog to eat. While Mietek was with an NKVD officer getting soup (boiled water with a few green tomatoes), some of his companions stole millet. After he returned, they were all arrested by the local militia and sent to the Samarkand Prison.
A number of Russians and Uzbekis shared Mietek’s cell. One Russian was imprisoned for being fifteen minutes late to work (his wife was sick). Mietek and his companions went to court where his charges were dropped but three others were given the maximum sentence (death penalty). Then a man spoke, pleading that the men had been brought up in a capitalist country and didn’t know the difference between right and wrong and they should be allowed to repay their crime by joining the army. The court released them with a warning to be out of Samarkand within twenty-four hours.
Mietek and a friend walked to Bukhara, surviving on weeds and desert tortoise eggs. When they arrived, the recruiting office was empty, but after two days a Polish 2nd lieutenant arrived and took them to the railway station. He shielded them from Soviet agents who were in the area conscripting the local men for the Russian Army. They traveled to Kermine where the Polish garrison was stationed, and Mietek gave his true name for the first time since he had been captured by the Soviets in Poland. Despite reaching the Polish Army, forty men died daily from the prolonged starvation they had endured. Even Mietek collapsed and spent two days in the hospital where he was put on a special diet.
As the Polish recruits gained strength, their military training increased. For a time, the Soviets refused to provide the Polish garrison at Kermine with transportation to Persia (Iran) where they planned to connect with the British Army. Instead the Soviets tried to persuade them to fight on the Eastern Front with the Russian Army. The Polish military leaders objected, and the troops prepared to march out. The Soviets didn’t have enough forces in the area to stop them, so they provided transportation to Krasnovodskon on the Caspian Sea.
The Polish troops and civilians at Krasnovodsk crossed the Caspian Sea on rusty, old ships, fighting dysentery and dehydration. One day while standing in line for his water ration, Mietek noticed a pair of bright, young eyes watching him through the gaps in the steps. Then he heard a young voice say, “Mum, it’s Mietek.” She was the daughter of the station master from his home town in Poland! The girl’s mother appeared and greeted him, sharing that they had been deported to Siberia with his mother, brother, and grandfather. She gave Mietek his mother’s address, and he was able to make contact with her.
In Pahlavi, Iran, the troops showered, obtained haircuts, and were powdered with insecticide. They burned their uniforms and were issued new tropical uniforms. Mietek was posted to Iraq where he defended a refinery and later an airport and served as a driving instructor. His unit transferred to Palestine and then North Africa. In Egypt, Mietek volunteered for the infantry and fought in Italy. He was wounded in a battle on the the Kenti River and was hospitalized in Taranto and in Scotland. He recuperated and returned to Italy where he guarded German POW’s following the war.
After his time of service, Mietek settled in England and worked for the forestry commission. He married Stephanie Burnett, an English widow. The Soviets resettled Mietek’s mother in western Poland, but Mietek didn’t see her again until she visited him in England in 1963, twenty-four years after parting. They didn’t recognize each other after all that time, but she stayed for five months. When Mietek visited Poland in 1988 (after a 49-year absence), he was disturbed by the moral scars caused by the communist domination of the country.
In late September 1939, the Soviets and the Nazis officially divided Poland. The Soviets occupied the eastern section of the country. Before WWI, this area had belonged to Russia but was awarded to Poland following the war. Polish settlers, Ukrainians, and Russians lived in this territory.
The Soviets exiled the Polish settlers in mass to northern Russia, Siberia, and other far flung locations to work in labor camps. The exact number of people transported will never be known, but estimates indicate the Soviets forcibly removed at least one million Polish men, women, and children. Later, the Soviets also exiled Ukrainians.
After the Germans invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Soviets allied themselves with England and consequently with the Polish government-in-exile in London. Stalin agreed to release the Polish captives held in the Soviet Union and allow the Polish Army to re-organize to fight the Germans. This army initially formed in Uzbekistan but later moved to the Middle East. Polish civilians left the Soviet Union along the same path as the newly formed army (Anders Army).
A small portion of the former captives successfully escaped the Soviet Union and arrived in the west where they shared their stories.
Fourteen-year-old Danuta Maczka lived with her family on a farm near Rowne in the Eastern Borderlands of Poland, now part of Ukraine.
In October of 1939, the local Ukrainian Committee, established by the Soviets, evicted her family from their home. They were allowed to take food, some furniture, their two dogs, and a few personal possessions with them. They rented an apartment in a Jewish house in a small town nearby, but the Soviet Secret Police (NKVD) continued to harass them.
At 6:00 AM on February 10, 1940, the NKVD and Ukrainian police awakened the Maczkas and gave them a two-hour notice to pack. Their destination—northern Russia. In icy cold temperatures, they traveled for two hours by sledge through deep snow to the railway station where they boarded a cattle truck with many other Polish settlers.
A few days later they transferred to a Soviet cattle truck, holding seventy-two people. Double bunks lined the sides of the car, a stove occupied the center, and one tiny grilled window admitted a little light and air. A hole in the floor provided for hygiene needs. Danuta and her family rode in this locked car for sixteen days. Occasionally they were given food, water, and coal for the stove.
The Maczkas reached Kotlas in northern Russia, and Danuta’s stepmother contracted pneumonia. She was taken to the hospital where she recovered. Meanwhile, the rest of the family traveled twenty-five kilometers by sledge during a huge snowstorm while the temperature was -40° Celsius.
For the next twenty-two months, the Maczkas lived in various huts and barracks and worked deep in the forests. They were paid for their work, which involved felling trees, removing branches, working in a sawmill, stripping bark, sawing wood, and building small wooden houses. Danuta’s younger brother and sister, Tadzio and Zosia, attended school, but Danuta, her father, and her older brother, Bogus, worked.
In the summer and fall, Danuta was allowed to leave the camp and collect berries and mushrooms in the forest. In a small plot of soil, they planted vegetables, potatoes, onions, cucumbers, and beans, which grew rapidly in the almost twenty-four-hour-a-day sunlight. Everyone worked in the forest, the saw-mill, or on the collective farm. If they refused, they didn’t receive their bread ration. Many were struck with sickness and died.
Danuta’s little sister Zosia caught the flu in October, was hospitalized for two weeks in December, and died alone in the hospital on Christmas Eve. Tadzio broke his leg in school, and it didn’t heal properly because of the lack of adequate medical treatment.
On June 22, 1941, the Germans invaded Soviet territory, initiating the German-Soviet War and the Soviet alliance with the Allies. On July 31, the Maczkas learned that the Soviets had signed a treaty with the Polish government in London, granting amnesty to all Poles on Soviet territory. Danuta and her family rejoiced that God had answered their prayers.
Although the first discharge papers for Polish citizens were issued on September 5th, the Maczkas didn’t receive their papers until December 27th. With the Soviets at war, the exiles were no longer paid for their work, and food was rationed. Christmas dinner consisted of a few pieces of dried bread and hope that they would soon leave the Soviet Union.
With great joy, Danuta and her family boarded their train to freedom on January 1, 1942. Impatient to join the Polish Army before receiving his papers, her brother Bogus had left with friends in November.
Danuta’s Route Map
After many weeks of riding the rails, on February 22nd the Maczkas arrived in Guzar, Uzbekistan, the location of the 7th Division of the Polish Army. Although only sixteen, Danuta claimed she was eighteen so she could volunteer for the Polish Women’s Auxiliary Service. The army issued her a man’s military uniform many sizes too big, a rifle with no bullets, and a bayonet. But she was proud to be in the Polish Army!
Danuta’s father found Bogus in the hospital recovering from typhoid. He and his friends had faced a very difficult journey. Without government papers, they had not been allowed to obtain rations at the railroad station canteens.
All the Maczkas traveled by train with the Polish Army to Krasnovodsk near the Caspian Sea and by boat to Persia. Many passengers suffered from typhoid and dysentery, and some died on the trip.
The Maczkas arrived in Teheran in early April. A Polish doctor operated on Tadzio’s leg, and Danuta’s father and older brother departed with the army. Danuta was doing a nursing course in the 4th hospital (Red Cross) and contracted typhoid fever. She nearly died.
After a two-and-a-half-month hospital stay, Danuta recovered and joined the transport office. She drove heavy vehicles, delivering supplies to military units in Egypt and later Italy.
During the Italian campaign, she met 2nd Lt. Jerzy Gradosilski and married him after the war. They settled in England and had six children. Danuta’s stepmother and Tadzio remained in Palestine until the war ended. Her father and brother also survived the war.
What: In a surprise move on the seventeenth day of the German invasion of Poland, the Soviet Union invaded from the east. The Nazis and Soviets had secretly agreed the month before to divide the country. Because the Polish military leadership had ordered the Polish forces not to engage the Soviets, the Red Army advanced rapidly with little opposition.
Problem: Stalin and the NKVD (the secret police and forerunner of the KGB) planned to quickly transform the eastern portion of Poland into a communist society and incorporate it into the USSR, but the educated classes stood in the way.
Lvov, the third largest city in Poland, was under German attack when Soviet troops arrived on September 19, 1939. Polish General Langner rejected German demands to surrender and abdicated to the Soviets instead. The negotiated agreement called for the 30,000 Polish troops in the city to surrender at 15:00 hours on September 22. The agreement allowed the soldiers to return home and the officers to cross the border into Romania or Hungary.
The Polish officers assembled at the designated time and laid down their arms, but the Soviets marched them off and transported them around the country for four days without food or water.
At station stops the soldiers scrounged for roots in unharvested gardens, and strangers thrust food at them. They eventually landed in prison camps to the east.
Polish prisoners of war captured by the Red Army after the Soviet invasion of Poland – Wikipedia
Before the war, the Polish government had required every non-exempt university graduate to join the military reserves. University professors, physicians, lawyers, engineers, teachers, writers, journalists, pilots, and chaplains made up the pool of reservists mobilized when Germany invaded. Those that weren’t captured in the initial surrender were easily rounded up later and transferred into the custody of the NKVD. This included police officers, border guards, landowners, refugees, and a prince.
From October 1939 through February 1940, the soldiers endured lengthy interrogations and constant political agitation in concentration camps established on the former grounds of orthodox monasteries in the western USSR. If the captives resisted the Soviet government, they were condemned to die as enemies of the state.
In March of 1940, Stalin signed the death warrant for over 20,000 officers, soldiers, and civilians. They were secretly shot and buried in mass graves. One such grave site was in Katyn, Russia. Although the captives were executed and buried in various locations, Katyn Forest became the symbol of the atrocity. In all, the NKVD annihilated almost half of the Polish Officer Corp.
Professor Stanislaw Swianiewicz was condemned to die at Katyn, but a NKVD colonel pulled the professor out of line while he waited to board a bus to the execution site. Swianiewicz had studied in Moscow before the Russian Revolution, was an internationally recognized expert on forced labor in Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany, and had written books on the Soviet economy. He was sent to various prisons, interrogated, and eventually incarcerated in Siberia.
Another officer, General Wladyslaw Anders, had commanded a cavalry brigade which had engaged in heavy fighting with the Germans. While fleeing to the Hungarian border in late September of 1939, he and his troops fought the Soviets. He was injured, captured, and eventually sent to prison in Moscow, thus avoiding the same fate as his fellow officers.
The NKVD arrested, tortured and killed thousands of other Poles, Jews, Ukrainians, and Belorussians from 1940 to 1941. Estimates vary among historians, but it’s believed that 300,000 to 1.2 million Poles were deported to Northern Russia, Siberia, and Central Asia during this time period.
Many died in transit or in exile.
After the Germans overran Eastern Poland and attacked the Soviet Union in 1941, the Soviets formed an alliance with Great Britain and the Polish government-in-exile in London. As part of their agreement, Stalin released all surviving Polish prisoners with the understanding that they would assist in the fight against the Nazis.
General Anders was freed and given command of the Polish Army in the east. It was his responsibility to gather and train the recently released Polish prisoners to form the new army. When inquiries were made regarding the whereabouts of the thousands of missing Polish officers, Stalin claimed that he had lost track of them in Manchuria.
Germany uncovered and exposed the Katyn atrocity to the world in 1943. The Soviets denied responsibility, claiming the Germans had killed the soldiers found in the mass graves. The Polish government-in-exile objected, so Stalin broke off relations with them. Great Britain and the United States chose to accept the Soviet explanation of Germany’s guilt rather than rouse the ire of their ally.
General Anders led his freed Polish troops through Iran and Iraq to Palestine where he successfully organized and trained them to fight the Germans. The Anders Army went on to fight in the Italian Campaign, capturing Monte Cassino in 1944. He and his soldiers engaged in other major battles before the war ended. Anders died in London in 1970.
Professor Swianiewicz was released from Siberia, and left the Soviet Union in 1942. He worked with the Polish government-in-exile in London and informed them of the number of Polish officers that were held in the Soviet Union in the spring of 1940. Later he wrote about the Katyn Massacre and lectured at numerous universities around the world. He died near London in 1997 at the age of 97.
The Soviets also released thousands of previously deported Polish civilians, including many women and children who left the Soviet Union with the Anders Army.
It wasn’t until 1990 that Russia admitted responsibility for the massacre and expressed “profound regret” for its actions.
Sources:
Williamson, David G. Poland Betrayed. Stackpole Books, 2007.
Today is the 80th anniversary of WWII – the day Germany invaded Poland. Six months prior to the invasion, Hitler had encouraged an event which he later came to regret. An event which saved tens of thousands of lives and aided the Allies in their future victory.
What big mistake did Hitler make in 1939 that contributed to his eventual defeat?
The map below illustrates the boundaries of European countries in early 1938 before Hitler began his conquests. Notice that Poland is sandwiched between Germany to the west and the USSR to the east. It was bordered by Czechoslovakia and Rumania in the south.
Before the end of 1938, Germany seized Austria and the mountainous area of western Czechoslovakia (Sudetenland) without opposition. Hitler then devised a way to take possession of the rest of Czechoslovakia and her iron works, armament factories, and huge supplies of modern military equipment. First, he encouraged the Hungarian government to invade the eastern tail of Czechoslovakia and reclaim the territory of Carpathian-Ruthenia lost after World War I.
So, in March of 1939, the Hungarians acted upon Hitler’s suggestion and repossessed their former lands in the Carpathian Mountains. This distraction allowed the Germans to march into Prague and seize the whole western half of Czechoslovakia unopposed. The middle of the divided country became “Slovakia” and a protectorate of Germany. The rest of the world responded with outrage but didn’t move to stop these advances. As seen on the map below, Hungary gained a common border with Poland.
Courtesy of Professor John L Heineman, Boston College
And then almost 6 months later . . . on September 1st . . .
the Germans unleashed the German army, the Wehrmacht, on Poland, giving birth to the blitzkrieg, “lightning war.” In the days leading up to the invasion, the English and French had urged the Polish government not to mobilize its troops so they wouldn’t further enrage Hitler. The Poles had ignored the warnings and secretly mobilized half of their armed forces by August 31st. Unfortunately, the German air force, the Luftwaffe, bombed trains, train stations, and rail lines, preventing many of the remaining troops from reaching their battle stations. Refugees clogged the roads, making it even more difficult for defense forces to engage the enemy.
What the Polish soldiers lacked in numbers and equipment they made up for in bravery and sheer determination. They held the enemy back longer than Hitler had expected. However, armed with the most modern equipment (including the newly acquired arsenal from Czechoslovakia), the German troops attacked from multiple points, broke through weak spots where the Polish Armies were spread out, and encircled hundreds of thousands of troops. The Poles tenaciously fought an army almost twice their size and an air force five times greater.
By September 9th, Hitler was impatient to finish the Polish campaign. The Germans asked the Hungarian government for permission to transport soldiers to Poland on a rail line through Hungary. The Hungarians denied passage. Even though they had signed a trade agreement with Germany, the Hungarians considered Poland their friend. If German troops set foot in Hungary, the government would consider it an act of war.
Nevertheless, the Germans advanced across Poland, and on September 11th Polish Commander-in-Chief Marshal Rydz-Śmigły ordered his remaining troops to retreat to the Romanian border in southeast Poland. He expected new military equipment to arrive from France and England via Romania. He also planned to organize a counterattack from the east when France opened an offensive from the west as they had promised.
Then on September 17th, the unthinkable happened . . .
The Soviet Union invaded Poland from the east and captured Polish troops. Upon hearing the news, Rydz-Śmigły ordered all remaining Polish units to cross the border into Hungary or Romania by any means possible. Although many soldiers, airmen, and civilians escaped into Romania, the Soviets quickly sealed the Polish-Romanian border, leaving Hungary as the only other escape route in the south.
The Hungarians officially opened their border with Poland on September 18th, and tens of thousands of Polish soldiers and civilians entered Hungary safely despite a lack of passports and visas. This allowed many military units and future soldiers to escape to fight another day.
Polish Soldiers. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Both Romania and Hungary followed the Geneva Convention and established refugee camps for civilian refugees and internment camps for soldiers. Refugees who could fend for themselves passed through Hungary and Yugoslavia to Italy and France. Hungarian citizens housed civilians in their homes and transported them to the Yugoslavian border where they found transportation further west. The Hungarian government didn’t stop “refugees” dressed in civilian clothing from leaving the country. In fact, the Hungarians sent civilian clothing to the Polish Embassy in Budapest, and this enabled tens of thousands of soldiers to make their way to France and rejoin the Polish Army and Air Force.
Graves of Polish Soldiers (1939) By Сергей Семёнов User: Stauffenberg via Wikimedia Commons
The Polish Armed Forces joined the Allies and became the fourth largest Allied military force to serve in World War II, and they served with distinction. If the escape route through Hungary had not been available, how many more Poles would have been captured or killed? How much longer would the war in Europe have lasted? How many more civilian lives would have been lost?
Used by Permission from Budby via flikr
Sources:
No Greater Ally (Kenneth K. Koskodan) Poland Betrayed (David G. Wiliamson) Man of Steel and Honour: General Stanislaw Maczek (Evan McGilvray) Hungarian History
Last month, I shared how Hitler came to power and took dictatorial control of Germany in 1933, and I described the state of the Jews in Germany during the interwar period (WWI – WWII). Here’s the link to the post if you missed it: “How Did Evil Men Take Power in Germany?” Today we will examine how Hitler and the Nazis gradually subjugated their opponents and the Jewish people prior to WWII.
In April of 1933, the German government sponsored a two-day boycott of Jewish businesses. Political opponents of the Nazis and all Jews who hadn’t fought in WWI were dismissed from civil service. New laws pushed Jews out of other government jobs, including Jewish doctors who worked in government-financed healthcare programs.
In 1933 . . . 37,000 Jews emigrated from Germany.
In 1934 . . . another 23,000 Jews fled the country.
But during these early years of Nazi control, many Germans, including the Jews, thought that Hitler wouldn’t last long.
Not even everyone in his own movement agreed with his policies.
The three-million-men-strong, brown-shirted, street-fighting SA Stormtroopers, who’d been instrumental in bringing the Nazis to power, now threatened the party’s power and existence. Hitler’s close friend Ernst Röhm headed the SA. He and the other SA leaders were unhappy with Hitler’s slow implementation of the radical policies the Nazis had advocated from the beginning. Also, Röhm wanted Hitler to combine the Reichswehr, the German military, with the SA and replace the officer corps. The German military leaders fought back by threatening to topple the Nazi regime if the too-powerful SA wasn’t eliminated.
Between June 30 and July 2, 1934, and under Hitler’s direction . . . Heinrich Himmler and the SS arrested the SA leaders and shot them to death, including Hitler’s buddy, Ernst Röhm.
This operation became known as the “Night of the Long Knives.”
As a result, the German Army leadership formed an alliance with Hitler and supported him when he declared himself Führer on August 19, 1934, less than three weeks after the death of President Hindenburg. Most of these military leaders remained loyal to Hitler for many years to come.
In September of 1935, Hitler reduced the Jews to the status of second-class citizens and stripped them of their civil rights. Despite this, many thought the worst was over. Indeed, the Jews felt a sense of calm for two years, and . . .
10,000 Jewish emigrants returned to Germany from neighboring countries in 1935.
By 1938, Germany had rebounded from the economic instability created by WWI and the Great Depression. Firmly in control of the country, Hitler and his regime set their sights on territorial expansion, and Jewish policies took a radical turn.
The German Army occupied Austria in March, 1938.
There were 185,000 Jews (3% of the country’s population) living in Austria, and 170,000 of them lived in Vienna (10% of the city’s population). Sixty-two percent of all lawyers in Vienna were Jewish, and a similar percentage held positions in finance and commerce. Almost 50% of all Viennese doctors were Jewish, and Jews dominated trade and were quite visible in cultural enterprises.
Before the occupation, the Nazi Party was very active in Austria, promoting the unification of Germany and Austria and stirring up anti-Semitism. After the annexation, anti-Jewish laws were put in place and enforced immediately. The Jews quickly came under attack and were even assaulted in the streets. Jews lost their businesses and their apartments from the start.
In August of 1938, SS Lieutenant Adolph Eichmann set up an emigration office in Vienna to help speed the exit of Jews from the country, and . . .
150,000 Jews left during the following eighteen months.
The Nazis forced them to give up their property and their wealth before leaving Austria, but the Jews were thankful to be alive.
Violence against the Jews increased in Germany and Jewish businessmen were pressured to sell and leave. Jews who had previously immigrated from Poland were sent back; however, the Polish government didn’t allow them to return and left them to fend for themselves in the frontier zone. An angry young Jewish man in Paris whose Polish parents resided in the frontier zone retaliated by shooting Ernst vom Rath, a German officer stationed at the German Embassy in Paris. The Nazis used this incident to accelerate Jewish persecution in Germany and Austria.
On the nights of November 8-10, 1938, SS and SA men, dressed as ordinary citizens, “set fire to 1000 synagogues, smashed up 7500 Jewish-owned businesses, invaded and ransacked the homes where Jewish people lived, and fatally assaulted over 90 Jewish men. Police herded 30,000 male Jews into concentration camps until they could be ransomed out by their terrified families” (Cesarani).
This event became known as Kristallnacht, or “Night of Broken Glass.”
In addition, the Nazis charged the German Jewish community one billion Reichsmark (approximately 400 million U.S. dollars at that time) for the damage done on Kristallnacht. This spared the German insurance companies from paying.
What were the conditions in Germany which led to another world war only twenty years after the War to End All Wars? How did a “civilized” nation allow its leaders to annihilate so many of its own citizens? And how did such evil leaders gain power in the first place?
Post WWI Turmoil
The Treaty of Versailles – as one of the conditions of surrender, Germany was forced to pay huge reparation payments to the countries she fought during WWI. She also lost territory and was forced to surrender her colonies abroad, further limiting the income needed to pay debts and recover from the War. To help pay its obligations, the German government printed more money, which led to extreme inflation.
Enter ➥ numerous political parties vying to fix Germany’s troubles, parties that opposed the new government (Weimar Republic) and hated democracy. The German Army hired former WWI soldiers to infiltrate and spy on these groups. One of these soldiers, Adolph Hitler, became an undercover agent and joined the German Workers’ Party in 1920. He liked the party’s program, so he dumped his role as spy and soon became the leader, renaming the party the National Socialist German Workers Party, or Nazis.
Hitler’s Rise to Power
Hitler led the Nazi Party in a failed attempt to take over the Bavarian state government in 1923 and spent a year in prison. After his release, he built support for his party by recruiting from other discontented groups.
1928 elections – the Nazis had 800,000 votes (2.6%) for representatives in the Reichstag (German Parliament).
1929 Wall St. Crash – American banks called in German loans, causing German businesses and banks to fold and unemployment to spin out-of-control.
1930 elections – the Nazis had 6.4 million votes for representatives in the Reichstag. The centrist German government was unable to cure the economic problems and parliament was paralyzed by the two large opposing blocks of Nazis and Communists.
July, 1932 elections – the Nazis received 13.7 million votes (37.3% of the vote) and became the second largest party in the Reichstag. Hitler used his growing power to demand the position of chancellor, but President Hindenburg resisted.
September, 1932 elections – the Nazis received 11.7 million votes (fewer than the previous election), and President Hindenburg offered Hitler the post of chancellor, which he accepted on January 30, 1933. The Nazi celebrations included torchlight parades and the assaulting of their political opponents.
February, 1933 – an arsonist set fire to the Reichstag building, and Hitler convinced President Hindenburg to issue a decree (allowed by the Weimar Constitution), suspending most civil liberties in Germany. These rights (secrecy of the post and telephone; habeas corpus; freedom of the press, of expression, of free association, of public assembly) were not reinstated as long as the Nazis held power. Because the Reichstag arsonist was a communist, Hitler declared that the communists were plotting to take over the government. Many communists were arrested, including those serving in the parliament.
March, 1933 elections – the Nazis received 44% of the vote. By forming an alliance with another party which had received 8% of the vote, the Nazis now had a majority in the Reichstag (52%). In order to pass the Enabling Act, the Nazis either arrested or intimidated representatives of the Social Democratic Party who opposed them. The act passed, giving Hitler the right to rule by decree, and he effectively became the dictator of Germany.
The Nazis immediately embarked on a plan to exclude the Jewish population from German culture, politics, economics, and society.
The State of the Jews in Germany
After WWI, approximately 600,00 Jews lived in Germany (under 1% of the population). One third lived in Berlin (4% of the Berlin population). Seventy percent of Jews lived in large cities while 50% of the non-Jewish population lived in small towns and villages. In 1933, only one in five Jews lived in small towns.
During this period, 75% of all Jews were employed in trade, commerce, the financial sector, and the professions (three times the proportion among the general population). Jews owned 80% of the turnover of all German department stores, 25% of smaller retail outlets, and 30% of clothing stores. They handled 25% of all wholesale agricultural trade, and in some districts, largely controlled cattle dealing and grain marketing.
Only 11% of all doctors and 16% of all lawyers in Germany were Jewish, but they were concentrated in Berlin, giving the appearance of a much higher percentage. Several of the great publishing houses were owned by Jews, and they were highly represented among writers and journalists, in theater and the film industry. However, a significant number were rather poor.
In 1932, during the Great Depression, over 31.5% of Jewish employees in Berlin were out of work, and one in four received charity. Jews from Poland and Russia had immigrated to Germany during the 1880’s to the 1920’s, and by 1933, they made up 20% of all German Jewry. The Eastern Jews were predominately small merchants, itinerant traders, shopkeepers, tailors, artisans, and industrial workers. Many were Orthodox and religiously observant whereas the majority of German Jews belonged to the Reform or Liberal movement. Also, many German Jews were assimilating and marrying outside the faith.
Sources:
Introduction from Into the Arms of Strangers, Stories of the Kindertransport, by Mark Jonathan Harris and Deborah Oppenheimer. (Introduction by David Cesarani)
Eighty Army Airmen formed the sixteen crews known as the Doolittle Raiders who bombed the Japanese homeland in April of 1942. Many consider this operation to be a turning point in WWII because it boosted the morale of the allies and humbled the Japanese at a time when they had seemed invincible.
After bombing Japan, three of the Raiders died during crash landings and bailouts in China, eight were captured by the Japanese (three were put to death and one died of starvation), five landed in the Soviet Union and were interned until they escaped through the Middle East one year later, and the rest were assisted inland by the Chinese.
So what happened to these airmen after their infamous raid and escape from China?
Pilot Ted Lawson who was severally injured during the crash landing of the Ruptured Duck survived after Doc White of Plane 15 amputated his leg at a remote missionary hospital in China. The Chinese escorted White and Lawson and his other injured crew members to safety, often just ahead of the Japanese pursuing them. Lawson was flown to the United States where surgeons at Walter Reed rebuilt his jaw and performed additional surgery on his leg.
One year later Lawson published Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, a book about the Doolittle Raid and his experiences in China. A Hollywood movie by the same name was produced and released by MGM in 1944. The black-and-white movie was a hit and won an Oscar and is still available for purchase today. Lawson died at the age of 75.
The Ruptured Duck Logo
When MGM needed a stunt pilot for the movie A Guy Named Joe, the army sent former co-pilot Col. Dean Davenport. Davenport also served as technical adviser during the filming of Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo. He completed his WWII service in Alaska and lived to the age of 81.
Lt.Charles McClure convalesced with Ted Lawson at Walter Reed Hospital and was hospitalized until June of 1943. He became a navigator instructor but retired with a physical disability in June of 1945. He lived to be 82.
Lt. Bob Clever recovered from his head and face injuries from the Ruptured Duck’s crash landing, but was killed on November 20, 1942, the day his flight group departed from Fort Wayne, Indiana. His “airplane spun out climbing up through the clouds.” He was 28.
Sgt. David Thatcher, only 20-years old when he served as gunner on the Ruptured Duck, was the only crew member able to walk after the crash landing. He kept his fellow crewmates alive by tending to their injuries and collecting and giving them rainwater. He was the only Doolittle enlisted man to receive the Silver Star for his gallantry and courage. Thatcher was sent to North Africa and Europe and survived 26 bombing mission. He contracted hepatitis and malaria with ended his military career. He died in 2016 at the age of 94.
Sgt. David Thatcher
Crew Members of the Hari Kari-er
The crew members of the Hari Kari-er bailed out in Japanese controlled territory eighty miles from the coast. Thanks to the help of the Chinese, they each made it safely out of China.
In early June of 1942, Pilot Ross Greening flew back to the states on the same plane with the
Ruptured Duck wounded airmen. Along with many other Raiders he was sent to North Africa later that year, and he was based in Marrakech, Morocco. By July of 1943 he had completed 125 hours of combat, and on July 17th, he took part in a five-hundred-craft run on the Naples, Italy, shipyards.
Greening’s plane was hit by anti-aircraft fire, the cockpit crashed open, and pieces of the plane fell off. The fuselage ripped apart, the plane burst into flames and the men ran to the bomb bay to bail out. The plane was thrown sideways by another burst, and the men were tossed out. Greening floated into the line of fire and “yanked his cords in every direction to” get away. He landed in the smoking crater of Mount Vesuvius and was knocked unconscious. He woke up with his hip out of joint, and the Nazis popped it back in place before carrying him out of the volcano piggyback. Despite his many injuries, he was forced to crawl from a truck to the inside of a jail while an Italian mob spat and threw stones at him.
After Italy surrendered on September 8, 1943, the Wehrmacht loaded the POWs from Greening’s prison on a northbound train. The Allies attacked the train and Greening “was blown out of the carriage by a direct hit, and in the chaos he took off.” He wandered in the mountains for a few days and then hid on a train until he reached Verona. An Italian family who had lived in the U.S. for many years aided him until it became too dangerous.
Greening hid in a cave near Venice with two escaped POWs from New Zealand until a German patrol searching for partisans found them by accident. He spent the rest of the war at Stalag Luft I, 125 miles north of Berlin where 9000 POW aviators were held. Greening “gave the prisoners art lessons and taught them to make their own supplies.” He became commanding officer, and “when the Red Army finally liberated the camp in 1945, the Nazi prison chief surrendered to Greening to spare himself the Soviets’ known brutality.”
Greening’s former co-pilotKen Reddy died in an airplane accident near Little Rock, Arkansas on September 3, 1942, at the age of 22. The three other Hari Kari-er crew members were assigned to the China-India-Burma Theater.
Lt. Kappeler and Sergeant Gardner were sent on a mission from India to bomb Burma and then land in Kunming, China. After they dropped their bombs, “they were immediately attacked by Japanese planes and ducked into the clouds to evade but weren’t familiar with the area’s mountainous terrain.” They tried to cross the hump (the Himalayas) at too low an altitude, and only Lt. Kappeler’s plane, out of the six, made it to China. Sgt. Gardner was killed in action on June 3, 1942 at the age of 22.
Lt. Kappeler survived to fly fifty-three combat missions out of England, France, and Belgium and died in 2010 at the age of 96. After the Doolittle Raid, Bombardier
Second Lt. Bill Birch was sent state-side and participated in War-Bond-selling drives and completed flight training in Texas. As a result of an airplane accident, he spent almost two years in a hospital and didn’t have an opportunity to fly again before the war ended.
After dropping their bombs, all the crews made it safely out of Japan but encountered numerous difficulties later.
3 Raiders died in crash landings and bailouts over China
8 Raiders were captured by the Japanese – 3 went before a firing squad and 1 starved to death
5 Raiders landed in the Soviet Union and were interned – they escaped through the Middle East one year later
64 Raiders were assisted to safety in Free China by Chinese soldiers and civilians
So what happened to the Raiders after they escaped from China?
Plane #1 – Piloted by Jimmy Doolittle
Doolittle Before WWII Public Domain
After spending the summer of 1942 traveling the U.S. on war bond drives, Jimmy Doolittle was appointed commanding general over the 12th Air Force in North Africa under General Eisenhower. In March 1943, Doolittle became commanding general of the North African Strategic Air Forces. On the one-year anniversary of the Tokyo Raid, Doolittle and the other Raiders also serving in North Africa held the first Doolittle Raider reunion.
First Doolittle Raider Reunion – North Africa – 1943
The Japanese notified the U.S. that the eight captured Raiders had been sentenced to death, but some lives had been spared. They refused give names. When the American military released this information, Jimmy Doolittle replied from North Africa that he and his Raiders were ready to go back to Japan and finish the job they had started. The Japanese responded in a radio address from Tokyo. They stated that “Doolittle, commander of the raid on Japan one year ago, failed to do anything, so we have the pleasure of offering him the title of “Did-little'” (The First Heroes).
After pushing the Germans out of Africa, Doolittle went on to command the 15th Air Force in the Mediterranean Theater and the 8th Air Force in Europe and the Pacific. He ended the war as a lieutenant general and reverted to inactive reserve status in May of 1946. He returned to Shell Oil and served as vice president and later director. In 1985, the U.S. Congress promoted Doolittle to full general on the Air Force retired list, and he became the first four-star general in Air Force Reserve history.
Doolittle was married to Josephine, “Joe,” for seventy years, and he lived to the age of 96.
Plane #1 on a Mountain in China – Courtesy of the Smithsonian
After Doolittle’s crew members bailed out over China and located each other on the ground, Doolittle and his gunner, Paul Leonard, visited their destroyed plane at its crash site on a mountainside. Doolittle sat beside his plane and wondered about the fate of the other 75 men and their aircraft. He “felt lower than a frog’s posterior.” This was his first combat mission, and he was sure it would be his last. He told Leonard he expected to be court-martialed and imprisoned at Fort Leavenworth. At the very least, he “would sit out the war flying a desk.” Leonard disagreed and predicted that Doolittle would be promoted to general, be given a new plane, and receive the Medal of Honor. Leonard was correct on all three counts (The First Heroes).
Leonard was so impressed with Doolittle that he asked to fly as Doolittle’s crew chief on his next mission. Doolittle agreed, and Leonard went with him to North Africa. When Doolittle was called away from the airfield for a meeting with the ground commanders at Youks-les-Bains, Algeria, he left Leonard to look after their airplane. The Germans bombed the airfield that night, and Leonard manned the top turret machine gun until the batteries ran out. He then took refuge in a nearby bomb crater, but a bomb meant for the plane landed in the bomb crater. When Doolittle returned to the field, he only found Leonard’s left hand with his wristwatch still in place. Doolittle stated that losing Leonard was his greatest personal tragedy of the war.
Dick Cole, Doolittle’s co-pilot, served in the China-Burma-India Theater and then became a test pilot with the Douglas Aircraft Plant for the remainder of the war. He served in the military for twenty-six years, rated as a command pilot, and retired as a colonel. Cole was the last living Doolittle Raider. He died on April 9, 2019, at 103 years of age.
Hank Potter, Doolittle’s navigator, served stateside after the Tokyo Raid and later in Germany in the 1950’s. He earned the rank of colonel and lived to be 83.
Fred Braemer, Doolittle’s bombardier, served in the China-Burma-India Theater and then attended bombardier, radar, and observer training schools and was commissioned as a 2nd lieutenant. He served in Korea, retired in 1969 and died at the age of 71.
Former Plane #5 pilot Davey Jones participated in the invasion of North Africa.Leading a dozen P-38 fighters in a B-26, he landed at the airfield in Oran, Algeria, during fighting. They had to land from every direction, straddling bomb craters and avoiding wrecked airplanes. Two or three hundred planes parked there, and the men lived by their airplanes and built fires for cooking. After a few days they all moved to Algiers. From there they ran bombing raids without ground crews. They refueled with five-gallon tins and loaded their 250-pound bombs by sheer muscle.
In November of 1942, Eisenhower started the offensive against Tunis, which was defended by thirty thousand German troops. Davey Jones led a raid on the port of Bizerte, twenty miles north of Tunis. They were forced to bomb at twelve hundred feet because they didn’t have any bomb sights. Jones’ plane was hit and the left engine knocked out. He also lost the trim and engine instruments and was forced to land along the coast between two little sand mounds which took their wings off.
North Africa Campaign – Courtesy of Naval-History.net and the Late Gordon Smith
The crew set off walking and ran into a line of German skirmishers. Jones pointed at his pistol and one of the Germans pulled it out. He said, “‘For you, the war is over.'” He and another guy were taken to the command post where the blond, Aryan-type commander who spoke reasonable English gave him a deck chair, cheese, and wine and asked him not to run away that night.
Jones was sent to Sicily and on to Rome for interrogation where he was in solitary for two weeks. From there he traveled by train in a group to Stalag Luft III, 125 miles southeast of Berlin. He arrived on his birthday. The camp was run by the Luftwaffe instead of the Gestapo or SS and grew to hold around 10,000 captive Allied aviators. In camp, Davey Jones was given the moniker “Tokyo” Jones because of his Raider experience.
The POWs put each other to work “‘building things, hiding things or ‘working to escape’-type things.'” In the spring of 1943, Davey and others moved to the north camp where they built the big tunnel featured in the book and movie, The Great Escape. The dug the tunnel thirty feet down through sand, using their hands or a small trowel and shored up the tunnel with bed boards. They used a little tin with margarine for a lamp but had to keep sending it up to be relit before they realized there wasn’t enough oxygen to support it. They had “a guy word a pump to bring air into the tunnel with beg bellows, and eventually they ran electric lights.”
The Nazi’s built more prisons to accommodate the rising number of captured Allied airmen. The Americans were moved out of Stalag Luft III, so they didn’t participate in the actual escape. Being moved likely saved Jones’s life because many of those who escaped were recaptured and executed. Jones stayed in the service after the war ended and later had the opportunity to test fly the Mach-2 supersonic bomber in 1955. He lived to be 95.
After the capture of Davey Jones and Ross Greening, U.S. Army officials worried that the Germans would hand over any captured Raiders to the Japanese, so they stopped most of the Raiders from flying and sent them home. Plane #14 navigator/bombardier Herb Macia from Tombstone, Arizona, missed the recall and crewed more than seventy sorties all the way to April 1945. He amassed more WWII combat missions than any other Raider. He lived to 93.
Former Plane 2 pilot Lt.Travis Hoover was assigned to train crews for a new squadron of B-25s. Before they were combat ready, they were sent to North Africa to bomb the tank forces under Rommel. Hoover flew missions over Sicily and Italy and then volunteered to fly B-24’s, “doing runs on Romania’s Ploesti oil fields, which were the major source of fuel for the Nazis.” Instead of being sent home after flying about fifty missions, Hoover received permission from Doolittle to stay on as a fighter pilot. He survived the war and lived to the age of 86.
Just four months after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, eighty U.S. Airmen, known as the Doolittle Raiders, pulled off a daring attack on Japan. Caught by surprise, the Japanese were unprepared for enemy bombers to strike their homeland, especially in broad daylight. Greater than the damage inflicted, the raid had a psychological impact on the Japanese and their leaders. The military pulled troops and equipment back from the war zones to protect Japan. The raid boosted the morale of the Allies and instilled hope that the enemy was not invincible.
Doolittle Painting from the Official Site of the Doolittle Tokyo Raiders. Used by Permission.
After the Doolittle Raiders bombed Japan, fifteen of the sixteen crews flew to China and either crash landed or bailed out of their planes. By way of a centuries-old communication system, news of the bombing in Japan spread quickly across the Chinese countryside.
The Japanese had brutally occupied parts of China for many years, and the Chinese rejoiced over the news that their enemy’s homeland had finally been attacked. When the “giant” Americans floated down or crashed into their world, the Chinese eagerly escorted the Raiders away from the occupying Japanese forces and to safety far from the coast.
Doolittle Raiders Bombing Japan. Used by Permission.
The Japanese quickly figured out the areas where the Raiders had landed and sought to capture them. Although most of the crews were spirited away to safety, the survivors from two crews were caught and imprisoned. Their stories can be found here and here.
Because the Chinese aided in the escape of most of the Raiders, the Japanese retaliated with a vengeance. The first order of business was to capture and occupy for one month the areas in China from which air raids could be launched against the Japanese homeland. Japanese Emperor Hirohito ordered his army in China to totally destroy military installations, air fields, and important lines of communication in these places. But the Japanese did so much more. They spent three months wreaking havoc in the Chekiang and Kiangsi Provinces where the Raiders had landed.
The Chinese Escorting Doolittle Raiders to Safety Courtesy of the Official Site of the Doolittle Tokyo Raiders
Japanese soldiers forced four thousand Chinese to dig eight-foot wide, three-foot-deep trenches on the runways of the airfields that were the most threat to Japan. This forced the U.S. to cancel planned follow-ups to the Doolittle Raid. One hundred thousand Japanese troops “attacked every town with a link to Doolittle’s crew.” The Raiders had given gifts and trinkets to those who helped them, but the Japanese used this evidence to single out the helpers for the harshest torture before killing them. One farmer who had helped a Raider was wrapped in a kerosene-soaked blanket and his wife was forced to set him on fire. In addition, the Japanese soldiers—
Drowned children
Beheaded women and babies
Looted and burned towns and villages
Raped any woman between the ages of 10 and 65
Bayoneted or burned to death many orphans and the aged
Wrecked electrical plants and pulled up railroad lines
Slew thousands of pigs, oxen, and other farm animals
Set crops on fire
Destroyed bridges and roads
Shot anyone or anything that moved
Threw dead bodies into wells, contaminating village drinking water
Chalked “Christ is defeated” on the wall of one torched church
Conducted over 600 bombing runs
Destroyed everything in their path
Spread destruction over some twenty thousand square miles
Slaughtered at least 250,000 Chinese
Eventually the Japanese soldiers spread their vengeance much farther inland, stopping only a few days’ march from Chunking, the capital of free China.
Many years before, the Japanese had built a three-square mile complex in Manchuria to develop bacteriological warfare. They conducted their experiments on humans they had taken prisoner, including Americans. This clandestine outfit was secretly known as “Unit 731” and employed 3000 scientists, doctors, and technicians. Before the arrival of the Doolittle Raiders, the Japanese had already “turned loose its specially bred fleas and rats to spread bubonic plague among the people of Changde and Ningbo in central China” (Nelson) and had dropped anthrax-bacillus bombs on the town of Anta.
Building from the Unit 731 complex which now houses the Unit 731 Museum By 松岡明芳 Courtesy of Creative Commons from Wikimedia Commons
In retaliation for the Doolittle Raid, the Japanese “sprayed cholera, typhoid, plague, and dysentery across southeastern China” in June and July of 1942 (Nelson). During one operation, the wind changed at the last minute and seventeen hundred Japanese soldiers contracted and died from disease, and ten thousand more were injured.
It was later learned that the Japanese had planned to spray the Allied forces in the Philippines with a 1000 kilograms of bubonic-plague-infected fleas, but the Allies surrendered first. The Japanese had also planned to attack the U.S. soldiers at Saipan with their “full arsenal of bacteriological weaponry,” but the U.S. won the battle quickly and thwarted the Japanese.
At the end of the war, the United States captured Unit 731 and continued the research into biological warfare. The Japanese unit chiefs shared “their research findings in exchange for release from prosecution” (Nelson). The U.S. Army built millions of bombs which contained several deadly toxins, but in 1972, “seventy-one nations jointly agreed to outlaw biological warfare, and President Richard Nixon ordered the weapons destroyed” (Nelson).
Japan also launched attacks on the U.S. mainland in retaliation for the Doolittle Raid.
Sources:
The First Heroes: The Extraordinary Story of the Doolittle Raid—America’s First World War II Victory by Craig Nelson (Viking, 2002)
Target Tokyo: Doolittle and the Raid That Avenged Pearl Harbor by James M. Scott (W. W. Norton & Co., 2015)
During World War II, the Doolittle Raiders were the first to launch fully loaded B-25‘s off an aircraft carrier. In 1942, these airmen did the impossible and lifted off from the Enterprise aircraft carrier and bombed Japan by total surprise. The pilots were ordered to drop their bombs and fly directly to airfields in free China, but all the men knew if the Japanese didn’t shoot them down they faced the likelihood of running out of fuel before reaching China.
Pilot Ski York and copilot Robert Emmens of Plane #8 had both missed out on the training the other pilots had participated in at Eglin Air Force Base. Yet their plane safely leaped into the air as the deck of the USS Enterprise disappeared beneath them. The crew breathed a sigh of relief.
York piloted his plane to Japan and bombed a large factory installation. After strafing an airfield and not encountering any opposition, the men of Plane #8 made their getaway, flying just above the treetops. Navigator/bombardier Nolan Herndon calculated they would run out of gas over the ocean, three hundred miles from free China.
York made the decision to fly to the Soviet Union which was much closer. By that time, the U.S.S.R. had joined the Allies. York directly disobeyed his commander, Jimmy Doolittle, who had ordered the Raiders not to land in the Soviet Union under any circumstances.
The Raiders of Plane #8 reached the Soviet coastline and turned inland. They sighted a small airport thirty miles from the city of Vladivostok and made a perfect landing. The Russians greeting the airmen didn’t speak English, but they correctly identified the airmen as “Americanski.” They communicated through sign language and provided the Raiders with food and vodka.
The airmen asked for gasoline and an opportunity to contact the American Embassy, but their requests were put off. The next morning the Raiders were informed that their plane was ready, but, when they emerged from their quarters, they discovered a DC-3 waiting for them.
The crew of Plane #8 was taken to Khabarovsk, Siberia, and interrogated by a Russian general who informed them they would be interned in the Soviet Union. The airmen were taken outside the city to an army dacha by the Amur River, across from Manchuria.“ The Soviets provided beds, three meals a day, and a guard for each of the men. The Raiders were convinced they would only be interned for a week or two.
Amur River Basin – Note the Cities of Vladivostok and Khabarovsk on the Right Courtesy of Wikimedia By Kmusser – Own work using Digital Chart of the World and GTOPO data
Ten days later the Soviets locked the Raiders and their guards in a third-class sleeper car attached to a freight train. The men traveled for twenty-one days to the village of Okhuna, three hundred miles south of Moscow. The U.S.S.R. billed the United States thirty thousand rubles a month to provide for the interned soldiers.
As time passed, the Raiders’ worries grew. They learned that the Wehrmacht (German Army) was approaching Moscow. They studied a map and realized that Okhuna was only a few days’ march from the front lines of the war. After seven weeks, American officials from Moscow arrived to check on the Raiders, and the airmen asked about the rest of the boys on the Tokyo raid. The officials had no information about the other members of the Doolittle gang, but the attaché brought a telegram from the U.S. for copilot Bob Emmens. He was now the father of a red-headed baby boy!
Courtesy of the Library of Congress
War-time shortages caught up with the airmen, and they went without meat or vegetables and sometimes both for days. For weeks they survived on cabbage, rice, black bread, tea, and red caviar. Next the Soviets sent the men by train and then on a flat-bottomed paddle wheeler into the foothills of the Urals, on the western edge of Siberia. The inhabitants in that area were very poor, dirty, and malnourished.
The American ambassador visited the Raiders but could provide them with very little. The men ate boiled, fried, and baked cereal, and pure, uncooked pork fat, sliced about an inch thick. The temperature hovered at thirty-five to forty degrees below zero and for one three-day period at fifty below. The airmen remained in Okhansk for seven months, and their physical condition rapidly deteriorated.
In early January of 1943, the Raiders wrote a letter to Stalin. They praised the progress of the Soviet Army against the Germans, and they made three requests. Their reply came close to the end of March with the arrival of two Russian officers sent by the High Command of the Red Army in Moscow. They couldn’t grant the airmen’s request to be released from the Soviet Union, but they could move them to a warmer climate and allow them to work.
The Raiders traveled by car for twelve hours to the city of Molotov, flew south to Chkalov, and then traveled by train for eight days to Ashkhabad, the capital of Soviet Turkmenistan. On the trip, Ski York shared a compartment with a young Russian named Kolya. Kolya had brought a large store of various food items and shared his bounty with Ski for every meal during the trip.
Courtesy of the University of Texas Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin
In Ashkhabad, the airmen lived in a two-room mud house and slept on bare wooden beds with one blanket each. They worked in a factory, overhauling small trainer biplanes. A Soviet officer showed up to count heads each night. Kolya visited and also took the Raiders to his own home, but always after dark. The airmen begged him to help them escape to Persia (present day Iran), only fifteen miles south of their current location.
One evening Kolya escorted York to the downtown square and directed him to a Persian man, Abdul Arram. After bargaining with York, Abdul agreed to take the airmen across the border for two hundred and fifty U.S. dollars.
In the middle of the night on May 26, 1943, after more than a year of internment in the Soviet Union, the Raiders of Plane #8 hiked over a mountain into Soviet-occupied Persia. After managing to avoid Russian sentries manning the bridge into the city of Meshed, the airmen found refuge at the British Embassy. From there they flew to India and on to the United States.
Source:
Nelson, Craig. The First Heroes: The Extraordinary Story of the Doolittle Raid—America’s First World War II Victory. Viking, 2002.
After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in December of 1941, the American people longed to strike Japan where it would hurt – in their homeland. But four months after the United States entered World War II, the Japanese continued to conquer territory in Asia and defeat the allies at every turn.
The Japanese Empire in 1942 – Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
In January 1942, top commanders in the American military began planning a sneak air attack on Japan, targeting military sites and industrial facilities supporting the war effort. Dubbed “Special Aviation Project #1,” the planned bombing was kept so secret that the volunteer army pilots selected to participate didn’t know their target until after they’d sailed out of San Francisco aboard the USS Hornet aircraft carrier.
One hundred forty Army Air Corps volunteers from the Seventeenth Bombardment Group trained for this mission at Eglin Air Force Base near Pensacola, Florida. Everything about the mission was peculiar from the start. Their B-25’s had been altered en route to Florida, and the men had to quickly adjust to the changes. A navy pilot arrived to train the soldiers and select who would go on the mission. The pilots trained to taxi for no more than five hundred feet and lift off at fifty miles per hour. This had never been done in a B-25. Then the crews practiced flying at extremely low levels and pulling up to accurately drop practice bombs.
Jimmy Doolittle – Pre-WWII. Courtesy of U.S. Air Force via Wikipedia
Shortly after their training began, the airmen met their mission commander—Lieutenant Colonel James H. Doolittle. Doolittle was a legend and many considered him to be America’s greatest aviator. Doolittle warned his men of the project’s danger and gave them the opportunity to drop out without repercussions. He said that “some of them would come home as heroes, and others, as angels,” but none of the men took Doolittle up on his offer to quit.
Three weeks later the airmen who’d been selected were roused from sleep, ordered to load up their gear, and immediately fly to McClellan Field near Sacramento. Those not chosen for the mission were heartbroken. Ordered to practice their “hedgehopping” on the way to California, the airmen enjoyed flying under power lines, racing dust clouds in the desert, banking through an open drawbridge, and frightening cattle in the fields. One twenty-two-year-old pilot landed on a Texas highway and went to say goodbye to his mom and dad.
At McClellan, the B-25’s were tuned-up and further modified. Unfortunately, the civilian mechanics who couldn’t be told of the operation, made unauthorized adjustments, undoing previous changes unique to the mission. There wasn’t time to undo the damage.
On April 1st, the army airmen flew their planes to Alameda Naval Air Station, outside San Francisco. The first sixteen B-25’s to arrive and not have anything wrong with them were loaded on the aircraft carrier, Hornet. This was the first joint mission coordinated by the army and navy since the Civil War, and the navy men and marines did their best to put the army men in their place.
B-25’s Aboard the USS Hornet En Route to Japan Courtesy National Museum of the U.S. Air Force via English Wikipedia
But all the rudeness and snubs evaporated two days out to sea. The Hornet’s captain announced over the loudspeakers that the mission’s target was Tokyo, the army was going to bomb Japan, and the navy would get them as close to the enemy as possible. Cheers and screams broke out, and the navy men couldn’t do enough to accommodate the army airmen for the rest of their journey aboard the Hornet. They realized the danger of the mission and wanted to honor the volunteer airmen for their bravery.
Doolittle had already briefed his men about their mission and informed them that their chances of making it back were slim. The goal was to sail within 450 miles of Japan, bomb the islands at night, and fly to unoccupied landing fields in eastern China. The airmen knew that if their B-25 bombers successfully lifted off the aircraft carrier, they could not return to the ship because the landing strip would be too short. They also knew the likely probability of running out of gas before reaching safe landing strips in China. Again, Doolittle gave his men the opportunity to stay behind, but none did.
Doolittle Raiders Aboard the USS Hornet. Courtesy of the U.S. Navy via Wikipedia
On April 10th, the Hornet’s fleet rendezvoused with the fleet of the aircraft carrier Enterprise, and they proceeded west under radio silence. The Japanese had intercepted an earlier transmission between the two fleets and knew where they were headed. The Japanese made plans to hit the American ships when they were six hundred miles from Tokyo. The weather grew bad, but the terrible squalls rendered the fleets invisible to the enemy.
On April 18th, the American ships encountered and sank a seventy-ton Japanese fishing boat, picketed about six hundred miles from Japan. The Enterprise picked up radio traffic indicating that the Japanese fleet had changed course, and the Americans knew they’d been discovered.
Sinking of the Japanese Fishing Boat Nitto Maru. Courtesy of U.S. Navy via Wikipedia
The American commanders realized the B-25’s wouldn’t have enough fuel to reach Japan and the Allied airfields in China, but the fleets couldn’t sail closer and put themselves in range of bombers flying out of Japan. And so, Admiral Halsey, the task force leader, sent a message: “LAUNCH PLANES. TO COL. DOOLITTLE AND GALLANT COMMAND: GOOD LUCK AND GOD BLESS YOU.” The army airmen were either waiting for breakfast or just getting up when the order came over the ship’s loudspeakers for them to man their planes.
Jimmy Doolittle and the Crew of Plane #1 – Courtesy of the U.S. Air Force via Wikipedia
Doolittle was the first pilot to ever fly a B-25 loaded with bombs, extra fuel, and a crew of five from an aircraft carrier. The skies poured rain, and the sea churned in thirty-foot swells, but the ship’s turbulence contributed to the successful launch of all sixteen bombers. The navy flagman timed each take-off so that the planes started down the runway when the ship’s bow started down and then the planes launched as the ship’s deck came up. After the last plane was in the air, the carrier fleets immediately reversed course and safely reached Hawaii.
The Doolittle Raiders bombed Japan in the middle of the day, and despite heavy anti-aircraft fire and attacks from Japanese fighter planes, each B-25 dropped its payload on various targets and left Japanese airspace safely. Radio Japan announced the attack on Tokyo, and the American papers picked up the news.
On April 21st, President Roosevelt held a press conference and confirmed “that the United States Army Air Corps planes had very successfully attacked ‘from our new base in Shangri-La'” (a fictitious place because Roosevelt didn’t want to give away the mission’s launch site.)
The mission accomplished its purpose—it was the first victory for the Allies in World War II and greatly boosted the morale of Allied civilians and soldiers.
B-25 Taking Off from the USS Hornet during the Doolittle Raid Courtesy of U.S. Navy via Wikimedia Commons (Public Domain)
Stories of the Individual Doolittle Crews
Jimmy Doolittle, commander of the Raiders, piloted the first B-25 to take off from the deck of the USS Hornet. A terrible storm bucked the ship with tremendous waves, but all eyes focused on the lead plane. If the “Old Man” didn’t succeed, none of them would.
Doolittle’s Plane Launching from the USS Hornet Courtesy of the U.S. Navy via Wikipedia
Plane #1 lifted off with yards to spare, and the sailors across the whole convoy cheered. Each of the sixteen planes lifted off four minutes apart and spread out over a field fifty miles wide and one hundred fifty miles long.
The pilots flew low over the water, and their crews watched for surface ships and other aircraft. The B-25’s cleared the storm front two hundred miles before reaching Japan and encountered clear skies all the way to their targets. After reaching land, Doolittle flew close to treetop level. He spotted a squadron of Japanese fighters ahead, so he dropped lower and the aircraft’s olive drab paint caused the plane to “disappear” over a rice paddy and lose the pursing fighters.
Doolittle flew over Tokyo at thirty feet, but nearing the target, ascended to 1,200 feet, and bombardier Fred Braemer dropped all four bombs consecutively. After diving to a low altitude for their getaway, Doolittle and his crew encountered antiaircraft fire. Although copilot Dick Cole counted eighty enemy planes during the course of their #1’s flight over Japan, the only sustained minor damage—some holes in the tail from flak.
Doolittle headed to the East China Sea. His navigator, Hank Potter, estimated they would run out of gas one hundred and thirty-five miles short of the Chinese coast. This was a frightening prospect since the crew spotted sharks basking in the sea below. Fifteen of the sixteen planes followed this same route, and after leaving Japanese territory, a miracle developed.
The prevailing winds which usually blew from west to east reversed direction, and the fifteen planes rode on a thirty-mile-an-hour tailwind. This gifted them with an extra two hundred and fity miles of flying time before running out of gas. The tailwind lasted for five to six hours, allowing all fifteen planes to reach mainland China.
As the planes neared land, the tailwind gave out, night descended, and the Raiders hit a coastal storm. Doolittle headed for a landing field at Chuchow, then in the hands of Free China, but couldn’t locate it in the storm and darkness. Through a serious of missteps the authorities in Chuchow didn’t receive word about the imminent arrival of the allied planes or of the signal the Doolittle crews would use to contact them.
Instead, upon hearing the noise of approaching aircraft and assuming the Japanese were conducting a night raid, the officials in Chuchow ordered a complete blackout. At the last possible moment, Doolittle instructed his crew members to bail out. He was the only member of the Raiders who had previously jumped from a plane, and he was afraid he’d repeat an earlier experience and break both ankles.
Gunner Paul Leonard landed in the rain and dark on the side of a very steep embankment. After crawling twenty feet up and down and getting nowhere, he rolled up in his shoot, wrapped his arm around a bamboo tree, and went to sleep.
Copilot, Dick Cole, landed in a thirty-foot pine tree. He climbed to the top, untangled his chute, then climbed down and inspected his surroundings. He was on the top of a very steep mountain, so he made a hammock and stayed in the tree for the night.
Colonel Doolittle landed in a recently fertilized rice paddy. After extricating himself from the mess, he spent the night inside a water mill doing light calisthenics to fend off the cold.
Doolittle, Flight Crew, & Chinese Officials in China after Raid on Japan Courtesy of U.S. Army Air Forces via Wikimedia Commons
In the morning, a Chinese peasant took Doolittle to the local headquarters of the Chinese army, and Dick Cole arrived shortly after. A band of renegade guerrilla fighters brought Leonard, Potter, and Braemer in later.
Leonard and Doolittle climbed to the site where their plane had crashed. The debris was spread over several acres. Doolittle said he “‘felt lower than a frog’s posterior.’” This was his first combat mission, and he considered it a failure. He expected to be court-martialed or relegated to sitting out the war behind a desk.
Japanese soldiers in the area could have captured Doolittle and his crew, but the Free Chinese found the airmen first and smuggled them many miles to safety. At the time, American missionary John Birch was travelling by river and arrived at the same location where the crew was hiding in the cabin of a boat. A Chinaman led Birch to the door of the crews’ hiding place, but when they heard his voice they were afraid Birch was a Japanese impersonator. His Southern drawl convinced Leonard to open the door. Birch joined the airmen, translating for them, and facilitating their trip to Chuchow.
The Japanese conducted regular air raids on Chuchow, forcing the American airmen to retreat to a handmade cave in the hills outside the city. They remained at an army post near the cave until a United States C-47 landed on April 29th and flew them to Chungking, the capital of Free China. At the American Embassy in Chungking, Doolittle learned that seventy-five of his eighty Raiders had landed in enemy-controlled territory. Twenty were rescued and brought to Chungking at the same time.
President Roosevelt, General Marshall, and General Arnold sent personal congratulations to the Raiders, and Doolittle was promoted to brigadier general. He left Chungking on May 9thon a two-week puddle-jumping trip west to Washington D.C. where he was immediately ushered to the White House and met with President Roosevelt.
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The Crew of Plane #7, the Ruptured Duck: McClure, Lawson, Clever, Davenport, Thatcher. Courtesy of the National Museum of the US Air Force
Shortly before the Ruptured Duck launched from the Enterprise, Pilot Ted Lawson levered the plane’s flaps down, the correct position for lift-off. But fearing the strong gale would tear the flaps off and disable the plane, he pulled the flaps back up. The navy flagman signaled Lawson to rev his engines and, after thirty seconds, gave the okay to release the brakes and head down the short flight deck.
The wind grabbed at the Ruptured Duck’s wings and sent it close to the edge of the ship, but Ted braked and steered the B-25 back to the white navigation line he needed to follow for take-off. The deck disappeared beneath the plane, and it skimmed the top of the waves before climbing away from the ship. Ted reached down to pull up the flaps and realized that he’d taken off without using them. Those on deck had noticed, and it had given them quite a scare.
To save fuel on the trip to Japan, Lawson maintained an altitude of twenty feet above the ocean. Gunner Dave Thatcher tested the turret, but it failed to engage. If the plane was attacked, Thatcher wouldn’t be able to move the .50 caliber rear guns which were currently pointing straight back. Switching on the emergency juice didn’t help.
In the meantime, an empty five-gallon gas can thrown out by one of the crews ahead flew past the Ruptured Duck’s left wing. If it had hit a prop, the plane would have crashed. Ted called bombardier Robert Clever in the plane’s snout and asked him to engage the automatic pilot. The plane moved dangerously to the left, forcing Lawson to quickly grab the controls. The automatic pilot didn’t work either.
The Ruptured Duck arrived at Tokyo Bay, and gunner Dave Thatcher, watching from his immovable turret, observed six Japanese fighter planes flying above. One dove but then flew away. Lawson hedgehopped fast and low to avoid the “ack-ack” attacks (anti-aircraft fire).
Yokosuka Japanese Naval Base Taken from a B-25 Bomber during the Doolittle Raid Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain.
The crew located its targets, and Lawson safely guided the Ruptured Duck up to 1500 feet, allowing Bombardier Robert Clever to drop the payload. Clouds of flak appeared in front of them and flew past at the right altitude but at the wrong time to damage their aircraft. Lawson put the plane into a screaming dive and outran the flak at three hundred and fifty miles per hour, then headed for China.
After crossing the China Sea, Lawson piloted the Ruptured Duck over numerous islands near the Chinese coast and located a beach that appeared adequate for landing, which he preferred to bailing out. The plane’s fuel level was dangerously low, and, before reaching the beach, both engines coughed and lost power. The bomber lost altitude, and a quarter of a mile from shore the back landing wheels hit a wave, slamming the Duck to a complete stop.
The pilot, co-pilot and navigator flew through the bomber’s windshield, and the bombardier pitched through the nose. Thatcher, the gunner, regained consciousness inside the rapidly sinking plane. When he tried to escape, he realized the Ruptured Duck was upside down, so he reversed course and crawled through the hatch above him.
Four of the five crew members on the Ruptured Duck were seriously injured. Pilot Ted Lawson landed underwater, but upright in the sand, still buckled into his pilot’s seat. He didn’t feel trapped and didn’t fight for air but thought about his wife and mother and wished he’d left them money. He was able to unbuckle his seat belt and float to the surface but was temporarily paralyzed and couldn’t swim.
The waves carried Lawson one hundred feet to the shore where he discovered the extent of his injuries. His teeth were bent in, and when he tried to straighten them, they broke off. His lower lip was torn down to the cleft of his chin, and his left arm was destroyed. His whole left leg was sliced wide open, exposing the bone.
The impact had pulled both of Navigator Mac McClure’s arms out of their sockets and left them swollen from his shoulders to his wrists. He was unable to use his arms to swim but kicked and hurled his body to shore and crawled onto the beach.
Blood poured from bombardier Bob Clever’s head and face from a serious gash and deep cuts. Half of his hair had been stripped away, and he could only crawl on his hands and knees because of back and hip sprains. Co-pilot Dean Davenport had deep cuts on his lower right leg and was unable to walk.
Gunner Dave Thatcher spotted two Chinese fishermen on a ridge above the beach but thought they were Japanese soldiers. Mac McClure stopped Thatcher from shooting the men, and once he put his gun away, eight of the fisherman came down to the beach and led the fliers to a shack about a half mile away.
Clever crawled the whole distance. The men shivered in their wet clothes, so the Chinese peasants gave them quilts to wrap up in and mud-encrusted bamboo mats to rest on. The airmen tried to communicate with their benefactors, but the language barrier proved difficult.
A Chinaman who appeared to hold power over the others arrived at the shack and studied the airmen’s insignia. He turned to Captain Lawson and introduced himself as “Charlie.” His English was extremely limited, but he pointed at them and said “Melican.” He promised to come back for them and repeatedly said, “Boat.”
Dave Thacker returned to the beach the next morning and dove around the plane, seeking more of their medical kits but couldn’t locate them. He heard a motor and spotted a Japanese patrol boat in the distance. The enemy had discovered the presence of the Doolittle Raiders.
Chinese Junks by Lai Afong. Courtesy Wikipedia. Public Domain
Charlie returned to the shack the next morning with a dozen helpers who constructed litters and carried the wounded airmen to a Chinese guerrilla camp. Armed guerrillas carried the men through villages, across fields, onto a flat-bottomed boat, and down a muddy canal. Another group of peasants met the boat and carried the wounded men straight up a winding hillside trail and down toward the shore where a Chinese junk waited to take them to the mainland.
However, before reaching the junk, the litter bearers heard a Japanese gunboat approaching and dumped the Raiders in a ditch. The boat appeared, and the Japanese soldiers questioned the men on the junk. The Americans were very impressed that the Chinese never gave them up to the enemy.
Chinese Carry Doolittle’s Raiders to Safety Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain.
After arriving on the mainland, the Raiders were taken to a China Relief station where Young Doctor Chen and his helpers awaited the airmen. They’d spent the night running twenty-six miles from their hospital in Linhai and brought sedan chairs to immediately carry the Americans back to the safety of Linhai. The local Chinese soldiers, Boy Scouts, and Girl Scouts stood at attention and saluted the wounded Raiders as they were carried out of town.
Doctor Chen’s father, as well as an English missionary couple, a young Australian nurse, and other volunteer nurses manned the hospital at Linhai. The facility only had a little chloroform, antiseptic fluid, and bandages left. The airmen were badly injured, their wounds had become infected, and Lawson could only eat and drink through a slit in his mouth. His leg had turned a horrible color and was swollen from the ankles to the groin.
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Plane #15 – No Nickname
When the time came for Plane #15 to take off from the Enterprise, she refused to budge. Pilot Don Smith feared he and his crew would be scrubbed from the mission. A deckhand realized they’d failed to remove the chocks in front of the B-25’s wheels and remedied the problem.
The Crew of Plane #15: Sessler, Smith, White, Williams, Saylor Courtesy of the National Museum of the US Air Force
Smith maneuvered #15 down the flight deck, but a rogue wave caused the Hornet’s bow to dip just as the plane reached the end of the deck. Pointing down toward the water, #15 faced an imminent catastrophe, but the plane’s speed, and the strong winds enabled her to lift off safely.
Plane #15 and her crew headed for targets in the city of Kobe, but a 2,500-foot mountain stood in the middle of their flight path. The mountain was not on their charts. While adjusting their route, they listened to a Tokyo radio station until a shrieking alarm, a voice shouting in Japanese, and complete silence interrupted the broadcast.
Due to the radio warning, the crew expected trouble in Kobe, but none materialized. They successfully dropped their bombs on an aircraft factory, dockyards, a steel works, and the machinery works. They only observed a little flak that didn’t come close to them.
Plane #15 reached the coast of China, and Smith and co-pilot “Griff” Williams decided to land in the ocean rather than travel inland and risk running out of gas. They located a soft spot on the water a half mile from shore and landed the craft so smoothly that no one was injured.
The crew had to evacuate quickly before the heavy bomber sank, so the men grabbed their supplies and prepared their raft. Gunner Thomas White, a medical doctor, salvaged his surgical instruments and medical kit and climbed from the plane seconds before it sank under the waves.
The life raft was too small to accommodate all the crew and their supplies. When one person moved too quickly, another crewman was knocked into the water. Waves pulled men overboard, and they made no progress with their rowing. A rogue wave forced the raft against a sharp edge of the sunken plane, and the raft began to collapse. Another wave flipped the whole raft over, and the crew lost everything, including Doc White’s bandages and medicines.
The airmen of Plane #15 abandoned their useless raft and swam through the crashing waves to the shore. They climbed cliffs surrounding the beach, spotted a light in the distance, and came upon a small house and a covered goat pen. The light was extinguished, and no one answered the door. The Raiders attempted to settle in the goat pen for the night, but the owner finally emerged from the house, brought the men inside, and fed them. The airmen were two feet taller than their host.
Local Chinese peasants came to the house, but no one was able to communicate until some children brought a book with pictures and English translations. The men learned they were on the only island in the vicinity that didn’t have its own Japanese patrol. Friends of the Chinese family sailed the crew to a nearby island and handed them over to the guerrilla band led by Charlie.
On April 25th, seven days after “The Ruptured Duck’s” crash landing, the crew members of Plane #15 arrived at the hospital in Linhai. The plane’s gunner, Doc White, was the only medical doctor among the eighty Doolittle Raiders, and he carried two tubes of morphine with him. White was also a surgeon and amputated Lawson’s infected leg, saving the captain’s life. All of the crew members on both bombers eventually made it to Chungking and out of China safely.
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Due to a faulty setting on its stabilizer, Plane #2 launched too sharply from the Enterprise “lost its air and seemed to collapse in flight.” A strong gust of wind came to the rescue and the plane avoided a collision with the ship’s hull which would have sliced it in two.
Travis Hoover, pilot of Plane #2, followed Doolittle’s plane until they reached Japan, but the army intelligence photos they’d brought with them didn’t match what the airmen now viewed. His navigator eventually gave Hoover a new course, but they didn’t spot their primary target, a powder works. They picked a new target but were unable to rise above 900 feet. When their bombs struck, the concussion jolted the plane and smoke rose all around them. If they’d struck the powder works, they wouldn’t have survived.
Trav Hoover followed General Doolittle to the coast of China, where they ran into a storm. The navigator checked his charts and determined they were in Japanese territory. They headed southwest and discovered mountains which were missing from their maps. They attempted to climb to a higher elevation, but each time they did, the left engine died. Now “they were too low on gas to climb, and too low in altitude to jump.”
Trav had no choice but to find a place to land. He brought the plane down in a rice paddy, and the airmen set it on fire so it wouldn’t fall into the hands of the enemy. The airmen knew the Japanese forces were very close, so they headed west through the mountains, guided by their dime store compasses.
Not knowing whom they could trust, the Raiders avoided contact with the locals, and all five men managed to survive on “one canteen of water, one ration, and a few candy bars” for three days. They made their way through the mountains but ran out of food and turned to the Chinese for help. They discovered that the Japanese had just moved out of their area the week before.
Chinese guerrilla soldiers took the airmen in, but they were unable to communicate with each other until a young man who spoke a little English asked them how he could help. Tung-Sheng Liu, a former university student from Beijing, was just traveling through the area, using the back roads to avoid the Japanese and had stopped overnight at a small hotel. He stayed with the airman and directed them away from areas where they would have been captured by the enemy.
The Crew of Plane #2 with Tung-Sheng Liu (in white coat) Courtesy of the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force via Wikimedia Commons
Tung-Sheng Liu and the Chinese guerillas led the five Raiders to Chuhsien, one hundred miles away. They traveled over trails through the mountains at night, covering ten to fifteen miles a day. Housing was arranged by the local guerrillas, and Chinese bearers carried the men in sedan chairs. After a week in Chuhsien, two buses arrived and took the airmen to Hengyang where they stayed for another week until an American C-47 landed and took them to Chungking and the American consulate. Tung-Sheng Liu immigrated to the U.S. and was named an honorary Doolittle Raider.
Davey Jones, pilot of Plane #5, discovered that one of his tanks was short by thirty gallons, but the hose had been turned off “and he could either have his plane pushed overboard or get in line and join the mission.” He joined the mission. Plane #5 crossed Tokyo Bay “and headed for their assignment on the far side of the city.” They encountered machine-gun fire and ack-ack. Hundreds of tracers followed their plane, so Davey Jones pulled up to 1200 feet, and they chose a new target—an oil storage facility and a power plant—and they were successful. Antiaircraft fire was intense, but they made it out of the city.
Using dead reckoning, Plane #5 arrived at the coast of China. Davey Jones determined they were close “to land because the color of the water changed.” He pulled the plane up to 5000 feet. They dropped a parachute flare and spotted a river and discovered they were over mountains. They had no choice but to bail out, which none of them had done before. Because of the bad weather and zero visibility, Gunner Joe Manske didn’t think he was falling. He thought he was just suspended. Davey was the last airman out the hatch and was blown against the fuselage. He hung on with his arms stretched out and then pulled the ripcord.
Davey Jones and his co-pilot, Hoss Wilder, ran into each other at a railroad station house, and the Chinese took them up to the town of Yushan in a railroad boxcar. Jones and Wilder were greeted by the mayor, thousands of people and huge banners that said, “Welcome brave heroes! You’ve struck a blow for us.” All five crewman made it out of China safely.
Plane 3, the Whiskey Pete, successfully launched from the deck of the USS Hornet during a squall but arrived over Tokyo on a clear, sunny day. The Whiskey Pete encountered strong anti-aircraft fire, forcing pilot Bob Gray and co-pilot Shorty Manch to pull up to 1450 feet. They passed over the Temple of Heaven, the residence of the Japanese emperor, but Commander Jimmy Doolittle had expressly forbidden the Raiders from attacking the emperor’s palace. Instead, bombardier Aden Jones dropped Pete’s bombs on the assigned steel, gas, and chemical plants nearby. Dozens of fighters and enemy warships fired at Pete, but she and her crew made a successfully getaway and headed to China.
The Whiskey Pete reached the coast of China as night was approaching and continued inland for one hour. Expecting their fuel to run out at any moment, the airmen dropped chute flares for illumination but didn’t detect any flat land. With no other choice available, the crew bailed out into the unknown. The navigator and bombardier left through the forward hatch.
Co-pilot Shorty Manch used his flashlight to check if gunner Leland Faktor had departed through the rear hatch. When he was satisfied, Shorty jumped. Unfortunately, his 24-foot parachute was too small for his weight, so when he pulled the D-ring, the impact of the chute’s opening jerked his bowie knife, ax, canteen, and all of his private arsenal away, except for a gun in his holster. The Baby Ruth bars he’d stuffed in his jacket flew off, leaving behind their empty wrappers.
Navigator Chuck Ozuk’s parachute tangled with a pine tree, causing Ozuk to be thrown against a ledge of rock, which cut his left leg wide open. He was unable to cut himself out of the lines or harness in the darkness. When daylight came, Ozuk gazed upon his surroundings in awe. All alone, high up in the mountains, with a beautiful sun above him, he almost thought he’d arrived in heaven. He freed himself, made a crutch from a tree limb, and headed west for two days without help.
Shorty Manch
Manch’s Chinese rescuer communicated with him by drawing with a stick in the dirt. First the Chinaman drew a Japanese flag, and Manch responded by holding his nose and waving the picture away. Then the man pulled out a clipping of an old British Blenheim plane and pointed at the insignia. Shorty shook his head again. Next, the Chinaman pulled out a four-year-old copy of the Saturday Evening Post with a picture of President Roosevelt on the cover.
Shorty grinned and pointed to Roosevelt and then to himself. Everybody present laughed and shook hands with the American. Manch slept in the man’s home that night and was escorted to another village the next morning. He spotted pieces of wreckage from Whiskey Pete along the way. “In the village, they showed him the American clothes they had found, some pieces of equipment from the navigator’s deck, and the body of twenty-one-year-old Leland Faktor.”
Faktor was the first Raider to die, but the cause of death was unclear because of conflicting reports from the eyewitnesses. Doolittle concluded that Faktor “landed on extremely rough terrain and was killed in the secondary fall.”
The Chinese whisked the remaining four members of the Whiskey Pete crew to safety, and the crewmen were reunited. A short time later, Pilot Bob Gray was assigned to fly transports over the Himalayas between India and China. Two days after he was promoted to the rank of captain, Gray’s plane crashed, and he and two other former Raiders were killed.
Co-pilot Shorty Manch was also assigned to the China-India-Burma Theater but was transferred Stateside in 1943. He served in the Korean War and later trained young officers to fly jets at Nellis AFB in Nevada. On one of his training missions, his T-33 burst into flames over Las Vegas. Manch ordered his students to bailout, while he guided the plane away from a residential neighborhood and an elementary school. By the time Manch ejected, his parachute couldn’t fully open, and he died when he hit the ground. He was 39.
Bombardier Aden Jones also served in the China-India-Burma Theater until 1943 and then was transferred Stateside. After the war, he served briefly in Japan and was discharged in 1948. He died at the age of 62. Navigator Chuck Ozuk was sent to North Africa in 1942 and was relieved from active duty in 1945. He died in 2010 at the age of 94.
Sources:
The First Heroes: The Extraordinary Story of the Doolittle Raid—America’s First World War II Victory by Craig Nelson (Viking, 2002)
With the outbreak of WWII, submarine warfare took on new dimensions. Many heroic battles occurred “under the sea.” The adventures of one particular Polish submarine received international attention and provided inspiration to those at war.
Where? The Baltic Sea, the Gulf of Finland, and the North Sea
Poland’s submarines were commissioned to protect the 90 miles of Polish coastline on the Baltic Sea. The Orzel had only been at sea for about twenty months when Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, and World War II began. At first, the Polish submarine fleet carried on very low-key operations, observing and reporting German naval activity, but on the seventh day of the war, the fleet was ordered to return to the Central Baltic region.
Poland’s submarines weren’t prepared for battle—they’d missed their May maintenance because of the seriousness of the international situation and had been at sea for nearly twelve months without an overhaul.
At first, the Polish submarine fleet carried on very low-key operations, observing and reporting German naval activity, but on the seventh day of the war, the fleet was ordered to return to the Central Baltic region.
On September 14th, the commanding officer of the Polish submarine division ordered the sub commanders to carry out patrols and thwart enemy shipping for as long as possible. When they could no longer continue, they were to sail to the United Kingdom. If that wasn’t possible, they were to seek internment in Sweden.
When the Polish submarine Wilk attempted the long journey, the Germans attacked with depth charges and dropped thirty-eight bombs from the air. Despite the opposition, the Wilk made it safely to the rendezvous point at Rosyth, Scotland on September 20.
The Orzel’s adventure lasted much longer . . . After patrolling the Baltic Sea for nine days, the Orzel landed at Talinn, capital of Estonia. The captain needed medical treatment for stomach pains. Officially neutral, but sympathetic to Germany, the Estonians insisted upon following international law. They required the Orzel to leave port within twenty-four hours but not until a German freighter already in port departed first (also international law). The German vessel didn’t sail, so the Orzel missed her departure deadline.
The Estonian government then interned the Orzel and her crew. They removed the ship’s charts, the sailors’ small arms, the breach locks on the ship’s guns, and fifteen of twenty torpedoes. They stationed two Estonian guards on the ship to conduct surveillance. But, undetected, the Polish submariners partially cut through the thick ropes mooring the ship, leaving the sub attached to the jetty by a single strand.
On the night of September 17-18, two Polish sailors crawled ashore and cut the lines powering the jetty searchlights. The sailors severed the last rope tying the Orzel to the jetty and overpowered the two Estonian guards, taking them aboard the sub. At the mouth of the harbor, the ship hit a rock, but the crew trimmed the tanks, and the sub floated free.
While the Estonians fired on the sub with rifles and artillery from the small fortified islands outside the city, the Orzel submerged and fled. The sailors steered blindly with no chart for soundings. At dawn, they lay down at the bottom and waited as the hunters passed over them and depth charges burst around them.
At midnight, the Orzel cautiously rose, and the submariners discovered they were at the entrance to the Gulf of Finland. Nothing was in sight, so they remained surfaced and recharged the sub’s batteries.
Meanwhile, the Orzel’s escape from Estonia became an international incident, and Germany accused the Estonians of complicity with Poland. The Soviets, who had invaded Poland on September 17th , patrolled the Gulf of Finland with cruisers and six destroyers, looking for Polish subs. The Orzel’s crew dropped off the Estonian guards on the island of Gotland, Sweden, leaving them with money, cigarettes, and a bottle of whiskey. The Orzel then cruised the Baltic for two weeks, evading the Soviets.
The Orzel in English Port, 1940 – Public Domain Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
With their water supply running low and their cook suffering from an infected finger, the crew of the Orzel decided to proceed to Scotland. On the way, they sighted a flotilla of German destroyers, so they dove to a shallow bed and avoided detection. After dark, they surfaced to periscope depth, ran aground, floated free, and crept along until reaching deeper water, all while the German flotilla continued to patrol.
The Orzel traveled up the narrow waterway between Denmark and Sweden and arrived at the North Sea where she was vulnerable to German attack and “friendly fire” from British patrols. On October 14 at six o’clock in the morning, a British shore naval station picked up a faint transmission from the Orzel, and a few hours later a Royal Navy destroyer escorted the sub into Rosyth.
The arrival of the Orzel shocked the Royal Navy—the British had presumed the ship was lost at sea. The Orzel went on to serve the Allies, sinking the clandestine German troop transport, Rio de Janeiro, in southern Norway in April 1940. During the sub’s seventh patrol in May-June of 1940, the Orzel disappeared and was never heard from again. To this day, her fate remains a mystery, although the Polish government has made repeated attempts to locate her final resting place.
