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Honor Bound - Jack Moskowitz's very moving story about the bonds of
friendships lasting a lifetime by World War II aircrews flying bombing missions
over enemy territory.
Stalag Luft I POW |
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The Prison Camp
Violin - Photo and story-- Clair Cline carved
it of rough-hewn bed slats with a penknife traded for Red
Cross rations. But would it play? Every POW at Stalag Luft I
during WWII remembers this violin and knew this story - truly inspirational -
you will be amazed!
Stalag Luft I POW |
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Prune Face and The Brow
- Don't miss this one! It is a haunting yet inspiring tale
of how four flying school classmates came to meet again in prison
camp. And how two of them teamed up to face and conquer with humor
and guts the terrible injuries each had suffered during World War
II.
Stalag XIII-D, Nürnberg and Stalag VII-A POW
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The Bet at Barth - Many bets were made on when WWII would be over. This is a
true story about a bet that every POW at Stalag Luft I on Christmas Day 1944
remembers! It brought hysterical laughter at a much needed time and
place.
Stalag Luft I
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The Saga of Murder, Inc. - A
German Propaganda Victory - Kenneth
D. Williams ( a Stalag Luft I POW)
was shot down over
Germany during WWII wearing a flight jacket with “Murder, Inc.” written on the
back. The Germans made much propaganda out of this. This is
his story taken from the U.S. Air Force Oral History Program.
Stalag Luft I POW |
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Dr. Aaron Kuptsow
the "Mickey Man" (radar navigator) on the plane with Dad when they
were shot down shares in this very interesting and well written
narrative his memories of their final mission, his capture,
interrogation, experience as a Jewish prisoner of war in Hitler's
WWII Germany,
the liberation of the camp by the Russians and the joyful
celebration upon his return to his family in the USA.
Stalag Luft I POW |
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2nd Lt. Elroy F. Wyman
- was shot
and killed by a German guard at Stalag Luft I on March 18, 1945.
Here is a sketch and a brief bio made by his former roommate.
The story behind this tragic killing is told.
Stalag Luft I POW |
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The Death of the Black Swan -
This is what we in
Stalag Luft I called a "horror story". Each of the 9000 prisoners
there had a horror story to tell. Experiencing the "horror" of
being shot from the sky was the universal prelude, the rite of
passage if you will, to our incarceration by Verne Woods.
Stalag Luft I POW |
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Major Cyrus Manierre
- This is one of the stranger stories of luck and coincidence to
come out of WW2. An OSS agent (spy and saboteur) who manages
to convince the Germans he is a downed airman after his capture and
is sent to Stalag Luft I. He finds a BIG surprise when he arrives at
the camp. While in the camp he works as Lt. Col. Gabreski
adjutant and then finds himself the lucky winner of the random
drawing to box with
Col. Zemke after liberation while awaiting
their evacuation!
Stalag Luft I POW |
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A Wartime Log
- A complete copy of
Robert Swartz's YMCA
issued diary, which he used to write a continuous letter to his parents
describing everything about the POW camp and his life there.
Included are drawings, poetry, roommate listing and the complete
Easter sermon given by Rev. H. A. M. Mitchell in the
POW camp in 1945, shortly before the end of World War II and their liberation
by the Russians.
Stalag Luft I POW |
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Mission 59
1/2 -
This is storytelling at its best by
Phil Wright!!! An extremely
interesting and entertaining story about a WWII fighter pilot whose
life has come full circle since that fateful day in 1945 when he
became a prisoner of war. It proves that life can still be
astounding even at the age 76. Wright, a lusty, crusty,
fun-loving retired Air Force pilot, was recently reunited with his
old plane-or at least parts of it: pieces of windshield, some engine
parts, a couple of 50 caliber bullets - thanks to an extraordinary
set of coincidences and a young German man with a metal detector.
Stalag XIII-D, Nürnberg and Stalag VII-A |
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The Newspaper Boy in Dulag Luft - Irwin Stovroff
flying as navigator on The Passion Pit during World War II, was shot down on his last
mission (35th). He receives a HUGE surprise when he learns his
German interrogator at Dulag Luft had once been his neighbor in Buffalo, NY and he had been his newspaper boy!
Stalag Luft I POW
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Escape
from Stalag Luft I - a fascinating true story of Bert
Markle's escape
from Stalag Luft I with two other POWs during World War II, their recapture the
following day and their imprisonment in a Gestapo prison for 3 weeks
prior to being sent to Stalag Luft III.
Stalag Luft I & Stalag Luft III POW |
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Bruce
Bockstanz - Highlights of Life
- excerpts from
letters to and from Bruce during the years 1940 thru 1945.
From his carefree civilian college days to enlistment in the Army
Air Corps training as a navigator on a B-17, then it's off to
England and the air war in Europe, to life as a prisoner of war in
World War II Germany.
Stalag Luft I POW |
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Good Buddy Goes For Good Cause
- Wherever you are, Good Buddy, Bill White’s got a confession.
He ate your cat about 56 years ago! It was during WWII and what U.S.
Prisoners of War in Germany’s Stalag Luft I called ‘Hungry March’.
The
Red Cross parcel supply had stopped and the prisoners of war were
trying to exist on just the extremely meager German rations. They were
indeed literally starving to death in the camp.
Stalag Luft I POW |
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The Great Escape (Almost) - “The rest of us peered through cracks in the blackout
shutters and saw the head digger begin to emerge. About that time,
the guard in the tower 50 feet from the barracks began playing his
searchlight up and down the fence line. As he reversed it, the beam
swept across our man just as he stood up. The light wavered past
him, then came back and fully caught him…”
Stalag Luft I POW |
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The Coming of the
Russians -
In April, 1945, we awakened every morning
to a tremendous, though distant, artillery barrage to the East and
Southeast of Barth. We knew that Marshall Rokassofsy’s First
Ukrainian Army was attacking across Northern Germany and was getting
closer by the day. Our spirits rose at the prospect of being
liberated soon.
The German guards were increasingly nervous, and a bit more friendly
than they had been.
Stalag Luft I POW |
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Remembering Stuart Mendelsohn
- Most young American males in
1941 saw the attack on Pearl Harbor not as a National calamity but
as an appreciated transition. Adventure was promised. That promise
could best be realized, so I reasoned, as a pilot in the US Army Air
Corps. Soon after Pearl Harbor, I took a battery of tests, passed,
and on April 1, 1942, was sworn into Army Air Corps as an Aviation
Cadet. At an airbase near Blythe, California, I was introduced
to the Boeing B-17 and to my combat crew.
Stalag Luft I POW |
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One Cold Night and
a Rosary -
A Stalag 4B POW tells of an encounter with a kind German guard and a
rosary.
For thirteen years, I had
thought I had lost it. I had almost forgotten it and the incident
that brought it into my possession. Yet, there it was, and with it
the memory of the one cold night and a rosary. |
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Chuck Blaney shares his very interesting story of being shot down by a ME-262
while bombing a target near Hamburg. He and his crew were
recently reunited at a 50th anniversary reunion celebration set up
by a German who saw the bomber crash while he was serving in the
Hitler Youth Corps.
Stalag Luft I POW |
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Mark Altvater - The truck arrived after dark and we were all in the hall near the
door when I saw Schneider (the German guard) in the
background. I went over to him and took off my gun belt and holster
and gave them to him and told him to give these to his
grandsons as souvenirs. He said Mark do not try to escape and his
eyes were full of tears. I think he looked upon me as a little boy,
sometimes prone to be naughty.
Stalag Luft I POW
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Attack on
the Run
- Ted Ansfield, an RAF Pathfinder Force
Observer, was shot down by a Bf 110 nightfighter (see photo on left
of a nightfighter briefing) on the night of 26/27 November 1943, on
his 16th mission (his 5th one on Berlin). Only the rear gunner and
Ted escaped. After six days of evading he was captured and sent to
the interrogation center and then to Stalag Luft 1. Ted recounts
his evasion in this story.
Stalag Luft I POW |
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Charles
L. Early -
From his YMCA Log Book.
His
story and wonderful, colorful drawings detailing his experiences
as a
Stalag Luft I
German POW during World War 2.
Stalag Luft I POW
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John
Kirkham - A WWII bombardier / navigator with the 379th BG.
While flying on his 35th mission he crash lands in a muddy field after
his plane
is hit by flak. He is captured and sent to solitary confinement
at
Dulag Luft then off to Stalag Luft I - North III Compound. Photos,
telegrams, letters from War Department, documents and excerpts from
his YMCA diary.
Stalag Luft I POW |
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John
"Red" Morgan - Congressional Medal of Honor
must be the
only draft-classified 4-F to serve with the air forces of three
nations, fly 26 combat missions with the RAF and the USAAF, earn our
country's highest decoration for valor, and spend 14 months as a
Prisoner of War. This tough, tenacious Texan was a truly an American Hero.
Stalag Luft I POW |
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The
Last German Soldier at Stalag Luft One -
I've often wondered if others in North Compound One who witnessed
the scene that I describe here remember it as I still do, a sadly
dissonant note to the joy of liberation - by Verne Woods.
Stalag Luft I POW
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From the Wild Blue Yonder to Kreigesgefangerenlager (POW Camp)
- Bruce Bockstanz's details his bail-out, evasion on the ground,
capture, beating, and transport to Dulag Luft.
Diary of Lt.
Bruce K. Bockstanz – Stalag Luft I
- Bruce's personal notes on his life in the POW
camp thru the evacuation to Camp Lucky Strike at LeHarve, France
awaiting a trip home via a "liberty ship" Covers the dates
3/8/45 thru 6/24/45
Stalag Luft I POW
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"Jackpot" over Vechta - "His tracers looked like red golf balls coming up, and
normally I would have zigged and zagged a bit so that he would miss.
On that day however, the temptation was too great and I held my aim
steady as I could see my tracers hitting the flak site. I felt the
ship get hit, and almost immediately a tongue of flame licked back
from around my feet and burned my hands quite badly. ‘You're on
fire Colonel!’ my element leader radioed."
by Luther Richmond
Stalag Luft I POW |
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The Greatest
Generation Reunites - Verne
Woods walked away from Stalag Luft
I before the B-17s arrived to evacuate everyone. Just one of his 15
roommates joined him on the trip to the British Lines.
Tom Brokaw's "The Greatest Generation Speaks" book recently
led to him finding that roommate more than 50 years later.
Stalag Luft I POW |
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E-mail and the Terrorflieger - On the Internet
newsgroup, soc.history.war.world-war-ii, World War II battles are refought, the FW-190 and the Zero face off in imaginary dogfights
and the Sherman, Tiger and T-34 tanks compete again for engineering
supremacy. Recently, when the forum took up the subject of the best
WWII TV documentaries, Verne Woods joined the discussion with this:
Stalag Luft I POW
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Alvin Millspaugh -
the co-pilot of a B-24 in the 15th Air Force, shares a story
of his "scenic" tour of Europe after being shot down on his 5th
mission. He also shares his diary entry on the "Day of Days" -
May 1st - the liberation day for the POWs at Stalag Luft I.
Stalag Luft I POW
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Horror Story
- A World War II P-47 fighter pilot.
Caleb Reeder, tells a true "horror story" which
results in his imprisonment at Stalag Luft I. After enduring
beatings by a mob of angry citizens, the simple statement "
Roosevelt made me" seems to have saved him from a lynching party.
This story originally told in the book "Behind Barbed Wire" by
Morris J. Roy. Photos supplied by his son.
Stalag Luft I POW |
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A Letter To My Grandchildren - Bill Miller is quite the story-teller. In this excerpt from
his book, A Letter To My Grandchildren, he details his
World War II experiences. His final mission, capture, several visits to German air-raid shelters
while a POW, Dulag Luft, and finally life at Stalag Luft 1. He
recounts many humorous POW "tales" and was actually present at Col.
Spicer's famous speech. Bill even managed to slip Col. Spicer some
fudge while Spicer was in the cooler awaiting execution after his
German court-martial.
Stalag Luft I POW |
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Charles "Tip" Clark - A World War II
B-24 Engineer and Gunner shot down on December 11, 1944 on his 20th
mission shares his military memoirs. He, like my Dad, didn't wait to
be evacuated but rather left the camp after the liberation and made
his way back to Allied territory by rowing a boat, walking,
hitch-hiking with Russian troops, and riding with German civilians
fleeing the oncoming Russians.
Stalag Luft I POW |
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Piggyback Hero-
by
Ralph Kenney Bennett.
, If
you had seen Glen Rojohn on the street he would probably have looked to you
like so many other graying, bespectacled old World War II veterans
whose names appear so often now on obituary pages.
But like so many of them, though he seldom talked about it, he could
have told you one h*ll of a story. He won the Air Medal, the
Distinguished Flying Cross and the Purple Heart all in one fell
swoop in the skies over Germany on December 31, 1944. Fell swoop
indeed.
Stalag Luft I POW |
