I enlisted in the Army Air Corps in February of 1943. After basic training I took courses in aircraft armament and aerial gunnery. I was assigned as a ball turret gunner on a B-17 Flying Fortress. The 17 had a crew of ten, four officers, pilot, co-pilot, bombardier and navigator. The other six members of the crew were sergeant gunners. We did practice missions around the United States, got to know each other, and then ferried a B-17 to England. The crew was then assigned to the 306th bomb group located near Bedford, England. Ball turret gunners were scarce when we joined the 306th. I flew four missions with other crews before any of my crew made a mission. I knew things were tough when I went to a briefing. The mission was a mission to Berlin and the whole group had never been there before. Our crew made 22 missions of which all were tough. We had to fly off enemy fighters and there were anti-aircraft batteries scattered all over enemy occupied Europe. On rare occasions we were not attacked. These were called “milk runs.” On March 28, 1944, on a mission to Brunswick during a fighter attack, the tail gunner was killed and I was wounded.

One of our toughest missions was just across the English Channel. The Germans had a submarine pen at Pas De Palais, France. On June 17, 1944, on a mission over France, our bomber was shot up by anti-aircraft fire and the crew had to bail out. I parachuted out and landed in a German compound and immediately became a prisoner of war. After they captured me they put me in a cell in a convent taken over by the Germans. There was an old German soldier who told me his son was a prisoner of war in the USA. Every afternoon he would go out and pick strawberries for me. After a few days “the Krauts” put me in the back of a truck along with the other POW’s and put us in prison for a week. Then they put us on the back of a bus that went to Belgium. There were other POW’s on the bus and also Luftwaffe pilots who had been shot down. It wasn’t comfortable but no one paid any attention to us. POW’s were taken to Dulag Luft, an interrogation jail. After interrogation we were put on a train that would take us to the new camp after many stops.

The first stop was Frankfurt, Germany. The city was bombed many times and was really torn up. As we went through the city, bottles, stones, and other trash were thrown at us by civilians. We stopped at a siding just outside Berlin one night. The Royal Air Force was pulverizing the city. Our last stop was prison, Stalag Luft IV, sometime in July. As prisons go, it had at least a bed for each prisoner. Some food came to us from the American Red Cross and some German food. It was enough to survive but no one gained any weight. Things were okay until the Russians started to move. Our POW camp was moved out on foot on February 6, 1945. We were marched westward in poor clothing and with little or no food. Sometimes we slept in the open and sometimes in barns. I was sick and emaciated when a British patrol liberated us on May 5, 1945. They took us across the Elbe River to an airdrome. I had always wanted to fly in a Lancaster. That is how I was flown to Belgium and then turned over to the Americans. I spent 21 days in an American hospital and then returned to the good old USA.