On May 12, I was told to prepare for a "Liberty Patrol", a rescue mission to one of the prisoner of war camps. To lighten the aircraft in preparation for carrying as many former American prisoners of war as we could, we removed all the armor plate, all the guns, the ball turret, the chin turret and made a makeshift wooden floor in the bomb bays.

On May 14 Bud Thumler [co-pilot], Larry Crocker [navigator], Ellis O’Neal [engineer] and I were awakened at 1:45 A.M. We got briefed, took off and flew in loose formation, northeast over Germany to the town of Barth where Stalag Luft No. 1 was located. Barth is about one hundred miles due north of Berlin and the POW camp was located just south of the town. Army engineers had prepared metal mesh strips about 2900 feet long for our landing and take-off and while these looked awfully short to me, I had no trouble at all getting the plane on the ground safely or taking off.

Once on the ground we taxied cross country far past abandoned Luftwaffe equipment, including JU-88s, FW-190s and ME-210s to where several groups of men were gathered. We taxied up to the first group and loaded thirty-one American pilots, navigators and bombardiers on the airplane, jammed them into the waist, radio room, bomb bays and nose compartment, taxied back to the temporary runway and took off, all in a matter of minutes.

Our aircraft flew back alone [to save time in getting the men out] southwest to Allied held Germany on our way to Laon, France where we were to deliver our passengers. As we flew, ex-POW pilots made their way up to the pilot's compartment, clearly eager to get their hands on the controls once more, so I asked Bud to circulate and one by one I had those who wished to, fly the aircraft for a few minutes. They were all anxious to see the damage done by the bombing so we dropped down to 1500 feet and flew over Hamburg, Bremen then down the Rhine River valley over Dusseldorf and Cologne and finally southwest over Belgium and into France.

While flying back I couldn't help but ask about some of their experiences. The one story I still remember had to do with the freeing of the prisoners as the war drew to an end. One morning in early May the POWs in Stalag Luft No. 1 woke to find the guards gone. The American camp commander, flying ace Lt. Col. Hubert (Hub) Zemke ordered the men in the camp to remain where they were while they waited to be repatriated.

After a wait of a couple of days, the local Russian Army commander, a major, entered the camp and met with Col. Zemke. The major asked why the men were still behind the barbed wire whereupon Zemke replied that they were there awaiting transport back to Allied territory. The major then pulled out a pistol and held it to Zemke's head and suggested that the former POWs would probably like to have the freedom to visit the town of Barth. Under the circumstances, Zemke agreed.

Lt. Marvin Laufer was a navigator with the 398th when he was forced to bail out of his bomber and ultimately ended up in Stalag Luft 1. He was Jewish and I was interested to know how he survived. Once in camp, although most of the POWs knew him to be Jewish, this was kept from the guards. Other POWs known to be Jewish were held separately in the camp and were rumored to be slated for execution but they were freed before this happened.

One of the men, whom I let fly the airplane, gave me a gift of a pair of knee length, fleece lined Luftwaffe flying boots. After the war I wore these in bad weather until about 1980, then in 1990 I found a small museum in Albuquerque, NM that wanted them and where they are now on display.

Laon, located about 75 miles northeast of Paris was a repatriation center for prisoners of war. After a three and a half hour flight we landed at the Laon airfield and taxied to the unloading area. Once there we cut the engines and watched in awe at the tender and loving treatment afforded these ex-prisoners by the Americans who met them. They were met and dealt with individually as soon as they disembarked; their personal needs, their desire to communicate with families, news from home, their need for clean clothes and good food and descriptions of the plans to return them immediately to the United States were all dealt with just as quickly as humanly possible. The Army and the Red Cross were masterful in their handling of the situation. I guarantee that each of the former prisoners was made to feel the warmth and gratitude of their nation just as soon as his feet touched the soil of France.


From "The Youngest Crew" by Paul Wagner
Lagumo Press, Cheyenne, WY, 1997, ISBN 1-878117-18-1