B0737M5NDQ

by Matthew Rozell

  We had a French doctor, who was interned, who took care of us in Bucharest. He took x-rays of my leg. He saw what had happened to my leg. He put me on a table and he got some guys from the camp downstairs. Real strong ones, you know, six-footers and 200-pounders.Three on each side, they held me down, and he re-broke the leg so it could have a chance to heal properly. It worked, although much later, I had to have a bone graft. I had a bone taken out of this leg [touches right leg] and put into that leg [touches left leg]. She healed beautifully. She healed so well that, you can feel it right here [pulls down sock to show the area where the bone was grafted]… that even in November 30, 1947, when I turned a car over five times, my car landed on top of the leg. If it had landed on [the rest of] me it would have killed me. I was thrown out as the car was turning over. It didn’t break here [points to the graft area]; it broke here [points to higher on leg].

  As the Red Army poured into Romania, the pro-fascist government was overthrown in a coup d'état near the end of August and Romania joined the Allies. The PoWs situation was precarious; as the Red Army approached the capital, the Germans carried out a series of reprisal terror bombing raids.

  The bombings started by the Germans. As a matter of fact the guys were looking up in the sky thinking maybe it was our boys and it turned about to be Dorniers, which are German bombers. When the bombings started as the Russians were coming in, all of a sudden there were Romanian tanks around the hospital ward we [Americans] were in, to protect us, because we were their greatest asset at that time.

  We were terror-bombed for three days and three nights. Before that, we were bombed by the Americans and the British. The first night we were in the basement of the hospital. This was a very, very, very old building. The rats were all over. We decided to go out, and I was starting to fall on my crutches when a couple of guys grabbed me. My radio operator had come out of a building which most of the GIs ended up in. It was the tallest building in Bucharest; it was a sixteen-story building, steel and concrete, owned by the Franco-American Oil Company. [Laughs] They also had two 40mm anti-aircraft guns, on the roof. Our guys had taken it over [with the Romanians’ blessing].

  He had come to look for me and I thought that he should have gotten a medal for that. They grabbed me. They had no stretcher so they used a door that had been blown off and they carried me to the safety of this building, which was a few blocks away. We were on the eighth floor, we took over the whole eighth floor. Our officers went to the Bank of Romania and they borrowed $75,000. We got equipment and rifles, things like that. We had our guards around the perimeter. We set up our own kitchen there. It was the safest place to be because you were in the middle of a building. You had the anti-aircraft guns on the roof. Not only did we go there, but as many of the Romanian people could get into the building got in to there. The only difference was, we had food.

  ‘Like Ants Scurrying Back and Forth’

  One of the saddest things I ever saw, after the third day of bombing by the Germans, these people had not had food at all. Bread trucks came to the courtyard of the building; this building had a courtyard in the middle of the building. The bread trucks came in and the Romanians started to cue up the civilians. All of a sudden, the sirens went off again and we could hear the German planes in the air. I watched from the eighth floor [hesitates; gets choked up] I’m sorry. It was like ants scurrying back and forth… [pauses, composes himself] I’m sorry.

  They were … [pauses] they wanted the safety of the building. But they needed bread, they were hungry. You could see them [motions his hands back and forth], they were torn—do we go to the building for safety, or for the bread? [Takes a deep breath and regroups himself]. When you fly, you don’t see that. You are up at 20,000, 25,000 feet. All you can see is the landmarks and soccer stadiums, the oil refinery you are going to hit or the marshalling yards, the railroad yards that you are going to hit. When I saw that I just broke down, and at that time I swore I would never drop another bomb. But I came to terms with that; if I had to do it again, I would. But actually seeing it was a very, very traumatic experience for me, still is.

  *

  I was a prisoner for two months. In early September, the first and largest evacuation of American PoWs during the war occurred; they flew us back to Italy.

  Over a thousand American PoWs were flown out of Romania on converted B-17s. On Sept. 4, 1944, the commanding officer of the 15th Air Force , Major Gen. N.F. Twining, wrote to the evacuees:

  You are going home. You are the returning heroes of the Battle of Ploesti. Your safe return to my command marked the culmination of an outstanding campaign in the annals of American military history. The German war machine's disintegration on all fronts is being caused, to a large extent, by their lack of oil—oil that you took from them. I only have one regret on this jubilant occasion. I wish it had been possible to bring out of Romania every officer and man who went down in that battle.

  Of the 3,781 men shot down trying to destroy Ploesti, only 1,185 came home.

  ‘Missing in Action’

  When I came out of Romania, I was in the hospital in Italy. A neighbor’s kid from home came up to see me. He had heard that they had brought us guys back. His family had been writing to him to see if they could find out about me, where I was, how I could be reached. I asked him right away, ‘How are my mother and father?’ He said, ‘Well your mother is dead, don’t you know it?’ I just broke down. I was in bad shape; I weighed about 100 pounds at the time, I had just gotten out of Romania. So I sent a telegram. It said, ‘Know about mother, don’t worry.’ [Begins to cry softly] I’m sorry, sometimes I get a little emotional, I can’t help that. The chaplain was supposed to tell me, but he never did. [Hands the interviewer some World War II era telegrams]

  ‘Missing in action.’ If you look at some of these telegrams, none of them has my home address; they were addressed my father’s place of business. I purposely didn’t want the telegram to go home because I knew my mother had very, very high blood pressure. My father and I had a deal where I’d have it sent to my father’s place of business so he would make arrangements to have a doctor come out and be handy, if need be. I got shot down June 28th. It came to my father during the July 4th weekend, and they couldn’t deliver it because the place of business was closed. So they went through the trouble to find out the home address, Strauss Street, which was delivered on July the 5th. My father was already in Manhattan working that day and my mother was home. The telegram came, that I’m missing in action. According to the way I heard it, she started to walk up the stairs and she keeled over. They called the doctor from down the block. She died of a cerebral hemorrhage.

  I spent a lot of time in hospitals. I had a lot of trouble reconciling how my mother died from the telegram. How do you think you feel when you find out you killed your mother?

  Wife: He was ‘Sonny’. He was the youngest and he was the only boy.

  Seymour Segan: I used to blame myself that I didn’t explain to her the fact that ‘missing in action’ is not necessarily ‘killed in action’. You know? I didn’t even think about that. One of the reasons I didn’t want to be in a foxhole or be a foot soldier because at least in the air, it’s often quick and over with, the ship blows up or crashes. Maybe that’s what she was thinking. In my case, seven out of ten died and three of us lived.

  Did I give you the letter where I’m dead? It was a letter from the Veterans Administration. Let’s see if I can find it, it’s here someplace. [Shuffles papers around] Here it is. ‘We regret to inform you of the death of the above named veteran.’ [Laughs]

  Wife: It came to his parents, but his mother was already dead.

  Seymour Segan: That was cleared up very fast. I had a brother-in-law at that time who was very much involved with the military, and he was able to go outside of the channels and find out what was going on.

  *

  [I experienced a lot of troubles], but I’ve found, in a way, that everything sometimes turns out for the best. [After the 1947
car accident], they put me in Brooklyn Jewish Hospital and then transported me to the Veterans Hospital. When I had recovered enough, the doctor said, ‘Go home for ten weeks, then come back and we will take x-rays and see how it healed’. I said, ‘I can’t go home; I live in a furnished room. I have no way of making food; I will have to walk in the winter on crunches for seven, eight blocks to find a restaurant for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. So, they sent me up here, near the Adirondacks, to a veteran’s hospital at Mt. McGregor[31]. It was originally was built in 1903 by Metropolitan Life for tuberculosis patients. It’s on top of the mountain there, fresh air, cold fresh air, porches all the way around. They could take the patients and put them out in the cold air, so they could breathe. They thought maybe that would help with their tuberculosis, and they did the same thing in Denver, and in Saranac Lake [Adirondacks]. So they also sent me up there.

  It was January of 1948, the beginning of January. I fell in love with Glens Falls, just to the north. To me, the whole town was welcoming me from Brooklyn, New York. In 1961, December the 18th, we moved up here. It was a wonderful move for us. We were very happy. The children were brought up here. We have had a wonderful life up here; I am going to be buried up here. I hope it’s not for a couple more years. [Laughs] Sometimes bad things can lead to good things.

  *

  To tell you the whole story is almost impossible. Because sometimes things come back to you that you haven’t thought of in years. All of a sudden you think of it, and what makes you think of it, you don’t even know. I’m one of the lucky ones. It took me a long time, but I was able to put it behind me and go on with my life. Not right away. For quite a while, I was at every veterans’ hospital in New York City. [Lists various hospitals] I was doing life. I was on the installment plan. [Laughs]

  Wife: He was in and out of every veterans’ hospital in New York...

  Seymour Segan: I ended up in I think 22 or 23 different hospitals. For my leg, for my finger that I lost—and that happened in on the job training, so it was covered by the government. One of the machines took it off. Post-traumatic war syndrome was the worst, a combination of that with alcoholism. I found AA. That was a deciding factor. I carry one of these around with me all the time; and maybe I’ll be able to cope with everything. [Takes a card out of his pocket] The important thing is right here. ‘God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.’ And once I was able to accept a lot of those things, I was able to reach my potential.

  Wife: You can’t blame any of these fellows who nearly self-destructed. The main thing [to remember] is that they have the wisdom to know the difference.

  ***

  Mr. Segan lost his wife of 59 years, Shirley, in 2007. I visited again with Mr. Segan from time to time at the retirement community he settled into. He passed away about a month after his 91st birthday on January 12, 2014.

  The author at Clarence McGuire’s gravesite at St. Mary’s Cemetery,

  Fort Edward, NY. 2010. Credit: Kris Dressen.

  Epilogue

  Epilogue

  Resurrection

  The phone rang on a beautiful summer evening. It was the cap to another long day at the keyboard and the perhaps the answer to a long shot query letter I had mailed a week earlier, to parts hitherto unknown.

  Just a day before mailing the letter, I had had a shock. I wondered what the odds were of finding the exact same photograph that had haunted me all of my life—but now labeled with names!—on the internet. And the webpage it appeared on at the American Air Museum in Britain looked like it was a tribute to the crew. I looked closely at the caption:

  A bomber crew of the 351st Bomb Group with their B-17 Flying Fortress. Handwritten caption: 'Technical Sergeant James E Ellis, Staff Sergeant Maurice J Franzblau, Sergeant Clarence B McGuire, Sergeant Fenton D Strohmeyer, Sergeant Guido Signoretti, Sergeant John Swarts, Second Lieutenant John M Morton, Second Lieutenant Donald Fish, Second Lieutenant William J Fuerth and Lieutenant McCaleb D Taylor of the 351th Bomb Group, 511 Squadron.

  I looked for the sponsor.

  IN MEMORIAM

  B-17 #4238146-Killed in Action (KIA) Shot down by flak and crashed near Beendorf, Germany.

  Remembered by John S Swarts, Summerfield, FL

  Here was another shock. The tribute appeared to be sponsored by the man who is labeled as the tail gunner on Clarence’s plane. He’s in the photo with Clarence that has been with me all of my life—but weren’t they all killed? The webpage also says:

  ‘2nd Lt. Warren J Bragdon filled in as Co-Pilot for Lt. Donald Fish as he was flying lead ship on 570 Bomb Group in Polebrook, England.

  So there were two survivors of the crew photo, who had not gotten on the plane that day. On the internet again, I tracked the tail gunner to an address in Florida, and sent off the letter to what I hoped was the right address. I included the graveside photograph; I suppose if I had my man, it might come as a bit of a surprise to him.

  I picked up the phone to answer the call. Some feedback interference hummed momentarily on the other end of the line, but even before he began to speak, I just knew that my hunch had played out. I found him, an actual survivor of the B-17 bomber crew in the photograph. Or should I say, he had found me.

  John Swarts, World War II.

  Source: John Swarts

  ‘This is John Swarts’, said the voice with the distinctive Southern twang. ‘Me and Clarence were pretty good friends.’ A pause. ‘You got it right, address and everything. I knew him well; I went with him to his home up there in New York. Me and him even rode horses together; I got some pictures I can send you. His mother used to write me letters afterwards. I’ll look for that, too.’

  John was the tail gunner in that crew photo. He hailed from Missouri, and later settled in St. Louis. ‘Things worked out alright for me. Was married twice, got a boy and a girl. Spent 33 years on the railroad, and then had my own business. I’ll be 93 on February 3rd. I don’t get around good like I used to; fell three years ago and broke my pelvis and hip. But it was just me and the co-pilot who survived that day.’

  ‘I was burned in the eyelid by flak a couple days before. I was in the hospital and didn’t go on the last mission.’ Because of a snafu, his mother got a telegram stating that he was missing in action—‘the Army didn’t know I was in the hospital. It took three months to clear up; she thought I was missing for two weeks before I was able to get word to the family that I was not on the plane.’

  The plane went down on July 29th, 1944. This weekend in the summer of 2017, the 73rd anniversary is upon us as we speak on the phone. ‘The name of the plane was Pugnacious Ball. Flak got it. Blew it up. But I think they recovered a body bag to send home to his mother.’

  ‘I watched for the planes coming back; you always do when they are out on a mission. You count them. We waited and waited. They didn’t come back.’

  ‘It was the worst day of my life. Still is.’

  John sent me some material back in the mail—some photographs, scrapbook pages, even a letter from Clarence’s mother. [32] ‘We were a very close crew. This is a photo of us horseback riding in Denver, Colorado in cadet school training. We enjoyed our time together. We then went to gunnery school in Kingman, Arizona.’ Clarence’s nickname was ‘Barney’. He was the biggest one on the crew. We all got along good. Oh, we had a lot of fun, going to Piccadilly Square, and all…’

  Riding horses in Colorado. John is on the right with the child;

  Clarence is on the left. Source: John Swarts.

  Over in England, they called themselves the ‘Ball Boys’ after their commander, Col. Ball. Clark Gable, the movie actor, was also in the 351st Bomb Group at the time, enlisting and flying operational missions over Germany.

  ‘He flew with us six times; I got to be with him a few times. He was a nice man.’

  John also met the eighteen-year old Princess Elizabeth, and her parents.

  ‘I had a year
on her. That’s General Doolittle and the King and Queen, too. We were just coming off a mission, and they were there to greet us. Somebody took a picture; it says on the back, NOT FOR RELEASE, but I suppose it’s okay now.’

  From left: John Swarts, General Jimmy Doolittle, The Queen Consort Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, King George VI, and Princess Elizabeth, 1944.

  Source: John Swarts.

  ‘I flew six missions with the crew Clarence was on, and seventeen altogether. We flew a support mission on D-Day, knocking out a German ammo dump. I saw a lot of guys getting killed on the beach, getting shot on the ground on that day. It was awful.’