Sam, bombardier: They’re backing up and backing up. Funny how they came in one day and said, ‘Everybody get packed because we are going to move out!’ So everybody starts packing and it started to snow in the afternoon, it was more like flurries and there was probably only an inch of snow on the ground, but as it got later in the day, the snow got heavier. And we had to go, so when we left there the snow was about four inches deep, when we went out.
Jerry, navigator: Middle of the night, midnight.
Sam, bombardier: And everybody has their sack, everything they could carry.
Earl, pilot: We really didn’t have any idea where we were going, or anything.
Sam, bombardier: We were back six to eight buildings from the front, and as we went along, we could see where guys would be dumping stuff along the side of road: they took extra food, we had a warehouse for canned food, and they were taking the sugar. Because while you were walking you wanted energy, so you would eat the sugar. So I packed I would say probably 200 cubes of sugar in my pockets, and that is what I ate as I went along.
We walked and walked and I found it getting cold, and everybody is getting tired, and we keep going. It’s like five, six, seven o’clock in the morning. It’s getting colder out: I had a scarf around my face and it was just a ball of ice: I would have to reach up and break it so I could get air to my face. My feet were frozen.
Interviewer: How many hours had you been walking?
Jerry, navigator: About three days, [at that point].
Sam, bombardier: And you never got warm, we just kept going and going, we couldn’t even change socks if you wanted to, so we had wet socks in cold weather—so as far as I’m concerned, that’s what happened to me.
The next day we marched almost twenty-some hours, so now we were coming up to some town, now everybody is falling over. Then I did something that I didn’t even know I did. I was in a group where everybody made a pledge to watch each other. I found myself off the side of the road and I lay in the snow and I said to myself, ‘Wow, this is so warm’; I was so damn cold, I could hardly do anything. In the meantime, when I lay over, some guys saw me—one was a captain and one was a major—they saw me walk over and lay down, and they grabbed me. They stood me up and shook me, they asked me questions and I—I didn’t know anything, so they picked me up and made me walk. We got to this town and that’s when he [points to Earl] came around, he was looking for me and he was hollering my name.
I was standing there and he comes over to me, ‘Sam,’ and I knew, ‘You’re Earl, you’re the pilot’. When they had questioned me, I didn’t know my name or anything, or where I lived—I was gone! The only thing I knew was [points to Earl], ‘You’re Earl, you’re the best god damn pilot in the whole Air Force.’
Interviewer: Well how many days had you been there?
Sam, bombardier: Well, that was after some 20 hours, we froze walking.
Earl, pilot: I went right to him [at that point]. I had gone through the same procedure as Sam—I actually sat down in the snow and they came to me… so I got up and I moved again. About at this time they’re yelling ‘Sam Lisica’ and I woke up and got hold of him, I was all right by then. When you see someone worse than you are… I kept him moving then.
Sam, bombardier: When I started getting all mixed up, I do remember I knew I was walking fast but I guess there were five, six, or seven barracks [of men in our group]. We went out in barracks, so everybody stays together—[but then] I walked through these guys and all of a sudden, I’m the leader. I’m out in front of everybody and that’s how they saw me take off to the side of the road [to lie down].
Interviewer: How many people would be on this march?
Jerry, navigator: From the camp…
Earl, pilot: They estimated about ten thousand, didn’t they?
Jerry, navigator: Stalag Luft III had a north compound, a south compound, a west and an east compound: we were in the west, this was the newest one. The north compound was the one that was all British and that’s the famous ‘Great Escape’ occurred: where they all went through a tunnel and 50 of them were caught and were murdered.
Jerry, navigator: And I guess three guys made it to, I think, Sweden: they made a movie out of that, Steve McQueen, there’s another movie coming out about the same compound we were in. Bruce Willis is in it, which is going to be interesting because nobody was in the place as old as Bruce Willis is right now.[50] [Laughter]
But anyway, when they took us out, one of the compounds went directly from there all the way to a place called Moosburg, the rest of us went on the march we were on, about a week, a week and a half, we took stops—we had no idea, no recollection of them. We eventually marched for about three days to the next town, we were going to stop—the next town it was bitter cold. They kept us in a church one night, on marble floors. If you want to freeze to death, I’ll tell you what, that’s the place. Another ten would come out [die], and another two, you know.
Then, some miracle happened. They put us into a factory, it was a pottery factory, and the floors were warm, actually warm. All the time in Germany we never felt warm; we were always freezing to death, and they kept us there for three days! I’m thinking that’s what saved a lot of our guys who would have died from pneumonia or whatever. We got our chance to get our strength back.
The pottery factory was worked by Polish and French slave laborers. In the basement were the kilns which operated day and night, warming the floors above. This reprieve indeed saved many; by this point, the line of prisoners extended nearly 30 miles.[19]
From there they marched us a day or two, then they took us to a place called Spremburg, and they put us into boxcars, 55 to 60 guys in a boxcar. Which only really held 40 or 8, 40 men or eight horses. We had 50, 55, 60 men depending, with only one little slit for everyone to look through. Everyone could not sit down at the same time, and we were trapped in this thing for about three days.
Interviewer: Was the train moving?
Sam, bombardier: Oh yes, they were taking us west.
Jerry, navigator: They were taking us down to Nuremberg. Then we would end up in a prison camp in Nuremberg.
Sam, bombardier: That’s when we all had discipline.
Jerry, navigator: This was between the train ride and the marching. Then one thing, then another, and the train having to stop to wait for the German soldiers to move, so the train could continue moving again, the rail lines all plugged up. Our train was strafed, lucky for us but unlucky for the guys at the other end—they were hit by our own P-47s. The Germans did not go through the trouble putting red crosses on the trains with prisoners, but they did on their own troop trains.
The remnants of the Volkssturm[51] were still streaming eastward in a futile effort to stem the tide of the Soviet advance, clogging the roads and railways as masses of humanity surged past them in a desperate attempt to outrun the Russians. At Spremburg near the beginning of February, the men were finally issued some black bread, having walked over sixty miles in five days.[20] Then they were crowded into the boxcars, where many of the men suffered indignities again in freezing temperatures.
Sam, bombardier: Then we all got dysentery. They stopped one time and everybody had to go and they would open the door. Everybody would run out sitting by the railroad track…
Jerry, navigator: I’ve been waiting for years to hear from somebody of one of the funniest things I saw in the war. There were so many of us out of the train at one time, and we were on this track. The train was standing still, a bright sun-shining day, the Germans guards were in the field with their guns and everything, and the guys came out to relieve themselves. About 150 guys sitting there with their pants down, all sitting straight, mooning the guards. [Laughter]
Sam, bombardier: When you’ve got dysentery, you could knock a fly dead from 50 paces because all the pressure and water and—zoom! The best part was when we were done, we would come walking by and they would say nothing to us. [Laughter]
The men arrived at Stalag XII
ID at Nuremburg, an area that was a favorite target of their previous bombing raids due to its nearby location at the railroad marshalling yards. Conditions here were abysmal, with rotten and vermin-infested food.
Jerry, navigator: You talk about the American sense of humor, if it wasn’t for the American sense of humor… We always had funny names for people; you could always find a funny moment. There was an air raid and one of our own bomb group came at us, they were dropping bombs around Nuremberg, and turning away but one plane didn't, and it was coming straight at us! I did see this happen—some [American] guy grabbed a hold of a guard and started shaking him, yelling, ‘Where’s the Luftwaffe, where’s the Luftwaffe!’ [Laughter]
Interviewer: And he was an American?
All: Yes.
Sam, bombardier: He told him to take out that bomber so it would not drop bombs on us! [Laughter]
Sam, speaking to Earl: Do you remember the day we were marching, we pulled off of the march and into the farmhouse and we went up and knocked on the door? We asked them if we could wash our faces and shave, because me, I was taking a shave every day, no matter where I was, I shaved.
Jerry, navigator: I always shaved.
Sam, bombardier: So anyhow, you talked sign language and whatever you thought you knew in German, until you strike a deal. And then she says, ‘Okay, wash up.’ Their stoves were big cast iron stoves and on their sides they had water tanks, so they were cooking over here [points to the right] and the water stayed hot all the time. So they’d just pick up the lid, dunk the cup in and give us a bucket of hot water. She said, ‘Go out behind the barn and there’s a wash basin and a mirror.’ And she even gave us towels. And she had two little kids, and we went out there and we got washed and came back and brought the stuff back. We came in, and there were four plates. We had fried bacon, fresh eggs, and she had just finished making rye bread in the oven. That was the breakfast I got on that march, the four of us got. So, anyhow, we said what the hell can we give her? I had some left over sugar cubes in my pocket, and I had a couple pieces of candy, and she had these little kids. We were talking and all of a sudden, we made sense with each other. She was saying she was a widow, her husband was killed on the eastern front, and she had these kids and I think she had her mother living with her on this farm. I don’t know how they worked it but anyhow, we sat down and we gave her this and that but she didn’t want it. Anyhow we got up to leave and she turned to each of us, we were in our 20s and she was probably about 47 years old. She came over to us and gave us a big hug and said ‘Good luck.’
Interviewer: Now, is this after the war ended?
Sam, bombardier: That’s when we were prisoners and we were marching from…
Earl, pilot: From Nuremberg to Moosburg…
Interviewer: How could you do that? Would the Germans let you do that?
Earl, pilot: We actually were bribing the guards to stay with us, because there were SS troops in the area and a bunch of Americans walking without guards, you’d have problems. But now along the same line, I didn’t get into a deal that you got into [points to Sam]. I got into a store that a couple of ladies were running. They let about 15 or 16 of us in there, and locked the door and the guards pulled the shade. And the guards were outside beating on the door trying to get in. She let us get what we wanted and she’d sneak us out the back door.
You see, this was at the end and I actually saw three women converge on the commandant of the camp. A big old fat major, he was at Sagan, then he was down in Nuremberg, and he was riding a bicycle on that march. I saw three women, two of them from each side and one of them from in the front caught him on his bicycle and dumped him right out there in front of all of us. And then all the civilians wanted to know, ‘When the Americans were going to get here?’—because, see, the Russians were coming too. They just wanted Americans. All the civilians by then on that march, they were with us. They wanted us there; they wanted the Americans there before the Russians got there.
Jerry, navigator: I told this story yesterday. I did eventually about 10 years ago meet one of the guys who was in this room with me and he remembered everything as I did because sometimes you think ‘I’m not sure if this happened or I heard it or what.’ But this is what happened, it was on my birthday, the night before was a Saturday. They put us in a barn and made a big fuss about all these displaced workers and they told these girls they were to fix up beds for us. So they made hay and got a blanket you know, they took care of us and that was nice. But the next day he invited us into his kitchen. We came into the kitchen, large kitchen, larger than this room, and they cooked over in that area and the family sat there. We sat at a table for six over here [pointing about the room] so I had mixed emotions about this, which I’ll tell you about at the end. They gave us pigs’ knuckles, they boiled potatoes, and after the meal we sat at the table and he came over with a pad and said, ‘I would like you to write a note to your commanding officer of the unit that occupies this area’. This would introduce ‘Herr So and So’, who’s the burgermeister, the mayor of the village here and ‘that he had the six of you there, treated you well, gave you breakfast, took care of you and gave you good quarters, clean quarters in the barn, and kept you warm’. Because it was April—April 15th was my birthday, so it’s etched—it was a Sunday and he asked us if anybody was Catholic, and if we wanted to go to church with the family and so on. And they didn’t go and I said, ‘I’m not signing anything like that’. The reason I didn’t want to sign was because I remembered when they were winning in 1941, 1942, it was all, ‘Our boys, our boys’, and I didn’t see anybody say, ‘Oh, this is terrible!’ They were cheering, you know? Now that they were losing all of a sudden they turned their faces around. So I said, ‘I’m not signing it.’ Another guy said, ‘I’m not signing it.’ And then one guy said, ‘Let me write it. I’ll write it.’ He got annoyed at the mayor, so he said, ‘Let me write it.’ So he writes it and this is what he wrote: ‘To the commanding officer…’ and then he added one more part and said, ‘please do the undersigned a favor and take care of this guy’ and then he signed it.
Sam, bombardier: ‘Take care’ meant different than take care of your welfare.
Jerry, navigator: What does it mean to an American? ‘Take care of this guy.’ So I’ve often wondered. I’d like to go back to find out whatever happened to him.
Earl, pilot: See, that’s the only thing that really bothered me when I got back. On the march we had in January, the civilian crowd, they weren’t with us at all, and then in April, boy, between January and April, they were going from this way to that way [points from left to right].
*
Liberation
Interviewer: Do you remember if you liberated on the same day?
Earl, pilot: Yes; we were in the same camp, but we didn’t all get out on the same date.
Interviewer: That was when General [George S.] Patton came through?
Sam, bombardier: He came in on his tank with his pearl-handled pistols, they were .38s he wore on his waist.
Interviewer: Did you all see him?
All: Yes.
Sam, bombardier: There was supposed to be 100,000 to 120,000 people in this camp at a time and they had other nationalities. They had Russians, they had Greeks, and they had Italians. I know they had a lot of Italians. The main gate was over here and there was an abbey and there were buildings like this [motioning with his hand] and there was another gate and the Canadians were in there. The first thing we knew, our planes were coming overhead. One of the great experiences I remember now, and I hope these guys remember, two fighter planes with their contrails were making a great big ‘8’ in the sky [motioning in the air] and the other one made a ‘9’ for the Ninth Air Force, and [motions with arm raised in air] that’s our boys! I mean, they were sharp! A P-51 would come by like this, you know, and we’d cheer and the Germans would get upset.
Anyway, we heard small arms fire one day. Now I’m air crew; I don’t know anything about small arms. But when I s
ee dirt hopping around, I figure something’s up, so we scooted! And there was a battle; you could hear ‘crackity-crack’; that’s what I remember, and the next thing, people are looking out, and someone said, ‘Look down there at the main gate!’, and the American flag was flying and we went berserk, we just went berserk! We were looking at the goon tower and there’s no goons there, there are Americans up there! And we saw the American flag, I mean—to this day I start to well up when I see the flag… [Gets emotional]
About three days later, word came that Patton was coming in, so by this time you could go from one compound the other. I was on a roof peak of building; there was only about six or eight or us, [but guys on rooftops all over]… there were French on that side, Canadians on this side [motioning with his hands]. Here comes this flying wedge of tanks, and here’s General Patton, with his chest breaking the ice because he’s like the icebreaker! And I’d known of him since Pearl Harbor, he’s got these pearl-handled guns so he’s walking through, and the British salute, and we heard a French guy say ‘Mon General’ and there’s an American next to us who says, ‘Hey Georgie, were the hell have you been, what took you saw long?’ He used an expletive that I’m not going to use, ‘Where the bleep have you been?’ George Patton, the first guy he acknowledged, was him! [points at Earl, who laughs] That’s my memory of George Patton. You can say what you want about George Patton, he liberated me; that’s my boy.
Interviewer: So that was beginning of May?
Sam, bombardier: That was April 29th, 1945, a date that in etched in my memory.
Interviewer: You got a salute out of him, Earl?
Earl, pilot: Yes! See, these guys were more mobile than I; I had this bad knee and I wasn’t getting around too fast, but I got up and ducked around the building and there he was! I threw a salute at him and he returned it, I just happened to be there all by myself, coming around that building. And he was upset. He said, ‘You guys are all officers, and this is what they did to you?’ Patton didn’t hang around long; he made his little speech and he was gone.
The Things Our Fathers Saw—The Untold Stories of the World War II Generation-Volume III: War in the Air—Combat, Captivity, and Reunion Page 15
