Forgotten Fifteenth

by Barrett Tillman

  Along the way Bill Hess’s feet froze, and he lagged far behind the column. A lone guard stayed with him—a German youngster about his own age. Finally Hess was spent. He collapsed in the snow, too exhausted to continue.

  The German reached into his greatcoat and produced something wrapped in paper: a sandwich. He gave half to the American, now more a comrade in shared misery than a prisoner. Thankful beyond expression, Hess ate what was offered. He felt some strength returning to his body and raised himself off the ground. The guard patted Hess on the shoulder, urging, “Mach schnell,” or “Hurry up.”

  Proceeding up the road, the unlikely pair came to a barn where dozens of prisoners were gathered for the coming night. An American officer saw them coming and shouted an order: “Pick that man up!” Willing hands raised Hess off his tortured feet and carried him inside. The officer was “Doc” Caplan. He scrounged some rags to bind Hess’s bloody feet and managed to halt the hemorrhaging. But that was only part of the challenge. Many men had severe dysentery, and there were no drugs to cure it. Caplan collected enough wood to burn to ashes and concocted his trademark anti-diarrheal brew. “This should counter the poison in your system,” he explained, extending a bitter but lifesaving cup to each ailing prisoner.

  During the march Hess and three others unable to continue were stashed at a farm. Especially concerned about the gangrenous foot of Hess’s friend Alton Dryer, Caplan convinced a German military doctor to assist him. The German, who spoke English, informed Dryer grimly, “Sergeant, I must lance the foot but I have no anesthetic, you understand?”

  “Buddy” Dryer was a rugged Texan. He replied, “Doctor, you do what you have to do. Bill, you hold me down no matter what I do or say.”

  The doctor produced a scalpel, sliced two slits in Dryer’s instep, and threaded a wire through both cuts. Then he pulled, hard. Blood, pus, and liquids spewed from Dryer’s foot, and he bucked and screamed in Anglo-Saxon expletives. When the horrific procedure continued, he switched to German. The doctor momentarily stopped the beneficial torture, amazed at the American’s fluent Teutonic profanity.

  When the doctor was finished, he swabbed out the wound with alcohol, bound it with a bandage, and wrapped a GI tee-shirt around the bandages. Finally he looked at Dryer: “Sergeant, where did you learn to swear like that?”

  “Oh, I’m from up north of San Antonio. Lots of Germans up there, sir.”

  Once the patient was able to hobble, an Oberfeldwebel escorted Dryer and Hess to a train station. The Luftwaffe sergeant was downright paternal. “He was an older man,” Hess recalls, “probably in his early fifties.” The German even carried one of Hess’s shoes, as the gunner’s frozen foot was still too swollen to wear it.

  The kindly sergeant stayed with the Americans until the ride ended in an underground station in an unknown city. He sent the two cripples upstairs through scores of obviously hostile civilians, Dryer leaving a blood trail up the steps. He looked around. “Bill, I don’t think we’re supposed to be here.” The Yanks glanced upward to find their savior grinning widely. Satisfied with his joke, he took them in tow again.

  Then, with one arm around Dryer and Hess hobbling on frostbitten feet, the dutiful non-com put his charges on another train. “I cannot go with you,” he said. The thought of two seeming escapees hopping a train in bombed-out Germany conjured up a variety of scenarios, none pleasant, but the fliers had no choice. Their escort placed them in a rail car. After a crowded two-day ride, they were met by guards who marched the Americans to Stalag XI-B, a multinational camp about fifty miles north of Hanover.

  RAF fighter-bombers routinely attacked the marshalling yard at XI-B. Some Typhoon pilots extended their passes to fly over the camp, tipping their wings in salute to the POWs. The prisoners’ morale perked up when a Spitfire chased a Junkers 88 into the ground, though soon a P-51 pilot bailed out of his crippled Mustang. He told the resident sergeants that he was a second lieutenant flying his second mission.

  Word got around that Hitler had ordered Terrorflieger executed rather than repatriated, but few officers were willing to comply, either from ethical or practical reasons. SS units remained fanatical to the end, however, enthusiastically executing real or suspected deserters. Nonetheless, some guards opted out when the opportunity arose. Bill Hess saw one young German ditch his light machinegun in a snow bank and dash for the trees, apparently not far from his home.

  The Kriegies settled in to await their fate.35

  APRIL ATTRITION

  After Romania changed sides, P-38 pilots mostly went hungry as the Luftwaffe largely disappeared from airspace available to Lightnings. So the Lockheed fighters went down on the deck, strafing far afield from Foggia. By then the Axis had ample flak, and “the light stuff” could be wicked. Airdromes, marshalling yards, and other obvious targets received additional 20 and 37mm AA weapons, as some pilots learned.

  A Lightning pilot wrote, “The Germans, their firepower for the most part intact, were being squeezed, and attacking this mass, bristling with guns, was like poking a stick at a hornet’s nest. Anti-aircraft fire came from every roadside and hillside. The sides of freight cars fell away to disclose heavy machine guns and anti-aircraft cannon manned for the most part by very skilled gunners. Lord knows they had had enough experience.”36

  That spring fewer and fewer strategic targets were worth a major effort. The fighters increasingly turned to transportation, sometimes joining Twelfth Air Force units. From January through May, however, nearly half of XV Fighter Command losses were attributed to operational causes; flying in weather had become almost as dangerous as combat.

  Not even aces were immune, including the Fifteenth’s top active shooter. The Clan’s Captain Harry Parker, victor in thirteen combats, had been shot down by a P-38 a year before but returned eager for more combat. He was killed on April 2 on his 273rd mission, an escort to Brux, near Vienna. Spotting bogies beneath his squadron, he and two others dropped down to investigate and were lost from sight in the undercast, fate unknown.

  That same day the Fifteenth lost its top P-38 ace, Captain Michael Brezas of the Fourteenth Group. Twenty-one years old and from Massachusetts, he had downed a dozen planes in seven weeks of July and August 1944, though squadron mates said that he got more than he claimed. But he ran afoul of AA while shooting up Magyarlad airfield in Hungary. Briefly held by the Germans, he was liberated by Russian forces, though he returned to Triolo bitter about the treatment received from the supposed allies. He told friends that if the war had continued, he would have been just as happy shooting Russian aircraft as German.37

  On April 10, 325th guns turned nine locomotives into scrap metal near Munich but unexpectedly encountered airborne targets. Among six kills was a Ju 88 downed by Lieutenant William E. Aron of New Jersey, who became the seventy-fourth and last ace of the Fifteenth Air Force. The twenty-one-year-old went down on another strafing mission almost two weeks later. Reportedly taken from his plane by hostile Italians, his body was never recovered.

  The next day, April 11, First Lieutenant Robert W. Whitehead of the Fourteenth Group had just strafed locomotives in Czechoslovakia when his flight met two FW 190 fighter-bombers of Schlachtgeschwader 10 returning from a mission. The twenty-one-year-old Hoosier lost his fight with one of the Germans, who was in turn downed by Whitehead’s wingman, First Lieutenant Harry Morris, avenging his leader’s death. Whitehead probably was the last Fifteenth Air Force pilot killed in air combat.38

  The First Group strafed rail lines in southern Germany on the fifteenth, deploying its squadrons in the Regensburg-Salzburg-Munich triangle. Minimal top cover was assigned, as the group had seen only four airborne bandits since December.

  The hunting was good: P-38s strafed twenty-one locomotives, destroying eleven, and riddling two dozen rail cars, including a Flakwagen. One luckless Focke-Wulf pilot crossed the sights of a Twenty-seventh Squadron pilot, First Lieutenant Warren Danielson. It was his first victory and the group’s last.

  But the Lig
htnings paid for their success. Operating in a denser defense environment, the “ack-ack” fire was thick and lethal. Five P-38s were shot down, including the leaders of all three squadrons.

  The concentrated defenses of northern Italy and southern Germany confounded the conventional wisdom of strafing. Ordinarily the first fighters sweeping over a target got away clean, as they usually enjoyed the advantage of surprise, while wingmen and trailing flights tended to catch the flak. But no more. When aggressive formation leaders made repeated runs on defended targets, their odds were the same as those behind them. Not even the P-38’s twin engines prevented heavy Lightning casualties. That month they accounted for twenty-four of the forty-two fighter losses, the First and Fourteenth Groups losing nine and ten respectively.

  The First Group’s attrition continued that month, as Lightnings had to hunt at low level to find concealed targets, within range of light and medium AA guns. The toll included two squadron leaders and a flight commander near Padua-Verona on April 23. An operational summary concluded, “the damage inflicted against the losses sustained does not make this type of mission practical in Northern Italy.”39

  In fairness to the P-38, the casualties for the most part were the result simply of exposure. Since Romania’s capitulation eight months before, the big Lockheeds had drawn a disproportionate share of air-to-ground missions, while Mustangs focused on escort. During April, in fact, the Thirty-first Group lost only three P-51s in combat and the Fifty-second only one.40 Despite the losses, however, the Fifteenth’s combat attrition for April was down 33 percent from March—from 112 to 84.41

  The pace of operations never slackened. Depending on weather, some groups flew eleven missions in the first twelve days. Then on the thirteenth came word from home that Franklin D. Roosevelt had died at Warm Springs, Georgia.

  The news affected nearly everyone, though some took it harder than others. At Cerignola a Democrat in the officer’s club was disconsolate: “The war is over. The war is lost.” With that, the flier—already known as a heavy drinker—got blitzed, repeatedly diving off the bar and trusting his friends, presumably including some Republicans, to catch him. Finally the others told the offender that he could stay as drunk as he wished, but the rest of them had to fly the next day.

  Among the men in the bar was a pilot from South Dakota, First Lieutenant George McGovern. He recalled, “It just struck me how close we really were. Here we were 3,000 miles from home and yet the death of Roosevelt hit that group of men awfully hard. They weren’t particularly political—it’s just that they hadn’t known any other president.”42

  Then the fliers got on with the war.

  Tactical operations continued against enemy supply routes from southern Germany into Italy. On April 20 the heavies attacked bridges in the Brenner Pass and Po Valley, while P-38s bombed rail lines from Innsbruck to Rosenheim. In two days the Lightnings scored forty rail cuts and destroyed or rendered useless four rail bridges. The next day P-38s inflicted thirty-nine cuts and left three rail yards, a rail bridge, and a highway crossing destroyed or inoperable.

  As opposition declined, bombing accuracy rose. The star performer of April was Colonel LeRoy Stefonowicz’s 451st, which frequently put 90 percent of its ordnance within the desired thousand feet of the aim point. On the twentieth, attacking a bridge at Lusia, the bombardiers scored 100 percent—probably the only perfect score in Fifteenth history. All sixteen spans of the 590-foot bridge were down.

  ENDGAME

  The last losses came in batches and singles. At San Giovanni the 455th Group spoke for the entire air force. “Everyone knew the war would soon be over, and the aircrews started sweating out the last few missions, as they had made it this far, and some suspicions and anxiety prevailed about getting shot down at this stage.”43

  Fourteen bombers from a dozen groups failed to return from Austrian rail targets on April 25, as did a Carpetbagger B-24. That day the 455th “Vulgar Vultures” lost Lieutenant John Greenman’s crew over Linz. Seven Liberators took severe flak damage with eleven others lightly damaged.

  The group’s Mission 253 was scheduled for the next day, and as usual the Liberators started their Pratt & Whitney engines. But they had barely turned their props when the providential red flare arced upward from the control tower. “April was over and so was the war in Europe,” said a group history.44

  The information was not distributed uniformly. That evening at Castellucio the softball game was interrupted with word of cessation of hostilities until further notice. The rejoicing was short lived; that night the 451st was alerted for “POM,” preparation for overseas movement in two weeks. The order could mean only one thing—the Liberators were deploying to the Pacific.

  The last U.S. fighter victories in the Mediterranean Theater came the next day, the twenty-sixth. During a photo escort near Prague, a flight from the 332nd Group tangled with five 109s to protect a recon Lightning. The Red Tails claimed four kills, including two by Lieutenant Thomas W. Jefferson.

  April 26 also brought the last fighter losses. Two Thirty-firsters were hit while strafing, and both planes went down without any sign of life: Lieutenants Ralph Lockney and Raymond Leonard were listed MIA. They were experienced pilots: Lockney had escaped from Yugoslavia in February, and Leonard had downed a jet in March.

  That day the 460th Group flew its 205th mission since March 1944, launching thirty-one Liberators against tactical targets in northern Italy. Heavy overcast kept them from attacking the primary and secondary targets, forcing most planes to abort. But the six B-24s of “Able Box” made a radar run on the Klagenfurt marshalling yard, where Captain Paul B. O’Connell’s Seldom Available was shot down by flak. All but one man safely parachuted from the spiraling Liberator—probably the last Fifteenth bomber lost to enemy action. Sergeant Edward S. Kovaleski of Southbridge, Massachusetts, was declared dead 366 days later.45

  MAY TWILIGHT

  Rumors swirled around Foggia. The Germans were surrendering. They were not surrendering. The Fifteenth was being demobilized. It was transferring to the Pacific. The uncertainty gnawed at the men—nobody knew for certain.

  In the waning days of hostilities, emotions tugged in different directions. Aircrews recognized the same “last man” syndrome some of their fathers and uncles had described as the clock ticked closer to the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month a quarter-century before. One fighter pilot explained, “The closer they got to the announcement that the war was over, the less everyone felt like they thought they would feel. It wasn’t sadness, but they were not happy either. They didn’t quite know how to feel; emotions kept changing inside them, in turmoil and confusion. Everyone thought he knew how he should feel, but admitted he didn’t feel that way.”46

  Some enlisted men had been overseas for three years. Long-serving units such as the 154th weather scouts, which had been in the theater since late 1942, were “nervous in the service.” Men were tired of gin and juice and just wanted a quart of milk. Major William R. Dinker repeatedly tried to learn his unit’s intended fate but always received the exasperated headquarters response, “Look, how can we tell you when we don’t know ourselves?” One wag noted, “Don’t believe all these rumors like driving to Vladivostok by jeep!”47

  The Fifteenth Air Force’s final bombing mission was to Salzburg on May Day. Battling poor weather, Lieutenant Colonel J. C. Reardon’s twenty-seven Fortresses were briefed to hit the main rail station and marshalling yard. The Second Group—whose motto was “The Second is first”—was the last in combat, logging Mission 412. Heavy-caliber flak was assessed moderate and inaccurate, though two crewmen received slight wounds and another suffered anoxia. One B-17 left formation with a propeller feathered but landed at Cervia.

  Reardon recognized the changed circumstances as the end of hostilities approached. His twenty-year-old navigator, Lieutenant Farley G. Mann, related, “A decision was made by Colonel Reardon, and agreed on by his crew, that we would not drop our bombs on the marshaling
yards. We all knew that the war was all but over. Colonel Reardon said, ‘Let’s get them in the open fields,’ and we dropped our bombs in what we hoped were open fields.” That evening at Amendola the group commander, Colonel Paul Cullen, noted that strike photography showed no damage to the target. Though the CO appeared angry, said Mann, “I believe he was putting on an act.”48

  On May 2 men eagerly monitored radio news reports. The broadcasts were optimistic: all Axis troops in northern Italy and some provinces of southern Austria had surrendered unconditionally to the Allies. Hitler was dead and Berlin had fallen to the Russians.

  At Mondolfo airfield there was more immediate news. That day the Thirty-first Group’s Lieutenant Ralph D. Lockney returned from an adventure worthy of an Errol Flynn movie. Hit by flak over northern Italy on April 26, Lockney had bellied in his P-51, but no one saw him exit so he went MIA. While being held with other prisoners, he received the surrender of the German guards who laid down their weapons. But when anti-Fascist guerrillas attacked the compound, the Americans returned the Germans’ rifles for the defense of all. In the ensuing shootout, the intrepid Lockney took himself elsewhere, then hitch-hiked home by the scenic route: Venice and Padua.49

  Flight schedules were altered in the twilight between war and peace. Reconnaissance missions continued, but the only escorts were for transport runs and leaflet drops. Fifteenth fighters accompanied U.S. and British planes dropping supplies in Yugoslavia and points west and locating POW camps. Meanwhile, Europe inched closer to peace. On May 7 Germany’s unconditional surrender was expected within twenty-four hours, and on several bases officers collected small arms from all but military police, anticipating celebratory gunfire when The Word came down.