ok, i wont post after being out all night....
my apologies to everyone.
this is a real long story about being shot down and escaping and evading the germans...
Downed but Not Out: A 316th Pilot's Escape Through German Lines
by James P. Dealy
My forty-third mission took place in the late morning of Saturday the 13th of May, 1944 ( I've been wary of May the 13th ever since! ) and just two days after the powerful offensive thrust against the Axis forces in northern Italy. Intelligence called for an air strike against a train loaded with enemy troops en route to relieve their garrison at Monte Cassino.
The German train had left Rome and was on its way to Frasinone. Most of the pilots in all three squadrons of the 324th were already on sorties or were otherwise out of the camp area at Pignataro (we had recently moved there from Cercola to be closer to the front). I was resting in my tent after flying twenty-nine missions in the preceding twenty eight days, when they dug me out of my sack for that ill fated-scramble -- four pilots from out of the 315th and four of us from the 316th. Major Sanders led the eight ship sortie and his element leader was Lt. Ken Scheiwe. One wing man was Lt. Kusch. Lt. King led our flight and I was his element leader. Lt. Matthew O'Brien (his second or third sortie) was on King's wing and another new recruit flew on my wing.
It may have been a bad omen that my own P40, number 79, "The Lovely Lois", was out for a routine maintenance check; so I was assigned Lt. Sven Jernstrom's number 93 Warhawk. Each pilot left his parachute in the bucket seat all the time. Since "Jerky" was about six inches taller and fifty pounds heavier than I was, you can imagine how his chute fit me!
We searched all the way up the Liri Valley railroad tracks to the suburbs of Rome and then Major Sanders led us back for another look. At some point over the high mountains approximately 45 miles northeast of Anzio, we were jumped by about twenty of the crack "Ace of Spades" ME 109 Luftwaffe fighter pilots. They probably scored several hundreds of conquests over Allied planes (they counted four kills for a single four-engine bomber), and they would add more victories to their score before this engagement was over! There were also two or three dozen FW 190s armed with bombs under the MEs, but I do not recall seeing any of those planes in the dog fight.
Sanders pulled into a Lufberry left and ordered "Bombs away!" Before the circle was completed, Lt. Kusch was hit and (I was informed later) went in with plane and bomb. After the second turn and upon resuming the Lufberry from shooting nearly head on at the 109s (I noted they attacked in pairs), I saw Lt. O'Brien just ahead of me level off to the right and leap out of his plane. I honestly believe that "Obey" made a speed record for hitting the silk, because we were flying about 250 mph!
On the third orbit of the Lufberry, I saw "Obey" floating down in his white 'chute just below us and a striped parachute about 2,000 feet above our level, possibly one less Kraut pilot who nailed him?. No time to keep count, though I knew King was right in front of me now.
I don't know how many orbits we made, perhaps five or six, that's about how many times I leveled off to spray some 50 cal. rounds at them. On that last one, I had leveled off to get a good burst at a yo yo ing Jerry pilot (and I thought I was being successful) just as our leader called "Tally ho!" and made a split S down toward a distant bank of clouds between mountain ridges.
I was too intent on getting a second victory, so I wound up being "Tail end Charlie" and quite a distance rearward. Although I could yet see the others in single file, with several pursuing MEs, I could not count them and assumed my wingman was behind me. I nearly red lined the throttle in a steep dive to try and catch up. Soon, barely above the huge rock boulders in that valley, I was gaining very well on the others.
Shortly before the leader reached the cloud cover, the second or third American pilot behind him suddenly pulled left and up the mountain slope and so fiercely fired at a 109 that he must have seriously damaged it. Then, another ME flew in on our pilot's tail immediately in front of me. I whipped my plane left and blasted up into that enemy's tail. With my "catch up" speed I was firing almost point blank. I was still firing when old number 93 was very well clobbered. In these last four sentences we're talking fractions of seconds in elapsed time. Despite being stunned, my reflexes saved further damage by pulling right and up into that welcoming thin cloud cover.
One has to experience such an instantaneous and accurate hit to know "just how the world turns upside down". Smoke and/or dust in the cockpit, radio and transmission gone as I had no sound from my "May day" call, outside air blasting in noisily, burned metal odors and a sickly feel of both controls and engine.
I was heading southward and worrying about collision with another plane or the mountaintops while flying in the clouds yet fearful of going out (up or down) and catching some more 20mm. "golf balls".
Now, I saw the engine heat indicator at the red line, so I quickly and reluctantly concluded that there would be no emergency landing at Anzio on this mission. Finally, I was losing air speed.
After a few moments of flying blind, two vital things happened. First, I broke out of the cloud cover, and-next, my engine began to freeze up. Looking around, I could see we were heading for a small village on the mountain slope and a paved road beyond the village, Scattered farm houses dotted the landscape, but there was no field flat or large enough for number 93 to belly in. I tried to lose air speed by lifting the plane's nose, but it wanted to drop that right wing at about 180 airspeed. I didn't even try the flaps, as I wasn't all that sure they were still on the wings.
So, off with the shoulder straps, mike and head phone lines, open canopy and jump for the right wing. By now, at around 3,000 feet (or less) number 93 went into its spin and I was thrown first into the antenna behind the cockpit, then pushed off and into the tail section, hard! Praise the Lord! I hit the tail backwards on a line from my left knee on through the parachute pack. I hung thus for another fraction of a second (or more) until spun off and away. No time to count before I pulled the rip cord, and there had already been too much trauma for me to think of saving that handle for good luck. Praise the Lord again! "Jerky's" parachute opened, but with quite a jolt to my crotch area!
I almost enjoyed the quiet float towards a large, white, two story stone farm house south of the highway. Drifting past the village (Roccasccca, Maenza) there appeared two unpleasant sights -- number 93 burning fiercely between the road and the village and a car and two motorcycles coming up the road about three or four miles southeastward. Had to be Germans. With my goggles still on, I didn't see my legs, but my left leg hurt so much that I thought of Lt. John Leggett of the 315th, who had been killed a month earlier when he was struck by his plane while bailing out near Anzio.
I reached down gingerly and felt below the knee. Praise the Lord for the third time in two or three minutes! The leg was still intact. The ground's approaching too swiftly, I thought, and then I landed on my right leg only and ricocheted into the ground on my nose, breaking it for the second time in a P-40 accident (the first time several months earlier while in training in the U.S.)
The Italian farming family at the white house (less than 100 feet away) seemed to lose no time in reaching me, although it's possible I may have lain unconscious for a short time. A young man said, "Americano pilotta?" I answered "Yes. Oui. Si." Then he pulled off my chute, goggles and helmet and hid them in a nearby haystack. An older man took off his shabby, frayed gray suit coat and helped me into it.
Suddenly, there were the sounds of motorcycles and a Volkswagen coming up the wagon trail from the highway. The two or three men and several women scattered westward toward nearby rocky hills. Only one three- or four-year-old girl and one badly battered, frustrated ex fighter pilot remained. As difficult as it may be to believe, the child took my hand and calmly led me into the house, up a rickety flight of stairs and into a room. Silently, she pointed to a covered space under a bed. Following her directions, I rolled under the bed like a child myself! In an instant, the girl had disappeared.
From this awkward and somewhat demeaning hiding place, I soon heard guttural shouts and then several short bursts from a 9mm. Schmeisser machine pistol (it didn't make as loud a noise as one would expect). Silence followed for about ten or fifteen minutes, until the young man arrived to escort me to the rear of the house and into a waist high field of wheat. We made an odd pair as he half ran and I hobbled along in a stooped position for a distance of about 500 yards. The pain in the knee was intense.
There were more boosts of gunfire, this time from MP40s — the "burp" gun; and that's what it sounded like when fired. The projectiles fell all around us, and the Italian lad took off like a wounded pheasant. I rolled and crawled about 200 feet to the right and found a dense growth of wheat with a small wash between stalks. Here I lay face down for thirty minutes to an hour. The Germans probably thought their bullets hit at least one of us, as they searched for a long time. They continued their hunt in ever widening circles, and I could actually hear their boots shuffling as they passed.
An hour or so after I first heard them walking about, I rose slightly to see my Italian savior just as he spotted me. He crawled over for a whispered, but fruitless conversation. I tried to penetrate the language barrier by using Latin. My grades in that subject at Coffee High School in Florence, Alabama had always been in the "A" category. But it was all in vain, as he had no grasp of that venerable tongue or of English. In desperation, I showed him my dog tags, the escape map and the escape money. The latter was the internationally understood communication! He fingered it affectionately and whistled softly. As I remember it, our pilots were furnished with 50,000 lira after every sortie briefing.
Realizing the extreme danger of my situation, I gave him most of the money in the hope that he would help me to escape. This was probably the most money he had ever seen in one pile, although on our side of the battle line inflation was so high that one U.S. dollar was equal to 1,000 lira. Anyway, he took the notes and in sign language instructed me to lie still until he returned for me that night.
While waiting, I reflected on my two months of combat flying, the dogfight and my aches and pains. Actually, excluding the two weeks off for the sprained ankle, there had been forty five days during which I flew my forty three missions; but I had flown two missions on the same day twelve times in the last part of March, April and the first half of May. During that period (and, indeed, until I left for the United States on the 8th of June) I knew of no other pilot in any of the three squadrons of our group who had run into Luftwaffe fighter pilots twice except for Bill King, and he had been on the same two missions.
My brothers, Jack and Bob, during their combined 86 missions had not seen an enemy plane while flying for the 314th Squadron. Of course, the P-40 was strictly a dive bombing and strafing weapon by this time, and it was not considered the equal of the FW and ME planes of the enemy in air-to-air fighting. Then too, by this time the Germans were running low on pilots, aircraft and fuel.
Now, the bad knee was growing quite stiff and increasingly painful; the broken nose (actually, this was a "break", if you will excuse the pun, as it bent my nose back towards the way it was before my first mishap, a badly bruised and uncomfortable right buttock from the impact that injured my left knee (this part of the collision with the tail section had gone through about eight inches of parachute and dinghy padding!); skinned shoulder, elbows and facial areas, and various cuts and punctures up and down my back. probably from 20mm. fragments. One thing was certain my present and future escape plans would be severely handicapped by that bad leg. If I were captured (perish the thought!) I would at least have a chance of decent medical attention.
The younger Italian man returned at dusk with his father. I learned later their names were, respectively, Luigi and Rocco di Angelis. The father knew a smattering of English, having worked in a railroad gang in Pennsylvania just after World War I (small world!). They assisted me to Luigi's home nearby.
The house was a low, poorly made structure of three rooms and built of a conglomeration of wood and tin probably gleaned from the debris of German and Italian bivouac areas. Here they removed my gabardine flight suit and washed all my cuts and bruises with wine soaked, dirty rags. They had no soap, salt, oil products or medical supplies all of which were practically none existent in the German occupied areas in Italy. Next they removed a dime sized metal fragment from the rear of my left thigh; the scar remains. A concoction of fried whole wheat, on another filthy rag, was used as a poultice to ease the pain and swelling of the knee. I'm not sure it did much good.
The family hid my flight suit and GI brogans and replaced them with an ancient pair of trousers, a ragged cloth shirt and a pair of buffalo-skin sandals that laced around the ankles with heavy strings. I think the heavy, dark green wool pantaloons were from a World War I Italian uniform, or a relic from Mussolini's Ethiopian campaign. Anyway, they tapered below the knees and tied at the calves with string. The sandals' flat leather soles had been broken in by Luigi's mother and fitted all right, but they were so thick and hard that I collected blisters on my heels and toes henceforth. They would stay on my feet during the next twelve days.
I also retained Rocco's shabby gray coat. They told me that the "Tedeschis" (Germans) were still hunting for me and that the search party had barely missed some of the family members with the "burp" gun I had heard firing while I was under the bed. Knowing they risked their lives if I were found there, the family equipped me with a wooden staff and then half carried me a mile away to a relative's (the Domonicis) homestead.
Feeling a bit sickly, I declined an offer of unappetizing appearing food. I was shown to a straw bed inside a low, six by ten feet straw thatched barn. The resident donkey was turned out to pasture. Rough day and rough night! Here I lay for the first five days and six nights.
Perhaps because I was delirious, I do not remember much of the first four days. They may have given me a raw egg and some wine, but I don't recall it. Nor do I remember seeing the Italians during those first few days, although they probably looked in on me daily to see if things were all right. On the fifth morning they brought two eggs. As I sucked out the nourishing insides, I reflected just how precious those eggs must have been to that poor family. Also provided were a bottle of wine (complete with maggots), a generous hunk of black, hard, homemade bread, and a piece of cheese which I ate with great relish, rind and all.
Not a smart move, one was not expected to consume the rind, as that part was exposed to the animal manure that the cheese was cured in. Perhaps this was the cause of the amoebic dysentery that plagued me during the next eighteen months or so. Or again, it could have been some of the food that I ate in the next six days. The cheese was made of the buffalo milk. There were no goats or cattle since the Germans had pilfered all of those animals in the valley.
I recall several other incidents while the jackass barn was my "R&R".
One day I hobbled out for relief and noticed a scrawny dog eating a four-foot-long snake. This was new to me, having been around dogs all my life; but it was probably the beast's only meat in a long time. I studied the terrain around the hideaway and beyond. Thank goodness, I did not belly in old number 93 hereabouts! There were huge rock boulders everywhere and numerous rocky hills.
On the fifth afternoon, the father, son and a brother-in-law returned for a long visit over wine and terrible hand rolled cigarettes. They were happy that I was feeling better and Rocco remarked that the Germans had quit searching for me that day. He also said there was another American pilot hiding nearby. I wondered if he had been on my final sortie.
Everyone, said Rocco, enjoyed the candy found in my dinghy, but after trying the powdered "sucre" their mouths had turned green. Those poor, starved people had tried to eat the fluorescent dye that assisted a downed pilot at sea to signal for rescue!
Finally, in this very quiet part of Italy on nights four, five and six, there were huge movements of enemy men, horses and equipment heading toward Anzio or Rome on the nearby highway. There were thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of troops. They traveled so quietly that I could barely hear the squealing of caissons, the whining of mechanized equipment or the clopping of the horses hooves. I never heard voices, nor did I see any lights whatsoever on these dusk to daylight retreats of these once mighty forces that had fought on the Cassino and Volturno fronts.
And in the day time? Absolutely no sign of these masses. But this exodus was a sign to all of us that the Allies' big push was a great success indeed! Still, where would they make their next stand? Some thought they would retaliate with a concentrated attack on poor Anzio, about twenty miles due west.
On the sixth afternoon we had two visitors; a young, unfriendly (or suspicious) Italian, who was active in the underground, and Lt. Douglas Plowden of Sumter, South Carolina, a U.S. Air Force pilot who had been shot down by ground fire on his 51st mission six months previously, while dive bombing and strafing in one of the new A-36s. Doug was in decrepit "Eytie" garb, but with his tall frame and blond hair he looked more German than Italian. How he had managed to hide out that long, I couldn't imagine.
First, he asked about my escape money and nearly cried when I told him that most of it was gone. "There goes our tobacco and vino supplies," he grumbled. Then he asked about chances for rescue, and I showed him the silk map and described the point 100 plus miles northwest from us where we were to rendezvous with an Allied navy ship, Finally, I was questioned concerning the recent status of the war southward, and I answered to the best of my ability. Both were very happy about the big offensive going on, as they had not known about it.
We ate supper with Luigi and his brother-in-law Dominici and their wives and children. There was no table. On the earthen floor was placed a large communal wooden bowl, with about ten wooden spoons circling its rim. Around the bowl were several three legged stools. The fare was homemade noodles, snails and cheese simmered in milk. The only spice on hand was garlic.
After the meal, we retired to my grass shack for talk and plans. Doug told me that he had heard of our dogfight the week before from the partisans. They had told him that by their count three Jerries and three Americans had been shot down not including me. Who was the fourth U.S. pilot? I still do not know, and then again perhaps their count was wrong. My guests departed at sundown, saying that Doug would be at my hut early next morning to escort me up the mountain where it was safer to hide, and that the partisans would get medical help for me before meeting us en route to the top.
Luigi had been advised of the plans and would lend us the jenny to transport one crippled pilot. That same night he returned with a sheet of Italian ledger paper (another scarce item) and a stub of indelible pencil for me with which to write a note to Lois saying that I was safe and would return as soon as possible. With the note completed, I folded the sheet into an envelope, addressed it and gave it to Luigi to hide until he could hand it over to an American once the Allies arrived.
This was a security risk, because after it was turned over, there would be no telling how many intelligence people scrutinized it between Rome and Washington before it was delivered to my father in July. But I set caution aside to inform the family that the war could stall again thus delaying our liberation by some months. In retrospect, I certainly must have trusted Luigi .
As planned, Doug arrived on the seventh morning, and we set out with him walking five or ten yards ahead of me astride the jenny. She was so short from her shoeless footpads to unsaddled swayback that my right foot occasionally scraped the ground.
Close to the highway in a small wheatfield we passed a large camouflaged anti-aircraft weapon. Its gunner was bent over nearby while performing his morning "ritual". The German eyed us with mixed suspicion and contempt, but his awkward position prevented him from questioning us. We arrived at the first of Doug!as's hiding spots after six hours of toiling up the mountain's slope.
Here was another poverty stricken family who fed us as best they could with bread, cheese and wine. The host provided us with tobacco which we rolled into lumpy cigarettes, using Allied propaganda leaflets for cigarette paper. These leaflets were all around the hills and valleys of that area, and following is a typical passage from their text:
"Der Sommer 1942 brachte den Deutschen Vormarsch nach Stalingrad und nach Aegyptcn Der Sommer 1943 brachte den Deutschcn Ruckzug zurn Dnjepr und nach Italien Der Sommer 1944 ? WAS WIRD DER SOMMER 1944 BRINGEN?
The leaflets made good cigarette paper and I enjoyed my fourth and fifth cigarettes in seven days especially since I had made these myself. The others had been made by the Italians in the valley, and I thought they used too much saliva to glue the paper! That night we slept in the weeds of their olive grove.
Early on the eighth morning, we continued up to a ledge more than halfway up the mountain, Doug's second hideaway. This was a large straw thatched circular barn behind and downslope of his benefactor's house. Squatting on the barn's straw strewn floor was a strange foursome playing contract bridge with a well worn and handmade deck of cards. In the group was one young Englishman (about my age) and three white South Africans. The latter had walked out of an Italian prison after the country had capitulated in 1943 and their guards had fled to parts unknown. The three had been captured during their first desert battle with elements of Rommel's forces.
The "Limey" (I saw only one tooth in his mouth) had a stranger story to tell. He had been part of the crew aboard a Sunderland, a Royal Navy patrol plane, in 1939 when they were shot down off Gibraltar by a German sub! Held a captive for four years, he had been in the same prison as the South Africans, Along with them, he had been trying for the past eight or nine months to make his way to southern Italy.
Together, we were a motley remnant of the Allied might! I took the Englishman's place in the card game .... but suddenly it was interrupted by our host rushing by and hissing "Tedeschi! Tcdcschi! " This signaled that two armed Germans were close by. Were they searching for us or for food?
In great haste, we gathered up the cards and rushed downslope in six different directions to hide. Although hindered by my game leg, I soon found a good boulder amid lots of brush. Here I hunkered down until the Italian gave us the "all clear" about an hour later. In a fury, he told us the Germans had stolen his last few cheeses, some bread and wine before continuing westward to Roccasecca.
Regrouping, we went on with our bridge playing. The others exchanged favorite stories on escapees and evaders. One concerned a German deserter in Roccasecca, who earned his subsistence by giving shaves and haircuts. He had said that he left his army near Cassino because the Allies made things too rough to suit him, The other tale,, as I remember it, was about four escaped Russian infantrymen, all of whom were armed to the teeth with a burp gun and two canisters of 9mm. shells hidden under their greatcoats. No one, Italians or escapees, would have anything to do with them because of the obvious consequences if captured in their midst.
I noticed that among us other Allied escapists, there was no weapon, not even a pen knife. The only metallic things I had were my dog tags, and they were sewn into the hem of my undershorts. It was wise not to have gone down with the .45 revolver we were issued back in the U.S.
True to his word, the Italian partisan arrived about 3 p.m. With him was a short, baldish, trussed up, blindfolded well dressed physician. Doug told me the man was a Fascist Party member and, as all professionals and other Italians employed by the doomed Mussolini regime, he dressed and lived as a wealthy man. He was untied and given his doctor's satchel. After examining me, he applied what I thought was amica to the cuts and bruises and bandaged my swollen knee. All the while he kept up a running conversation with Doug with me as the obvious subject. By now, my left knee was nearly double the size of my right knee and looked bad -- black, blue, red, yellow and even greenish for three or four inches up and down and around the leg.
Doug said that the doctor advised cutting off the leg just above the knee. I asked Doug to tell him in Italian just where he could shove that prognosis. He didn't seem to appreciate that. Before they trussed him up for the return trip he gave me a blank prescription slip and a pencil. Then he demanded that I write a note and sign it, stating that he had given me medical aid. I told him where he could shove that too, and everyone in our group seemed to agree. Even his fellow countrymen were contemptuous of him.
As they led him away, he complained loudly and bitterly about the injustice of his treatment at the hands of the partisans. Obviously, they had kidnapped that man somewhere within a two days' walk but I had the feeling that the partisan leader was armed with a small pistol; probably a 7mm. Italian Beretta. No doubt it had helped in persuading the doctor to make his "house call".
I don't recall that we had anything to eat that day, but we left early the next morning to assure that we reached the mountaintop before dark. I was still astride the miniature donkey. As we neared the summit, we met a large group of partisans, and Doug sent the little jackass back to Luigi in the custody of one of them. The others assisted me up the final bluff, and we held a joyful party when we broke out into the spacious and level crest.
Thirty or forty of the group unpacked homemade sausages that were moldy and, I guessed, were made of goat meat. The others brought forth their bottles of vino. The celebration was caused by the news that the Germans and Allies were skirmishing in the mountains south of us.
The group was in a feisty mood, brandishing their knives and one old pistol. I gathered that their intention was to aid our side against their former allies. I still believe this was but a show of mock heroics, and that they would quickly return to their hiding places until assured there were no more Krauts around. Anyway, the wine and sausages were nourishing, if not too appetizing. Could that be where my dysentery started?
Doug helped me to his third hiding place (one of how many in his six months of wandering about here?). It was a small building with the first wooden floor I had yet seen and modestly furnished by our hosts, a very nice elderly couple. After Doug had talked to them for a while, we retired to my first real bed in nine nights. Although tired from the climb, I still didn't sleep well thanks to the freezing cold! The temperature must have hovered around 35'. Of course, there was no heat in the house and no blankets. But we were close to 4,000 feel above the Mediterranean (which we saw at a distance) and that's the reason it was so cold here in the latter part of May in "sunny Italy".
While giving us a breakfast of some kind of porridge, our hostess realized I was cold, so she replaced my ragged cotton shirt with a home spun woolen pullover and gave me a pair of hand knitted, patched, knee length stockings. Now, at last, I was warm!
Things were very quiet on that tenth morning in this hideaway hamlet of about thirty scattered homes; no roads here, just a well-worn path running southeast to northwest. In the afternoon there was a sudden clamoring and screeching outside, and we saw the women folk waving large white cloths all along the path. Doug said that there must be an Allied patrol advancing in our direction because we had heard no gunfire.
He rushed down the path to intercept them while I hobbled to a stone fence to await our liberating party. In about fifteen minutes they came slowly into view, walking in single file. Unbelievably, they were American doughboys! When they arrived at my spot and halted, the first one I saw was a strapping, huge master sergeant. Then a corporal, and following him was Brigadier General Ernest N. Harmon of the Fifth Army! At the time our paths crossed, Harmon was commander of the First Armored Division. I later learned from Life Magazine that he was considered the "most colorful and kinetic general officer in the E.T.O." and at war's end as a Lt. General he was "in charge of 33,000 specially trained troopers of the U.S. Constabulary policing all of Germany during the occupation period."
He was, I believe, shorter than me (5' 7") and quite stout. At his side was one of a dozen or two Missouri mules carrying radio and telephone equipment, etc. He said tersely, "I understand you are a wounded fighter pilot shot down here recently. The medics section is at the rear." That was all, and he motioned the patrol forward. He had been given that information by Doug, who was back in the line stuffing himself on C rations and chain smoking American cigarettes. I sat down (to be truthful, tearfully) to watch this magnificent group march by advancing twenty or thirty yards, then stopping awhile and repeating the process until assured by the scouts that all was clear ahead.
As they filed by, they paid scarcely any attention to me, a bedraggled, disheveled unshaven figure sitting by the wayside. They marched in route step, disciplined, fearless and beautiful! I thought this was the most rugged, toughest and heroic group that I would ever again see anywhere. Most of them were from Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas, I believe. Surely, no army past, present or future could be a match for these seasoned doughboys! In contrast to me, the Italians and General Harmon, they all seemed to be six feet tail and 200 pounds in weight!
After the first two hundred or so passed by, I noticed a tall, heavy set Indian. I called out to him, "What part of Oklahoma are you from?" He grunted, "No capiche" and walked on a few steps. Suddenly, he broke out of file,, ran back to me and said, "What the hell did you say?" I repeated my question, identified myself and told him that I had been working in Oklahoma before volunteering for the Air Force. He told me he was a Pawnee from Muskogee, and I replied that Bob Pappan, one of my helpers in the government lab at Tulsa, was a Pawnee and had been drafted before Pearl Harbor. He gave me a chunk of chocolate and a pack of Camels, then rushed back to his place in the patrol. Oh! how good the candy and tobacco tasted! I waited about a half hour for Doug and the medics while the patrol bivouacked ahead at the end of the mountain ridge. It would be dark soon.
Early that night, a sergeant, lieutenant and a captain (the latter a Rogers or Roberts from Knoxville, Tennessee) visited us at our new hideaway to ask questions about the area and the people. They had food rations, cigarettes and soap, which we shared with our hosts, who were very grateful as they had not seen these luxuries in years. This visit was probably ordered by General Harmon. We (mostly Doug) answered their queries and told them about the sudden appearance of the two Jcrries while we had been playing cards and of the German deserter at Roccasecca. This and other bits of information we had was passed along to the three men. Captain R. was especially interested in the three Germans at Roccasecca, and he stated that he would "visit" them later that night.
The captain told us that earlier this brigade had fought through the faltering enemy front in a night attack up the mountain. Afterwards, they marched for three or four days undetected by the enemy in this so called "fluid front" until they reached our hiding area. He added that the troops had literally worn out their boots, and that provisions were getting low. Hence, the general would send a two mule pack team back to fetch the needed supplies. In addition, he had ordered a corporal and a private to lead us back with them. I would ride one mule (on a wooden saddle), while Doug and the two partisans would alternate riding the other. We were to start at first light on my eleventh day in enemy territory.
The next day, after an hour of picking our way along the mountain ridge, we were met by a burst of machine gun fire. Fortunately, it missed men and mules. This was another rough test on my crippled leg, but I left that mule in record time to hide behind the massive rocks downslope (please don't hit that wonderful mule, was my fervent wish!). Minutes later our pack train resumed its course along a path lower down the westward slope away from the guns, and we were apparently not visible to them anymore.
Another hour or two of difficult travel elapsed before we heard the sounds of heavy artillery. This time we were not the target, as our corporal observed through his binoculars. A large group of Germans on a mountain top to our left were firing their 20 mm and larger guns at a small American patrol armed with 50 caliber machine guns on a mountain top to our right. We continued between them and under the heavy crossfire until the racket sank to sporadic bursts.
We finally moved out of the fire zone, and the corporal sadly told me that the patrol under fire was from his division, and he thought it had been wiped out. By mid afternoon we approached the important pass leading down to Fondi from the high mountains, and for the first time in my recent travels I saw, not a forest, but medium sized trees. Here there was more fighting. But this time the "good guys" were winning! We went right through the battle area and saw our side shooting at snipers some of whom were up in tree branches no more than forty or fifty yards from us. I guess we weren't an important target for the snipers, as they paid no attention to us.
On our way through we saw many "immobile" of the enemy lying about and some prisoners. We halted once, when the firing was especially brisk, and were some ten to fifteen feet from a frightened prisoner sitting on a rock with his hands on the top of his blond hair. Immaculate in his green gabardine uniform, he did not look more than eighteen years old. I asked the corporal to cut out his infantry badge ( a brown eagle with the swastika in its claws and inverted wings) on his right chest. The prisoner was even more scared as the corporal obliged, also confiscating the prisoner's bayonet for me.
Along with other mementos, I still have those souvenirs. We descended the pass towards the Fifth Army's temporary headquarters at the foot of these high mountains. During these final three or four hours of our journey we experienced the most awesome noises I had ever heard. Allied big guns were lobbing projectiles over us (it seemed within 100 feet) at targets around the pass. The roar of the firing from the 90s, 105s and larger artillery pieces was bad enough; but the hissing and screaming of rockets overhead was almost unbelievable.
At dusk, we finally arrived in safe Allied territory. Getting out of that wooden saddle for the last time, I first kissed the ground in the traditional manner, and then untraditionally kissed the rear end of that beautiful, faithful, strong and sure footed Missouri mule! It would be weeks before my already bruised rear was healed. American intelligence officers arranged for our bedding down in sleeping bags on their office floor, after giving us a supper of C rations, real bacon and warm beer. How delicious! But the war wasn't over for us. We still heard the big guns and sniper fire.
About midnight all hell broke loose again! German J 88 night bombers scared us the rest of the night with their bombs and flares, some landing pretty close at times. Our anti-aircraft guns also helped keep us awake. I think intelligence called my Hell's Belles fighter squadron to verify my identity that night or early next morning. I was still (as Captain Robert J. Wynne put it) "in debilitory native attire", and up to this point no one had offered to equip us with U.S. uniforms.
The earlier part of that last morning was taken up by answering Intelligence questions. There were others among us returning from enemy territory including the partisans and a young, frightened French private in uniform and still armed with his rifle. During the interrogation of this young soldier (a member of the Free French attached to our forces in Italy) he was knocked to the floor by a French officer on the intelligence team. It turned out the soldier had fled his unit under fire.
Strange discipline, I thought, but didn't we have a similar incident between an alleged "goldbrick" and a certain high ranking general at a U.S. hospital in Sicily? After the questioning, we left the war-torn, ex Axis building for a photo session by our Army and news media. To my complete surprise, a jeep pulled up with four officers, all with holstered .45s, since they were this close to action. They were Captain J. T. Johnson and Lt. J. T. Arena of the 316th Fighter Squadron along with my brother Bob and Lt Duca of the 314th Fighter Squadron. Bob, true to our Irish tradition, had in his leather flight jacket a bottle of "Old Overshoes " (Overholt) rye whiskey! Later, I learned that this was my own mission booze (an ounce per sortie).
More pictures were taken. I have a complete set along with eight or ten photos taken by Luigi di Angelis and mailed to me in 1945. These were pictures of the shacks, the jenny, the area where I had landed and hid and some of the Italians who had helped me. En route, along the war ravaged road back to our air strip near Capua, we and, especially, I polished off that quart and I arrived almost bombed out. The final picture showed me wearing J. T.'s " 100 mission hat" and greeting our squadron commander, C. 0., Major O'Pizzi in a rather unofficial manner.
Steaks (where from?) and more strong beverages moved the night along. Very late that night our medical officer, Captain Dorger, sent me and my terrific hangover to the 32nd Field Hospital nearby for about a ten day period of X rays, treatment and rest.
I returned to the United States as a Courier Officer around the 9th of June after just three months in the combat zone, but a longer time in many ways. Being entrusted with the delivery of secret documents allowed me to pass through the various customs stations without baggage inspection. Therefore, I was able to carry back my stripped down MP40 "burp" gun and clip of shells, a 7mm Italian Berretta bought from Lt. Bill Beckler, my "depilatory" clothing, the Jerry prisoner's infantry badge and bayonet, the Allied propaganda leaflet, the silk escape map, a few escape lira, miscellaneous photos and other souvenirs. I would not fly for another eight months except as a co pilot or dual because of the knee injury.
In the Spring of 1945 1 was shot down again, this time over American soil by an American captain while I was towing a target from a P51 for aerial gunnery practice. He flew too close and was over eager to try for a good score! But therein lies another tale.