[bobbysocks]

Lt. William C. DuBose, "Evading the Enemy"

It was about 2 pm on Saturday, June 17, 1944. We were flying over the beautiful green wheat fields and farms of northern France. Our mission that day was to glide two eleven second delayed action, thousand pound bombs, into a railroad bridge, across the Somme River near Perrone. The purpose was to help cut the German supply lines leading to Normandy.

There were 48 of us on this mission. We were to take turns flying in elements of two about 100 feet above the water, release our bombs just as the target passed through our gun sight, pass over the bridge and make a sharp climbing turn to the left. Not far beyond the bridge the river swept left and on the right bank was a German airfield.

When our turn came, my flight leader Capt. Don Penn and I dove down and flew along the river towards the bridge. We could see French people atop the high banks waving and cheering us on.

Apparently we were only about 10 seconds behind the aircraft ahead of us. As we lined up on the bridge, one of the bombs from the previous P-38 went off in the water far short of the bridge and I could not help flying through the splash.

Don release one bomb instead of two so I quickly changed my trigger switch so I would also only release one bomb. My thought at that moment was that we were to make a second run along about 20 feet above the train. Then all hell broke loose. German flak positions on both sides of the tracks opened up on me. They couldn't miss. Shells flew through my wings and nacelles. Instantly I triggered my guns and dropped the bomb but it was too late. My plane was on fire and Don was screaming for me to bail out.

I pulled up, jettisoned the canopy, unhooked my seat belt and decided to go out over the top because smoke was pouring into the cockpit. After I pushed myself up into the slip stream, I was pinned against the back of the canopy hanging half in and half out of the plane. I couldn't move and just dangled there for a few seconds until my plane turned over into the dead engine and started down. A few seconds later I was pulled free. I saw the tail whip by and I pulled the rip cord. My parachute opened with an explosion and I saw my plane burning on the ground. I looked around to see where I was going to hit and tried to turn my chute so I would hit facing forward but it was too late. I slammed into a wheat field going sideways and broke and dislocated my right ankle and sprained my left. I hit with such force that my one-man dingy was popped loose and spread all over the area. I pulled in my collapsed parachute and unhooked my harness. We had been told to bury it but I did not have the strength so I left it there and crawled about 30 feet to a dirt road. At the top of a hedge row on the other side I could see German soldiers running from the village of Chaulnes towards my plane which had hit about 100 yards from where I had landed. I crawled back across the road and into the wheat field and headed towards some trees about a mile away. As I crawled towards the edge of the field I saw two German soldiers running towards me. I thought they saw me so I laid down. They got to the edge of the wheat field and turned down towards the road. Had they have run straight ahead, they would have tripped over me.

At this point, I decided it was too risky to crawl across an open field so I headed back to the hedge row on the side of the road and hit myself with leaves and bushes. I looked at my watch, it was 3:15 PM. As I laid in that hedge-row, forty German soldiers combed the area looking for me. A few came within five feet of me as they walked and drove along the road. Luckily they gave up after only a few hours.

As evening approached, I could see the lights of a farm house several miles away. I decided that would become my destination. I hadn't crawled very far before I realized this was going to be a painful task. My green summer flying suit gave little protection to my knees. Perhaps if I got to my feet and could find something to use as a cane, I could hobble to my destination. I saw a concrete power pole in the distance. I crawled to it and tried to pull myself to my feet. It was too painful. I could not put any weight on my ankles. I sat down, tore the legs from my flight suit and wrapped them around my knees. This gave me some relief.

As early morning light appeared my knees were bleeding and every movement was painful. I decided to sit on my back-side and push myself along backwards using my hands to propel me. I did this from early morning until late that afternoon.

About 5 pm I reached a dirt road near the outskirts of Chaulnes. Finally, a woman and her young daughter walked by. I got to my knees so they could see me and yelled, "I am an American." The woman was startled but kept calm. She grabbed her daughter's hand and pulled her along, apparently telling her not to look back at me or say anything.

Approximately 30 minutes later a man came walking down the road in my direction and seemed to be looking for me. I hollered at him and he came over, knelt down and spoke to me. Using my French-English translation card from my Escape Kit, I was able to show him sentences that stated that I was an American airman, shot down, injured, thirsty, hungry, and wanted to be hid. He was cautious and asked if I could speak German, Spanish or French. I was not able to speak any of these languages but from the little I had learned in high school, I could understand what he was getting at. He wanted to make sure I was not a German spy planted there to find out who were members of the French Resistance. He motioned for me to stay low in the wheat so I would not be seen, then he left.

Sometime later two teenage boys came looking for me. One motioned for me to crawl across the road and follow them. I got across the road but was not able to crawl any further. One of the boys helped me on his back and ran about 100 yards down the road to a driveway leading into a farm. His father was waiting for us with a wooden wheelbarrow. They put me on it and put an old piece of carpeting over me and wheeled me back to a barn behind the house. In the corner of the barn was a pile of grain. Somehow, they pushed me up and over the crest so I was hidden between the grain and the wall. I quickly fell asleep.

Hours later when it was dark, I heard voices below and could tell someone was crawling up toward me. They brought me a piece of bread and a bottle of water. After I had eaten, they pulled me down and took me into the house. I was taken to a bedroom on the second floor where we attempted to communicate. I do not recall how many people were there, but I do know they were concerned with my physical condition. One lady was from the local Red Cross. They called her, "Mademoiselle Rouge." There was nothing she or anyone else could do to help my ankle. They took what was left of my flight suit, my GI pants and shirt and gave me a sweat shirt and pair of pants to wear. I kept my wings and dog tags.

The next morning I was awakened and a man who could speak English appeared. He was a former World War I English soldier who had married a French lady and settled in France. They put me in his horse drawn carriage, told me to lie down so I was hidden, and I was driven about ten miles out into the country to his farm. He told me that their big beautiful home had been burned by the German occupation forces as they invaded France. They now lived in the servant's quarters nearby. There was not room for me in this one bedroom house which they shared with their daughter. They had cleaned out a chicken coop for me. Actually the chicken coop was adequate. It was clean, had a cot and an end table and the chickens next door were noisy but good company. While there I was made to stand and hobble around with a cane as soon as the swelling when down. I am sure they were concerned about getting me mobile as soon as possible and moved somewhere else. Both my legs were black and blue all the way to my hips.

Two weeks later I was transported back to the village of Chaulnes and put into the care of the Edward LeBlanc family. They lived on the main street about two blocks from the railroad station where I had tried to bomb that train. The downstairs front of their house was a store. Their living quarters were behind the store and upstairs. I lived in a bedroom on the second floor. During my approximate three week's stay with the LeBlancs the railroad yard was bombed by B-26 bombers. I was watching them fly over and saw and heard the bombs falling. Even with my bad ankles I ran down the stairs and out the back door to their slit trench bomb shelter. A piece of metal from one of the bombs when through the wall of my room. Numerous French civilians and German soldiers were killed or wounded.

The French had given me false identification papers and use the picture from my Escape Kit (we all carried out picture taken in civilian clothes, just in case we were shot down). My French name was Jean Pierre DuBose. I was supposed to be a friend of the family from the Normandy area who was deaf and mute, injured during the invasion of France. The LeBlancs had neighbors sympathetic to the Russians who visited quite often unannounced. They would bring their map of Europe and discuss the latest positions of the Russian and American fronts. The LeBlancs were not sure their friends should know they were hiding an American flyer so every time they visited I played the roll of a deaf and mute person.

The French insisted that I get out of the house occasionally to get some exercise. They got me a bicycle and we rode along the dirt road beside the flak positions so I could see my enemy. They also took me out to the hole in the ground where my P-38 had hit. I can assure you I was not enthusiastic about making these bicycle trips. It was more interesting to watch the 100 regular German troops and 100 SS troops who occupied this village and manned the flak positions march down the main street every evening singing German songs. I stood at an open window upstairs in the back of the LeBlanc's house and watched three or four German soldiers standing on a road just behind their yard. They saw me watching and yelled something. I had no idea what they were saying so I just stood there. One of the soldiers pulled out his pistol and fired at me. I got the point and moved away from the window!

I at a lot of boiled tripe, strawberry sandwiches and chicken. The sanitary conditions were not the best and a few days before I was to be moved to another family I got diarrhea. It made me very sick and very weak. However, the French school teacher who was to take care of me for the next few weeks showed up and we took off on our bikes. I was so weak I had to walk beside my bicycle and put it up any kind of incline. On one of our walks up a hill we were accompanied by a German soldier. My French school teacher friend and he talked all the way up the hill. I just played deaf and mute and was scared.

I lived with this family about two weeks and was told that I would be transported by car to another location. This time I was picked up by two members of the French Resistance. In the car was an American B-17 gunner ... my first contact in a long time with someone with whom I could really communicate. As we drove north through the countryside we saw a group of P-47s strafing. Our driver immediately pulled into a farmyard and parked under some trees. We all ran for the house. Shortly after we got into the house two truck loads of German soldiers drove into the yard and parked under the same trees. AS the soldiers ran for the house, my new B-19 gunner friend and I were told to run out the back and hide behind an outhouse near the edge of a field. We hid there for what seemed like eternity, watching the P-47s strafe on one side of us and the German soldiers milling around in the house on the other. Finally, the P-47s left, the Germans left, and we departed. We were taken to the apartment of a Madame Heller in the village of Billy-Montigny. She was the head of the French Resistance in that area. She was Australian and her husband a Hungarian photographer. They had been caught in France when the Germans invaded. Neither were French citizens but were forced to stay there during the war.

We arrived in time for dinner and were told we would be spending the night with a brewer on the edge of town. We were told to walk down the stairs to the street, turn right, go to the corner, cross the street and wait for a car to pick us up. We did this but no car showed up. We waited and waited. It was getting late, 8:45 pm and curfew started at 9:00 pm. Finally, a young man riding a bicycle showed up and motioned for us to follow him. He could see that I could hardly walk so he put me on the handle bars and drove several blocks and then told me to get off and walk straight ahead. he then went back to get my friend and in this manner shuttled us to the brewer's home on the edge of town. We were lucky no German soldiers were around or we would have been apprehended for being out after curfew.

Our new French host offered us food and drink. I was too scared to be hungry. The next morning we were awakened and given coffee and cognac and a tour of the brewery. Under the loading dock of his brewery was a secret entrance to an area where he had stashed hundreds of cases of champagne and a room where he kept his radio. Here he could listen to broadcasts from the BBC direct to the people of the French Resistance. Radios were outlawed by the Germans. Upstairs in one corner of his brewery were stacked hundreds of cases of empty bottles. His car was hidden behind them.

Madame Heller and her driver came by that afternoon to take us to our next destination. On the way we picked up a typical looking Englishman, mustache and all. Madame Heller tucked our wings and dog tags in her bosom. We came to a gate guarded by several German soldiers. The soldiers, the driver and Madame Heller spoke for a few minutes and finally the guards raised the gate and we drove through. My heart was in my mouth! Our destination was the home of Mr. and Mrs. Dernancourt who live in the city of Lens. Six other Allied airmen already lived with them. From that point on the nine of us lived together in the room above their store which was located on the main street of the city.

By day we played poker with our, "escape money", sunned ourselves in the brick courtyard behind the house, shared by a pig, or watched the activity of the German soldiers from the windows upstairs. We all picked out pretty girls on the street whom we would like to meet when we were liberated. We also helped prepare the meals. We ate a lot of soup which contained everything our hosts and their close friends could conjure up to put into the pots. We spent many hours grinding, peeling and stirring.

This is where I met Clifford O. Williams, a P-38 pilot from the 343rd Fighter Squadron. He had been shot down the same day that I got into the 55th Fighter Group. The nine of us consisted of two Australians, two Canadians, two Englishmen and three Americans. Madame Heller had also found places for about 14 other Allied airmen to live in the Billy-Montigny, Lens, area of northern France.

One evening while all of us were sitting around the dining room table eating, we heard a scream from the teenage girl who was minding the store up front. She came running back to warn us that a German truck with many soldiers had driven up and parked in front of the store. We all thought that some one had turned us in and we would be taken prisoners and the French people shot! As it turned out the Germans had stopped to take hostages. They made it a point to take a husband or wife from a family ... never both. This was shortly before we were liberated by the English 1st Army. The French were out every night blowing up bridges, killing German troops and cutting telephone wires. For several weeks, we could hear the explosions, see the flashes of light as the French Resistance did their thing... things like putting unexploded bombs into carts and dragging them under railroad bridges where they hoped they would eventually explode.

It was interesting to watch the German troops retreat. For several days before the English 1st Army arrived, the Germans came down the main street heading north in every conceivable mode of transportation imaginable... trucks, cars, bicycles, horses, horse drawn carts, tanks and on foot. This went on 24 hours a day. Finally the English 1st Army rumbled through with tanks and trucks and many troops. Everyone was waving and cheering, flags were flying and people were crying tears of joy. As the troops sped by they threw us cigarettes and candy bars but would not stop. When a convoy finally did stop we told them we were Allied airmen and needed transportation back to Paris. This was arranged but it took a few days. In the meantime we were treated as heros by the townspeople, were given a banquet and asked to march in a liberation parade. In the parade with us were French collaborators. The women collaborators had their heads shaved and they were kicked and spit upon as they marched along. The pretty girl I had picked to meet after liberation was one of those women!

We were eventually turned over to the American 1st Army and then transported to the Hotel Maurice in Paris. There the Evaders and Escapees were interrogated. Our false identification was taken and we were given clothes and a cold water bath, my first in three months.

Paris still had pockets of Germans but that did not bother us. As soon as possible, we were in the sidewalk cafes drinking champagne and trying to pick up French girls. We were then flown by C-47 back to London. I was put into a tent hospital north of London where I spent another month or so. Every V-1 shot toward London seemed to pass over this location - another very terrifying experience! I was flown back to the good old United States in November of 1944 and soon returned to my home state of California. Again I was put in a hospital where they tried to repair my ankle.

And you know, the irony of all this is that very few people understand why I like to watch WW II Air Force movies on TV and will not buy a Japanese or German car! Vive la France and God Bless America!!!!