[bobbysocks]

Capt. Bert McDowell Jr.

I learned the importance of freedom the hard way! Our fighter group had a policy of the, three squadrons taking turns going back into Germany to look for "targets of opportunity" when escorting our bombers back from the target. On this mission it was the 338th's time and down we went from the 30,000-foot assigned level to 8,500 feet where we could more easily see enemy truck convoys, airfields, oil tanks and other choice targets.

I spotted an airfield in southern Germany (near Gerolshofen), called it out over the radio and down we went as fast as our "Mustangs" would go, coming in over the airfield fence at about 20 feet with the airspeed needle on the 400-miles-an-hour mark, all six guns on each plane blazing away.

I could feel the German shells from ground guns hitting my plane but had no idea how severe the damage. I lined up on a Junkers 88, a twin-engine bomber, and through the thousands of "red golf balls" coming at me from both sides, I could see my bullets hitting the JU-88 and setting it on fire. Just before I got to it, the plane blew up. Instinctively, I ducked my head and pulled back slightly on the stick to pass over the burning wreckage.

After flying for almost ten minutes, the engine froze. Wheels and flaps up, I set my P-51 down almost perfectly and came to a sudden stop. I was out and running for a wooded area, waving to my buddies who were circling above me to let them know I was O.K. When darkness settled in, with snow on the ground, I walked on muddy back roads all night. As dawn broke, I hid in another woods. It rained all that day, a bitter, cold, steady rain. I never spent a more miserable time in my life. I had no hat and was wearing summer underwear!

When dark enough to travel, I started walking towards the Allied lines and passed Germans who were coming home from work or shopping. The blackout was in effect, of course, so people appeared as dark forms. I walked all night again and just before dawn hid in another forest. I was awakened by voices. Looking cautiously from under my bush, I stared into the wrong end of two German Lugers. Two S.S. soldiers! One shouted: "Raus! Raus!", which I understood to mean, "Get the hell out of there." The taller of the two said in broken English: "You are lucky ... vor you der vor iss ovfer."

I was marched to a tiny village a couple of miles away to their detachment headquarters. There the German S.S. soldier who spoke English asked if I was hungry. I replied, "Ja!". He gave me a hot bowl of potato soup, two slices of black bread and a cup of ersatz (artificial) coffee. I wolfed it down.

The commander sent for a local female school teacher who spoke English and asked me many questions, such as where were the other members of my crew, what target did we bomb, where was our base in England, what type of plane were we flying, etc. Each time I answered by giving my name, rank, serial number and reminding her that this was in accordance with the Geneva Convention, to which Germany was a signatory member. She gave up and I was put in the cellar of a small house. No dinner that night. No breakfast the next morning.

Escorted by two guards, we walked five or six miles to a railroad station in a small village. While sitting in the tiny station, a small boy of about eight, who was with his mother, kept staring at me. Finally, he walked over to me, pulled out a cheese sandwich from a brown paper bag and offered it to me. I said "Dunker" (thank you, one of the few German words I knew). I almost cried, I was so overwhelmed by this gesture of generosity and friendliness to a prisoner of war.

We boarded the train for the hour's ride to Mannheim. There we rode a trolley car to the end of the line, then walked some four miles to an airfield, where I was imprisoned for two days, then transferred to the Luftwaffe interrogation center at Oberursel, a suburb of Frankfurt. There I spent 11 miserable days and 10 nights in solitary confinement while being interrogated.

They told me that I could not tell them anything that they did not already know. On the evening of 22 February 1945, about 50 of us were taken to the Frankfurt Banhof (railroad station). We were sitting on the floor when we heard the air raid sirens scream. Soon the eerie sound of falling bombs interrupted our thoughts ... RAF bombers were bombing the city! The railroad marshaling yard took a terrible beating but NOT ONE BOMB DROPPED ON THE BANHOF! The Good Lord answered our prayers!

After waiting seven hours for another freight train (the one we were scheduled to take was blasted to smithereens), we climbed aboard boxcars for the intermediate staging camp at Wetzlar. European boxcars are tiny when compared to American ones. There were 44 of us crammed into each boxcar, which meant we had to take turns sitting and standing. We were issued one can of meat and one loaf of bread, plus some water, for each six men. The meat was spoiled and we became violently ill. It was a nightmarish two-day and two-night journey ... an unbelievable mess!

About four days later, it was off to my first permanent P.O.W. camp at Nuremberg, also by boxcar. We were marched from the railroad yards to the camp, Stalag 13-D (I was in Compound . At 11 a.m. on 4 April 1945, we were informed that we were leaving camp at 1 p.m. and to be ready to march. Promptly at 1 p.m. down the road we marched, 8,000 of us, in a column of threes, with German guards and police dogs on each side of the column.

After three hours we were spotted by some American P-47 "Thunderbolt" fighter-bombers. They attacked us with 500-pound bombs and strafed us with their eight .50-caliber machine guns. It was sheer panic -- every man for himself!

After it was over, there were dead and dying all over the place. Among those killed (I counted 12 in my immediate area) were some who had been captured in North Africa in 1942 and had been through all kinds of hell ... forced marches in snow, half starved, and now this.

We marched all that night, in the rain, and all the next day in the rain until 11 p.m. before we finally stopped for the night, lying on the ground, trying to sleep. Every now and then we were given ten-minute rest stops. We walked into Stalag VII-A, Moosburg, Germany, near Munich, on 20 April 1945, we could hear the rumble of tanks of General George S. Patton's Third Army in the valley. A P.O.W. climbed up the flagpole at the main gate, threw down the Nazi swastika flag, then hauled up the Stars and Stripes. There were very few dry eyes among the newly liberated prisoners that morning!

My experience taught me something I had previously taken for granted ... how very precious is freedom. And food. And cleanliness. And warmth. And sanitation. Never before had I given any thought to having clean clothes waiting for me when I got out of the shower. But I do now, even after some 45 years


Wes Tibbetts

Several people told me to read the book Goodbye Mickey Mouse. It is a great story and I highly recommend it for it is very close portrayal of the men who composed a fighter squadron. One particular scene is about two fighter pilots who had too much to drink one night and what happened to them as a result of their overindulgence. That made me think of Wes Tibbetts and a similar night we shared.
Wes was a very fine looking fellow and almost the maximum size allowed for a fighter pilot. While in college he became a light middle weight boxer and won the Gold Gloves championship for Iowa. If you have ever boxed, you know this is no simple feat.
When I joined the 55th Fighter Group in Portland, Wes had been there and had come in with the new fresh lieutenants who were the class ahead of me. It included Joe Myers, Giller, Ryan, Marsiglia et al.
I liked Wes but he was never in my crowd. We never double-dated (although I am sure that the girls we no problem for him – he was very handsome man as you can see in the picture.) We were just friends in the early days but, as time went on, and especially when we were in combat, we became closer.
Wes was just a quiet and great guy. He did have something that I am not sure you would say made him special, but it did make him a “one and only” as far as anyone else I have ever met. By swallowing air, he was able to pass wind at almost any time. Somehow he decided it would be a great trick to pass wind in the form of Morse Code. If you don’t recall the sound of Morse Code, it is: A…dit…daaa B..daa..dit.dit.dit Caa.dit.daa.dit and so on down the alphabet.
Everyone got to know Wes for there was always a new officer coming in to the group. Eventually one of the old timers would say, “We have a guy that can fart the alphabet”. Naturally the new man would say you are crazy and a bet of some kind was bound to follow. The old timer would then come and get Wes and lead him to the fellow who would bet against him. I saw this happen in our room at night, at the Officers’ Club, and even in London when we were on R&R. Wes always seemed pleased to show the new man his unique talent and certainly never wanted any of the bet money. His demonstrations would always gather a crowd and his performance was always followed by tons of laughter.
Wes and I went overseas with the 55th and were stationed at Nuthampstead. There was a fair sized Quonset hut that contained the officers of the 338th and the flight leaders. That would be Sqd. Co.: Busching, Exec: Jones, Adj: Hall, S-2: Gabbert, Doc Garnett and the four flight leaders, Patterson, Beal, Marsiglia, and Tibbetts.
The night of the story, we had been flying out of Nuthampstead long enough to have some tough losses. Wes and I had both been flying every day for a week, trying to put up all the planes we could, filling in for some of the fellows who were ill. About 6pm that evening we got a call that there was to be an all out effort the next morning. Neither of us had been scheduled to fly, but after Doc and Bushing had checked around, they found they were short of a couple of pilots. So Wes and I volunteered.
We had all planned to go out that evening to something special, a Danny Kaye Show. So at about 8pm everyone took off but Wes and me. Both of us felt we needed the rest to be ready for combat the next day.
About 9pm we got a phone call saying the mission had been cancelled due to bad weather. Wes and I were so happy we got out of bed and started shooting the breeze. At that time I never touched a drop of liquor for I always wanted to beat my opponent and I would rather go in to combat with him having a hangover (, rather) than me. I knew I wasn’t going to give him any advantage. Wes was the same for he had been a great athlete and there is no place for liquor when you want to be in top shape.
Both of us had given our combat liquor to Busching and knew that he stored it in his footlocker. Somehow in shooting the breeze we decided it would be a good idea to celebrate tonight and have just a shot of bourbon. We put in enough bourbon to sufficiently fill the bottoms of our very large canteen cups and proceeded to have a drink. Well, let me tell you, if you never have any liquor and you drink it straight with no water, it arrives at the top of your head The first drink hit our funny bone and each drink thereafter seemed to hit a higher level of funny bone. We kept this up until the two of us drank the whole quart (they were quarts in those days). I remember that we were sitting at a picnic-style table with the cross supports you had to stop over to get out. Well neither one of us could step out and the last thing I remembered was crawling (there was no way I could walk!) back to my bed and into my sleeping bag.
I was vaguely aware of being slapped in the face and lots of turmoil going on around me, but I was in too deep a stupor to respond.
A day later when I came to, Doc Garnett told me the rest of the story. When they came back form the show that evening, they found Wes drunkenly trying to get in bed with me muttering, “The only way we’re going to get through this is to stick together”. They had a helluva time getting Wes away from me and Doc was slapping me, trying to get me to wake up. When he couldn’t wake me and saw that Wes was in such bad shape, he knew we weren’t merely intoxicated but in need of immediate medical attention.
He rushed us both to the hospital and had our stomachs pumped out. When I finally woke up almost a day later, I can remember the terrible terrible task it was just to open my eyes. What pain. And there was Wes in the next bed. Normally I think I would have laughed under the circumstances, but this was no laughing matter.
I often wonder if I would have lived if Doc hadn’t been in the room. Someone else probably would have just got Wes to bed and figured we would sleep it off. Doc said there was no way we would have made it with the lack of tolerance we had for liquor.
We stayed in the hospital another day and by that time we could laugh about it. We both thanked Doc Garnett for saving our lives. I certainly would have felt bad to be shot down by a bottle of bourbon.
Wes Tibbetts was shot down on a flight to (Gotha). That was a day we lost a number of pilots. A day that it was a tough show. We never heard from Wes on the radio and as far as I know he just disappeared. Was it flak? Did he call on the radio and it was jammed so we didn’t hear him? If by chance there is life after death then I want him to know that I still think of him and miss him saying “good-bye”.