March 17, 1999
My view of World War Two
S/Sgt. Lewis T. Haas
452 Bombardment Group (H)
730th Bombardment Squadron
Tail Gunner/Armorer
On a B-17 Heavy Bomber
Served from Dec., 1942 to Dec., 1945
Germany and Stalag Luft VI The Third Mission, Brunswick Germany, never made it to target. In spite of Accounts by so called eyewitnesses I will tell my version of the combination of things that brought us down (my wife read a transcript of my story taken by a Psychiatrist while I was under Pentothol and it matched my story exactly) That was considered a truth serum those days, so at least my family can feel comfortable about it and I don't give a damn what any one else thinks. I'm pretty bitter about the whole deal, especially Tiska took a bum rap. Two accounts I've read said he pulled ahead and up to hit the B-17. One account was by the jerk that was directly over us and had no business there. I was captured with part of his crew and they hated his guts. He told them he was going to take the lead position, he wasn't even in our squadron. I think he was trying to tuck himself in ahead of someone to avoid the fighters. He must have just got there since he was never reported and I don't believe the top turret could have failed to see him. Suffice it to say there was a hell of a lot going on in a very short space in time.
Eyewitnesses (they say) do not mention fighters and that would be quite an oversight. If the reader will check the records I've gotten over the years you will see that at the group de-briefing it shows fighters at 11:00 in the morning hit us, and German records show us as shot down at 11:45. I shot down two ME 109s and Spieler one. We had a terrific explosion directly under us, which I now believe to be the 109 that Spieler got, I'm not sure things were happening very fast. Anyway, whatever the explosion was, it forced us up into the other ship. His crew told me their pilot was the first man to leave his position and the co-pilot pulled them up and level long enough for nine men to bail out, the ball turret gunner didn't make it.
The tail gunner died about six hours later, in fact a couple of his crew asked me to help hold him down while they gave a shot of morphine to try to calm him down (he was thrashing around and calling for his mother, he was seventeen). I was holding his shoulders when he died, it still haunts me. We were not sure what he died of, we could find no serious injuries, so he either died of shock or internal injuries. I think we all had seen better days.
I wasn't feeling all that great myself. I had a busted nose, and both legs full of shrapnel below the knees. I got the shrapnel when a 109 hit my right hand gun and knocked it off its mount. The nose I either got banging around in a spinning tail section, or when I hit the ground. My legs wouldn't have been hurt if they had been where they belonged, but I had them wrapped around the armor plate. I could handle my guns better that way. When the other plane hit us I realized we had been hit, but I had no idea how bad, in fact I was more worried about the next fighter which I couldn't see. I wasn't even sure my one gun would work and my sights were just flopping around. I kind of thought the next bozo would nail me.
I was so scared I wasn't feeling any pain or thinking very clear. I was depending on the intercom or alarm bell to alert me if the ship was in trouble. I guess the tail must have sailed along even for a moment or two. The first I realized we were in deep poo poo was when the tail all at once turned with the dorsal to my left and I thought I better see if anyone was bailing out. When I looked back there was no airplane there. That was a traumatic experience to say the least. About the time I realized a tail section without an airplane attached was not a healthy environment and decided to move out, the tail started to spin and threw me around pretty badly. I was nearly helpless plus the ammo all fell out of the cans and draped all over me. I was so terrified I tried to claw the ammo off me. Had I been thinking clear I would have pulled a round and the belts would have come apart.
It seemed forever I had been falling, I figured I was due to hit the ground any second. We had been flying at 26,000 feet. I can remember asking God to let me go home dead or alive. I think my brother, Cene, would have felt the same, so when they asked me when I got home I voted to have his body brought back to the States. About the time I gave up and figured I was dead the tail quit spinning with the dorsal din to my left and started drifting back and forth like a falling leaf, the ammo slid off me and I scrambled around to get my chute and had another shock. Everything in the tail had gone out but my chute which had caught by one snap to the intercom cable. I grabbed it snapped it on my harness and jumped I jerked the ripcord at the same time. I never had a chance to look up and see the chute. It opened, jerked me and hit the top branch of a tall evergreen tree. It jerked me again and I landed on my back and lost consciousness for a short time. Had I been one second longer jumping it would have been curtains. I think God gave me his undivided attention that day.
When I came to there was total silence. I wondered if I was dead and this was heaven. Pretty trees and absolute quiet, but about then a 109 flew low overhead and I knew there would be no fighter planes in heaven so I sat up and realized I had fallen 26,000 feet without clearing my ears so I held my nose and blew, wow it felt like I had been hit in the head with a hammer. I feel sure my son would not approve of my landing, he was a paratrooper and made a lot of jumps, one was enough for me.
I guess I should explain our chutes since my daughter said to put in details. We used 24-foot chest chutes, which attached by two snaps to the harness we wore. We couldn't wear the chutes because they would be in the way of handling the guns. I had a lot of gear that was hooked to the ship and wasn't on me when I landed. Helmet, goggles, silk ski mask, throat mike and all electrical cords were intact for heated suit, gloves and boots. The oxygen mask all that stuff was strapped on and I don't remember undoing any of it. That seems strange to me since I can remember so many other details. We used all that stuff on high altitude missions because of the cold 70% below on that day. We oiled the guns with caster oil or they would freeze. Remember we were not in a sealed ship like today, it was a thin aluminum capsule with open waist windows and four big fans blowing up front. Any exposed flesh would frost bite or freeze.
The chute catching was a miracle, I had an A3 bag, extra cases of ammo, an Aldis lamp and case, the chute was right on top where I could reach it easy. There was nothing left in the tail but the chute. After I came to on the ground I looked around, the tail was only a few feet from me. The edge of the woods was close and down the hill a ways was a Dutch mill like in the postcards. Made me wonder for a minute if I had landed in Holland, but I was pretty sure we were in Germany. I hid my chute best I could and looked for a place to hide me. There was some snow on the ground and I had to stay out of it because with my flying boots on I would have left tracks like an elephant. I jumped to bare spots, but was unable to get very far from the tail. I finally crawled under a big evergreen shrub, bush, whatever, and tried to take stock of my situation. I didn't come up with anything very hopeful.
The whole situation seemed pretty bleak; down in an enemy country in winter, no gardens to get food out of. Only two possibilities, I either had to make it across part of Germany through France over the Pyrenees Mountains to Spain. The other way was to get over the Alps into Switzerland neither one was an appealing alternative, but neither was capture since for all I knew I would be shot or hanged, which would have happened had I come down in a bombed city and civilians beat the soldiers to me. I dug a hole and buried the escape money and maps figuring I could dig it up if I didn't get caught before dark. With the medical kit I fixed my legs best I could they had finally started to hurt. Then I settled down to wait and all of a sudden I started to shake every inch of me was shaking and I couldn't stop. Nothing to date in my life had prepared me to grasp what was happening to me. God I was so lonesome I could hardly stand it.
However one copes, at that time I didn't know my entire crew was dead or I don't how I would have fared I thought the world of those guys and I wasn't all that old or used to death. I was twenty at the time. I celebrated my 21st and 22nd birthdays as a non-paying guest of the Luft Waffe. I was captured near Wagenfeld Germany. I was down about three hours before they found me. I had time to think things over and worry. After a while the returning flight came over and one of the four ships lost in that area came down. I watched it crash, it came down in a flat spin and one of the crew was hooked to the rudder by his open chute, he must have pulled his ripcord too soon. Tough way to go.
After maybe an hour people and soldiers started to come and pick up parts of airplanes and equipment and search for bodies. Some came pretty close, but didn't spot me. Towards the end there were fifty or sixty in the area. Finally a little kid walked by and looked me in the eye. He started to yell his head off so I crawled out with my hands over my head, way over. At this time I received another shock, this time a pleasant one. The people there at that time acted like I was a long lost relative, they were very friendly. I found out later they were Russian slave laborers. I was taken first to a little hut down the road a way. They kept pointing in and saying comrade, so I went in and sure enough there was another airman laying on a bunk and they kept pointing to him and jabbering away I kept saying, "yes, comrade", and nodding my head. I thought the kid was asleep, I should explain that as soon as I gave up and wasn't hanged out of hand I became very, very sleepy, I suppose another symptom of shock. Anyway I shrugged and walked out. It turned out he was the tail gunner of the ship we had the collision with. He was unconscious and I did not have the sense to realize it. but first we were stopped by soldiers and after a little talking, not a word of which I understood the Russians were sent on their way and I was turned over to a very old man and a young boy. A little way down the road they stopped me and left me standing in the middle of the road while one went into a house and the other into a house on the opposite side. When they came out the old man had an ancient rifle and the boy had a bullet that looked six inches long. They worked and crammed the shell into the rifle while I patiently waited. It was then I had the strangest manifestation of shock. I started to giggle and couldn't stop It seemed hilarious to me 'cause I felt sure if they tried to fire the thing it would either misfire or blow up in their face. Any way where did they think I would go, there were soldiers all over with rifles that would fire. There was no way I was going to make a break, until the odds were a lot better than at that time and place.
They marched me to a little town, I suppose Wagenfeld, and put me with several other captured airmen, searched and loaded on trucks. They stopped first and picked up the boy (tail gunner of the ship we collided with) in the shack then took us to a Luft Waffe base nearby. It was here the boy died. They gave us some black bread and ersatz coffee, I couldn't stomach either one at that time, but later I was glad to get any at all. I believe it was the next day we were trucked to Frankfurt.
At Frankfurt we were put in solitary confinement for either six or seven days then interrogated. The interrogation was a farce they knew more about me than I did. I was taken before a German Officer equal to an U.S. Major. I stood at attention and saluted as we had been told to do in case of capture. I was all for being polite anyway for I was scared. He said, "Sergeant are you going to tell me what group you're in?" I replied, ,"Sir I'm only allowed to give my name, rank and serial number," so I proceeded to do so hoping like hell he would coax me a little before having me shot. He just laughed at me. "All right, I'll tell you," he said, and did. He had a week to look me up. He had a big loose leaf ledger or whatever on his desk marked 452 . He knew all about me even that I had a wife and child. He had the crew's names and ship number. This was when I learned for sure that my entire crew had perished. That was a black day for me. He knew a bunch of things that I couldn't have told him. Where I had trained and date I started and finished, who could remember that kind of stuff? Not me anyway. After the interregation, he asked me what a guy named Haas was doing in the American Army. I replied that my grandparents came from Germany, hoping that would make us buddies. I didn't have a clue as to where my grandparents came from. He asked, "What part of Germany?" I was desperate, I knew nothing about Germany, but there was a map on the wall back of him and it had Essen in bold letters on it so I said, " I think they came from around Essen." Turned out he was from there and I thought damn, but he dropped it much to my delight.
He was quite good natured by now so he asked me if I would like my name put on a short wave broadcast to the states so my people would know I was alive. I said I would like that very much. I was surprised to find out later he had done it. Helma got telegrams from the government and some from the East Coast so she knew I was a prisoner months before she would have known any other way. Next I was put in a place that had both British and American prisoners. We were there a day or two, our flight clothing was taken and we were issued OD pants and two OD shirts, also shoes. I suppose the US Gov. furnished the clothes and the Red Cross got them into Germany, at any rate I suppose that was the way it came about.
Some of us Americans were taken and put in boxcars in the middle of the marshaling yards, no engine at that time. In the night the British decided to bomb the marshaling yards. They had dropped their flares outlining the target area when a switch engine hooked us up and pushed us to one side I'm sure that engineer saved us because the next morning the place we had been was totaled, also the engineer was dead hanging half out of cab. I don't know if shrapnel got him or concussion. I do know the concussion was unbelievable. I think they were using their 2000-pound blockbusters. For the second time I thought I was dead for sure, but no injuries except scrambled brains.
Next morning they couldn't move the cars we were in since the tracks were torn up all around us. They took us out on a passenger train. The trainload of passengers (civilians) who got bumped tried to mob us, but the soldiers kept them at bay long enough to get us out of there. So again a hairy situation turned out okay. The train was so loaded I rode in the overhead baggage rack. We didn't go far, just to a station where they could load us on boxcars. When we had first arrived at Frankfurt the train station was unique, a huge hanger shaped edifice all glass panels. When we left that morning there wasn't a piece of glass left whole. That began a nightmare trip of seven days and six nights. We got side tracked for every thing that went by. We went through Germany, Poland and East Prussia to within seven miles of Lithuania. At every station we came to everybody sang patriotic songs, they always threatened to machine gun the cars, but they never did. I doubt if the civilians could understand what we sang, but at least they knew we sang. There was a kid in my car that had opened his chute too soon at high altitude, lost a boot and froze his foot. It was rotting and stank really bad. They wouldn't do anything for him, I never saw or heard about him after we got to camp. I suppose he lost the foot, maybe even died I don't know.
Life in camp was no bed of roses, but neither was it as bad as I thought it would be. We were pretty far North (same as Hudson 's Bay I was told) It was still pretty cold in February, but we didn't suffer too much. There were so many men in each barracks that body heat kept the temperature bearable. Bunks were three high and had three slats. Each bunk had a gunny sack type mattress filled with straw after ten minutes in bed all the straw was between the slats, but its funny how you can adjust to discomfort, after we learned which body parts to rest on the slats and which to let hang through. After a time we slept fine. Of course I was twenty, I doubt if my 75 year old body would adjust to such conditions. Of course if we hadn't been in fine physical condition we would not have survived to that point. There was still lots of snow so it was miserable to get out and walk around, but it was imperative that we do so not only for the exercise, but to avoid going stir crazy. I don't remember anyone going nuts at Stalag six, but there were a lot six months later at Stalag four.
We were lined up and counted twice a day pretty miserable in Feb. and March standing around in the snow. The count usually took quite a while since we usually managed To screw up the count two or three times, It sure pissed them off, they would threaten to shoot every tenth man. They never did though. The way it was worked, we were lined up five ranks deep and shoulder to shoulder. So it was pre-planned which ranks would lean and when, if it worked a couple of times then another rank would take over. I suppose it was childish, but it amused us. Keep in mind we were constantly looking at the muzzle end of machine guns. We were mad, but unable to lose our tempers, so we did whatever we could to annoy them.
There are a great many things that happened in that six months, but it would take a book to narrate them all, Mostly unimportant day to day life in a prisoner of war camp, but I'll tell a few things that come to mind. The camp Commandant was kind of a character. We called him "snag" because in front he had only one tooth. Every so often he'd parade us and give a speech mostly about what would happen to us if we weren't good little boys, but one I remember he said, " it's your duty as Americans to try to escape and it is my duty as a German Officer to stop you" . Then he laid out the rules. If we were caught escaping, three days in solitary on bread and water, if we damaged German property thirty days bread and water. If the damage was too great or if a German was injured or killed, punishment was death.
The bread and water didn't pose too much of a threat since bread and water was almost as good as we were getting. Any plan for escape had to have the approval of the escape committee. This prevented more than one escape plan being tried at the same time, also if it did not seem feasible to the committee it was vetoed. they some times could furnish things like maps or in our case wire cutters. The trade committee who traded American Red Cross stuff for these things, got them from the German guards (or goons as we called them) who walked the compound during the day. No one was allowed to trade with the guards except the trading committee, this was to keep the price down as much as possible. Thus we got things to build radios and a few things to use in escapes.
Another guy and me had plans for getting into a drainage ditch and cutting the wire. It had to be worked in the daytime as dogs were turned into the compound at night. It took two changes of guards since one guard tower could see our point of entry. We learned that invariably, as one guard was climbing up for a change of guard, there was a moment or two when the wall of the tower restricted his view and always the guy on duty would be watching him and talking. There was only time for one guy to slip into the ditch at a time. If he stayed flat and went very slowly he had a good chance of making it, this proved to be true, every thing went as planned. We flipped or cut cards or something to see who went first, he lost. He was to creep down the ditch, cut the wire and hide under a footbridge until I joined him, then after dark we would attempt to reach Lithuania (seven miles) and hopefully find help. The fly in the ointment came when a squad of soldiers on a work detail crossed the bridge and one of them dropped a tool. When he climbed down to retrieve it he looked my cohort right in the eye, and looking a little further saw me cowering in the ditch. My, it was exciting for a few minutes. You would have thought we had shot Hitler (wish we had). As usual I was in the wrong place, but lucked out. I got three days, my partner got thirty, he cut the fence. It was probably lucky that we were caught since at night the dogs would maybe have detected us and we may have got ourselves shot.
There were many escapes attempted from camp six. It paid to take chance with Lithuania so close. Some were successful many were not. There always seemed to be a tunnel going, usually boards were carefully removed under bunks or any place not too noticeable. The barracks were not on stilts like the next camp was. Sometimes they would start dummy tunnels so the Germans could be happy when they found them. It also helped account for the extra dirt. Snag let us start victory gardens in the spring beside the barracks. He didn't call them victory gardens. They all ended up a foot above where they should be, dirt from tunnels. One tunnel they never did find. They dug one between our compound and the British. So if we had a successful escape somebody would come over from their compound for the count or vice versa. One British airman made it to England and wrote back to his buddies (in code of course). It took quite a while to get a letter from England, but he was still being counted.
At night shutters were locked on any windows and the doors were locked until morning. For a latrine we had a huge tub much bigger than our number three tubs in the States. Each morning it had to be carried to the main latrine and dumped. It was all two men could tote. If it wasn't full of piss a little dirt was added. Each day the honey wagon came to the main latrine. They would fire some kind of charge and everything would be sucked up into the tank. Then it was taken out to the fields and sprayed for fertilizer. When the wind was right it got pretty rank.
One morning a kid stepped out too soon and was shot, they hadn't bolted our door. The s.o.b. in the tower just wanted to shoot some one. The kid was just sauntering and had his towel over his shoulder he was obviously headed for the wash house. He was shot in the belly and was conscious. No one was allowed to go to his aid. He laid there the better part of an hour digging his heels in the ground and pushing himself in a circle and moaning. The Germans finally came and packed him out. He didn't make it. This is the sort of thing that was frustrating, unnecessary cruelty that we were unable to redress in any way, not even to the point of blowing your top. Like when the Gestapo searched for radios if you had a little Red Cross food like powdered coffee or jam they made sure it got knocked down and walked on. No wonder so many of us had ungovernable tempers when we first got home. It felt good to be able to blow your top and not get shot.
Once a German Bomber came over and was in trouble I guess, anyway the crew bailed out, and we cheered like hell cause a bomber was lost, but Snag fell us out and complimented us for cheering because the crew was able to bail out. Who knows maybe he was right we had all faced it. I remember how tickled we were when we got the news of the invasion we figured the war would soon be over, but it took another year. We were at Luft six about six months when we were moved out by ship. Made us sad we could hear the artillery as the Russians was getting close. So instead of liberation we got a free cruise on the Baltic.
(Continued on the next page)
BACK
NEXT
HOME
