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Haunted Mission

Mladen Rudman is an ace staff writer for the Northwest Florida Daily News.  In January 2003, he met with four 8th AF vets in the small town of Cinco Bayou, Fla. and wrote their story. They were pilot Charles Marcy, navigator George Compton, bombardier James Conway (a member of our chapter) and Flight Engineer Bob Schrimsher. He has given VT permission to use it and indeed encourages other vets to tell their stories for posterity.

He writes "Buffered by the passage of six decades the four (surviving) crew members of “Hey Mabel” nostalgically tell stories about serving in the Eighth.  They even recount the days when they became POWs with a sense of disbelief. Listen to Schrimsher who held the key dual position of top turret gunner and flight engineer.

"Sometimes I wonder if it was a dream” he muses recalling that fateful flight. The last time he and Navigator George Compton saw each other prior to this meeting they were bailing out of a burning B-17 over Berlin. Compton was suffering extensive injuries that included the loss of an eye.  Schrimsher came away almost unscratched.  Bombardier James Conway also escaped unhurt. Shells were literally exploding within feet of him and bullets were whizzing every which way and yet he was not touched.  He parachuted and was captured by what looked to him like a group of Hitler Youth.  They stripped him of his outer flight suit but left him wearing his (no longer) electrically heated flight suit.  He was then loaded on a turretless World War One tank for a trip thru Berlin's streets.

"There I am standing in this old tank in this bright blue suit going through the Berlin suburbs.” He had become a war trophy.  

Schrimsher, the flight engineer, was up in his top turret when he saw a BF109G beginning a head-on attack.  He lacked time to bring his twin 50s into position to fire. He could see the muzzle flashes as the German pilot closed in. A shell hit the instrument panel and the spent shell hit Pilot Charles Marcy in the chest knocking him out. 

The engineer slid down from his turret and set to work to save the plane and the crew. About this time the pilot and copilot were drifting in and out of consciousness and the 17 entered a slow bank to the right and began a dive. The Sgt revived Marcy and then yanked the copilot out of his seat. The poor fellow was flying his first mission and had frozen at the controls.
 
Compton, the navigator, fired at the ME with his right side 50.  He heard slugs whistling past.  One shattered the window covering his machine gun portal.

"I felt it fly past," he said. "The shattered plexiglass plastered my face and cut me up pretty bad."  Compton faded in and out of consciousness during the remaining 45 minutes "Hey Mabel" was in the air.

  He managed to bail out and landed on the lawn of a hospital named after Herman Goering, the Third Reich Air Marshal. Compton had a broken leg and ankle as well as the injuries to his right eye. The Germans operated on him and removed his badly injured eye to save the sight in his surviving eye. A German staff sergeant who was born in Detroit managed to get a glass eye for the wounded Yank.

Luck seemed to be running out. The left wing was on fire so pilot Marcy gave the order to jump. The gunners aft of the bomb bay quickly left. The engines on the right wing had been shot up so badly they stopped running.  Poor "Hey Mabel" had been a brand new airplane and this was its third and last mission.  She was one of 62 Flying Fortresses destroyed that day.

Each man landed in a different spot around Berlin.  Pilot Marcy landed in a field where soldiers and farmers with pitchforks were running toward him.  (Ed. Note. There were stories about this time that angry civilians were attacking and sometimes murdering downed airmen.)

Nothing like that happened to the crew of “Hey Mabel”.  Marcy says he was "pooped out" from trying to keep his 17 flying and getting his crew members out of the burning craft.  He was exhausted by the time he touched down. He surrendered to the Germans and relied on them to gather his parachute. His captors stuffed him and his parachute into the sidecar of a motorcycle.  He was taken to a hospital where he remained in treatment for three weeks.

The Germans called their nurses "Sister Marias". The 17 pilot says they actually spoiled him.  He ate well and received good treatment during his three week stay. He lost two fingers in the battle.

Schrimsher remembers he hit the ground behind a row of houses, collected his parachute and awaited his fate while residents gathered around him. Eventually soldiers came and took him away in a truck to interrogation.  He tried to offer his captors chewing gum and cigarettes but they would not take the gifts. All the men said later that they were treated properly.

"I didn't think it was too bad," remarked Conway about being a POW in Germany recalling his imprisonment sixty years later.  "They had a library and a theater.  I learned to play bridge. The only thing that was bad, really bad, was the lack of food."

He said the International Red Cross helped POWs get by but supplies were raided by the guards, Rations also dwindled as allied forces converged on Germany. Tech Sgt Schrimsher was one of about 2000 airmen confined to a camp for non-coms at Krems, Austria.

The three captive officers were moved twice as the Russians closed in from the east and the Brits and the Third Army under Patton came in from the west. They were freed 18 days before what was left of Germany surrendered. It was Sunday, April 9, 1945, almost a year to the day since “Hey Mabel” was shot down.

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Book Reviews

Dereliction of Duty

The Eyewitness Account of How Bill Clinton Compromised America’s National Security
Lt.Col. Robert “Buzz” Patterson USAF (Ret.)
Regnery Publishing Company

Al Santoli writes the forward to Colonel Patterson’s shocking book. Santoli is a US Army combat veteran, a foreign policy analyst and a writer. He clearly states that Patterson did not write this book as an attack on the Clintons. Santoli says Buzz describes “only those events and decisions having a direct impact on our nation’s defense capabilities that he witnessed or of which he had first hand knowledge”.

And Buzz had plenty of first hand knowledge. He was one of the very few military officers in our nation’s history to serve at the president’s side carrying the suitcase containing the nuclear launch codes.

Patterson was a career Air Force pilot and squadron commander and served four US presidents. He rose through the ranks in the refreshing years when Ronald Reagan was rebuilding the military after the ditherings of Jimmy Carter. He earned his wings in the Grenada rescue mission under the orders of President Reagan. (All right, class. Explain what Grenada was all about. Compare it to the mess in Somalia.)

Here are some of the events to which Col. Patterson was witness. He says Bill Clinton “loathed” the military and set about to weaken it beyond belief. He reduced the active duty force from 2.1 million to 1.6 million. He reduced the Army and 18 full strength divisions to a “vulnerable” twelve. The Air Force went from 76 flight squadron to fifty.

Here are some events as experienced by Patterson. President Clinton with Patterson in tow is at the President’s Cup golf match in Lake Manassas, Virginia. Clinton has just given an interview to ESPN and is now in the VIP area having a fine time with Vernon Jordan. The only possible problem to Clinton’s enjoying himself is that Sandy Berger is on the phone and must speak to the president. Berger is acting White security advisor. “Major,” he addresses Patterson who held that rank at the time, “we’re poised to launch air strikes on Iraq and I need the president’s nod”. When Patterson finally broke into the Clinton-Jordan confab, Clinton ordered “Tell him I’ll get back to him later.” To find out more about this shocking episode, read the book.

Later in the book the author says that among the military who served in the White House and the professional White House staff the Clintons were noted for “lack of professionalism and courtesy”. Patterson calls Hugh and Tony Rodham “characters right out of The Sopranos.” Hillary’s brothers are described as “loud, obnoxious, demanding and rude.” “They thought nothing of asking and expecting an Air Force or Army colonel to carry their golf bags for them.” Glorified caddies!

Let me cite one person on the White House staff who was a gentleman. This was White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles. When Patterson offered to carry his golf clubs for him Bowles politely refused. “I am ex-Coast Guard enlisted! No military officer is going to carry my clubs.”

Patterson was not anxious to go but his parents h ad flown in from Atlanta and they were accompanied by Buzz’s wife. Here is what Patterson says transpired”…I caught a glance at President Clinton…and I couldn’t believe it. He was eyeballing my wife as though she had just entered a singles bar. I was angered and immediately regretted beng there and putting my wife in this situation.”

-- Jack Brennan

 In The Shadows of War:
An American Pilot’s Odyssey through Occupied France and the Camps of Nazi Germany.
Thomas Childers, 443 Pages
Holt, illustrated. $27.50

A favorite author of veterans of the Eighth Air Force and, indeed, all those interested in World War Two history, has scored with another winning effort. We all remember Tom Childers popular “Wings of Morning” that told the sad history of the last B-24 shot down in Europe. This new and exciting and illuminating book brings to life what it was like to be “on the run” in Nazi Germany and later the difficulties of surviving life in the camps.

Your editor recalls the instructions his crew received on its way to assignment in India. We left St Mawes in Cornwall headed for Naples. The advice given us was to surrender to the Germans if we came down in occupied France and to avoid being captured by the Vichy Milice at all costs. The Germans would most likely ship you off to a POW camp. The Milice would just as likely rob and kill you.

The mists of history are closing over all those who took part in WW2 whether in uniform or out. It is therefore a pleasure to see Childers tell the story of the incredibly courageous young schoolteacher, Colette Florin, a member of the resistance since their earliest days who sheltered a fugitive Roy Allen, an airman from Philadelphia, in her tiny apartment when any of the other tenants might well have been Nazi collaborators.

Do you remember Pierre Laval, the French politico who headed the collaborationist puppet Vichy government? A bit about this traitor appears in the book. He was later executed on orders of the DeGaulle government. Remember that when the Nazis invaded France they were allies of the Communists who at that time held Russia. It is interesting to note that some believe that French Communists working in French aircraft factories sabotaged fighters being destined for the French Air Force and actually cost more casualties than did the Luftwaffe .

Read “In The Shadows of War”. Those of you, and there are many in the AFHS, who experienced bail-outs over France will find Roy Allen’s experiences particularly interesting as will all those who experienced the dubious hospitality of the German POW camps.

-- Jack Brennan

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National Day Celebration of the Republic of China

Your editor, his wife Anne, Henry and Betty Oi and Bill Campbell and Al Ducey enjoyed themselves thoroughly at the National Day Celebration of the Republic of China. 
We were invited by the Director-General of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Boston and Mrs. C.K. Liu. The reception was held in the Grand Ballroom of the Fairmont Copley Plaza. Boston and its Chinese community have always been very close. 

Your editor taught 4th grade at the Quincy school on Tyler St. 1950-51 and wonders if there is anyone left from that class.

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Department of Veterans Affairs Cemetery System

“The Bulletin” newspaper notes that the Department of Veterans Affairs cemetery system celebrated 30 years of operation in September. Reporter Ted Mulvehill told "The Bulletin" that national cemeteries were first established during the Abraham Lincoln administration.

  There are now 103 national cemeteries operated by Veterans Affairs.  It took over 21 which had been operated by the old Veterans Administration.  In the first 111 years there were 1.3 million internments. There have been 1.7 million including spouses and children in the thirty years since. Five more national cemeteries are planned.

Veterans’ death rates will continue to increase until peaking in 2008 when 676,000 deaths are expected.  A record 89,300 were interred last year.  Any veterans' services organization can furnish necessary information to vets and their families.  Check your Town Hall or City Hall.  In Boston call Deputy Commissioner Veterans Services at 617-635-3507.

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Time is running out if you want to hear WW2 air vets describe their adventures! Call President Bill Campbell (978-368-8864). Give us plenty of lead time because we ain't as young as we used to be.

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