Prisoners battled fear, deplorable conditions

Part 5

After eight months at Stalag Luft 4, the prisoners were moved out of Poland in January to Stalag Luft 1 in northern Germany, close to the Baltic Sea. The Stalag was located near the villages of Barth and Vogelsang.

“This is a distance of approximately 90 miles. We were loaded in 40 and 8 boxcars,” Lloyd T. Smith Sr. said. “We were furnished one loaf of bread and one Red Cross package to last us the nine-day route. During that nine days we were allowed to unload (only) twice for toilet facilities and were furnished with two pails for the remainder of the time. We were given very little water during the trip.”

Stalag Luft 1 contained more than 10,000 prisoners of war. They slept on mattress covers filled with straw. The men had one blanket that they wrapped around their thin bodies. It was a very cold winter. As they entered the winter of 1945, the men were given even less to eat. At this Stalag, “there was never enough food during the months of February, March and April of 1945,” Smith said. “We were on a starvation diet.”

The German people were also starving.

“We did not receive any more Red Cross parcels,” he added. “The barracks were built to accommodate one third the number of men housed. The windows were boarded up at night.”

Very few airmen tried to escape from the Stalag. All the men who tried were killed. The men knew that if you were recaptured, you were shot in front of the rest of the prisoners.

And then there were the rumors. They heard that Hitler had ordered all prisoners of war executed. The men lived in constant dread. They also knew about the youth corps with their deadly and ruthless reputation.

“I would frequently wake up in a cold sweat and then be unable to go back to sleep,” he said.

Lloyd’s stomach ached and doubled him over in pain.

On May 8, 1945, the men in the Stalag Luft 1 suddenly realized that all of the German guards were gone. They knocked down the front gates. A short time later, Russian tanks started rumbling past. Soldiers soon appeared and liberated the men from their captors. Lloyd had been at this Stalag for three months.

The greatest sight in the world was the Statue of Liberty as they sailed into New York Harbor.

Lloyd was discharged from the military at Fort Dix, N.J., in August 1945.

•••••

Years later on a trip to Hawaii in 1975, Lloyd Sr. and his wife, Margaret, visited the Arizona Memorial. His memory rolled back across the years standing in the memorial above the sunken battleship reading the names of the crewmen who died on Dec. 7, 1941.

“This is where it all began,” he said quietly to himself.

Read parts 1-4 of ‘Tale of Two Brothers’ linked to this story online at Frontiersman.com.

Lloyd T. Smith lives in the Mat-Su Borough. Contact him at news@frontiersman.com.

Intrigued by the World War II journal of his uncle, Francis E. Smith, Lloyd Smith Jr. researched some of the entries. Here’s some of what he learned.

July 22, 1944

On Mission 28 of the above date, Francis changes his journal entry from technical observations to a slightly depressed entry.

At any one time, the 15th Air Force had between 200 and 300 bombers. The number of planes depended upon how fast the crews from the states could ferry replacements over to Italy. By the end of July 1944, the 15th had lost 318 bombers in that month alone.

July 15, 1944

Several days before this mission to the Ploieti oil refinery, the first of the silver B-24s arrived at Manduria, Italy. This Liberator had just arrived from the states and was not painted. The Air Force was not painting the aircraft in a sky camouflage because it simply did not work in their daylight raids. The lack of paint also saved hundreds of pounds of weight.

The shiny bomber made such a hit with the men that the base operations officer decided it should lead a raid and he would fly it.

On this mission, the silver bomber was leading the group at 21,000 feet when the group encountered heavy flak. Ploieti was one of the most dreaded targets they would go against. As they flew through the black, red and white smoke of the flak, the silver ship took a direct hit in the bomb bays and in a reddish-orange flash, was blown into a million pieces.

The sight of that silver Liberator being destroyed, on its first mission, must have been a tremendous blow to the morale of the men following its lead.

Many weeks later in Manduria, while the men were eating, the pilot of the silver bomber walked into the mess hall for dinner. The place became deadly quiet. It was as if they had seen a ghost.

The explosion from the anti-aircraft shell and bombs had blown the silver plane completely apart. The pilot and co-pilot were the only crewmembers who wore their parachutes on their backs. When the pilot was blown free of the bomber, he awoke while floating down with the burning wreckage of his plane, pulled his ripcord and landed safely with minor injuries. The 12 other airmen on board were killed in the explosion.

The pilot, Lt. Col. William G. Snaith, was captured and came back to Italy when Romania fell to the Allies later in August. He was ready to fly again. He completed 32 missions in World War II and 18 over Korea.

Aug. 6, 1944

On Mission 32, the “Dottie Darling,” Francis’ airplane, was down for maintenance. The crew took a replacement bomber.

After the Liberators dropped their bombs on the target, the lead plane made a sharp right turn and all the other bombers in the squadron followed in formation. The replacement ship, Francis’ airplane, had been hit by a tremendous amount of flak and the rudder cables, A-5 and trim tabs were cut.

Captain Booth, the pilot, did not know this and did not realize the damage until the aircraft did not respond. Francis was in the left waist position and saw the B-24 alongside of them angling directly at them. The pilot of that bomber saw that the Liberator was not turning and leveled his plane off and flew six feet above them. The crews of both aircraft held their breath as the planes passed dangerously close.

The rudder cables were fixed with “safety wire” by attaching them back to the pedals by the pilot’s feet.

The hydraulic system was also inoperative due to damaged lines. The lines were fixed or sealed off and the crew urinated into the hydraulic reservoir to replenish the lost fluid.

The landing gear would not come down and the crew cranked the two main wheels under the wing down by hand. To deploy the nose wheel, a pin was pulled and the nose wheel doors were opened. Then the wheel was kicked with both feet while seated in the very front of the nose. By kicking the nose wheel down and back, the airspeed would grab the wheel and “snap” it into place.

The shrapnel from the flak had also hit the fuel tanks and gas was leaking out. The bomber did not have enough aviation fuel to make it back to their home base in Italy. Captain Booth had to land the bomber at the island of Corsica before they ran out of gas.

A long day had ended.

Francis was scheduled for a mission the next day, but the crew did not return in time to make the departure. The man who took his place that day was shot down. That man became a prisoner of war.