B-17 POW reunion, Part 2
Earl Morrow Sam Lisica Jerry Silverman
Pilot Bombardier Navigator
Interviewed by Matthew Rozell at Earl Morrow's home,
Hartford,
NY
July 31, 2001
Continued...
Jerry
Silverman: And that really shook me up…. [The author states] “You guys are
heroes’ and we’re not heroes, but when I read this I decided, “I am a damn
hero”.
Mr.
Rozell: My dad’s cousin, his name was Clarence
McGuire and he was a waist gunner and he was in the Eighth Air Force-he was
shot down on July 29, 1944, he was twenty.
And that’s it-no one ever saw him again, he was from Hudson Falls-
there are so many of those guys that don’t come back…
Sam
Lisica: The enemy actually never
turned his back; the weather did, but never an enemy.
M.R:
I mean you must have lost a lot of friends.
How do you deal with that, how did you deal with that?
J.S:
Like the way it was dealt with in some cases - the
officers, then the enlisted men -they were together and these guys finished up
and my guys finished up. And I went home after so many missions , rest and
recuperation, which we called “return and regret’-but anyway, we got through
the thing. What happened when a crew went down and replacements came through,
word started getting around. “Don’t
get friendly with these guys cause it breaks your heart”, you know, so no one
talked to anybody. But anyway we
got through the thing.
M.R: That reminds me about Twelve O’Clock High.
Gary Cooper movie, Twelve O’Clock High…
S.L: Anyone remember that movie with Gary Cooper?
J.S: It wasn’t Gary Cooper, it was Gregory Peck, I can’t
remember your name (in reference to
Mr. Rozell) but I remember Gregory Peck …
M.R: Matt Rozell…
J.S: But I can remember Gregory Peck.
M.R: Well you should…
J.S: (points to Lisica)
He can’t even remember to take his medicine.
Earl Morrow: (returning to table) I don’t where that stuff is,
but I think we put it in there but I can’t see it anymore.
But it will show up after a while.
M.R: Did you know any of the British troops or fighters?
S.L: We weren’t up
to their status; they didn’t have anything to do with us.
M.R: They looked down on you?
S.L: Oh yes, they looked down their noses on us.
J.S: Can you say that again?
M.R: The British flyers, any contact with them or any conversations
during the war?
J.S: Well I got a chance to fly, not a mission but a practice. And
I can’t remember how it came about and I think it was in Wellington; we were
talking about the other day. Some flew with one of ours, it was sort of an
exchange thing -they flew one in and we talked to them and we thought they were
very…they had a whole different conception- they bombed at night, but they
weren’t heavily armed like we were. They carried heavier bomb loads -we would
never fly at night, it is dangerous as hell. They would never fly in the
daytime; they would say you’d get killed doing that.
S.L: They said, “You are crazy!”
J.S: I had great admiration for the RAF (Royal Air Force), they
don’t take the backseat to anybody. They
had more guts when they were Prisoners of
War, the reason they could have had an
escape, as they did. The British were taking the crème of the kids from the
college, and putting them in the RAF. They were the crème de la crème. So when
they got there, they had guys that could print, could forge and could do this.
They had engineers. You know, they could build tunnels, but they knew how to get
air through it. They built the thing, you had hardly any fuel. When you got down
to Moosburg, I see them with this
little thing (motions hands in a circular motion) they got a little blower with
a duct going down there and you turn a few things in and they had a red hot
flame going. They had to have ingenuity. The British had the ingenuity. I was
watching this little thing and I asked what’s that? They devised all kinds of
things. If you see that movie again, to refresh your memory, these guys were all
experts in their own fields, and they knew how to forge documents, they knew how
to do things with their time. They took uniforms and re-cut them and re-sewed
them and made them into civilian clothes. And they got a hold of the train
schedule and arrived at daylight out of the forest.
I can tell you another story about a POW in our chapter who could
speak seven languages. He was in our camp. He told me his name was Alex Maleska
(sp), about a year or two ago the Russian Ambassador gave him a medal down in
Washington- it was in the papers. Now this guy was a prisoner in the camp that
communicated with London. London dropped tons of cigarettes, which we used for
currency. The Germans got a lot, but we got a lot in the camp. Alex Maleska got
all of them; he had an apartment in Munich in which he was hiding because he
could speak the language- how the hell he got in and out of the camps, I have no
idea. And he has Russians in this
apartment, a whole story on its own, fantastic thing. How did we get radio parts, cigarette companies sent tons and
tons of cigarettes over, and I got 20 cartons or something -for every 5th
or every 10th or every 100th carton or shipment there was
one pack and in one cigarette, it had a part for a radio, and when it came, we
gave it to whomever we were supposed to give it to and given enough of those,
we’d get radios. We’d get cameras and we’d get parts and we’d sneak
things in. So it was a very, very, complicated thing if you wanted to get into
another area, get a hold of the book A Man Called Intrepid.
You will not be able to put it down, unbelievable.
M.R: Thank you, I know, one of them is sitting on my father’s
bookshelf.
J.S: Did you read it?
M.R: I haven’t read it but I know the title of it; I was looking
through his bookshelf.
J.S: One of the most fantastic stories, the way the spies worked.
When they sent spies in, they checked out the area because the Germans would
know in this town here in Hothin(sp), people didn’t wear shoes like that, that
was something you got at a store in New York City. So they would be out of place here, and they would nail the
guy, they would nail the spy. That’s it, they (the spy team) would detain
somebody, a German somebody, they would detain him and say something was wrong
with the plane, to get him into the restaurant and somebody would go over
(motioning with his hands) grab all his stuff, photograph everything, and put
everything back and he wouldn’t even know anything was touched. They would
then indicate that the plane was fixed; meantime, they would have a nice meal on
Uncle Sam. Read the book.
M.R: All right.
J.S: Guaranteed one of the best books you’ll ever read, if you
are interested in it, I couldn’t put the book down.
M.R: So did you guys get your POW
medals?
S.L: Yes.
M.R: Did you get them late?
S.L: Oh yes, everything was late -we don’t get a free invitation,
they mail them in a little cardboard box.
M.R: When did you get yours, Sam? Did you have to wait years?
S.L: No, I was not given them at first-when they were going to be
issued, I went to the V.A. and we
had a man in charge of POWs, and he got everything for us -he was good.
Everything we had coming, he would deliver them and it would come to us.
And he just retired.
J.S: What is he talking about?
S.L:
Your POW medals. I got mine mailed to me in the little bubbles.
J.S:
On the {ship} Intrepid we got a presentation.
They had an Admiral and a General and we were in this big auditorium and
they called off our names, one by one and we went up there and our families were
there. And we all got our POW
medals.
M.R:
When was that?
J.S:
I got the whole thing on tape, because my tail gunner was in… my radio
operator was in from Kansas. And he came along and he had a camcorder and he
took pictures of the whole thing. The interesting thing is they invited
President Bush he said he would come if he were available, well, they knew right
away that was a standard answer.
M.R:
Sure.
J.S:
They invited Mario Cuomo and he said he’d need about 10 minutes to talk and
they said “this is a POW function, this is not a political opportunity, you
will not be able to speak”, so he didn’t show up. They invited Mayor Koch (NYC) and they told him the same
thing, you can’t speak, but that didn’t stop Koch. Because he went outside
and took a place on the lower deck, {editor’s note- the gathering was on a
docked WWII vessel} he had a microphone and he had a crowd on the pier and he
made his speech anyway, Koch did. (Laughs)
EM:
I just got an invitation down to Albany and I go on down there, got all dressed
up because I didn’t know if I was going to get the POW medal, and it was
outside in the pouring down rain, that’s about all I can remember.
M.R:
Was {former congressman} Jerry Solomon there?
EM:
Nope, there were some military people there and that was it.
And there was a reserve unit I guess that presented them. I think it was
the colonel that presented them to us, and he stood out in the rain with us,
too.
M.R:
Speaking of colonels, didn’t you tell me that one time they dropped an officer
maybe a colonel at your camp?
EM:
Yes, (pointing to J.S) in our camp the colonel was running the camp, what was
his name, the old fellow? There was
a general in there (referring to the camp).
S.L:
He was a colonel in the B-24 group.
EM:
Yes.
Earl. Morrow (pilot, far left) Sam Lisica (bombardier, far right)
J.S:
What are you talking about, the old POW camp?
The general there was…
J.S:
Alkrere was the officer in charge. Once
you were behind the barbed wire the Germans said you were in the military
organization and the officers would run things so that they don’t have to.
We have to tell the officers what we wanted.
We had rules, very strict rules. You
couldn’t escape if you felt like it. You
had to go to the escape committee, because you might do something to screw up
somebody else’s (escape plan), but anyways, let’s not get into that.
M.R:
All right.
J.S:
Al Keire was over all the Americans in the whole camp.
In
our compound, the west compound, there was a colonel. A fighter pilot, Jack Jenkins was his name, a Texan.
He was the officer in charge. A story I knew about him is that he was
standing outside when they have a roll call; they call it once at morning and
once at night. They lined everybody up with space and then two Germans go down
and they count. They see that each
line is complete and then they count up the lines.
(He counts in German) Then they count up this one and write it down.
And add that one to make sure everybody is there.
Well that opens up a whole bunch of stories.
However this one particular day we stand there, the counters are right,
were we just standing there two hours, we were standing there.
Something was said and the colonel and the counting man came together,
you know and the next thing we know, they’re standing there and there is a big
argument. And the story as I got it
was this, they said they wanted a list of all of the Jewish POWS.
{Editor’s note: Mr. Silverman is Jewish} So the next day, we came out
there and there’s this big argument, there was raving and ranting.
Jenkins says “That’s it!”, well after all this standing around, we
said “ well what happened?” and the story filtered back.
The German says “give me a list of the names of the Jews”,
ridiculous! Well, they all took
the pledge that night. The pledge like they all had converted, like everybody
was converted to Judaism. They
would not give him the list of Jews. There
was a whoo-ha about it. The rumor
was they wanted to take the Jews and hold them hostage up in the Alps.
The next rumor that went around I guess, maybe a month later, when a
whole pack of us, that’s when they started to march us out.
The story was they were going to take us as hostages to the Alps and use
us as bargaining chips. Another story that I’ve seen in print, and I can get you a
copy of it, one German general after the war said that Hitler has said he wanted
all of all Allies that they were being coddled because of Goring.
Which is what I told you.
M.R:
(Interrupts) Right.
J.S:
We weren’t, if you want to put this into perspective.
He {Hitler} said he wanted all the airmen shot (pound table with his
fist) and they did not follow his orders. You
know, we came this close (gestures with his fingers), God knows how many times.
But that was one of the stories about Jack Jenkins and he was a fighter
pilot who came from Texas. What
made me cry was this is a guy from Texas, and no general was pushing him around.
Now even if he didn’t like blacks or he didn’t like Jews or
Catholics, or whatever his particular group he had animosity towards, no German
was going to tell him what to do. He
says we are Americans in this camp and we are all the same.
There was another POW camp for allied officers in the North Sea, and
colonel Dbesanski(sp) was the head of a
fighter group. The same thing
happened up there. They asked him
for a list of all Jews and he didn’t say they were all Jews, he said
‘you’re not going to get it. If
your going to shoot them, your going to shoot us all because we are not going to
tell you which ones to pick out’. So
these are the things that make me feel damn proud to be an American.
E.M:
I saw this colonel stand up to a German general- POWs were tearing the
boards off the building down there in Nuremberg.
A general came in there and says “the man who tears the next board off,
we are just going to shoot him”. And
the colonel just stuck his chest out “Anytime you want to start, start with
me!”
M.R:
The same colonel?
E.M:
Yes
J.S:
Was this Colonel Good, in Nuremberg, was that his name?
E.M:
I couldn’t tell you.
J.S:
G-O-O-D.
E.M:
He was on the march with us, but they had him in a wagon because he
couldn’t walk. And he was
screaming at them back there because the Germans wouldn’t get him up front
with his troops. He was the same
one that was at Sagan.
J.S:
Was he the fellow that wrote a letter about the conditions in the camp?
S.L:
Colonel Davinport…
E.M:
Yes.
S.L:
I have it home at home, it’s 12 pages.
With the amount of food you got….
E.M:
He wrote a letter on the conditions and slipped it to the
Red Cross. And it went
through…
M.R:
Why were you tearing boards off the buildings?
E.M:
For the…
S.L:
Heat.
M.R:
Burning them for heat?
S.L:
That was our heat.
E.M:
Yes, we didn’t have any other.
S.L
(interrupts) We burned anything that would burn, we were freezing.
E.M:
Yes, that same night, you could hear the boards being torn off.
J.S:
This was in Nuremberg.
E.M:
Yes.
J.S:
When I was in Sagan we came in.
E.M:
Sagan we were using boards to stand up, to make the tunnels.
S.L:
We were taking the boards off to make tunnels.
E.M:
We were taking the bed stakes out of the beds. You had three boards gone.
J.S:
Next thing you know you were sleeping on three boards.
S.L:
It looked something like your fingers (makes a wave motion).
M.R:
For escape?
E.M:
Yes.
S.L:
That is when they were digging the tunnels.
J.S: That’s where they…
E.M:
(interrupts) So I was saying, you see you had to shore up for every inch you
made.
S.L:
And when the guys touched down straight so many feet they had to shore it up
with the wood. Then they’d start this way (motions with hands) and every time
they’d move they’d have to shore it up. They made a gadget that they had to
carry the dirt. They made a rope that they put wheels on it. The guy had only
room to go through. He could not turn around, you see. When he came out, he had
to come out backwards.
E.M:
At first they had to bring the dirt out in stockings, but they had gardens, see.
They’d mix the dirt in with that (referring to the garden). Well then the
Germans stopped the gardening business. So then they figured it out and had a
whole bunch of people go out in the field and drop the dirt.
J.S:
(Stands up pointing just below the knee, walks around, demonstrating) The
stocking is right on his leg, tied with a string, and you walked out and pull
the string. But the dirt is going to look different- so they put a little out,
then they walk, and mix a little up… They claim that the field there was
raised six inches and then they went to tunnel. The Germans drove a tank and a
little would collapse and we would have to dig deeper.
E.M:
That happened when they brought a load of potatoes in Sagan
and about 3 days later before they came and checked it. In the first camp
that we were in was north of Berlin.
J.S:
Sagan is Stalag Luft III- “Luft” is “air”,
III , it was third one and Sagan was
a village.
E.M:
The Germans soldiers were not supposed to think for themselves, and they
drove across this tunnel, it caved in, so they got another wagon and unloaded
that one and move it on out. Then the officers came and spotted it, and of
course I heard this story from other guys in there, because I’m not privileged
to everything, but by then our tracks were all covered up and we didn’t know
anything about tunnels.
J.S:
Let me tell you about the escape committee…Every prisoner of war was
expected to escape at all times, the reason being you tie up more Germans troops
guarding you, it keeps them away from the lines, and if every one tried to
escape at once up, it would mess up the other guy.
So if you wanted to get out, they would help you, but you needed a plan
to get over the fence. Once you got
over the fence, they would get you clothes, timetables, tickets, you know, maps,
the whole bit. They could get you
this stuff…You had to go to the escape committee, let’s say he wants to
escape and has a plan, ‘ok, go, we will try it such and such night’ then
they will try to find the weather…. two or three days before his plan of
escape, somebody goes out at night, and they clip some wires and make some
tracks. The Germans get up in the morning and they see this, they count, you
know, and one guy is missing, But he’s not missing- I’m missing-I’m up in
the attic somewhere (point to the ceiling) -…So then they lined everybody up
and you go through, past the desk, and they
check your number and your picture and identify you and say that ‘Silverman is
missing’, that’s the guy were looking for,
but I’m up in the attic. Three days later he {one of the guys planning
to escape} goes out in the honey wagon or potato wagon or to the hospital and he
gets out…Now I come down from the ladder, or the attic and I’m standing
where I’m supposed to stand, it doesn’t make any difference… They don’t
know he’s gone, you see? They’re still looking for me. So until he goofs and
gets caught on the outside he is still free, this why they had an escape
committee. . You know, just example of how they did things.
M.R:
You had to organize it.
E.M:
And you did not try to escape on your own.
It had to be approved by the committee.
MR:
Now how many men were on the committee? Were there officers?
J.S:
One guy was called “Big X”, I don’t know who he was, he was number
one. His assistant was called
“Little X” and I think you can find that in that same movie “ The Great
Escape.” What went on in the
camp, it was only across the wire from where we were in the next camp.
We had towers there, they were the guards - all Germans were called
‘goons’-so they called them “goon boxes”. And there were little wires
about this high (motions about 6 inches with his hands) called a ‘warning
wire’ and if you stepped over it, you were shot.
If you were playing ball and the ball goes over, you wave ( waves in the
air) to the guard and point (points). You’d
hop and if you pick up the ball and went back, it was ok, but if you go the
other way, they’d start shooting. Well,
didn’t happen. Then there was a barbed wire fence, it was a big fence and then
there was another fence. Between
these two fences there were German Shepards running around, you know, walking
back and forth in case anybody went through.
Also between the fences there were goon boxes up there.
They had German guards we called ‘ferrets’.
The barracks
J.S:
“Oh, so sorry Hans, we didn’t know” (laughs)….
M.R:
Where would the tunnels be?
J.S:
How they got there, don’t ask me, you will have to ask some of the other guys.
But they had ways of getting tunnels, they would dummy up things,
latrines or...
S.C:
They took the stove- remember the stove?
J.S:
I can’t ever get how they got the stove down to the place down below.
They went thru the stove, probably through the space, then they’d have
a pallet of some sort of covering the tunnel, which they would cover with dirt.
There must have been some way to get through this stove and get
underneath their building. They’d
lift this thing up and started digging their tunnels.
E.M:
See, at first, the building sat on the ground and everybody was digging.
They set it up on stilts.
S.L:
Dogs would run around down there.
E.M:
In the washroom it was concrete so I think the one in the “Great Escape”
they went down through the manholes in the bathrooms.
J.S:
They had three tunnels -Tom, Dick, and
Harry, I remember that.
M.R:
Do you remember -were you liberated on the same day?
E.M:
Yes- we were in the same camp, we didn’t all get out on the same date.
M.R:
That was when General {George
S.}Patton came through?
S.L:
He came in on his tank with his pearl
handled… they were .38s {caliber pistols} he had on there {his waist}.
M.R:
Did you all see him?
(They
all say “I did, I did”…)
S.L: There was supposed to be 100-120,000 people in this camp at a time and they had other nationalities. They had Russians, they had Greeks, they had Italians. I know they had a lot of Italians. The main gate was over here and there was an abbey and there were buildings like this (motioning with his hand) and there was another gate and the Canadians were in there. Then there was a big one over here we were in. I don’t know what was down there or {unintelligible} …by the time we got down there, it took another two weeks and we were out... The first thing we knew, the planes were coming overhead. One of the great experiences I remember now; I hope these guys remember, two fighter planes with there contrails were making a great big “8” in the sky (motioning in the air) and the other one made a “9” for the 9th Air Force, and …(motions with arm raised in air) “that’s our boys and I mean, they were sharp!
But
they would come back -a P51
would come by like this, you know, and we’d cheer and the Germans would get
upset -but anyway we would hear small arms fire one day. Now I’m air crew-
don’t know anything about small arms. But when I see dirt hopping around, I figure something’s
up, so we scooted! And there was a battle- you could hear “crackity-crack”
(making noises) that’s what I remember -and the next thing, people are looking
out, and someone said look down there at the main gate and the American flag was
flying and we went berserk, we went berserk, but we were looking at the goon
tower and there’s no goons there, there’s Americans up there- I never saw
it, I guess I was hiding from the bullets making like an ostrich. And we saw the American flag, I mean, and to this day I’ll
start to well up when I see that... About
3 days later word came, Patton was coming in, so by this time you could go from
one compound the other. These buildings that were here, I was on the roof at the
peak of the building there was only about 6 or 8 or us. And there were French on
that side Canadians on this side. 0…2…3…was on this roof a couple guys
here and one more there (motioning with his hands). Here comes this flying wedge
{of tanks} and here’s general Patton. With his chest breaking the ice because
he’s the icebreaker. And I’ve
know him since Pearl Harbor he’s got these pearl handled guns so he’s
walking through, and the British (salute) and we heard a French guy “Mon
General” and there’s a guy next to us “Hey Georgy, were the hell have you
been- what took you saw long?” He
used an expletive that I’m not gone use on this thing, “but were the bleep
have you been”. George, the first guy he acknowledged (pointing up) was him!
(Earl laughs)
That’s
my memory of George Patton. You can
say what you want about George Patton, he liberated me- that’s my boy.
M.R:
He was the man. So that was
beginning of May?
S.L:
That was April 29, 1945. a date that in etched in my memory.
M.R:
You got a salute out of him, Earl?
E.M:
Yes, see these guys were more mobile than I had this bad knee and I wasn’t
getting around too fast, but I got up and ducked around the building and there
he was- I threw a salute at him and he returned it, I just happened to be there
all by myself, coming around that building.
And
he was “p.o.ed” he said, “You guys are all officers and this is what they
did to you?”
E.M:
Patton, He didn’t hang around long he made his little speech and he was gone.
Some of the guys hung around in there and we were talking to some of them.
S.L:
They sent up a field station, and we hadn’t had nothing good to eat for months
and…
E.M:
Bread would look like angel food cakes it was so white, we were used to that
“sawdust” bread.
S.L:
But the best thing was the Russians prisoners, they left camp, no one told me
they left -they went out and killed cows that had them on their shoulder bring
pieces of cows in on there shoulders “gonna roast some beef!”
J.S:
That’s right…
E.M.
They got them from the guards, too…
S.L:
And they made the guards scared. So
they went to the railroad yard and broke into a boxcar, they
found condensed milk in gallon cans. And them Russians brought them to us in our
tent were I saw staying. In there must have been 50 guys in our tent
J.S:
We had big white tents…
S.L:
We had great big tents, circus tents …
J.S:
Far more then 50 guys…
S.L:
We laid on the ground when it rained, we were in water so…
E.M:
We had hay to lie on, clean hay, so it wasn’t like back in Nuremberg- boy, it
{Nuremberg} was horrible…
S.L:
They brought us the condensed milk and the army started to deliver the bread and
we looked at that bread and we were afraid- it looked so good, it looked like
angel food cake…and everyone just looked at it- then we started eating it, we
put the condensed milk on it then they started making food and then we got good
food down there.
J.S:
One thing about the Russian cobbling up the livestock was that the farmers got a
hold of some American officer and he said “take some troops” because they
were killing off all the sheep, the
sheep were involved at the time. And
they’d just cut off a couple steaks they wanted and discard the rest of it,
and then they’d move along. So he
said “we’re going need this food, to feed you guys and us, our people”.
But by the time he convinced this particular officer, the farmer came
back and said “Forget it” (waves his hand) his herd had been wiped out.
We spoke with some Russians {our
guys} who had broken German, and Russians who had broken German, and some {of
our} Polish guys, you know, we had sort of communications with them. And we would -at this point, we had this airport called
Lonchort (sp), which was a German fighter base, and we were waiting for C47s to
come and get us. We hung around and
exchanged some stories, we would tell the Russians how we were getting out of
this, incidentally, how were you guys getting out of this? They said “we were
walking home, we walk to Turkistan”, that name sticks in my mind, 1200 or 1400
miles, sticks in my mind and I and the other fellows, as a group we said “well
aren’t they coming to get you, go by truck, fly in?” “They do not
recognize that we were prisoners of war -we were written off as dead-we were
supposed to die.” You know- ‘either go forward or die- cannot go back’,
that’s what they were up against. Now
that the war was over, Moscow didn’t give a damn about them, and if they were
going to go home, they were going to have to get out (motions with thumb, as in
hitching a ride)…
Rozell: So these Russian soldiers, did you get a pretty good impression of them? I’m sure they were different.
Lisica: Well, how many generals
did they have in the Russians did they have in there (speaks to Silverman) I
think it was about 12 Russian generals in there. They walked around and looked
like (unintelligible)…
Silverman: I have no idea…In
retrospect, and this is what I said to that girl that interviewed me for the
book, I said any person today or any kid today who’s growing up should get on
his hands and knees every night and thank God that he was born in the United
States of America… Because even today you could be born in Africa, you have a
fifty-fifty chance of getting to be 12 years old. You have AIDS all over,
you’ve got one group murdering the other, you know, within their own country,
killing each other and all the while this is going on and on… in Israel, Syria
and Lebanon and such. I mean, you can’t even go to school without being afraid
your bus is going to be machine gunned or blown
up. And people that live in this country have no idea how lucky
they are.
In
Mexico they’re having a terrible time. They’re coming by the droves to come
over here and work. And they have problems with us because we don’t want them
for one reason or another… Same thing with the Canadians, they should be damn
glad and thank God every day that they were born in {that} country. And I
don’t think anybody knows it. {There’s a quote by} George Santayana and
it’s posted at the Air Force Museum and I can’t recite it from verbatim but
it says, “Those who do not learn from history are condemned”-that
word I know- “condemned to relive it”, to live it again, and
nobody knows!
We spoke about this the other day
(pointing to Morrow) you know they want the Olympics in China and the pros say
“well, you know, we’ll get in there and we’ll do good and they’ll
realize that they have to become more democratic, and it can’t be that way
with their people,” you don’t learn from history-in 1936 they held the
Olympics in Munich, now didn’t that make Hitler the nice guy? Imagine what he
would have been if they didn’t have the Olympics, how bad it could have been?
Everybody is worried about
himself and nobody is worried about the United States. Nobody is worried about
his or her country. They want their boat; they want their summer
cottage, you know? They want their retirement plan, you know-; they want theirs.
All my boys have vans like he has (pointing to Morrow) and he has a good reason
for the van because he’s up on a farm and he transports, you know? He’s got
a big family. My kids just have 2 kids. We had a station wagon. We went to
Canada, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and we went camping places. We had four
kids-they have 2 kids now and they have these monster things, I said “what do
you need it for?” and they said, “They go in snow.” And I said “But they
don’t stop in snow.” You’re not going across fields or through the rocks
like you see on television. What have you got to worry about, the potholes on
Sunrise Highway?
Morrow: Well, there are some
places to worry about them, too….
Silverman: It’s a thing
you’ve got to have. You know? “It’s my 4x4.” “It’s my
4x4.” “It’s my 4x4.”
“It’s my 4x4.” Look at the commercials, look at the automobile
commercials. Do you ever see anything going 12 miles an hour? (motions with
hands) “Zoom-Zap-Zoom-Zoom!” The Cadillac goes and it looks like a rocket,
you’ve got smoke everywhere. So guys buy these things and say “ oh, I have
to drive like this.” And they cut in and out {on the highways}…
Rozell: I’ve seen the traffic
on Sunrise Highway {Long Island, New York}; I know what you’re talking about.
Lisica: It makes you laugh.
Silverman: In the mean time this
stuff is using up gas and oil. You know, there’s only so much juice in an
orange, and there’s only so much oil. Now, where is the oil right now that’s
being used up? Arabia? They want to take off a few yards of oil up here and some
in the U.S. When this is done who’s going to have the oil? Russia, China and
India.
Rozell: Then what do you do,
right?
Silverman: So boys (to Morrow and
Lisica), plan ahead (chuckles)...
Lisica: We don’t have anything
to worry about. We’re not going to be here.
Morrow: Yes, well you worry a
little bit about your kids and grandkids…
Silverman: What you get out of
the prisoner of war experience, it’s amazing-I haven’t seen this guy for 50
years (points to Lisica) and politically, economically and everything else,
we’re like twins. And you could see any guy, and that’s why it broke my
heart when John McCain dropped out {of the 2000 presidential race}, because the
guy is a POW {Vietnam} and I know-when you’re a POW you suddenly
realize what’s important and what’s not important. That’s one thing you
find out. The next important thing is that we’ve got to take care of this
country first and nobody seems to be giving a damn.
Rozell: Have any of you been back
to Germany since the war?
Lisica: Not me.
Silverman: They have tours –do
you want to go to the old prison camps, you know,
that’s hot stuff. (Sarcastically) I get out of Sing-Sing-after 15
years, do you think I’m going to go back and take a tour of the place?
(laughs)
Rozell: So you have no desire to
retrace those steps?
Lisica: I want to go and take my
wife, but she’d get sick. But I wanted to go to just let her see England, and
let her see France. You know? So, I cant do nothing, she’s crippled, she had a
stroke. That just shuts the door. I was lucky to get here.
Rozell: What do you think about
the German people?
Lisica: The men that I knew were
the civilians, the ones who were left behind. We got to talk to them and I
thought most of them I met were pretty nice people. Do you remember the day we
were marching (speaking to Morrow), we pulled off of the march and into the
farmhouse and we went up and knocked on the door. We asked them if we could wash
our faces and shave, because me, I was taking a shave everyday, no matter where
I was- I shaved.
Silverman: I always shaved.
Lisica: So anyhow, you talked
sign language and whatever you thought you knew in German, until you strike a
deal. And then she says, “ok wash up.” Their stoves were big cast iron
stoves and on their sides they had water tanks, so they were cooking over here
(points to the right) and the water stayed hot all the time. So they’d just
pick up the lid, dunk the cup in and give us a bucket of hot water. She said,
“Go out behind the barn and there’s a wash basin and a mirror.” And she
even gave us towels. And she had two little kids, and we went out there and we
got washed and came back and brought the stuff back. We came in, and there were
four plates. We had fried bacon, fresh eggs, and she had just finished making
rye bread in the oven. That was the breakfast I got on that march, the four of
us got. So, anyhow, we said what the hell can we give her? I had some left over
sugar cubes in my pocket, and I had a couple pieces of candy, and she had these
little kids. We were talking and all of a sudden-we made sense with each other.
She was saying she was a widow, her husband was killed on the eastern front, and
she had these kids and I think she had her mother living with her on this farm.
I don’t know how they worked it but anyhow, we sat down and we gave her this
and that but she didn’t want it. Anyhow we got up to leave and she turned to
each of us, we were in our 20’s and she was probably about 47 years old. She
came over to us and gave us a big hug and said “Good luck.”
Rozell: Now, is this after the
war ended?
Lisica: That’s when we were
prisoners and we were marching from…
Morrow: From Nuremberg to
Moosburg…
Rozell: How could you do that?
Would the Germans let you do that?
Morrow: We actually were bribing
the guards to stay with us, because there were S.S. troops in the area and a
bunch of Americans walking without guards, you’d have problems. But now along
the same line, I didn’t get into a deal that you got into (pointing to Lisica).
I got into a store that a couple of ladies were running. They let about 15 or 16
of us in there, and locked the door and the guards pulled the shade. And the
guards were outside beating on the door trying to get in. She let us get what we
wanted and she’d sneak us out the back door.
You see, this was at the end and
I actually saw three women converge on the commandant of the camp. A big old fat
major, he was at Sagan, then he was down in Nuremberg, and he was riding a
bicycle on that march. I saw three women, two of them from each side and one of
them from in the front caught him on his bicycle and dumped him right out there
in front of all of us. And then all the civilians wanted to know “when the
Americans were going to get here?” because, see, the Russians were coming too.
They just wanted Americans. All the civilians by then on that march, they were
with us. They wanted us there; they wanted the Americans there before the
Russians got there.
Silverman: I told this story
yesterday. I did eventually about
10 years ago meet one of the guys who was in this room with me and he remembered
everything as I did because sometimes you think “I’m not sure if this
happened or I heard it or what.” But this is what happened, it was on my
birthday, the night before was a Saturday. They put us in a barn and made a big
fuss about all these displaced workers and they told these girls they were to
fix up beds for us. So they made hay and got a blanket you know, they took care
of us and that was nice. But the next day he invited us into his kitchen. We
came into the kitchen, large kitchen, larger than this room (the room they are
in) and they cooked over in that area and the family sat there. We sat at a
table for six over here (pointing about the room) so I had mixed emotions about
this, which I’ll tell you about at the end. They gave us pigs’ knuckles,
which got him (points to Lisica) all upset, they boiled potatoes and after the
meal we sat at the table and he came over with a pad and said, “I would like
you to write a note to your commanding officer of the unit that occupies this
area”. This would introduce Herr So and So,
who’s the burgermeister, the mayor of the village here and “that he
had the six of you there, treated you well, gave you breakfast, took care of you
and gave you good quarters, clean quarters in the barn, and kept you warm”
because it was April. April 15th was my birthday, so it’s etched,
it was a Sunday and he asked us if anybody was Catholic, and if we wanted
to go to church with the family and so on. And they didn’t go and I said
“I’m not signing anything like that”. The reason I didn’t want to sign
was because I remembered when they were winning in 1941,1942 it was all “our
boys, our boys” and I didn’t see anybody say “oh, this is terrible”.
They were cheered, you know? Now that they were losing all of a sudden they
turned their faces around. So I said “I’m not signing it.” Another guy
said “I’m not signing it.” And
then one guy said “Let me write it. I’ll write it.” He got annoyed so he
said “let me write it.” So he writes it and this is what he wrote: “To the
commanding officer…..” just as this man said, please take care of him and
his family and then he added one more part and said “please do the undersigned
a favor and take care of this guy” and then he signed it.
Lisica: “Take care” meant
different than take care of your welfare.
Silverman: What does it mean to
an American? “Take care of this guy.”
Rozell: Who knows what he was,
right?
Silverman: So I’ve often
wondered. I’d like to go back to find out whatever happened to him.
Morrow: See, that’s the only
thing that really bothered me when I got back. On the march we had in January,
the civilian crowd, they weren’t with us at all, and then in April, boy,
between January and April, they were going this way and then this way.
(Points from left to right) Now why can’t they just turn around and go
the other way? Which, if we gave them the chance I think they would have in the
next few years.
Silverman: When we got picked up,
we were near a place called Ice laden (sp?) They put us on a train and took us
to Holly (sp?) and there was a railroad station. That’s where we got on a
train to go back west of Frankfurt, which was the interrogation center. So they
had a number of us, I’d say maybe 15, 20, 30, something like that, and we were
guarded by the Luftwaffe and we came in to this railroad station and all these
Germans were there, and the next thing you know, there was a mob of people
screaming and shouting, and the Luftwaffe had their guns and they protected us.
That’s when we first found out.
Morrow: They finally had to lock
us in the building in a room in the basement to keep us away from the civilians.
Silverman: Had it not been for
that, we would have been lynched right there. We would have been lynched right
there. Now these are the same people, that come April, when they could smell
borsht on the Russians’ breaths on one side and onion on the Americans’
breaths on the other, you know then all of a sudden (imitates German civilian,
shrugging shoulders, palms up) “What could ve do?” you know…{as if to say}
‘what you do if you were in the same position, you’d do the same thing!’
Morrow: When we were shot down,
the only reason I had a .45 strapped to me was that they made sure you had it
when you left. And they put some rifles in the back of the airplane incase you
crash-landed so you could protect yourself with it. And at the end of all the
discussion when they were telling us how to use this stuff, they said “Save a
bullet for yourself.” And I would never do that, but I mean, that’s the way
it was. The civilians were really going after the air force.
Lisica: They did all the
killing of the American airmen when they were captured. Not the soldiers, the
civilians did that. Strung them up on telephone poles…
Morrow: They said “If you get
shot down, you get under military control as soon as you possibly can.”
Silverman: It seems to be
worldwide. Nobody seems to like the American airmen. The worst thing about being
airmen is being caught by the Viet Cong, caught by the Koreans; they’d torture
the airmen.
Rozell: So what about German
people today? Do you know any? Do you have any desire to know any?
Silverman: I can tell you a
story about that; if you’re old enough, you have a story for everything. I
used to be in the driving school business. When I first got in I worked for the
summer and took it as a temporary job, and I was teaching a woman by the name of
Katie Gunther. She was a German woman, and also a nice woman, I just didn’t
get around to telling her that I had bombed Germany, you know, my job was to
teach her how to drive. And she was married to Max. And Max is a salesman for a
German company that makes hardware for operating such as scissors, scalpels,
etc. And in the course of discussion with him, it turned out that he was a
German fighter pilot. We started to compare notes and probably, we were mixed
up, and we were flying everyday, so he must have been flying when I was there
because he was flying in that period of time, and he was a 109. Now this is the
nicest guy in world, I mean, we got along very well. They invited my wife and
me, we went over, had dinner there, they wanted something done to their building
and our scout master was a contractor so I fixed it up with the scout master and
he got the job. She was a chief housekeeper in a hospital in Hempstead (Long
Island) nearby and whenever anyone was in the hospital that I knew, I’d go in
and see them, and then go down and see Katie. Katie saw to it that they got a
little extra of this and that, that kind of thing. They were the nicest people
in the world. Here’s a guy doing his job for his country, I'm a guy doing my
job, we were trying to kill each other, and 30, 40 years later, I don’t see
anything wrong with this guy.
But I’m not judging the German people or the German frame of mind; I’m judging Max Gunther, individual. Now, I’m Jewish, and this guy’s Luftwaffe and he was fighting for the Nazis. He should have said to his wife, “What? You let him teach you to drive?” Never happened. I taught Arabs by the way, and if they pass they think you’re the greatest instructor in the world. If they fail, you’re a bum. (Laughter) So anyway, they’re passing and I’m getting a lot of these Arab people, and I’m getting them from Lebanon, I’m getting them from Syria, and I’m getting them from Israel itself, they’re Palestinian Arabs. So one day I asked one guy, his name was Habeeb, I said, ”You guys know I’m Jewish. With all of this that’s going on in Palestine, how come you’re using me?”
And he said, “That’s Palestine, this is here. You’re a good teacher, we want you.”
So if you go on a
person-to-person level and I've taught people in that area from all over,
everybody wants the same thing. They want a good job, they want a clean house,
they want a roof that doesn’t leak, they want their bellies full, they want
their kids clean, behaved, kept out of trouble, they want their kids educated,
they want to enjoy Jones Beach just like everyone else, on a person to person
basis. But when you get a rabble rouser that whips up the crowd (waves hand in
the air) you know, I could mention a few of ours right now, whenever the set up
a camera, bingo!-they are there, I’m not going to mention any names, you know
who I’m talking about…
Morrow: I went to an air force
meeting out here with Clarence Dart (Tuskegee Airman) and that’s where I met
him. But when I went out there, I saw in the paper that there was going to be a
German Luftwaffe pilot who was going to be a speaker, and I didn’t want to go.
Rozell: Where was it?
Morrow: Glens Falls. So I called and talked to a guy who was the director of Adirondack Community College. He was a Jewish gentleman, the head of this group that was getting together out there, and his wife said, “Well, forget your problems and come on out and have a good time.” So I went and I stood out there the night that he made the speech. Now his speech kind of turned me off too, because he spent a lot of time explaining that he was not a combat pilot, and at the end of the war he was flying scientists, and so on and so forth, out of the eastern zone back to the western zone so we could get them. And he was backing himself up that he was a good guy. So then I flat out asked him, “Well tell me this: when we were shot down and our guys were in parachutes, why was the German Luftwaffe down there shooting the guys with the parachutes?”
“It couldn’t have
happened,” He said. “Well it did happen,” I said, “I was down there and
saw it.” And that kind of turned me off. I still go to the meetings and he’s
there every time. As a matter of fact, he was the head of one of the big paper
companies out there; he was the manager of it for years. He came over here and
has been here since the war. Some of the guys that work there, I don’t know if
it’s the company that’s on strike or what, but they all said he was a good
man, and so on and so forth, but since I got on him pretty heavy about those
German fighters down there shooting our guys in the parachutes, he kind of
avoids me.
Silverman: Well I can prove to
you that what he (points to Morrow) is saying is correct because when I bailed
out, I could see 2 or 3 other parachutes and about 3 or 4 of us were in a group.
I heard the chatter of machine guns and I got terrified and said “Oh my God,
they’re shooting us, they’re going to come around and shoot us in our
parachutes.” Now, if the story wasn’t around, I wouldn’t have thought of
that, but it just so happened that I heard all this chatter I heard from the
machine guns was not them shooting parachutes, it was what they called a
Leufberry circle, which was developed in the first World War after a pilot by
the name of Leufberry. Here’s an ME-109, he’s on the tail of a P51, who was
on the tail of a 109, who was on the tail of a P51, and if you break out,
you’ve go to try and turn inside (motions with hands) then so they can’t get
at you. All the while they’re trying to get inside and shoot you. So the
circle gets tighter and tighter and they’re all firing at each other, so I
couldn’t wait to get down from that cloud level and disappear into the clouds
below. But up above I could hear the shooting. And when I came through and I saw
the planes, the first thing I thought was that they were shooting at the
parachutes. And if I didn’t think that, then where did I get the thought? From
the stories that go around that they did do these things.
Morrow: Well they found a guy
that was shot through the leg down there and he was still in his parachute. I
didn’t see any American fighters down there, either. Things were rather
hectic.
Silverman: One thing that came
back to me yesterday that I hadn’t thought about for a long time. By the time
I got on the ground and we were picked up and put in a building, which he
remembers and reminded me about. (Pointing at Lisica) He’s the first guy
I’ve seen in years that was in that building. I could never find a guy, and
I’ve met a lot of POW’s, and I never found a guy that was in that building.
He remembers that I was one of the two guys that weren’t wounded. Everyone was
wounded either one way or another and some guys were all burned and black like
chicken.
Rozell: It must have been
terrible.
Silverman: Well, it wasn’t
good.. Now this is what I’m talking about. I went off on a tangent and I
forgot the damn point.
Morrow: Were you going to talk
about the first aid kits? They snatched them so quick, we had nothing to take
care of our wounded with.
Lisica: The German soldiers would come with a knife and cut the whole thing off. (Referring to the kit) It had iodine and bandages, and they took it for their troops. We had nothing for ours.
Silverman: Yes.
Lisica: He and I were trying to
figure out how we were going to take care of the rest. We would go on rides and
look for the packs, and there weren’t any there. So I would take off my shirt
and my undershirt, cause I always wear an undershirt, and we cut that up and
used it for bandages. Finally we got the Germans to bring us some stuff for
wounds. Like the paper you dry your hands with? That’s what they were using
for bandages. They brought us some
grease, and we put as much on our guys as we could. One guy landed on a roof and
it collapsed, so he fell 35 feet to the ground and hurt his back and couldn’t
move. Every time we tried to move him, he was in pain...
Morrow: He was the one I
carried across Franklin, and I don’t know if he got used to the pain or what,
because he never uttered a cry or anything.
Lisica: I was hurt. When I hit the ground, I bruised my left knee. It was huge and it was all swollen, and I walked with a limp. I don’t know if you were with me. (Points at Morrow)
No, you weren’t with me.
Morrow: No, it wasn’t me.
Lisica: Who the hell was it? I
walked across the field, and they made me pick up me chute and carry it and they
took me to the burgermeister’s house.
Morrow: The first one I saw on
the ground was _______(unintelligible), and he was the happiest guy on earth to
see me. He was afraid that he had bailed out and the rest of us had gone back to
England. When he saw me, he knew he had done the right thing.
Rozell: He didn’t know that
the plane blew up?
Morrow: Well, no. But he knew
to get out because he saw the other crew up forward and he motioned for them to
go. One guy was left standing there and he just shook his head. He wasn’t
going.
Lisica: And he died. That was
one of the guys that died on the plane.
Morrow: And I
still think, that was strictly a case where… (reaches for photograph) Do you
see these two small guys here? (Pointing at photograph)
This guy was in the ball and turret. He was standing here on the waist gun and
these guys would switch off in the turret. I think they had a deal between them.
“If I’m in the turret, you don’t leave until I’m out.” And Joe would
always stand there and wait for him to get out. And the escape door was gone and
I think Linquist must have gotten out and I think he probably was wounded.
Because when we were on the ground, the Germans came back and told us “Komrade
bleeding”, but they wouldn’t let us go to him.
Silverman: I remember that one. I was saying, if you go back up, it goes with what he’s talking about (points to Morrow) when our plane was hit. To get to the point of this story, the pilot pushed the “Bail out” button and a bell or something rang, and it meant you were supposed to bail out. So I started to bail out and my feet were already hanging out, and I realized that the plane was still flying straight and level. Everybody knew many a time that half the crew bailed out and the rest of them somehow got back {to England}. So I figured, this thing is still straight and level. So I came back into the plane and hooked up to the interphone, I got an oxygen bottle, and I called the pilot and said “what’s wrong with the airplane? We’re still going straight and level.”
He said, “We’re on fire.”
I said “Where?”
He said “The waist.”
I crawled through the bombay
and back, and I haven’t crawled through a bombay since then and I don’t know
how the hell I ever did it the first time because you can’t get through that
Bombay today, maybe I’m a little bigger now, I don’t know. But anyway, I
opened the door in the back and I see just flame. From the radio room back, it
was just solid flame. I closed the door, came, curved straight over, and I
bailed out. They tell me that the airplane blew up about a {little after} the
last parachute was seen. The part that I forgot was that we were in this big
room, and this was 3 or 4 hours after we landed, and then I got the shakes
(shakes his hands vigorously) you know, my nerves were such…Up until then I
was perfectly normal, as normal as I am sitting here now, and about 4 hours
later it was uncontrollable. I guess it must have a delayed reaction.
Rozell: Did all of your crew
make it out of the plane?
Silverman: Everybody got out of
our airplane. But the tail gunner, he was a lieutenant in the lead plane, and
the copilot flies in the back position and he polices the formation, he calls
off what ever he sees {telling other planes to tighten up their formation over
the radio} was the eyes in the back of the pilot’s head. He became a
“streamer”, which means he bailed out and popped his parachute, and it the
parachute came up but it didn’t blossom. It just streamed, so he went down.
His name was Ford. I don’t know his first name, but his name was Ford.
Rozell: And he was on your
plane?
Silverman: He was from the
airplane I was in. My airplane with my old crew.
Morrow: You saw this picture
didn’t you? (Pointing at photo in National Geographic Magazine)
Lisica: That was the same day
we got shot down. (Referring to photo)
Rozell: This is from National
Geographic, right? November 2nd, is
this it?
Morrow: That’s it. That’s
the day we were shot down. My wife was looking at it and said, “That’s
you.”
Silverman: Can you see and
markings on those planes?
Morrow: No, but the deal is
that this one, you can see him dropping bombs, and we were already off the
target.
Lisica: That’s what our plane
looked like (referring to photo. So there was somebody in that group that was
getting smashed.
Morrow: That’s what we were
going through.
Rozell: You guys had already
dropped your bombs, right?
Morrow: Yes. We had already dropped ours and were 5 minutes out this way (Points right) when we were hit and went down.
Lisica: That’s what happens when you become a bomber. If you get out, you say “Thank you Lord for letting me go.”
interview originally recorded on 7/31/01
copyright © Matthew A. Rozell, 2001.
transcribed by
Emily Getty and Nicole Middleton '04, Jennie Hartung and Catie Heil '04back to THE INTERVIEWS
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