Prisoner of War at 18! WW2 Veteran Shows Us How He Bailed out of a B-17 and Survived

hello i'm norman gibbs where and when were you born i was born in waterloo iowa on november 12 1925. so how old are you right now and i'm age 94 and thinking about my birth date i'll be 95 just next month what's that like it's hell getting old but it's okay i'm sure you hear quite often that you don't look like you're in your 90s well my legs feel like it and just tell me sir what branch of the service were you in okay i was in the united states army air corps and uh i was attached to the 15th air force flying out of italy as with the 463rd bomb group and the 775th squadron that was perfect what was your specific job in the plane okay my job in the plane uh there's several little duties first off i was a right waist gunner before we started the engines it was my job to go up on the wings and check the fuel tanks make sure they were full and and then during flight if anything happened to the flight engineer who was up in the cockpit it was my job to go up there and take over for him of course i didn't have all his knowledge that he'd gone through school for so primarily it was just to take over his guns which was the top turret also i was assigned a job to in case of emergency open the door on the back of the plane or i'll say side so we could all jump out that's another little story which we can go into a little bit later uh what other jobs did i have there i think that was about it otherwise just trying to be a good crew member and tell me what kind of plane were you flying in i was in flying in a b-17 uh after we finished our training we were assigned to plane in charleston i think it was i'm not sure what the state is but that was a brand new b-17g that had heated cabins closed windows waste windows and that was very nice that was a great flight flying from the united states over to italy it was a good trip we got to see the statue of liberty flying not directly over it they didn't permit that but uh we flew by it practically around it i'd say uh we went up north into new finland and then flew kind of south east to the azores then into morocco algeria and finally up into italy where we lost our nice brand new plane and they gave us one of the oldest they could find of course that's a natural train of events newcomers always get the old planes when do you think you first arrived in italy i'm sorry would you repeat when do you think you first arrived in italy i would say we arrived in italy about december yeah about the first of december that's a little vague right now but that's fairly close yes in 1944 and it was uh winter there in italy but not a lot of snow lots of water though and fortunately we had a tent that didn't have a bunch of holes in it so we could stay out of the rain uh that wasn't true all the while because there was a engineer in our tent from another uh air crew and he saw [Music] a centipede going along the side of the tent he shot it with his 45 with bird shot consequently we had a tent that leaked after that there was one night close to christmas where the engineer and i you may want to cut this out i went over to the pilot's tent with a bottle of whiskey we got him drunk i wasn't a drinker at that time so i was the only sober one but he wanted to come over to our tent so we went outside and the engineer got on one side of him i got on the other and we practically carried him over there but what uh happened is that i didn't see this drainage stitch and i stepped right in it so guess who got all wet him the pilot who was drunk was dry we went on our first mission which was a what they called a milk run to rigginsburg germany by the time we went over the city had been destroyed and we were just keeping them that way so there was no fighters german fighters set up to intercept us and that's reason they called them milk runners easy easy to do our second mission again we were in this old plane and our mission was to vienna austria and uh after we got into yugo slavia which was on a direct line between fojia and vienna we lost an engine to overheating and the pilot shut it down and feathered it going along and we were gradually losing our squadron so the pilot being democratic he said shall we go on or shall we go back to base and we were all green behind the ears and we all said ah let's go on so we lost our squadron and we had a good navigator with us but he took us right over vienna all by ourselves uh we dropped our bombs and as we made our 180 to return to base i was sitting in the waste this was another little job i had i was chucking out chaff as fast as i could go and for someone who doesn't know what the chaff is it's like christmas tree tinsel which one thrown out of the plane and uh hits the wind scatters and it just makes a big blob on the enemy radar so the german anti-aircraft guns never did catch up with us uh going back to our base we lost another engine uh well the first one who went out was number four that one was shut down and prop was feathered going back we lost engine number two the pilot was able to shut it down but the feathering system did not work so that prop was windmilling and the pilot ordered everybody in the nose of the plane out of there to go back into the waste he was left there the reason for that is that something has to break when a propeller is windmilling backwards and if the propeller breaks off which is what the pilot wanted it to do if it goes off to the left you're okay if it goes to the right it goes right through the pilot that's the reason why everybody was chased out of the front end of the plane fortunately the prop took off to the left so now we're left flying on two engines well when the navigator was ordered to go back to waste he just grabbed some maps off of his desk and went back and then found out he grabbed the wrong ones so he lost track of where we were and uh we had what's a term for it we had clouds underneath us so we couldn't see the ground we were still pretty high and about that time engine number one started to overheat so the pilot knew he couldn't fly the plane on one engine so you ordered us all to bail out when the pilot rang the bailout horn or whatever you want to call it it's my job to open the waste door jettison to the door so that we could bail out but when i went to do that the cable the steel cable had rusted so the cable came away in my hand and the door was still there it just so happened i had a pair of dikes in my pocket i don't know why i carried it but i did and i was able to pull the hinge excuse me i was able to pull the pins out of the hinge and push the door out now with that seven of us jumped out one right after the other because i was wearing a chest pack i was had been told to fall butt first in a v so that when i pulled the rip cord which is right here the parachute would pop open away from me if i were falling out of my face that parachute and the metal parts and it would be right in my face anyway so if you ever have done a dumb thing as i was falling before i pulled the ripcord my helmet started to come off so i reached up and pulled it down but i didn't fasten it under my chin started coming off again i reached up and pulled it up down third time i came started to come off i just looked up and watched it go fly away from me i don't know why you do dump things like that but i did it anyway we pulled ripcords before we hit the clouds and when i came out of the clouds are swinging back and forth so you can control the parachute to stop the swing anyway i was enjoying the view forest farmland villages and uh all of a sudden i realized my god the trees were level with my eyes so bam i hit on frozen ground uh that may have started some of the problems i have with my legs and so anyway six of us got together the seventh man uh somehow he got separated from us anyway we uh it was late afternoon so we looked for a place to hide and spend the night we found a little wooded area that we could lay down in and uh those nylon parachutes are not blankets they don't keep you warm but anyway we managed to survive the night we got up in the morning and we started walking in line but the last man well i should say it was foggy the last man could see the leader curving off to the right he couldn't follow a straight line so anyway we stopped waited for the fog to lift and we started walking through this forested area and we came to a road well the snow was about a foot deep and difficult walking through so hey let's take the road it'll at least get us someplace so we did and the road led us up to a like a block of forest and the road turned left and then it turned right to go around this block of forest when we turned right boy there's a plunder tune of soldiers coming towards us and they saw us and when you have six or seven men who just with 45s facing the platoon of men with rifles you give up so anyway we sat down by the side of the road we took all the heroin out of our emergency packs and the extra ammunition for our 45s we threw it all out in the snow so we were armed with pistols i had no bullets anyway this platoon comes up i'll say a platoon because there must have been about 40 men thereabouts and uh they wanted our guns okay i happen to have mine in a shoulder holster so i unzipped my jacket and reached in with two fingers took the gun out and handed it to this officer he turned that 45 around and looked at the muzzle and then he took his gun out of his holster i don't know what it was but it looked like it was smaller than a 22 and his eyes just bugged out when he compared the size of his bullets or muzzle to the muzzle of the 45. it wasn't a comical situation but it was and i had to laugh anyway they assigned about three guys to guard us and they went on their way wherever they were going and the three guards marched us again in the direction we were had been going and we came to a village okay they lined us up against a wood fence such as your six foot fences you put around your homes one of them went into the village the other two stood on the other side of the road with their rifles pointed at us well we were wondering is this a firing squad or what is it anyway the other third guard came out of the village and motioned for us to come forward we did they took us into a farmhouse and lo and behold they had a feast spread out uh i should say this is in northern yugoslavia which is croatian territory which is under the control of the germans by the way they fed us very good with wine pastries sausages and we thought to ourselves is this being a prisoner of war it was strange anywheres from there they took us to another building which happened to be a command post with the barracks attached and they signed us to a bed i guess okay it was strange we were still wondering what was happening and one of our people could speak german understand it he caught a few words and it turned out that the russians were about 15 miles away and these people were going to hold us as hostages hoping that we would say good words about them all that lasted a couple days then they loaded us into a farm truck loaded with frozen vegetables they put croatian great coats on us and correlation hats to make us look like croatian soldiers so we got we start driving away uh we came to a german checkpoint and one of these germans looked directly at me and said something i had no idea what it was so he said one more roust one more word which was roused and made this sign so we all got off the truck and from that point on we were under german to control well they took us into a prison it was nice prison compared to what we saw later but they gave us a pot of soup we didn't know whether we were supposed to eat it all right then or save some anyway we had a good cot to sleep on we were full of vegetable soup and next day they lined us up they had three guards assigned to us german this time and because i was the tallest one of the group i guess [Music] the lead sergeant or top man of the three assigned to guardis had me carry his backpack i thought sure he was had his wife in there that thing was heavy he had everything he owned in there they took us to a railroad station we got on a train uh we had a compartment to ourselves which was crowded with seven american prisoners and two guards there was always one guard outside the door the lead sergeant sat there and he opened his suitcase a suitcase it had wood in that was loaded with sausage and bready he gave a certain amount to us that's yours you know then he naught away on the rest of it but i have to say one thing for the german were mark they were like us they were given orders they followed their orders in this case one time the sliding door slammed open a german officer stood there and he made the sign roused that german's squad leader or whatever he was simply raised his burp gun aimed at that officer and said nine the officer exited slammed the door and that's the last we saw of him unfortunately in a sense the train stopped in vienna we had just bombed it a couple weeks ago and the guards took us into a soup kitchen which had a lot of soldiers civilians in there and they had us get in line with the german people or austrian i guess anyway our [Music] one crew member who could understand german said if i say hit the deck hit it well just about then the lights go out he said hit the deck and we did a few minutes later the lights came back on we were on the floor our three guards were around us where their guns pointed at outside the guns were not pointed at us they were given the job to escort us up into germany alive and they were doing their job i have to compliment them on that they never really gave us a problem during the entire trip anyway we arrived up in frankfurt germany which was a interrogation point we were marched into a prison and uh each of us assigned to a single cell that had a cot a small blanket and an open window well if i didn't mention it we went down on january 15th this was the coldest winter recorded there it was the same whether the soldiers in the battle of the bulge experienced anyway i was called into the interrogation room the german soldier started asking me questions in perfect english he said he lived in chicago for 20 years or so and of course we weren't supposed to give out anything and he finally says well it doesn't really matter here's your squadron identification and then he really shook me up when he said here's your grades from high school i had just been out of high school for one year but he had the records of my grades that shook me up a little bit anyway i was escorted out and then they finally loaded us up into boxcars uh if anyone has been over there that i think they call them the forty and eight four either forty men or eight horses traveled in them i think we had about eighty men in that car standing room only one bucket for you know what after about two to four hours you have to evacuate something and one bucket does not do it for about 80 men so that was going all over the floor we finally arrived at wetzler germany where they had a what do i want to say distribution camp ah that was a good experience we were assigned to a bunk a couple blankets we were given new clean uniforms and which the americans had delivered to the germans just for that purpose i guess uh they had warm showers they had a nice lunch room and they had american gis who put on uh what's the term like vaudeville programs oh being a prisoner or more isn't that bad until they loaded us up in some more box cars well they took us to nurnberg germany and i was in a position where i could see out of the single window that was in that box car and going through the city of nirnberg i don't think i saw anything standing higher than about 12 foot the city was totally bombed out they took us to a prison camp in nurenberg and we were assigned to this one block and given us a bunk fortunately i didn't have to share it with anybody but very few wood slats in it so when you lay down and you make sure that the slats were in the right place to support you and once we got situated in the camp they put us on the regular food line which in the morning was half of a soup can if you picture a campbell soup can of urzot's coffee which we swore was made from burnt charcoal i don't think they actually had coffee so it had to be something else for lunch as a recall we got half a can of soup vegetable soup and occasionally there'd be a chunk of meat you didn't know what it was but you weren't worried about that at the time but you look at the soup and there'd be a bug floating in it so we'd pick out that bug and then when we chug lug the soup and any bugs down below not on the surface we took in that was our meat ration and for dinner we usually got a rotten potato and i can't recall we shared a loaf of bread eight of us i can't recall if that was lunch or dinner the whoever sliced it up into eight rations got the last slice so you'd make sure that you cut everything equal otherwise if you were cutting the loaf of bread up you got the last slice and it was small that was your tough luck after so much time we got the word that we were going to have to leave that the russians were headed towards us so we walked from nurenberg to mooseburg which was prison camp number seven hey i think um at that time i was a good walker and so i wasn't bothered too much by the distance we were traveling plus we had a german officer who i think was around 60 or so who [Music] obviously didn't wouldn't care if the war ended so he wasn't pushing us on our march from nuremberg to mooseburg but we did see british soldiers who were guarded by ss troops we had to get off the road form because they came marching through like they were going to a party they were in formation and everybody was in step and they really put the americans to shame because we were sloppy uh we finally reached mooseburg which turned out to be one of the biggest camps they had i was assigned to a barracks and i had to share a bunk with a yugoslav soldier but he was very welcome to me i was a um 19 year old youth i'll put it that way i never did have a big mustache or beard but he got tired of seeing these long hairs popping out here and there so he loaned me his razor that was first time i shaved the first time you shaved was in a pow camp yes fortunately we got along well with the people in that barracks i did count seven nationalities in this one barracks there was egyptian french english yugoslav and i don't know what else but it was an interesting time although it was in prison uh was one day that all of a sudden there's a lot of shouting outdoors so i went outside and lo and behold there's an american tank sitting on the road and the sergeant in charge of the tank was trying to keep pows off the tank they were climbing all over it they were all around it and it just so happens that what now 50 60 years later i met that tank commander and he's a very good friend of mine now uh he said the only thing you have to pay me for is to buy me a cup of coffee so i did buy him a cup of coffee which is in payment for his coming in and rescuing us i should say that he had a total disregard for german property he had his tank drive right through the prison gate smash it down and he says to this date the german government has never charged him for replacing that gate he's a wonderful person and he's someone that i'm really glad i know anyway we were finally released from there we had to march out to a big pasture where they had c-47s lined up and we were assigned to a c-47 we took off and we flew to a camp they called lucky strike and there we were given hot showers brand new clothing they wouldn't allow us to keep anything everything went in a junk pile and we started out fresh from there they took us to a harbor and we were loaded on a liberty ship that had been converted by installing five tier bunks in the major hold i think they held about 400 gis there there was also a group of officers i have no idea where they were assigned we only could see them as they were getting their steaks in the kitchen while we were getting soup they treated the officers very well and we were still in a prison so to speak anyway on the boat trip back from france to new york we ran into fog and icebergs so something we found out is that when they were in fog in a formation like that they ships would drag a telephone pole behind them which would create a large wake and then the ship following and the fall could see that and know where the ship in front of him was well that was good for us we managed it and we found out later that the ship behind us was an ammunition ship ah glad we didn't know it in the beginning uh during that trip [Music] one ship did hit an iceberg and sink i still have a newspaper article that described that incident somehow somebody got the word back to our hometown about it and they printed it we arrived in new york city very nice reception and uh i can't remember the army beasts they took us to and what they processed us through gave us train tickets traveling money and said get out of here so i went on a 60-day furlong and i could perceive my orders to report to miami florida to a certain hotel but so i went out and oh during this time i got married to my high school sweetheart uh what was that like to see here for the first time oh that was great and it was great to see my parents and especially my dog at first the dog would not allow me to get on the porch of the house if you ever run up across a bulldog that's growling at you and giving you a bad look and poised to spring [Music] you don't move very far finally the dog recognized me and that was okay by the way i went down got tickets for my wife i got married when i was home to go to miami florida with me and i got home there's a telegram saying report to send san antonio texas with no dependents nice honeymoon we have we went so i went to san antonio texas went back to the old gi barracks uh they didn't have any workforce they so every day there's a couple officers that would come in say everybody outside we're going to dive bond for cigarette butts by the time we got to the end of the block or area that we were cleaning up there was only two officers and everybody else had scattered we were ex-pows we couldn't care less what we were doing and uh they never gave us a bad time about it and uh from there they shipped me to i think it's bowling field in kentucky they knew i was going to be discharged in a couple months they said we don't want you so they shipped me to leavenworth kansas and i was assigned to learn how to do the paperwork for soldiers coming back from the pacific i did that for a week and then i got my discharge papers so that's basically my story i i appreciate you going through it i want to go over some of the parts and ask you questions okay so tell me about the first two missions you made the first mission you mentioned you know was easy milk run did you guys encounter any enemy fire on that okay on our first mission to rigginsburg germany we flew in formation i think we're at around 29 000 feet using oxygen i think i was wearing every piece of clothing i could put on because man it was cold up there uh that first mission we saw some p-38s off in the distance we were told they were p-38s that was attracting the enemy gunfire so they got all the ackak and we didn't get any so that was a very easy mission to learn about what we were there to do the second mission as i mentioned we flew over the target ourselves which is a very dumb thing to do and but i don't know if i mentioned it one of my jobs was to check out the chaff which was like tin foil for a christmas tree and the tail gunner told me later he said the ack act or german anti-aircraft fire just followed us around our u-turn never did catch up i guess i was throwing it out extra fast they didn't know where we were for where we were for sure explain for those who don't know what would chaff do okay the reason we threw out the chaff is that that would deflect the german radar and if there was enough chaff out there radar could not pinpoint where we were and so either because they couldn't pinpoint where we were because i was throwing it out so fast or they didn't figure it was worth it to shoot at us just a single plane i prefer to think this the chaff that did it because the radar was their anti-aircraft gun their anti-aircraft guns were controlled by the radar yeah um could you see on your second mission the bombs hitting the target no i couldn't uh see what the bombs did because i was in the waste and all i like to do is see out the side to the other well there weren't any planes next to us but all i could see was like looking out a window in a house it's framed and that's all you see the tail gunner the ball turret gunner they had an ideal position to see what happened uh quite truthfully because we didn't have a bombardier we didn't know what the actual target was so when we dropped our bombs we had no idea what we were doing and we were flying about 29 000 feet at that distance you really can't make out the details as to what the bombs hit uh 20 000 29 000 feet it's like you're looking at a road map from 10 feet away you really can't make out the details tell me about that feeling you had before your first combat mission you know you'd arrived in italy i mean what was that like right before you flew that first mission sir okay when we arrived in italy uh this was in december so the weather was lousy it rained a lot uh we got a little snow at that location but evidently there was that area from italy up into europe that got a lot of bad weather snow rain ice whatever and so we couldn't go on missions i guess the most tragic thing i ever saw was one night they let us go into the city of foggia and coming back we hitched a ride on an ambulance so there's eight or ten of us on the ambulance i happen to be in the right hand front seat we're driving along this road no lights and uh we came to this railroad track there was a guy standing next to the tracks with a hooded lantern we couldn't even just barely make him out and for some reason the ambulance driver put the brakes on and the engine died well he couldn't start the engine again and being on the right-hand seat i happened to look out to my right and all i could see was this hooded headlight on this train engine coming towards us so i hollered train and boy that right hand door flew open fast and i got the hell out of there uh the guys in the back they opened the back doors of the ambulance and they started piling out but one guy didn't get out fast enough the train hit the front of the ambulance and the back door caught that fellow and threw him under the train it sliced off the top of his head i happened to be the only guy with a flashlight and i found him that was not a sight i would like to remember that was my own experience at seeing someone killed during the war um they finally took us into the squadron doctor he asked if we were all right and i said yeah my table gunner's with me he says well let me give you a shot of whiskey that'll help you i wasn't a drinker i was too young and whatever but i gave mine to the tail gunner boy he put both of them down real quick uh that was my own only really bad experience during the war i appreciate you sharing that could you clarify why were you in the ambulance again okay coming from back from the city of folgia on the one night furlough we hitch height and regretfully we got a ride in an ambulance where the driver was having trouble keeping the engine running and he stopped right on some railroad tracks and the engine died he could not restart it that's when i saw the train coming and but you mentioned earlier in the story that you thought it was someone holding a lantern yeah i guess there was a what they called a switch man or something there or because it was a road they had this guy a position there but he was just standing there with a liner he didn't tell you guys to move or anything well he couldn't i think we were too far away from well he just didn't shout anything he just held up the lanyard gas lantern not electric so it didn't really hit us like a electric lantern would with a beam of light how far were you from the ambulance when the train hit it i was far enough from the ambulance from the rear of it that those swinging doors on the back probably just missed me because i had to run all the way back there um i don't know how close it was i never gave that a thought well that must have been a tremendous noise when the train hit this oh yeah because the ambulance was right on the tracks the engine of the ambulance was on the tracks so when the train hit it well let's say this is the engine of the car of the ambulance when the train hit it like this it just threw the ambulance ambulance around the side the bird arrows were open this guy was trying to come out and that rear door caught him and just threw him under the train uh that was the worst experience i had during the whole war seeing that happen and you didn't know that man though no no one had no idea who he was but it just bothers you anyway when you see something like that happen i wonder how they would classify that you know is it just an accidental death you know because you're friendly fire you're the enemy you know killed in action or just accidental death yeah makes you wonder how many of these happened across during the war during the war i would imagine there was a lot of accidental deaths get this i was researching the planes and the air corps something like 20 000 men throughout the whole war just the u.s were killed in training accidents yes that's just the air court yeah i mean that's crazy 20 000 just in training never even got a chance to fight the enemy well when you consider that the heavy bombers of that day usually had 10 crewmen so if one bomber was shot down or had problems and went down there's 10 men gone so on those emissions flying out of england predominantly if they lost 10 airplanes that's a hundred men and that's why there were so many air force men in prison camps

Channel: Remember WWII

Views: 232,692

Rating: 4.9189944 out of 5

Keywords: world war II, veterans, world war II veterans, world war 2, combat veterans, heroes of world war, heroes of war, World war two, b-17, prisoner of war

Id: QHYbR6VwKA0

Length: 58min 24sec (3504 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 05 2020