Summerfield Press - Columnists Blogs - Hero relates harrowing WWII experience

Location: Blogs Spruce Creek South
Posted by: Bob Turner	9/29/2006
What do you do when the guest speaker calls and informs you he will not be able to keep his commitment owing to sudden illness - and you have less than 24 hours to obtain a substitute? For the president of the Spruce Creek South Veterans Club, that was not too much of a problem. When Robert Walker, a member of the famed Tuskegee Airmen, had to bow out from speaking due to a severe case of laryngitis, club president Russ Warriner contacted resident Joel Gatewood, a B-17 pilot who had his aircraft shot down over enemy territory. The 85-year-old veteran agreed to stand in to share his story with his fellow club members. Gatewood's Army Air Corps career began when he was a freshman at Wayne State Teachers College in Nebraska. Shortly after the United States entered World War II, Gatewood wanted to do his part for his country by flying in the Army Air Corps. There was one problem: He lacked the two years of college required to enter flight training. He managed to take a written test, however, that was being offered to those who excelled in mathematics in lieu of the two-year college requirement. After passing the test and a rigorous physical examination, he was on his way to flight school. During the summer of 1942, he received classroom instruction in flying, followed by actual flying of the B-17 aircraft. After completing the required flight hours, he was assigned a crew to fly a new B-17 to Scotland from Gander Lake, Newfoundland. After delivering that plane, which he never saw again, the new pilot was sent to Bassingbourn, England, which would become his home base. "The first four missions were not too bad, with just about the normal flack and anti-aircraft stuff you got," he said. His fifth mission, however, was a one-way flight. Gatewood remembers that day vividly when he was asked to fly the assignment. At the briefing, the 21-year-old first lieutenant found out his mission was to fly with 230 B-17s to a place named Schweinfurt in northern Bavaria. The target sites were factories that made precision ball bearings. It was Aug. 17, 1943, and 36 of the bombers on that raid did not return to England that day. Gatewood's was one of them. "We were flying at 19,000 feet when we got hit with everything," he said, "I got out with my navigator, bombardier and one waist gunner." He watched his plane spiraling down as he floated to earth in his parachute. After regrouping on the ground in occupied Bavaria, the men evaded capture for 10 days by lying low during the daytime and moving only at night. He told how they ate wild berries and grass and drank water from streams. Late on the 10th day, they came across a potato field that was being worked and were spotted by a young peasant girl. She ran away and returned shortly with local police. They were held in the town jail until being turned over to several German officers and becoming prisoners of war. He spoke of the group being sent to Frankfurt, where the members were interrogated. During the interrogation, Joel said the interrogator told them things they already knew about them. Afterward, they were loaded in railway boxcars in freezing weather and shipped to a POW camp in Sagan, Poland, where Gatewood endured 17 months of hardship. The movie "The Great Escape" was based on the massive British Airmen escape from this camp. By January 1945 the Russians were advancing from the north, he said, and the entire camp was ordered evacuated. The prisoners were marched for seven days in subfreezing weather before being loaded into boxcars. Joel said he was sent to Stalag 7A in Moosburg, Bavaria, where he spent his last four months of captivity before being repatriated by Patton's third army. He managed to spend a short time in Paris before going to Le Havre, France, to board a ship that aided in his return home to Nebraska. He obtained his private pilot license and has owned two planes that he has enjoyed flying around the country. At the end of his talk, the substitute speaker received an ovation usually reserved for professional orators. Bob Turner covers Spruce Creek South for the Summerfield Press. Contact him at summerfieldpress@earthlink.net.>

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