Welcome to Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in this edition is Richard Hamilton. He is a veteran of the US Army Air Forces in World War Two, serving on a B seventeen bomber crew. Mister Hamilton's served on nine bombing missions. However, the ninth mission resulted in his plane being shot down. He spent more than a year as a German prisoner of war. And Richard, thank you so much for being with us. All right, You're welcome. When and where were you born, sir? I was born
in Bradlboro, Overmond, September twenty eighth, nineteen twenty two. I understand that you became interested in flying as a child. How did that interest begin? I don't know. I was a farm boy, and I think it was not when I was a young child. It was probably during my high school days. I always listened to into things about the war, and as we went to the movies, and I thought that the Army Air Corps was
the right place to be and and that's where I ended up. What do you remember about hearing of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December nineteen forty one. What were you doing and how do you remember hearing that news? Well, that is a very interesting thing. We had a radio. We had no electricity in our home and no running water. We had a pump at the sink. And but anyway, that gives you old background of why we were listening to the radio. It was battery powered and the battery was
getting beyond its law should be recharged. And President Roosevelt got on the phone and he told about the Empire of the JAP van has attack Star base at Pearl Harbor. And at this day we'll live in infanty, but we were all crouched down around that we meaning my three brothers, sisters, my grandfather, and I was in a multi generational home. And so we listened to the radio that way. And and then when it was over listening to the president, we looked at each other and where was Pearl Harbor? So we
got over globe and started looking. And that was the conditions that I heard about the attack on Pearl Harbor. Now, mister Hamilton, you mentioned that you were in the Army Air Corps. Were you drafted or did you enlist? No? I was drafted, and at that time I realized there was a young kid that had enlisted in the Air Corps and I was in his group. And when we left our home and in Brattleboro, Vermont, and
apparently they needed I guess, I don't know. Maybe it was after Fort Devon's where we entered, and four or five days while we were there, and then we went on troop train to basic training, and that's when I realized I was in the Air Corps. So were you assigned to the B seventeen or is that something you volunteered for Miami Beach was basic training for about a month or so, and then to Chicago for radio mechanics and learning the
Morse code and all those things. And I can't say when I early on that I was going to be on a B seventeen, but anyway, that's where I ended up. So you mentioned that you were the radio man and you had all this training to be the radio man. Explain what that role involves. What does a radio man do. The radio man on they BE seventeen is one who keeps in touch with the home base when the pilot gets
lost. It was the radio man that had the signal and could be located by the home base as to where we were, and I pushed down a key and send out a signal. They would monitor that and know just where we were, and that could be relayed to the pilot on the inter calm. Now, before you went off to war, you had another thing on your mind, and that also made you very excited for the war to be over. A certain young lady was very much in your life, and so
you decided to give her something very special. Tell me about that. Oh yes, my first year of training from one one base to another and ended up at Hume, Arizona for gunnery training. And then I had a two week furlough and from there I went home and I had an opportunity to purchase a ring. Then I gave her that ring while we were there, and so I tied us up for the for the for the for the during ration of the war. That is excellent incentive to do a good job and to
get home. So well done on that front. And so when did you get deployed across the Atlantic. We had a new B seventeen and the whole flight crew loaded our baggage on it and we flew from Kerney, Nebraska to bang of Maine and Gander, Newfoundland and ended in Prestick, Scotland. So from there we went by truck down through Bassingbourne, England. And so that was in the last of May, in June of forty four, so you got to the south of England right around the time of the D Day invasion.
Yes, we were at our face in Bassingbourne, and and there again we all listened to the radio and as that whole thing was going on. We weren't trained to participate in any way, but but I was listening to foot I said on the radio, Well, that had to be a huge boost in morale for everyone there, I would imagine, well, yeah, it was moving us closer to actually what was going to happen and what we were probably going to be doing. Well, mister Hamilton, let's pause right
there. When we come back, we'll start talking about your missions, the eight that you safely returned from and also the ninth which did not return safely and resulted in your time as a prisoner of war. Our guest today is Richard Hamilton. He's a veteran of the US Army Air Corps serving as a radio man on a B seventeen bomber crew. We'll be right back on Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbas. Please stay with us. This is Veterans Chronicles.
I'm Greg Corumbas. Our guest in this edition is Richard Hamilton, a veteran of the US Army Air Corps in World War Two, serving as a radio man on a B seventeen bomber crew. We've talked about his training, We've talked about him being in southern England getting ready to participate in bombing runs around the time of the D Day landings, that his crew did not participate in those, but soon they would be taking to the skies. And so,
sir, take me to that first mission on the B seventeen. What do you remember about it and how did it compare to what you thought it would be like. We were roused at three thirty or four in the morning, and we went from breakfast and we went to a session of briefing, and then I remember going out to the plane and it was a cloudy, foggy morning, as most of them seemed to be in England, and we
watched people were getting the plane ready for our take off. I was inside and didn't see much, but I realized that the things were going on. They had to prepare the plane for takeoff, and I guess now what I was thinking about was going down the runway with all the bombs in and with
the bumping along. And then we smoothed things out when we began lifting off on taking off, and then we went through that mist and fog and so forth until we circled around and I realized that we were gaining our altitude and finally we got up to where the sun was shining, and that was an experience that made things much better. But flying through that fog, I didn't
have much of a view of it. I wasn't up front like the bombardier and the navigator, and so I had just that little window over the wing. And we didn't encounter any fighter planes that day, and it was seemed to be smooth. And let's see, I don't think I experienced flack that first mission. When we got back, it was a matter of going back into briefing, and it was not a rough mission as some of the others
were, and and it wasn't an especially long one either. We went through a debriefing time and then a meal that was mighty good, because I don't know that we properly ate, what we what I should haven't. Breakfast doesn't give you much of an idea for our first mission was like, but I think it was in Tours, France, but I'm not just sure if that was the first of the second, and I'll be checking up on that. I guess it was relatively short and you took no flak. That's a pretty
good first mission. I'd say, let's talk about general conditions on board, because I don't think a lot of people know about some of these things. First of all, talk about how cold it is on board the plane. That is something that surprised me too. We get up to ten thousand feet and the pilot says, okay, oxygen masks, and so we put on
our oxygen mask. And one of the things that I remember about how cold it was was when a drop of moisture and the oxygen mask dropped onto my radio desk in front of me. It wasn't immediate exactly, but I went to rub that off the desk and had already frozen, and that was I couldn't leave that. But of course we had heated and there was check ups. Let's see, one would go through some of those things like make sure
heated suits were properly working. There was a check back to the pilot or I think the oxygen mask that was the same thing, to make sure they were properly. I don't know how that was done either, But talk about how loud it was on board. Oh yeah, those four Pratt and Whitney
engines, twelve hundred horsepower. Each one by itself made a lot of noise, and then they started the second one, and the third one and the fourth one, and so that began to make some noise, and there was no protection from outside except that layer of aluminum of the surface of the B seventeen. When they revved up several different times to make sure they were all
functioning properly, that was a lot of noise. And then when you get airborne, you're still in that drone of loud noise, and yet our intercornes worked inside our helmet, and of course in the whole thing was loud, loud, loud, and that it was the drone that we faced all the time that we were flying. And mister Hamiltons, you mentioned that on your first mission you did not encounter any flak, any anti aircraft fire from the Germans on the ground. I'm guessing that on later missions you did. What
was it like to fly through that? Oh, it was a very scary time. It was frightening and we could see it bursting around us. And then I remember one time it was a cloudy day. We were heading from Munich that particular day and it was a long day, and so we were going through flack. The pilot said, you see that black cloud up ahead. He says, that's flack and that's over the target, and he says, we've got to go through that. And that was beginning to be scary.
But as we did fly through it, some of those bursts of traillery fire you could heal it close enough to lift our plane as we were flying through, and we had a few punctures in the plane, but none of us during that time were injured. That's what it was. I mean, some planes were hit and they went down. That of course, is the idea of their trying to bring us down anyway, And so that's what I remember about the flag. It was terrible. Mister Hamilton. Let's take one
more break. When we come back, we'll talk about your ninth mission, the one that you did not return from immediately and resulted in You Becoming a Prisoner of War. Our guest is Richard Hamilton, a veteran of the US Army Air Corps world War Two, serving as a radio man on a B seventeen bomber crew. I'm Greg Corumbas and this is Veterans Chronicles. This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in this edition is Richard Hamilton.
He is a veteran of the US Army Air Corps in World War Two, serving on a B seventeen bomber crew as a radio man. We've been talking about his first eight missions, from the first one, which was relatively short and encountering no flat back to some of the ones that were more harrowing involving quite a bit of groundfire from the Germans. But none of that compares
to what happened on the ninth mission, which we'll talk about now. And so mister Hamilton tell me how the flight started and how things went wrong.
The day started as as usual. We were prepared with the breakfast, and then this day we had clear whether there was just now and then a little cloud layer at round ten thousand feet as I remember, So we were heading toward Leipzig to bomb the airfield there or and as we went along we expected a fighter planes to protect us the fifty ones, but when the tail gunner
saw them coming in early on, they were tiny specks. And next we knew he was saying, and it's coming in on the tail, and there was sixty or more f W one nineties and any one oh nines that were stacked in such a way that they came at us. It was that first wave that did destroyed our plane and put the smoke and bullet holes through the plane, and the bombay was on fire, and the right wing was shot off at number four engine, and we began to lose altitude and to sort
of get turned so that we were going to be spinning. The communication was knocked out of that, so we didn't know what was happening up front. But I was down with the waist gunner at first, and then I left my radio table and when to a gun. But later we knew that we got to bail out. But I tried to get up through the bombay and it was just full of flames and and there at the bomb still hanging there.
A little extinguisher didn't do anything, and so back I went, and the waist gunner was at the waist hatch and ready to go, and I gestured is to what was in back. We didn't know what happened to the gunner. He wasn't standing there. And the waist gunner looked at me and shook his head. And so there were the two of us there to go
out, and and so I I followed him out. And that was a hard thing to do, to go out that hatch when so many times before you'd knew just where you were going to land down on your feet, and this time was certainly different. And so out we went. And with those
planes, I had they sense not to pull that rip cord. Our mission is at the twenty fourth thousand feet, and I think probably when we bailed out, it was perhaps about eighteen and so the air was light and hostile, so no parachute was deployed, and so I just went free fall. But I was like a rag doll out there with no bearing whatsoever. And finally I extended my arms out straight realized that began to stabilize my flight. It just seemed like I was flying horizontally, but all the time we were
dropping down. But I was faced down and realized that if I angled my palms in my hand, I could move and sort of cold roll my flight. And it just seemed like a flight. Yes, I keep calling it a flight, and yet I was dropping. And so I went through that little cloud layer at ten thousand feet and the air went from cold to warm. Oh, it was so warm. And then at five thousand I'm guessing forty five feet, I pulled my shoot and only two or three swings and
I was down on the ground. Well I landed, I drifting along, and so I went down on my right shoulder and it's hurt. But I didn't describe how when I did pull my shoet how I had a chest back and so with the harness, it just bent me right in two and apparently injured my back a little when I don't know whether it was when I pulled the shoot or whether I hit the ground, but I tried quickly to pull
in my shoe. It was in a wheat field and hard July twentieth forty four hot day, and it was on the sort of edge of the village. And I saw in the window woman witnessing my landing there, and next I say she had disappeared, and it wasn't too long before the whole village came out with clubs and pitchforks, and the lead man was fire ring a pistol from either hand, and I just did have a feeling that pretty sill. I'm going to feel what it's like to get a bullet in me.
And but he wasn't firing, I guess to get me, but he was letting me know that I wasn't a welcome visitor here on German soil. It wasn't very long before I realized that I had lost my freedom and that was up to them as to how they were going to deal with me. And they surrounded me and got me to put my hands up. And I wasn't savvy on the German language, but there were lots of allowed to talk,
and so I got my hands up. I was pushed and shoved down into the village, and as I went by one of the mustachioed older men, and he looked at me and said schweinehound, and he spit in my face. And it was not just a sit, it was a whole wad. He gave me the full amount, and so that was dripping off my face. And I that was the way I went into the village, and they got me into what I guess was a town hall, town eating, I guess, and they began interrogating and looking at my outfit. I guess more
than anything else. I was had that parachute harness and took that off, and then the May West and all the stuff was gesturing and they were talking all the time, and I'm not knowing what was being said, and so they wanted me to take off that Maywest, and then they looked it all over and they wanted to know how, and I pulled a little shoot the CO two thing that fills it with air, and that happened to squeak like as a kid you blew up a balloon and you stretch out the nose of
it and it squeals. And that's just the way that CO two pressure going into that Maywest. So they were oh ah. They searched me all over, and I know we had an opportunity to take our issued forty five, and I thought, well, what would I do with it? Going deep
into Germany? What would I do with the forty five? And I do feel very certain even to this very day that if I'd had that forty five, I would have realized how it was to receive a bullet, because they were pretty rough on me, and they didn't really beat, but they shoved and poked and pushed, and I was gathered up and with a truck that
had blood stains in it and taken to a collecting place. And then I was putting a little cell overnight and the next morning I can just say I can hear keys jingling and opening doors three doors before he got to my cell, and he brought in some hot boiled potatoes. I was handcuffed behind me and during the night, and they squashed. The handcuff sounds so tight that circulations to my hand was cut right off to the right arm, and so my hand was puffed way up so I couldn't hold of eating utensil. And
that was my first day. And tell me about the conditions in the prison camp where you were sent, well, it was quite a lot of a few days before I went to a prison camp, we went to what is called doolud Luft. That's when we were interrogated and tried to find out who our crew members were a list. But we had been a briefing before England was if we became a prisoner of war, you'd only had to disclose your name, rank and serial number and other questions. You didn't have to disclose
anything. And so there's different methods of interrogation. Some were one fellow was spoke perfect English and he was asked me about one of the New York nightclubs or something. He was a good guy. And then they have another one that comes in and they opened up books and showed the different training bases in this country and a different rank. They had everything in those books, and
they wondering where I was trained, and all listener. And so without a response, I was put in a solitary confinement and the next day I'd be brought out and interviewed again. And and like I say, there different methods and different personalities. So they said, well and untill you talk, you'll just be in solitary with your bread and water. And that's the way I was for eight days. And then next I knew they were getting a whole
group ready to go. In that group was a young man from neighboring Putney from Aunt who we had met in high school and couldn't believe that it was like a bit of home to meet him, and it was just great. But then we got on to a troop carrying train for about four days to get to where we were going to get off and go to about four kilometers
up to the Stalacluft prison camp. And as a forerunner, before we got off the train, there was a captain of the guards or captain or he was, I'll call him captain, but he was yelling like a madman about the cities that had been bombed. And then he was leading his troops, quite a lot of guards out there, and then he gave a sharp order and and I guess that was to fix bayonets, and they was just a loud clatter of steel. Everything was precision, and we could see police dogs
out there. And then we were allowed to get off the train and then to form a column on the road, and there was a column of four, as I remember, and I happened to be then another friend that had had befriended anyway that it was next to me in the middle, and a
big tall fellow on the outside on my left side. And I don't know why I describe him is because when we got started to march, and then they wanted fast pace and then they wanted double time and faster pace, and each received a shell of a suitcase filled with red cross things, sweaters, I mean, just toothbrush and all things that we had been missing since our mourning at Passing Bourn, So those were sort of cherished and we tried to
hang onto them. And on the outside were the guards that were shouting, and dogs were held back, but every now and then they'd be right next to us. And when we got to the prison camp, there were thirty five that came in on a flatbed horse drawn wagon. And I saw one fellow there with his pants just crimson with blood where he'd been jabbed with the
bayonet being on the outside. And this fellow that I spoke about on my left, he was a big fellow, and he looked at the guard and I don't know how you can interpret the look he gave, but the guard took his rifle and hit him in the back of the neck and he went down, so I didn't see him again. But it was a rough session.
To get to that prison camp. We put in the barracks that were off the ground along stills like off the ground so the dogs could walk under, and an all around down and they knew that there was no tunnel escaping, and that was they were trying to avoid. But that's what you asked
me, is as what it was like in the camp. Well, every day they had to count us and know that we're all there, and so all the barracks went out front and stood at attention out there while they counted the whole compound and Stagluft was divided off into four different sections, and we were in Section C, there was ABC and D, and each morning and night we were out front and counted. And some of the days in that hot summer it was so hot, we'd stand there until they counted everyone in
that compound. It was grueling. In the winter time, we'd just about freeze up before they satisfied with the count and we could go back. But I know sometimes when it was so long a wait and Ray finally would find some guy, they'd go through the barracks and when a kid failed to come out, he was sleeping and they'd bring out a guy and then soon after
we could be discharged and go back to our barracks. It was one of those things that you dread going out to be counted, because you'd stand there at their attention, and where they go up and down all the rows and they make their tally. And but I'll tell you one thing that was very upsetting was when they'd come in at night, get everyone out of their sacks and and then start going through. What I guess they were looking for was
this little crystal radio that was somewhere in the compound. Periodically we'd have someone come in with a bit of BBC news to let us be updated on the status of the war. It was a rough time because when they'd go into the sacks and search everything, and and then they mess up the room, and then they'd go out. Soon the lights went out, and you just had to do the best you could putting things back together in the dark.
But it was pretty upsetting the way they could antagonize and just make life not so pleasant. Mister Hamilton's, let's pause your story right there. When we come back, we'll pick up your story as a prisoner of war in Germany and learn what happened about a year into your captivity. That was certainly not
a welcome change. Our guest in this edition is Richard Hamilton. He's a World War Two veteran of the Army Air Corps, served as a radio man on a B seventeen bomber crew and then spent well over a year as a German POW. I'm Greg Corumbus. We'll be right back. This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Honored to be joined today by Richard Hamilton. He is a World War Two veteran of the US Army Air Corps. Served
on nine missions as a radio man on a B seventeen bomber crew. But as you've heard, on that ninth mission, his plane was shot down, he was forced to jump, and he soon became a German prisoner of war. And mister Hamilton, it was in February of nineteen forty five that your situation as a prisoner of war changed, and not for the better. The next seventy seven days would be extraordinarily difficult for you. Explain what happened well
in February forty five. On February sixth, we were told to get ready and we're going to leave the camp. Those days were cold and snowy, and when we left the camp, we went by a whole store of Red Cross parcels that had been opened up that food should have been hours from the
Red Cross, and it would supplement that bread ration that we got. So some fellows opened them on the way and got their bellies full, and and then out we went onto the road and and that first night we went into sort of a stump field like that was where we were stopping for the night, and it was sort of not pouring rain, but it was sort of a spitting close to freezing. I remember the next morning I was so stiff. I thought, oh my gosh, I'm not going to be able to
run again. But we were rounded up and on we went to walk that day and it was just laboring to put one foot in front of the other, but finally we did it. And we did that for seventy seven days. Sometimes they'd find a barn for us to have shelter, and I remember after in the dark, having boiled potatoes in my knit od cap. They were just elegant without salt, pepper or butter, and they were pretty gritty. They'd been cooked, I guess for farm animals, and that's why they
weren't well prepared, but they did taste elegant. But on we went, and I remember having a cold and dysentery and well, I just describe it as every day was just as we walked along. It was just laboring to to continue on. But I remember going over a not a regular bridge, but a big thing, and people were lined up, I guess to watch these prisoners of war, and some of them, you know, had to just pull down their pants because of the dysentery. And so he was really
a rough time. But like I say, some of the days would become very pleasant, and we had a doctor Kaplan. He'd go ahead and negotiate for us to get the best accommodations he could find for us. And my friend, as he tells it, he said doctor Kaplan came along and he told him that he was I don't know, he felt sick and he needed some attention. And the doctor, he said, looked at him and swiped off the lice from his chest and put his ear down and he said,
you've got pneumonia. And he says, I can't do anything for you. I don't have anything for you. So he really had a hard time the rest of the time, and I guess very close to not surviving at all. As the days went by, we sometimes got acquainted with different guards. They weren't young boys like we were. They were older guys, and they'd got to be I think more of our guides than our guards. And because sometimes civilians would rush out and gesture and they'd have to beat them back.
And another thing, come to think of it, when we were walking along there was Russian captives serving on these farms, and they came out with cups of water, and the guards beat them back. And I can see afterwards that if they lose control of our gang, if we got that drink of water on the way. So that was another thing that made things rough, is to be hungry and thirsty issue have to walk. Yeah, I can't imagine walking twenty miles a day for seventy seven days in a row. It's
it's unbelievable. Did the Nazis do to the people who couldn't keep up? Well, I tell you we always wondered that's what would make anyone keep going to the endurance here full existence, It is just to keep going and not dropped back to the end. We'd heard sometimes so different ones. The rumors were, did you hear that shot? And so we always tried to manage not to be on the end in the back and because you never knew what was happening. But at that time did I say? It was a quiet
morning. And I had left the marching group and fell back to this bunch that were crouched down. They were the six dragglers, I call them, and I joined with them, and then realized that the town was quiet. About noontime, two Russians on horseback came into the village and U and they wondered who we are, and and I was spoke to one. I said American, and he yelled out Americanski. And that's our first little step to coming back to freedom. But we were allowed to walk around in the in
the Russian territory. And but that was a long time to endure hardships, and and there were many How much weight did you lose as a prisoner? Well, I was one hundred and eighteen pounds. My weight when I started out was one hundred and forty seven pounds when I entered the service. After you were freed, could you eat regular food right away or was it a gradual process of getting to eat again. There was a empty farmhouse right there, and we took up occupancy and in that and there was a farm right
there and I get warm milk. You go in and these milk maids were doing the caring for the animals, and so there was warm milk right there, and that was very Oh, that was good. And I have another experience. In that farmhouse where we were living, there was a chicken house not too far away where we could get some eggs, and so we took
up living in that house. One night, we had a candle going in there and knock at the door, and I went to the door and realized I was facing German with his cap that you can identify him as a German soldier. And so in walked nine heavily armed German soldiers. We were and cooking the oven. Must house must have smelled so good. But apparently they had deserted on the Russian front and headed west. They wanted to be taken
in by the Americans instead of the Russians. So there we were cooking for the next day's walk where we were close to Torgau, and there was a bridge there being repaired and we had to stay there for a day or so, and we were cooking and the sergeant someone went right to that oven and they were going to grab that food and that I can't believe it, but the sergeant says, no, nine nine, hands off. But they went down in the cellar and there was sorghum molasses and there were I suppose salt
pork and along the other provisions that were stored away in the cellar. And they ate that stuff and came back, and then they wanted to go with us the next day, and I said, oh, no, no, no. They said they could change their clothes and go with us, and I said no, no. And after a while I came up from the cellar and went out into the night. And that was pretty a scary situation there for a while, but they respected us, and I just marveled at
that, because I don't think we would be so disciplined. Mister Hamilton's a last question for you, sir. The people who cherish freedom the most are often people who know what it's like to not have freedom. So given the fact that you know what it's like to not have freedom, how special is the freedoms we have in this country? How special are those to you? What I realize is that the people here we don't appreciate until freedom is denied.
Only then do you realize what freedom means and is, and I use that in my talks to school groups, and I said that we look at that flag, and if you don't salute it and appreciate it and worship that flag, you don't realize the freedoms that are there for everyone as long as you're own to that flag. And that's what we didn't have. We didn't
have an American flag to give us that protection. And that's what was the basis of my talk all the time, was when you see that flag, don't just sit there on the curb, get up and salute it as it goes by, and treat it with reverence. And I'm afraid we're now losing some of our freedoms that we cherish. Nevertheless, it's not like living without the freedom that we have. Well, mister Hamilton, we thank you very much for your time today, and most of all, we thank you for
your incredible service and sacrifice for our country. Thank you, sir very much. All right, you're welcome. Chard Hamilton as a World War Two veteran of the US Army Air Corps, serving as a radioman on a B seventeen bomber crew. He flew on eight successful missions, but was forced to jump after his plane was badly damaged on the ninth mission. He spent more than a year as a German prisoner of war. I'm Greg Corumbus and this is
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