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My father was the youngest of four brothers: Charlie (22), Melvin (20), Wendell (18) and Richard (15) on Pearl Harbor Day. The three oldest ones drove straight to the recruiting station and signed up. That was before the five Sullivan brothers died on the USS Juneau, so the policy was, if a family signs up together, it serves together.

All three became B-24 pilots. A B-24 was a lot like a B-17: ten-man crew, four engines, bristling with machine guns. We built almost three times as many B-24s. They had less armor but they flew farther.

Wendell was hit by an 88mm shell fragment in the left shoulder and it severed a nerve, much like Bob Dole's wound in Italy at the end of the war. His left arm was nearly useless but unlike Dole, Wendell wore it in a sling rather than letting it hang. He came home, sat on the front porch and told war stories. If it were a cartoon, there would have been smoke coming out of Dad's ears. He was still too young.

Later on, due to manpower shortages and Wendell's proven talents in this area, he was called back into service as an Operations Officer. When they were planning a raid, they would call all the pilots, co-pilots, navigators and bombardiers into an auditorium. The front wall was one huge aerial photograph of the target area.

Wendell had a pointer in his right hand and said, "This building here is the 16th century cathedral. Don't you dare break one stained glass window. These buildings over here are a school and an apartment complex full of women and children. This building complex in between here is the factory where they assemble the engines for the Focke Wulf fighter planes that shot your buddies down yesterday. Drop all of your bombs right there."

Charlie and Melvin kept flying, mission after mission. Charlie had all the good luck. God was looking out for him. His plane missed one mission because a shell fragment hit one of the engines. His bombardier missed another mission because the docs had to dig a tiny shell fragment out of his big toe, so Charlie flew with a replacement bombardier on that mission.

Melvin made up for it. He had all the bad luck. Time after time, his B-24 came limping home with one engine dead, another engine sputtering, and three or four dead men on board. Ground crewmen swarmed all over it. They patched it up, hosed out the blood, gave him replacement crewmen and sent him back out on the next run. Gradually, it wore on his nerves.

Then one day in January 1944, he just didn't come back. By that time Charlie was the squadron commander and he wrote Grandma a letter. Out of ten men, there were four parachutes. That was all they knew. As you're aware, the Nazis were too barbaric to pass along the names of POWs.

The truth was that there were five parachutes, sort of. Four men got out in a tight group. Then, several seconds later a fifth man came out of the wrecked plane. He was on fire and his chute was partially open. He plunged past the other four screaming. In his letter, Charlie didn't want to tell Grandma about that part. The word was that the pilot was always the last to jump.

When the four survivors landed, one of them snapped his ankle. There was snow on the ground and more falling. They were quickly rounded up by the Volksturm, a sort of National Guard. Fifty-year-old men with World War I rifles and uniforms. The Volksturm shared some sausage, bread and wine with them. It would be their last decent meal for a long, long time.

Along came an SS patrol. The man with the broken ankle was instantly bayonetted, because the SS Gruppenfuehrer didn't want to be slowed down. One of the other three spoke a little German and had the nerve to protest.

Then the Gruppenfuehrer told them to drop their pants. One of the three men had been circumcised. The Gruppenfuehrer looked at his dogtags, which said, "Goldstein." Another bayonet. Again the American who spoke a bit of German had the nerve to protest. This time, half of his teeth were knocked out with a rifle butt.

Then the two survivors were marched to a POW camp, which was loaded with Russian POWs. The Russians had formed into several gangs, much like the gangs that run our prisons today. The two American aviators were supposed to be sent to a Luftstalag, but that never happened. The Russians kept stealing their food.

The two Americans came up with a strategy. The little one (Murphy from Brooklyn) was the tail gunner. He would steal a guard's cap and go running around the courtyard laughing. The guards would stampede out of their barracks to chase him down. Then the big, quiet American would slip in the back door of the empty guards' barracks and steal every scrap of food he could find. Murphy would spend 24 hours in solitary, but when he got out, he had food waiting for him.

Finally, the big guy came down with typhoid fever like the Russians. He could barely move. There was no medicine and Murphy decided he had to make something happen. He went in the back door of the guards' barracks. The guards were sitting there in their underwear, cleaning their rifles and polishing their boots. He grabbed a medical kit which had a bottle of Bayer aspirin and a bottle of antibiotics. Then he grabbed the only food in sight: a big bag of onions.

Murphy ran out the back door and the guards chased after him in their underwear. He ran into the prisoners' barracks and dropped everything on the big guy's bunk. He raced out the back door and was instantly shot in the back of the head.

The Russians started to gather around the big guy's bunk and he pulled out a hidden knife that he had made out of a spoon. With the last scrap of his strength, he sat up in his bed and snarled at them in German: "The first man close enough gets his throat cut! Which one of you is brave enough to die, so that his friends can eat an onion?" The Russians backed off.

Two weeks later, American GIs liberated the POW camp. Uncle Melvin was calmly eating the last of his onions. He was surrounded by Russians who had died in their bunks of typhoid fever. He was liberated in March 1945. The war ended in Europe in May, and in the Pacific in September. But he didn't come home until Thanksgiving, because he insisted on being able to walk up the front steps by himself. He was 6'5" and when he signed up, he weighed 250 pounds. When he was liberated, they weighed him in at 113.

Your post was so fascinating (what is the right word) that I printed it for others to see. My father guarded Japanese in the Philipeans and his stories were humorous and enlightening compared to the horrendous life these brothers had. My father's brother's stories were unlike his. One time my uncle told of the first time he killed a German in France. As his eyes glistened in remembrance he described killing a blonde blued-eyed man, younger than he, with like appearance. He said for an instant, he felt the youth could have been his younger brother. He went on to kill others but the first one ate at him for a long time. That was the only time he ever related his WWll experiences to us.

Thanks for sharing that story with us Byan.

Your dad and his brothers are the kind of people that America needs to remember and realize what they gave up to keep this Country Free.

Stories like yours are important.
They help us realize that everyday people performed extraordinary feats.

What an amazing account of your family's participation in WWII. It's stories like yours that I love most about the Foxhole threads. Thank you so much for sharing it. All your uncles are heroes in my opinion.

My grandfather served in the Army Air Corps in WWII but I never heard any of his stories. He never talked about the war and he died earlier this year, so I may never know what he did. My great-uncle earned a Purple Heart and another award for merit, but I don't know the particulars of it either. He's gone now too. I wish that I had taken the time to talk to them and hear their stories before it was too late.

What an amazing story! thank you for sharing it!