Preserving The Oral HistorIES of Combat Veterans
6:55 | One thing about those Germans, they were really sharp and could clean out a latrine tank like nobody's business. The younger SS guards, though, had a cruel streak and liked to abuse the prisoners.
Keywords : Jim Deer Prisoner Of War (POW) Germans latrine dynamite Schutzstaffel (SS) Gestapo Dogs bayonet lice bath Geneva Convention
Jim Deer enlisted ahead of the draft in 1943 because he was excited by a flight he took as a twelve year old. He wanted to be in the Air Corps. After his aircraft and gunnery training, he joined a B-24 crew as a waist gunner.
A crew that was ready to leave was short one gunner so Jim Deer left the crew he'd been training with and headed for Europe a little early. On their first night off the plane, the crew was hosted by some local girls at a pie dinner. That was nice but it was over too soon.
The first mission was the day after D-Day. Flying low over the water, the B-24s hit a German artillery unit on a small island off the French coast. It didn't stay that easy for long. Once the missions were deep into Germany, Jim Deer recalls that it got really dangerous. Over Kassel, a wrong turn took the group into a swarm a fighters and most of the flight was lost.
It was their 30th and final mission. If they made it back, they were finished. The flak was heavy over Hamburg and two engines were gone. Jim Deer and the rest of the crew knew their chances were slim but they made for Sweden, losing altitude all the way.
All he gave them, of course, was his name, rank and serial number. Jim Deer was one of two men who survived when their B-24 was blown out of the sky. The man from the Gestapo let a civilian abuse him for a while before he was taken finally to a hospital. Then he was taken for more interrogation.
Why are the Germans grilling us so much? Jim Deer and his friend were only peons. They didn't know anything. Finally they gave up and sent him to Stag Luft IV up on the Baltic Sea. He was very ill when he got there so he went straight into the camp hospital.
The Russians were coming. Jim Deer and the rest of the POWs were forced into a road march that lasted three months. It was long and unforgiving and many men were left dead on the side of the road. The SS guards were replaced by old men in the regular Army and it got a little easier.
Jim Deer and his friend, Bob Schmitt, were liberated on May 9th, 1945. Then they did a little liberating themselves, scavenging actually. They went with all their loot to Camp Lucky Strike for a little de-lousing but the lice wasn't all they lost.
Everyone was trying to help each other on that long road march. Jim Deer and the other POWs could not save everyone and it was heart breaking when someone fell by the wayside. Hitler had decreed that their shoes were to be taken from them before they started the march but an act of mercy came from a surprising source.
