Preserving The Oral HistorIES of Combat Veterans
4:15 | After a miserable Atlantic crossing with sick troops and British rice, Stan Hodsdon settled into a routine of rising at 0400 to fuel up B-17s for the day’s bombing missions.
Keywords : Stan Hodsdon B-17 check rides Halifax bomber
Air Corps Cadet Stan Hodsdon signed up for flight training but before it was completed, manpower needs in the European Theater caused the entire class of pilots to switch to other crew positions and ship out.
First, they told Stan Hodsdon that his broken hand wasn’t broken. Then, they put a huge cast on it, which kept the B-17 ground crew member from doing his job. Then, they told him that he was in the infantry.
When Stan Hodsdon was reassigned to the infantry and put on the march in the push after Normandy, he never even knew what his unit was, his pay was messed up, and he went through the worst winter on record with no winter gear. Part 1 of 2.
Infantry soldier Stan Hodsdon continued moving through France, and he continued to have no idea what unit he was in because of the constant reassignment. He does remember the tree bursts, the Screaming Mimis, and eating in the rain with an unusual placemat. Part 2 of 2.
Stan Hodsdon did not last long as an MP after he balked at arresting black Red Ball Express drivers for driving too fast. Reassigned to the field artillery, he promptly got lost looking for his new unit and nearly drove into a German position.
An avid photographer, Stan Hodsdon was among the first to enter the Ohrdruf concentration camp when it was liberated. His photographs were in an article he wrote, which he believes was one of the first accounts of the Holocaust to be seen in the US.
Stan Hodsdon finally got to fly when the spotter plane he maintained for his field artillery unit needed a fill-in pilot. On a side trip to find camera film, he refused the surrender of an entire German town and shared a liquor warehouse with the Russians. Part 1 of 2.
Stan Hodsdon recalls when he flew a captured German spotter plane back to base, without knowing the fuel gauge was backwards, and also the time when, on night guard duty, he had a confrontation with an unseen enemy. Part 2 of 2.
At war’s end, Stan Hodsdon was offered a commission if he would stay on for a year, but it didn't matter to him what the rank was, he was done.
At a baseball game after the war, Stan Hodsdon spotted Dwight D. Eisenhower in the stands and managed to chat with his former commander for a while.
