702nd Tank Battalion “Red Devils”

Rolling On

 

THE PILOT WHO CAME BACK

 

Grunau Austria, early July,1945, RED DEVIL D spent a month in this small Austrian village situated in a bowl formed by the surrounding mountains.  There is one small access road down a narrow valley paralled by a railroad spur used to haul the timber that is the area’s major product.  “Grimm's Guerilla's” were in Grunau to comb the mountain’s numerous hunting camps and lodges for German stragglers and our daily search squads netted quite a few.

 

Captain Grimm had picked a house at the entrance to the town as his headquarters and billets for the officers.  After evening chow,  Grimm, Dumbleton, Zoril, Eickmeyer and I were on the lawn in front of the house when we heard a vehicle approaching.  Expecting to see visitors from Battalion, we instead met an air corps lieutenant and a driver in a battered jeep.  The lieutenant (whose name I regret I never got) looked like death warmed over and we soon learned why.  He had just been liberated from a stalag in northern Germany where he had been a prisoner for over a year.  He said the treatment was fair, but the food scant and very poor.  We fed our guest and the lieutenant told his story.

 

The pilot had been assigned to a bomber group in Italy.  His wing flew B-25’s with a crew of five.  Most of their missions in ’43 & ‘44 were over the alps to the industrial targets in Bavaria and Austria.  On one Austrian run to Steyer, his plane was hit by flak.  Grunau had been a German anti-aircraft battalion site.  He and probably others of the crew had been wounded, so he ordered a bail out.  He saw his copilot and navigator jump and he followed.  By the light of shell burst he saw other parachutes but could not count them.  He landed in the trees and broke an arm and one leg on impact.  Hanging in his harness, he blacked out.  He regained conciousess lying on a stretcher in front of a small town hall type building and remembered being put on a train.  He awoke in a hospital and after healing was sent to the prison camp.  All his time in camp was spent wondering about the fate of his crew.  When the camp was liberated by the the U.S. Army troops the pilot’s first request was for a driver,  a jeep and maps.  After a month of healing and nourishing food, his much repeated request was granted.  He was given two weeks for his search. 

 

During the drive to Austria (He knew his approxmate location when the plane was hit.) the pilot circled all the towns that might have a small square in front of a town hall with a railroad nearby.  The map had about a dozen circles and Grunau was maybe the tenth visited.  We all went to see the Burgermeister and to his office in the rathauz (Town Hall) He opened a record of events book which he kept and showed us an entry for each of several plane crashes in his area.  The pilot found the entry for the date of his crash and began to question the mayor.  He told us each crash was investigated, any wounded were treated and carried into town by local woodcutters.  Under German surveilance survivers were made prisoners and casualties buried on the crash site.  On the date of our pilots crash, two wounded had been brought into town and sent by train to the hospital.  The mayor had a map with all crash locations shown on it.  Captain Grimm, while using the official office desk and chair had been sitting on a cushion from one of the downed planes.  We told the mayor to arrange for a guide to lead us to this paticular location and he suggested starting at 0700 the next morning.  We figured this would get us back about noon.

 

At 0700, dressed for the cool misty mountain morning we met our guide.  He was at least 70, about 5 ft. 2 in. and looked a little like grandpa McCoy.  I've the exact climbing group, but I think Dumbleton, Eickmeyer, the pilot and his driver, a couple of our guys who wanted to go for a walk, me and our guide drove to the foot of one big hill in jeeps.  We followed the guide up a sloping path into the forest.  Only the pilot was not joking about the fun our walk would be.  Our guide gave us a Mona Lisa smile and climbed the path like it was a flat sidewalk.  After one hour we broke for time to catch our breath and hung our shirts on a bush.  After two hours, we shed our undershirts.  Our guide wasn't even breathing heavily.  He would just stop and wait for us to catch up, and smile.  After three hours the path disappeared and the climb over earth and mossy rocks became steeper.  The trees thinned out and were smaller.  We had passed a couple of wood-cutter’s cabins.  The cutters work in the fall dropping and stripping trees to be slid down the hillside after the first heavy snow.  Our guide was a cutter who got too old to work hard, so all he (and other retirees) did was climb up to a hut, and with 50 lbs of wood on his back, descend the next day and then repeat the trip.

 

 

At about noon we stopped (most of us almost nudist by now) while our guide looked around a bit.  He called us to come, and we approached the crash site.  The plane hitting the trees, had desintegrated!  Pieces were everywhere, none very large.  We never did see the engines, they probably went a mile down the hillside.  A short climb brought us to three graves, each with a rustic cross, with the man’s yellow flak vest draped on it.  The pilot was quite broken up as he read the names stenciled on each vest.  He said he was worried about the fate of the sixth crewman.  Two wounded and evacuated, three graves, still left one man unaccounted for.  We never did resolve this question. 

 

Recovering some composure, the pilot identified each of the buried crewmen and using a camera he had brought, took many pictures of the area while we rested.  He again relived the mission, which was their last.

 

Our guide suggested starting down, and fool that I am, I said this is the easy part.  I was never more wrong.  Try walking for three hours with your heels raised and all your weight thrown on your toes.  How the pilot managed the climb was amazing.  The rest of us just kept going on pride.  We didn't want to be outdone by an Austrian senior citizen.  We all made it, retrieving our uniform parts along the way.  We were in time for evening chow and it sure tasted good.  We retired early!  The next morning, Captain Grimm notified Battalion to get a graves registration team to Grunau and our visiting air corps pair left us.

 

I have never forgotten this episode - because it epitomized the close bond of a small group of men such as our tank crews.  I had not believed it possible among aircrews who were together only during operations.  Either our returning pilot was unusual or more likely Milt Still was wrong again!

MILT STILL (For the climbers)

 

 

 

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