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Stayton veteran
recalls his 418 days spent as a POW
Robert Nelson has
compiled a book about experience
BY KATHLEEN ELLYN
Statesman Journal
November 12, 2006
Robert Nelson spent
more than a year as a
Nazi prisoner during World War II, but it's a distant memory now for
the Stayton resident who rarely thinks of his days on the front line.
Nelson
doesn't talk much about his war years, and he keeps his Purple Heart,
air medals and numerous other service medals in their boxes, neatly
stored away in his Stayton home.
Now more
than 80 years old, Nelson says he rarely talks of his sacrifice to the
country and the world. He's only recently begun sharing his experiences
from his time in the military with the group of friends he meets for
coffee at Rumors in Stayton every morning at about 6:30 a.m., and that
only may be because others are asking him about it. He received his POW
medal just 18 months ago and his friends' interest in the prison camp
he was incarcerated in has been piqued lately. Nelson recently saw a
show on television about archeology studies being done in the prison
camp he once occupied.
"They're digging down
30 feet looking for artifacts. I couldn't believe it!" he said.
Part of history
The camp was Stalag
Luft III, in Sagan, Poland -- made famous by the movie "The Great
Escape."
Though
Nelson didn't escape the camp with the famous British soldiers who made
the attempt, it wasn't because of a lack of effort. He said American
soldiers on the other side of the camp were digging tunnels, carrying
dirt out in their pant-legs, or standing watch to warn of approaching
guards. But few tunnels made it all the way out to freedom. Most were
discovered after months of work and the guards would fill the tunnels
with water to collapse them.
And then the men
would start a new tunnel.
Written account
Nelson
has managed to save a book full of memorabilia from the 418-day
experience, a remarkable document if he can be persuaded to show it.
He
got the blank book from a tank driver in the camp, he said, and though
most men were forced to burn their books for warmth on a forced march
from Sagan toward Nuremburg shortly before liberation, he managed to
keep his and "get warm by other guys' fires," he said.
The
book contains a little bit of everything: cigarette papers, matchbox
covers, a label from a care package from home, photos of his pregnant
wife, invasion money, lists of prisoner slang and their meanings, tree
leaves collected on his first walk as a prisoner, his prison ID, a list
of the food they ate on their forced march from Sagan to Nuremburg,
pictures and jokes drawn by other servicemen, news clippings and an
invitation to a prison-camp music program that was used to distract
their guards as a tunnel project progressed.
"While
we were making the noise, why, they were pulling dirt," he said. The
book also contains all of Nelson's letters from home.
"We were allowed
three letters a month and two postcards," he said.
The
book seems to break Nelson's experience down into manageable chapters.
Stories are sparked by a scrap of paper, a drawing, or a name.
The call of duty
A
newspaper clipping of a Liberator B-24 bomber bristling nose guns,
turret guns and tail guns, recalls his early training on 17 bases
before he went overseas.
He was trained to
be an engineer/gunner and could operate any of the guns, but mostly
manned the two .50-caliber M2 guns in the top turret.
There
were 10 men in the crew, he recalls, and he was eventually posted to
the town of Cergnolia in Southern Italy with the 15th Air Force in
February of 1942. He was in the 459th Bomb Group.
He
flew 16 missions out of Cergnolia bombing in the German-occupied
Balkans, he explained, and was on a bombing raid to Budapest, April 13,
1944, when his plane and the wing-man's plane were hit by German
anti-aircraft fire.
"One of the best guns
ever made," Nelson said.
They came down over
Imotski, what was then a city in Yugoslavia.
"We
got hit, and it killed everybody, but four of us and the navigator had
his leg half-off at the knee," Nelson recalled. "They shot two B-24's
down right together. Our left wing man, they shot the wing off of him
and he just about hit us, and then we got it. The pilot, copilot and
bombardier all were killed. There were five of us left out of 20 in the
two planes."
Heading toward camp
Nelson's
ability to re-examine his past has developed considerably and he can
pinpoint the towns featured in his story on a modern map of the Balkans.
He points to the town
of Mostar, Yugoslavia in what is now Bosnia, where he and the other
survivors were taken to the hospital.
He remembers the ride.
"The
first ride we got was on a 1931 model A truck," Nelson recalled. "It
was so rough it felt like we were going down a creek bed, and poor old
Paul Hox, our navigator, was laying there with his leg from his knee
down looked like a chunk of liver before they amputated it."
Hox
survived the amputation, though their radioman, whose name Nelson can
no longer recall, died at the hospital. Nelson suffered a shrapnel
injury to a foot and ankle. The crew was eventually transferred to
Stalag Luft III.
That trip, he
recalls, was depressing, but decades later he can now chuckle at the
irony of it.
"I
had my escape kit with me and my flight jacket on and I took my maps
and $48 worth of gold seal money -- escape money -- in my jacket. When
we got up there in Belgrade they went past an incinerator and they
opened the door and threw all my clothes in the incinerator and there
went all my money and my maps."
Life was
hard in the camp, despite letters and care packages from home, and food
was very scarce. Nelson dropped 54 pounds from what was a slim, young
man's frame during his stay.
"Sometimes there were
25 of us to a loaf of bread," he said.
Painful march to
freedom
The
worst, however, was the eventual hike from Sagan to Nuremberg, Bavaria
in January of 1945 during which they plowed through snow, slept on the
floor of a tile factory, were packed into livestock cars 50 to 60 men
per car, and eventually arrived at Moosburg -- where a camp built to
hold 14,000 now housed 130,000.
Fortunately their
suffering there was short-lived as Patton's army liberated them just
over a year later.
Then,
they went from lean times to fat times, Nelson said. After air
transport was arranged for them, they were flown to Holland and feasted
on eggnog to fatten them back up.
"Our
stomachs were the size of a silver dollar," Nelson said. "We drank all
the eggnog we could stand. I can't drink it, yet today."
Nelson is able to
laugh about that now, too.
Just the memories now
That's
enough talk about a war that occurred a lifetime ago for Nelson. He has
places to go now and people to see. He's planning a family Thanksgiving
in his little home south of Stayton and he and Sparky, his Jack Russell
terrier, will be at coffee at Rumors at 6:30 a.m. to visit with the
other men. The medals go back in their boxes; the memories return to
the book.
It's good to bring
them out,
remember the fallen, honor the experiences, and realize the sacrifices
made a difference in the world today. But Nelson is too busy living in
the present now to be consumed by the past.
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