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00:00There were 9,900 American planes that went down, a mix of mostly bombers, some fighters and other
00:17aircraft. And in those planes there was roughly 90,000 American flyers. Of the 90,000 lives,
00:28there were 70,000 that were killed in the event of being shot down, either in the air or coming down
00:37in parachutes and being killed by civilians or killed on impact of the aircraft. And 20,000 became
00:45prisoners of war.
00:57I went up the top hatch and I came down right and the Germans were waiting for me. The first
01:02thing they said, for you the war is over. I think they take that in basic training.
01:08I landed maybe 30, 40 feet from a row of trees. I saw people in fields around me as I glanced
01:20around, but from there you don't know whether they're good people or bad ones. And so as soon
01:27as I got on the ground, as soon as I saw the tops of the trees, you hit the ground the same
01:33instant. Then you realize, when you're down even with something, you realize just how fast
01:39you are going because the last 50 feet was before I could blink.
01:43We were told to free fall because occasionally German fighters shot guys falling in a parachute.
01:53And I didn't look forward to anything like that. Plus you didn't want the people on the ground
02:00to see you. We were at 28,000. So I imagine I fell 15,000, 17,000, something like that.
02:10It's pretty windy at that speed. Then I got to the ground. Before it, I was in the chute
02:18long enough to see there were people all around that saw me as soon as I opened my chute.
02:24So all my precautions didn't help much.
02:27I landed in this little open area in this forest. And he got caught up in the tree and his feet
02:35were about six inches off the ground. And I landed right out in the open in mossy area
02:42where it didn't hurt me a bit. And I carried a knife all the time I ran over and cut him down.
02:47I heard you could guide them damn parachutes, but I couldn't guide mine because one of my arms
02:53was shot up too bad. And so I just landed in second growth timber. It was no harder than
03:01jumping off the bed.
03:02I jumped about 900 to over 1,000 feet. And the parachute worked. They always told us,
03:12the girls who packed the parachutes said, now remember, if it doesn't work, you can bring
03:16it back and we'll give you another one. But this one worked.
03:19All of a sudden, there's a big noise and an explosion back up here. I have a steel helmet
03:27on and a flak suit. And I feel the force of it. And I look down and my navigation table
03:32is gone. Just gone. You're just smoking elements around, you know. I come out of the bomb bay
03:39doors. I kind of lift myself up and I'm looking at the co-pilot. And he's looking. I yell at him,
03:48or he looks around and I say, come on. And he said, go on to me. And now I know he was badly wounded
03:57when he went like that. And then the plane did something and I fell out. I didn't bail out. I fell
04:04out. I just fell backwards out. And it goes from all this noise and smoke and confusion. And all of a sudden,
04:13you're floating through the air. And it's quiet.
04:20The Hitler Youth, you know, the 16, 15-year-old kids, the company of them came out. They were beating the brush for me until they found me. And they were pretty nice. And this German guard, the soldier that was in charge of him, he came up to me and he
04:27pulled his pistol out and stuck it right against my temple. And he said, English order American.
04:34And then, you know, you've got to think twice before you answer that. You've got to try to figure out who in the hell he was mad at.
04:41And he said, English order American. And then, you know, you've got to think twice before you answer that. You've got to try to figure out who in the hell he was mad at.
04:49If you said English and he was mad at the English, he's going to shoot you. If you said American and he said, if he was mad at the American, he's going to shoot you.
05:04If you said English and he was mad at the American, he's going to shoot you. If you said American and he said, if he was mad at the American, he's going to shoot you. But if you said English and he found out you were American, he was going to shoot you anyway.
05:21So he asked me and I said, I'm American. Oh, he said, Scoot, stuck his pistol back in. And we walked leisurely out through the woods. I couldn't walk very fast because I had a piece of shrapnel about an inch long stuck in my heel.
05:38And we ate blackberries and we tried to, I couldn't talk German, he couldn't talk English, but we got a few things out of it. And he was nice.
05:49And they put me in a car, little Volkswagen, took me to this Gestapo place up on the hill. Then the guy that was so nice, when he got up there and the Gestapo got there, he yanked the door open, grabbed me by the collar, threw me out on the ground and kicked me two or three times and cussed me out in German.
06:10I guess he was just doing that for the Gestapo's benefit.
06:13We were quite close to the Yugoslavian border. You know, it draws us right there. And we thought we had a pretty good chance. So Pete and I started out. Then we heard some noises, people coming up behind us. So we ran up into the brush and hid. And here was the rest of our crew that had been captured. And they were, they were marching in front of us. So we just kept quiet and let them go.
06:41So we walked all that day and then all that night. And the next morning, I don't know how far we got. It was mountainous territory.
06:49He was in a lot of pain and we came to a house. We were up on a hill looking down on this house and it was just dawn. And we stayed there and watched the house to make sure there wasn't any men around, maybe just women or maybe it wasn't occupied.
07:11But nobody seemed to show. So Pete gave me, he carried, we were all issued a pistol, but I never carried mine. I had a knife and I didn't know what good a pistol would do anyway.
07:25But he gave me his pistol and he went on down to the farm to get his hands taken care of, maybe some kind of medication and get some relief.
07:35So I sat there on this hillside watching the house and he knocked on the door and went in. And then I went to sleep. And when I woke up, he was coming out of the door with an old man with a rifle in his back, a shotgun turned out to be.
07:54And so I figured we'd had it, except that they came towards me and then over to the left. And so I had Pete's pistol and I thought I'd, it was quite an old man, about my age now.
08:12And he had this shotgun right at Pete's back and was marching him down that little trail. So I came in behind him and I was going to hit this guy or knock his gun away, you know, and we'll take off again.
08:29But he heard the brush snap or something. He turned around and he had this shotgun. It was over and under barrel shotgun. And he was shaking and I could tell he was going to fire.
08:44So I threw my pistol up in the air and I lit the ground and he did fire right over my head. And he wasn't more than 25 feet away, I guess.
08:52So, and then I threw up my hands and threw the gun up in the air. And so he had two of us now.
09:00I got away for, for five days until I didn't have anything to eat.
09:08Wandered down and I saw this little shack and farm shack and went in the door, went in the front door and went to the front door and knocked on the door.
09:17And in my high school German, I said, I should be hungry. And I can't remember. It was a man, I think.
09:25And, and he went like that or something like that and came up, brought me a plate of milk or some milk and some bread.
09:35All of a sudden, a few minutes later, I saw these guys. I like to think they were in leather shorts, Lederhosen. They may not have been.
09:45But they were walking out. I do remember they had two of the biggest rifles I'd ever seen in my life.
09:51And I said to myself, Cook, you're not going to be a hero. And I took my .45 out and I threw it as far as I could throw it.
10:00He said, well, you will talk to me before we're through. I'll guarantee you.
10:15So, he said, if not, you'll be shot in the morning as a spy just because you're wearing those clothes don't mean nothing to us.
10:25You know, you could be a spy and still be wearing an Air Corps uniform.
10:31So, anyway, I guess he was trying to impress a kid. He did.
10:37So, it was long in the mid morning, I think, he called me back up there again or had him bring me up.
10:42And, and he said, you're not going to talk to me. And I said, well, I, you asked me all these questions.
10:50I, I don't know, I haven't, I can't even tell you. I was only there in that outfit for two weeks.
10:55I don't know the name of the commander. I, I don't know the name, I don't even know the name of the outfit I was flying with.
11:01He said, I have more information about you than you do.
11:04And he said, I, and he commenced to tell me the day we left the States, that we'd flown over, what outfit we, when we went to Italy, then over to Corsica, everything.
11:17He said, I just wanted to see if you'd talk to me because you're very young.
11:23And he said, I'm sending three guards with you and they're not, they're not to try to keep you from escaping.
11:29Because I haven't, I don't even care at this point whether you do or don't.
11:33If you do, you'll be shot. If you don't, think about it.
11:37He said, you've come this far in this war. We all know what's going to happen.
11:41He said, it's winding down rapidly.
11:44And he said, you guys know as well as I do how it's going to end at this point.
11:50Mind your manners, do what's told, don't do anything stupid, and you'll go home.
11:59That came from the German Lieutenant. He was right.
12:04He told me where I went to high school, who my friends were, when I shipped overseas.
12:13They had such detailed information on me that I'm, my mouth fell open.
12:19I'm sure I confirmed everything that they maybe didn't know by the expression on my face.
12:26They knew my CO, they knew when I, what, they knew the time that I took off, everything.
12:34And I just was amazed.
12:36They knew every name on the crew.
12:38They knew where we came from, Lecce, the whole works.
12:41Two or three times a day or night, there would be this clump of people walking by and then machine gun fire.
12:50And I said, shit, they're going to shoot me, you know.
12:53And I said, but I'm, I said, if they try to do that, I'll, I'm not going to, I'm not going to break.
13:05I said, I'm an American soldier and I'm going to die like a man, you know.
13:10I really, you know, I was nutty enough to really feel that way, but I thought they were going to kill me.
13:23I went into the camp and was processed, and while we were in there, over there, the Germans had a loudspeaker system.
13:33And in German, I heard the words, heute der Gosekamp in Westen hat begonnen.
13:39And I, I, there was a guy next to me, I said, what in the hell are they talking about?
13:44He said, the second front has started.
13:47He said, we've invaded the, heute, today, the great battle in the West has begun.
13:51Well, that was the invasion day.
13:53So they, they told us, you know, with their loudspeaker system in German.
13:57And I, I kind of said, oh hell, we'll be out of here in six weeks.
14:01And then nearly a year later, I'm still there.
14:05The treatment wasn't too bad.
14:07You could get an angry guard if he had gone home for the weekend and his house was blown apart over, you know, while he was gone.
14:15He'd get pretty bitter.
14:17But, and they had places where we could walk outside and they had a wire about foot high, I guess, on pigs, all the way around the compound.
14:28And if we set our foot on that, they would shoot us.
14:31And, of course, we knew that, so we didn't do it.
14:33And as long as you do, did what you were told, I can't say that the treatment was bad.
14:39The worst thing about that whole experience was lack of food.
14:43And the Germans themselves didn't have much.
14:46Probably the four, first four to six weeks were the hardest part of captivity.
14:52Being captured is the hardest part, but the second hardest part then is trying to get used to being hungry.
14:58Because you get, as time goes on and you lose weight, you get a little more used to it all the time.
15:06Some days they had very little, and other days you had a small, maybe two-inch piece of black bread would be your share,
15:14and a small bowl of some kind of watery soup.
15:20Sometimes it had meat flavor, sometimes it didn't.
15:24I remember a couple of times the only flavor you could get out of it was the rotten potatoes they'd used in it.
15:31Anyway, I lost about 40, 50 pounds in the first four to six weeks.
15:39And after that, why, you're just hungry, but you don't.
15:43It's not the foremost thing on your mind.
15:47Every day, at least twice a day, we all had to line up out in front of our barracks, and the Germans would count us.
15:56We lined up in fives, because that's the only way they knew how to count, I guess.
16:01Several times while we were out lined up, three ME 109s had come flying over.
16:07I don't know if they were training or coming back from a mission or what.
16:11I suspicioned training.
16:13And they knew we were all flyers, so they'd buzz the field and peel off in wing overs, you know, showing off a little.
16:20Well, one day one of them peeled off and flew the thing right into the ground and blew up.
16:26And we all said, well, there's no way that guy could survive with 5,000 of us down there saying, blow up, you son of a bitch.
16:38We started cheering and doing stupid things, so they cut loose with machine guns over our head to calm us down, which did real quick.
16:47The Germans had a fighter plane factory about 15 to 20 miles from our camp, and they were bombing it one time, and an air raider had sounded.
17:01And when the air raid sounded in our camp, we had to stay in the barracks.
17:04We didn't go outside.
17:05And I was inside the barracks, but I happened to look across.
17:08There was one of our enlisted men in the camp was standing in the doorway, and a German guard saw him and shot him dead.
17:20I remember the first formation we had when we got there, they lined us all up, and we all had standard attention.
17:33And he said, gentlemen, I must tell you this.
17:38Escaping will no longer be the sport.
17:41Anyone trying to escape will be shot.
17:45And we all threw our hats up in the air and cheered, and a couple days later somebody tried it.
17:53And he had a nice funeral.
17:56Escaping from Stanley 17B wasn't like Hogan's Heroes and the movie.
18:04It was damn serious business.
18:07He was having to get shot.
18:10I remember one time I walked in the room, and they were getting this man ready to go out the gate as a German officer, or German soldier.
18:18And he had a German uniform on, and he had a German rifle in his pocket.
18:25Heck, how'd he get that?
18:27Well, it was a German RAF uniform, which they'd changed a little bit, and cast the ornaments that go on the uniform, including the eagle.
18:39And then the rifle was made out of wood and been carved, and it's the perfect duplication of a German rifle.
18:48And what they did, they had this man who looked like one of the Germans that came into the camp.
18:55He was just a spitting enemy.
18:57He could have been twins.
18:58It was remarkable.
18:59And they had him wear this uniform with the necessary documents.
19:04When this other man that looked like him, the German, came into camp, this guy and I think 15 or 20 others went up to the gate and showed their document.
19:13The German let him through because he had the regular documents.
19:16And he had a rifle, and he assumed he was authentic, and went out the gate.
19:20And so we had 21 out there, but they were allowed to lose about half a day.
19:27There were very few escape attempts.
19:30If you wanted to make an escape, we had a panel of men that we'd have to go to to get and present your plan and let them comment on it.
19:41And they'd either tell you no, or if they gave their okay, they'd give you all the help that they could with uniforms and that sort of thing.
19:49The only one I know that even tried was a fellow.
19:56I don't even think that he got the permission from this panel, but I knew he was going.
20:04And he donned a white sheet of some kind, and it was snow on the ground.
20:10And he sneaked out of the barracks, which we weren't allowed outside at night, of course.
20:15And they had, all around the camp, they had the searchlights going, and they were searching back and forth.
20:23And they saw him, I'm sure, because they would go up one side with the searchlights, then they'd go down the other,
20:30and then they'd watch him move, and then they'd run the searchlights, never across his body.
20:35But he was itching his way to the fence, and I don't know what he was going to do when he hit the fence,
20:40because there's two rows of fences with bar briar in between.
20:45So he had a very poor plan.
20:47They let him go on for three or four hours, I guess, laying out there in the snow.
20:52Finally, they went out and got him.
20:55Well, we were digging this tunnel, you see, and we were digging it.
20:59And the Polish Jews used to come in with a honey bucket to pump out the latrines, you know, pump out the tunnels.
21:11And we were going so far along with our tunnel, and the honey bucket weighed a lot of weight,
21:17and our tunnel wasn't far enough down, and so it collapsed.
21:20And there was, oh no, there are Germans, and they go crazy when things like this happen.
21:26It's just almost for us losing the tunnels.
21:29Yelling and screaming.
21:32I mean, that's one thing, if you wanted to get a German's attention in those days, you just yelled at him.
21:37It doesn't matter whether you're POW or not, but he's a German, and you yell at him, you got up his attention right away.
21:42You just got to yell, and you have his attention.
21:44But anyway, the honey bucket went over this thing, and that was the end of our tunnel.
21:48You have a lot of sand.
21:50What the hell do you do with it, you see?
21:52That was the big problem, getting rid of sand.
21:56I mean, it's awful.
21:57You know, talk about logistics.
21:59But I mean, it was done, and we got rid of it, and...
22:02But Bert and I were just the moles.
22:04We were the diggers, you know.
22:06And North Camp, the Great Escape, they had electricity down tunnels.
22:10They had a railroad for the things.
22:12Well, we just had sleds, and we had a...
22:15We used to get lots of margarine, and instead of oil, oil lamp, we'd have a margarine lamp.
22:21It'd burn.
22:22It'd be a stinky thing, but it'd burn.
22:24But I'd throw the tunnel, the sand behind for Bert, and he would put it on, and pull it to the cord, and away they'd go.
22:31You know, it was very...
22:33It was a lot of fun.
22:34And of course, it was interesting to do.
22:36There wasn't much else to do.
22:37Well, there were other things to do.
22:38We played basketball, played games, but tunneling was our fort.
22:44This guy built a vaulting horse out of an old Red Cross parcel box, and they put him in that thing,
22:54and then they hauled him out near the perimeter of the fence, and then he started digging.
23:01And then after he got through digging a certain length of time, he'd put the dirt up into the vaulting horse,
23:09crawl up into it, and close off where he started his tunnel and camouflage it,
23:15and then they'd take it back into some place and dispose of the sand.
23:20Next day, he'd do the same thing, and he'd keep digging.
23:24After he'd gone so far, they'd put him down there, he'd go out, he'd go into this tunnel,
23:30and they'd close it up, and he'd start digging.
23:33And as he dug, he'd push the dirt back behind him like a mole.
23:38And this guy made it.
23:40He mulled out and escaped and got back to England.
23:50One night, the guards came in and roused, you know, and we packed up everything we could,
24:00and we broke up bed slats and made sled, our crew did, made a sled and put all we could on that, you know.
24:09And as we entered or left the gate, they opened the warehouse full of Red Cross parcels,
24:14and we took all those that we could hold.
24:16So the first day or two, we did pretty well for eating.
24:20We had heard about this death march, you know, in Bataan.
24:23We thought it was comparable, but of course it wasn't.
24:27But it was bad.
24:29The cold was the worst, and the hunger, hunger.
24:32They were moving all the air officers down south to be a, for Hitler's retreat,
24:40and we were going to be hostages.
24:42That was the story anyway, and I guess it was true, because that's where we ended up,
24:47down in Moosburg, which is very close to Munich.
24:51And there we were in huge big tents, a couple hundred in a tent, you know.
24:57It was just packed one body after another.
25:01Patton's troops came in, the tanks and all.
25:04We heard those rumbling up a couple of days before they came.
25:07And the guards there are all vacated.
25:10They left it, they left the gates open and all.
25:12And then the tanks came in, and it was real, real thrilled to get liberated.
25:22The orders were out, and we, that all came from Hitler.
25:29That all POWs were to be eliminated rather than be given back.
25:39The whole idea was, if they felt if they had enough hostages prior,
25:46they could strike a better deal on a surrender.
25:49But if they didn't make the surrender, then the guards were to use their machine guns
25:55and wipe out as many as they could.
25:57And a few of them tried that at the camp that morning.
26:02Anyway, where we were, we could look across at a field.
26:06And we heard, finally heard tank rumbling, which was a nice sound.
26:11And they were the ones that came to the front gate
26:15and pushed the fence and the gates and everything down.
26:21And the hearsay was that Patton himself, which we knew was there,
26:26had come in and saw how badly these guys looked.
26:32And it made him mad.
26:33So he says, let's go get the sons of bitches.
26:38Our camp was bypassed by, we were up on the Baltic,
26:43and our camp was bypassed by the Russian troops.
26:47And we were left in a pocket up there by ourselves.
26:51And the Germans took off, left us there.
26:56And these two Russians came in the middle of the night,
27:01and they wore fez hats and had air-cooled submachine guns slung across them.
27:08And they came to liberate us.
27:11And of course, right away, the rest of the horde came.
27:16And we were under the Mongols for a couple of weeks
27:23before the crack troops came back and restored order.
27:27I got down to a little town called Gammelsdorf,
27:30and I could hear the artillery.
27:33I could hear 105s or whatever they were, 155s.
27:37And I knew the Americans were coming.
27:40And I said, jeez, I'm just going to stay here.
27:43I'm not going to...
27:44And we were told the next morning we were going to go into the permanent camp.
27:47And then the capper was when that was the day that we were told by laughing Germans
27:53that Roosevelt is dead.
27:55Roosevelt is tot.
27:57Ha, ha.
27:58You know.
27:59You know.
28:00And that...
28:01You know, I'd never lost a precedent before.
28:05But I said to myself, you know, I'm tired of this.
28:09I don't want to go back into another camp.
28:11I'm...
28:12The American army's going to be here in the next couple of days.
28:15I'll just stay behind.
28:17And after two days, the artillery stopped.
28:20Ha, ha, ha.
28:21And I said, oh, shit, they...
28:23You know, they swung somewhere else.
28:25And I'm going to run out of food here, and I'm going to have to give myself up.
28:28And I don't want to do that, because they'll kill me.
28:30And so I said, well, I know where I am, and I know where I have to go.
28:35And so I, over the next 10 or 12 days, I walked about 120 kilometers.
28:41And the only problem I had in traveling that is that I didn't have any papers,
28:46and I had...
28:47I couldn't walk across a bridge.
28:49So what do you do when you can't walk across a bridge?
28:52You have to swim the river.
28:54So I was always wet.
28:56And there's nothing as wet as a GI overcoat.
29:00You can take your shirt off and dry your pants out, but that coat never dries.
29:04And I swam four rivers.
29:08Finally got down to the border, and I knew it was the border into Switzerland,
29:14because I knew it was the Rhine River.
29:17And there was a barbed wire on the German side, substantial barbed wire,
29:22double system with tangle wire in the middle.
29:26Watched the German guards and their dogs walking.
29:30So I used the same...
29:32They would walk it at 4 o'clock, and then they would walk it the next morning.
29:38And I said, I've got to get out of here.
29:40And if I'm going to do it, I'm going to get out at night.
29:44So I got down to the wire.
29:46And of course, then I realized that I didn't exactly know where the Germans had walked.
29:52And I started to say, you know, this could be bad because Germans were known to mine their barbed wire fence systems,
30:02either internally as you touch the wire or mostly in the ground three feet down.
30:09So I started to dig, and I didn't have any tools.
30:14And I bloodied my hands and got through the first strands.
30:18The tangle wire was the worst because you can't avoid it.
30:22You know, you've got to lift it, and just when you think you're out, it's caught your pants.
30:26And I ripped myself up quite a bit and finally got through.
30:32And going through the last one, I was so afraid that I was going to die or be caught there and shot
30:40that my tongue stuck to the top of my mouth.
30:43And that's an awful feeling.
30:45I had no moisture in my body.
30:47So I was dehydrated, totally fearful.
30:52Then I stumbled, ripped my clothes, ripped my head, stumbled into the Rhine River,
31:00flowing rather swiftly because it was just coming down out of the Alps.
31:05And I floated, you know, with the flow of the river.
31:10And I could touch the ground or the bottom in most places, but, you know, I could swim too.
31:21And kind of got myself up to the other bank and just kind of collapsed, kind of fitfully passed out.
31:31Got up the next morning, all stiff, cold as hell, and stumbled out on this little road and walked along.
31:43I didn't know, I just, I just knew I had to go somewhere, you know, rather than just sit there and die.
31:52And I was stumbling along this road and this guy on a bike came roaring around the corner.
31:57And he stops and gets off the bike.
32:00And he's got a uniform on, it looks like a German uniform, you know, a blue-gray uniform.
32:06And I said, oh, God, after all this, didn't I get out?
32:17You know, I thought maybe I'd cross back in or did some dumb thing.
32:21I was really almost delirious at that time.
32:24And I kind of stumbled to him and I said, I got within about 20 feet.
32:29I don't know what I look like, but it would be nice to have that picture right now.
32:34But he kind of, he was kind of apprehensive, you know, because I was covered with blood and all sorts of things.
32:44Mud and wet, miserable, mean looking probably.
32:48And I said, ich bin Amerikaner.
32:52And this guy said, je suis.
32:55I have seen German soldiers who were prisoners in Russia coming home.
33:09And they're filthy, dirty, greasy clothes.
33:14And maybe don't have shoes.
33:16And I think about them, may not have any family left.
33:22And no place to go.
33:25And I think about how fortunate I am that I had something to come home to.
33:34And those guys, granted, they did terrible things, a lot of them.
33:40But a lot of them were just young men like me.
33:45And here we go.
33:46I'm sure people are alive.
33:47I'm sure.
33:48And I don't know what to do.
33:49I'll let them know the day.
33:50Maybe.
33:51I think they have a meal.
33:52Maybe.
33:53I think that they are the same.
33:54Maybe.
33:55Maybe.
33:56Maybe.
33:57Maybe.
33:58Maybe.
33:59Maybe.
34:00Maybe.
34:01Maybe.
34:02Maybe.
34:04Maybe.
34:05Maybe.
34:06Maybe.
34:07Maybe.
34:08Maybe.
34:10Maybe.
34:12Maybe.