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Lt. Robert W. Brown
By DEBORAH McQUAID
Morning News staff reporter
Lt. Robert W. Brown of Erie, imprisoned in a German war camp near the Baltic Sea, listened on a handmade radio and charted the progress of the invasion of Normandy. Brown and his
American comrades in the German prison camp knew that if the landing and the assault were successful, the war would end and they would be going home. Sometime.
Some English prisoners bribed German soldiers for
radio parts and built their own. They listened to BBC broadcasts and "knew more about the war than the Germans did.''
Months later, the Russians came, knocked down all the fences and brought cattle to eat
and vodka to drink
Brown became a prisoner in December 1943. He had been an Army Air Force fighter pilot flying a single-seat P-38 Lightning for the 338th Fighter Squadron out of England to Germany.
"We had two engines to take care of and one man. It was sort of a complicated ship, but a nice ship,'' he said. Their mission was to protect the American bombers. About 100 P-38s would protect 600 bombers.
"We just kept flying over top of them,'' Brown recalled. Most missions lasted about three hours, but he remembers one that was seven hours.
"We were a long-range escort,'' he said. The planes they were
protecting were dropping bombs on factories around Berlin.
On Dec. 22, 1943, after he had completed about 15 missions, Brown was hit. "A German ship snuck right in and hit my engine,'' Brown said.
"It started to smoke and I got myself out of formation and started down.
"I set it down in the Netherlands.''
The plane crash-landed at about 175 mph, he said, and about the only thing left of it was
the engines. But he came out unharmed. "There was not much left of it. I was hiding in the fields of Holland and a couple of fellows came up, they had their daggers out. They didn't know who I was. We talked in a
kind of a sign language and they bummed cigarettes and I asked them which way was Belgium. "I went that way. It was hard to walk between the dikes.''
He walked for about four hours and then saw a light
coming towards him. It was an eight-man German patrol. "The lead guy could speak English. He was an awful nice guy. He started telling me where he had lived in the United States,'' Brown said. They took Brown
to Amsterdam where he spent Christmas and New Year's in jail with four other men from the same bombing mission. "A lot of bomber pilots got hit that day,'' he said.
After about five days, they were taken to Frankfurt for interrogation.
"They asked you almost anything, but you didn't give too much information. A German major told me he married a Boston girl.''
After a two weeks, the International Red Cross took the prisoners on their last train ride to the POW camp. There were 17,000 prisoners from different Allied nations, including many pilots from Brown's squadron.
Back home, On Dec. 29, 1943, a Western Union telegram from the U.S. Department of War adjutant general arrived for Brown's wife, Theodora. It read: "The Secretary of War desires me to express his deep regret
that your husband, First Lieutenant Robert W. Brown has been reported missing in action since 22 December over Germany.'' For a month she would live in fear of her husband's fate.
Another telegram came Jan.
31, 1944, the Germans held him prisoner, but gave no location. Not long after, young Mrs. Brown received postcards and letters from all over the United States from people who monitored a Berlin short-wave radio
broadcast at 9:07 p.m. on Feb. 1, 1943, when the names of five American prisoners of war were announced. They heard Lt. Brown's name and hers. He was said to be "safe and well.''
Mrs. Brown saved all the
correspondence, postmarked from New York City, Hartford, Ct., Los Angeles, Plainfield, N.J., a "listening club'' in Dallas, Texas, Carbondale, Pa., Watertown, Mass. and Bangor, Maine. There were 15 of them in
all. Some expressed the frustration of the war.
"No doubt it must be some time since you heard from Lt. Brown. I know how anxious you must be to hear about him,'' one woman wrote. Mrs. Maud Whitny of
North East wrote that she got Berlin every night on her ham radio and had sent out 1,000 cards to family members of prisoners.
"I do hope this much news will bring you a word of cheer, comfort and happiness.
Join me in hope and prayer for a speedy victory, peace and a safe homecoming,'' wrote a man from Brooklyn, N.Y.
In the prison camp, English-speaking men were placed together, six to a room. They had cots and
clean sheets about once a month. The Red Cross furnished the food. They got a ration box once a week with canned meat and rutabagas. The Germans furnished black bread which was "hard as a rock, but stuck to your
ribs.''
The camp was run by the German Luftwaffe, which protected the American and British fliers. "They didn't want to see us mistreated,'' Brown said. They had a reason _ they didn't want their
captured pilots mistreated in retaliation.
"We had freedom all day long,'' he said. Brown, who played the saxophone and clarinet in big bands in the U.S., spent his 18 months in the prison camp's "Big
Band.''Given instruments by the Red Cross, there was a big band, a jazz band and a philharmonic there. "We were damn good. We might have had some of the best musicians in the States.
"Thank goodness
we had the outlet so we could do something outside of just laying around all day. That was tough, watching the four walls,'' Brown said. Prisoners could read the library of paperback books, he said.
On D-Day, the
Germans told their Allied prisoners what would happen next. "The German guards told us "If you make the landing and it goes OK, the war will be over in six months.''' When the camp was liberated and
despite the "good'' treatment, Brown had lost 40 pounds.
When he arrived home in Erie, it was time to celebrate. Afterwards, he re-enlisted and volunteered to go to Japan.
"The war wasn't over
yet and I figured I didn't do my duty sitting in a prison camp so I thought I'd try it again. I didn't get in it to stay out of it.''
The war ended before he could be sent away again. He stayed in the Air Force
Reserves and left as a major. He's proud of his service in the military, but not that he was a prisoner. A few months ago, he received the first communication ever from a reunion committee for the 338th
Fighter Squadron. It will be held this summer in Bloomington, Minn. |
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