By DANA PARNELL
Morning News staff intern
Frank
Chimera was a 19-year-old high school senior when he was taken out of North East High School and drafted into the Army Air Force during World War II.
""Six of us were drafted and still had a half a year left
before we graduated,'' he said. ""Although you were kind of apprehensive, you had to make up your mind to go. You thought about your country and about keeping it safe and sound _ to protect and to have world
peace.''
Chimera left home a teenager and returned as a liberated prisoner of war.
He and the five other high school seniors went to Miami where they were split up. Chimera trained as a radio operator on several
bases in the United States before flying to Trinidad, Brazil, Africa, Morocco and then to England where he began flying missions.
""It was two weeks after D-Day, and we were flying to hit an oil field in
south Poland,'' he explained. The American B-24 Liberators were flying over Germany. ""I was on my 23rd mission when we were shot down between Munich and Stuttgart, Germany,'' he said. ""Some were on
their 30th and last mission.
""The day we flew it was real cloudy, and we were ordered to go back to England, but my plane and two others never heard the command, and we were all shot down,'' he said.
""When we were hit, it blew everything up around me. One (airman) went down with the plane as it burned, and another pulled his parachute's rip cord before he left the plane and was dragged into the plane and
went down with it.''
The engineer on Chimera's plane was just about to fall through the hole in the plane when Chimera grabbed onto him. They put on their parachutes and waited for the pilot to give the signal to jump.
""I felt like an angel when I was falling,'' he said. ""All I could hear was wind, and I could see all of the others falling.''
Chimera landed in a tree and freed himself within 10 minutes. But
the freedom was short-lived. ""As soon as I hit the ground, I was captured.
""A civilian with a gun took me over to a house where there was a Hitler youth. He was a raving maniac. Then a regular
soldier came and got me and put me in a chicken coop until the morning.
""I remember I could hear someone inside the house playing the piano. It was such beautiful music and listening to it calmed me.''
The next morning Chimera was taken to a town where civilians gathered near two people hanged in the town's square.
""They were ready to throw rocks at me and beat me up, but I was with a good Army soldier
who kept the people away,'' he said. ""From there I was taken by train to Frankfurt where a bunch of satanistic people interrogated me.''
Chimera stayed there for two weeks and then was taken with a train
full of prisoners to a camp near the Polish border.
""As we were getting out of the train, soldiers were pulling fellows with broken arms and legs out onto the ground because they said they weren't moving
fast enough,'' he said.
Along the road leading to the prison camp, German guards and police dogs stood every 10 yards on each side of the road, ready to attack anyone who stumbled.
""If you stumbled and
fell, the guards would hit you with the butts of their guns or stick a bayonet in you or they'd sic the dogs on you,'' Chimera said. ""One fellow made it to the camp with 63 bayonet wounds, others were beat up
or chewed up by the dogs.''
The 20,000 prisoners in the camp were permitted to send one letter every three months. His parents only received a few. They received word from a ham radio operator that Chimera had been
shot down and was doing ""OK.''
He knew how much this worried his father, Salvatore ""Sam'' Chimera, who was a prisoner of war when he served in the Italian Army during World War I.
""He knew what I was going through,'' Chimera said.
He remembers how the war and being a prisoner affected other Allied soldiers when he was admitted and treated for frostbite at the camp's hospital.
""Fellows' minds snapped,'' he said. ""I remember one who would put a blanket on his shoulders, grab a knife and run around the hospital pretending he was Batman. Another would sit in the corner and
rub his head. That's all he would do, just sit and rub his head. And one guy who played baseball would pretend he was swinging a bat. There was no telling how long they'd been in there.''
How did he survive?
""A lot of what I guess you'd call fortitude,'' he said, ""and a lot of willpower to help you keep your senses. We just hoped this war would make the world better.''
Chimera was in the hospital
three days when the Russians ""got close.'' He said the Germans left and returned two days later.
""When they found out we had broken into the barracks and stolen the food we should have been
eating, they lined us up in front of a firing squad. Just then they got word that the Russians were getting close again and left us alone.''
That put an end to Chimera's one-and-a-half year stay as a prisoner of war.
No longer would he eat potato soup with maggots when no road kill, dead horses or cows could be scavenged. No longer would he have to dodge the machine gun bullets that sprayed his camp. No longer would he wonder if his
mind would snap or if he'd live to touch American soil.
He was moved to Barth, Germany, near Berlin by the Russians. He was then sent to France and, finally, was on his way home.
""I came home on a 30-day
leave, and there was a little reception for me,'' Chimera said. ""The town was glad I was home, especially the school principal, Mr. Davis. He called me and asked if I'd come and talk to him.''
The other
five high school seniors also made it back to North East, and all were presented high school diplomas.
Chimera and other prisoners of war were sent to San Antonio, Texas, for rehabilitation. He was discharged on Oct.
15, 1945.
""I was 22 when I came back home. I sure did grow up.''
Three years ago Chimera was finally awarded a Purple Heart, an Air Medal for meritorious achievement while in flight, with three oak leaf
clusters, and a POW medal. When he looks at the medals and thinks back to his experiences as a United States soldier, he can't help from becoming overwhelmed with emotion.
""I wonder how I got out of that
plane,'' he said. ""It was shot up, there were no controls and it was on fire. When we jumped, we could see the smoke and the flames of the plane. How did I get out?''
Chimera, who has two daughters and two
sons, is a retired barber and is retired from Lake Erie Electric.
