The treatment received by the airmen on capture depended upon the luck of the draw, where they landed and in whose hands they fell. There are many stories of prisoners being beaten and killed and, for some inexpiicable reason, German farmers were often the worst offenders. A good example is that of Lt. James E. Hack.
Hack, a P-47 pilot was brought down by ground fire when he strafed military equipment between Buch and Illetissen, Germany. Forced to bail out at low altitude, he landed in a "sea of mud." The great impact drove his body into the mud up to his hips.
Several farmers rushed to Hack and found him mired in the mud, conscious and still alive. One of the farmers, Hermann Wasler, went to the defensely pilot and, instead of rendering aid, brutally kicked him repeatedly until he had beaten the last ounce of life out of the helpless airman. The other farmers stood by and watched approvingly. When they were satisfied that he was dead, they turned their backs and walked away.
A Polish slave laborer who worked for Wasler stayed behind. When they were gone, he pulled Hacks body from the mud. He carried the dead airman into the village of Buch looking for something to bury him in. But, the townspeople refused to render any help. So, the Polish laborer too Hark to a nearby area and buried him in his leather jacket and flying clothes in the raw earth. The Pole then made a wooden cross and erected it over his grave upon which he had written, "Here Sleeps an American Pilot."
One of the most brutal documented cases of barbarous treatment of American aircrews by German citizens was that of the crew of the bomber "Wham Bam, Thank You Ma'am." The aircraft was shot down near Hannover. One of the crew, Forrest W. Brininstool, was seriously wounded and sent to a hospital by his Luftwaffe captors. The rest of the crew, Norman J. Rogers, pilot, John N. Sekul, co-pilot, Haigus Tufenkjian, navigator, Thomas D. Williams, Jr., radio operator, William M. Adams, nose gunner, Elmer Austin, waist gunner, Sidney Brown, tail gunner, and William A. Dumont were placed on a train for Frankfurt. .
The train was stopped in the early morning at Russelsshelm, fifteen miles from Frankfurt, by blown up tracks. The RAF had bombed the area heavily the night before. The prisoners guarded by three Luftwaffe soldiers began to march across town to where the tracks were not damaged. As they walked past the Park Hotel, three women employees of the adjoining togacco store, Kathe Reinhardt, Margarete Witzler and her daughter, Lilo ran out of the shop cursing the flyers and shouting, "These are terror flyers! Beat them to death!" The hysterical women crowded around the airmen pelting them with stones. Reinhardt struck one of the men with a large piece of slate knocking him down. Philip Gutlich, a tavern operator, hearing the commotion, came out and joined in the attack upon the airmen, repeatedly striking Dumont with a club and breaking the gunners ankle. Joseph Hartgen, the local Nazi Party leader joined in the attack, firing a gun into the air several times while shouting, "Beat the schweins to death!" .He then again fired his pistol into the air several times inciting the mob to continue the malicious attack..
The flyers ran down the street. They were showered with bricks and rocksas they ran. A farmer, Johannes Seipel, joined in with the others in the assault. He ran along beside the fleeing airmen pounding them with a club. George Daum, a factory worker, ran along striking them with a shovel. Johann Opper, a railroad worker, broke a broom handle over the head of one of the men. Then, four Wehrmacht soldiers who normally did not engage in mob violence, joined the group in the rancorous beatings of the airmen.
The Americans came to a dead-end of the street at a stone wall of an elevated railroad crossing. They had no further line of retreat. The battered airmen huddled together against the wall trying to ward off the blows resigned to their fate. Three factory workers , August Wolf, Karl Fugmann and Freidrick Wust, attacked the men from the top of the wall. Wust leaned over and clubed the men on their heads with a large hammer. Wolf and Fugmann threw railroad ties and large boulders down upon them. The ruthless, sadistic townspeople continued their frenzied attack intent on beating the men to death. They did not stop the deadly beating of the flyers until all signs of life were gone from their battered, broken and bloodied bodies. The Nazi leader then stepped up and emptied his pistor into the heads of several of the motionless airmen.
The bodies, taken for dead, were thrown into an old farm wagon and hauled to the local cemetery. Miraculously, Adams, Brown, Sekul and Willieams were still alive. Sekul had his hand gripping Brown's shoulder. One of the murderers apparently saw signs of life in Sekul and struck him several times on the head. Brown could feel his comrade release his grip as he died. Williams was beaten on the head again and died. Brown and Adams, by the grace of God still lived.
The Germans, believing the Americans dead, departed leaving the bodies for burial. Brown and Adams remained completely motionless for about twenty minutes then crawled out from the bodies of their dead comrades and headed for the Rhine River. Four days later, they were spotted by a German policeman and recaptured. Bruised, bloody, exhausted, and near death, they expected the worst. But, fate was kind. They were delivered to nearby Dulag Luft and ultimately to Stalag Luft IV. It is difficult to understand how their bodies could have withstood the ordeal. A German mob had done everything they could to kill the American flyers but had not succeeded.
The treatment received by the airmen on capture depended upon the luck of the draw, where they landed and in whose hands they fell. There are many stories of prisoners being beaten and killed and, for some inexpiicable reason, German farmers were often the worst offenders. A good example is that of Lt. James E. Hack.