Former POWs to be Honored

These men will be honored by their children in a reenactment of the forced march of POWs from Stalag Luft III that began on Jan. 27th, 1945. The 16 "Kriegie Kids" will also begin their march from Zagan, Poland to Spremberg, Germany on Jan. 27th in 2009. Stay tuned for updates on their progress! Brief bios of these brave men are included below. If you have another former Stalag Luft III POW that you would like to acknowledge, please reply to this post.

Capt. Edward M. Bender – B-17G Pilot, 457th Bomb Group, 750th Squadron, based at Glatton, England. On his 13th mission on April 25, 1944, the borrowed plane he was flying went down near La Goulafriere, Eure, France (original target Nancy-Essey, France; group commander insisted that they head for a ‘target of opportunity’ to the submarine pens at Lorient, France). Captured by a unit of Hitler’s teenaged ‘crack babies’ and interrogated at Dulag Luft, Oberursel, Germany, about three miles from where his great grandfather lived prior to coming to the U.S. in 1838. Sent to Stalag Luft III, West Compound, Block 158, Combine 13. Force marched in January, 1945 to Stalag XIII-D and then in April to Stalag VII-A, from where he was liberated by Gen. Patton’s army on April 29, 1945. He is publishing his memoirs as “Lest They Forget Freedom’s Price: Memoirs of a WWII Bomber Pilot.” Native of Cape Girardeau, Missouri. Retired from the Reserves as a Lt. Col. He is very excited to watch the progress of the forced march reenactment this January. ˇ

Lt. James Arnett Gore - B-17 Navigator, 379th Bomb Group, 524th Squadron, based at Kimbolton (England). Shot down June 25, 1943, over Hamburg, Germany. SLIII South Compound, Block 139, Combine 3. James Gore lives in Durango Colorado with his wife of 63 years. He is 91 and is excited about the forced march reenactment trip to be completed by the children of SLIII POWs (a.k.a., "Kriegies"). He went back to Stalag Luft III in 2005 with his family and drove the march route. He looks forward to hearing about the adventure.

Lt. James H. Keeffe, Jr. - Seattle, WA. B-24 co-pilot with the Lt. James McArthur crew, 566th Bomb Squadron, 389th Bomb Group. Based at Hethel, East Anglia, England near Norwich. Shot down the 8th of March, 1944 on 4th mission - target Berlin. Bailed out over Papendrecht, Holland and evaded with the Dutch underground for five months in Rotterdam, Holland. While on his way to France, he was betrayed to the German Intelligence Service in Antwerp, Belgium and sent to Stalag Luft III in August, 1944, where he was put into Center Compound, Block 43, Combine 7. Evacuated with the reset of Stalag Luft III, 27th of January, 1945 and marched 52 miles and then transported in box cars to Moosburg, Bavaria, to Stalag VIIA. Liberated on the 29th of April, 1945. Currently residing in Bellevue, WA, at age 85. He thinks we are crazy to do this march in winter - but he is also quite proud and touched that we are.

2nd Lt. Thomas Conway Leary - P-51 pilot, 2nd Fighter Squadron, 52nd Fighter Group, 15th Air Force, based in Madna, Italy. Shot down over Seregeles, Hungary, October 14, 1944. Belaria Compound. Native of Kansas City, Missouri.

2nd Lt Charles W. Arnett – B-24 Pilot, 492nd Bomb Group, 857th Squadron, stationed at North Pickenham (England). Shot down on 3rd mission over Brunswick, Germany, May 19, 1944. SLIII West Compound, Block 166, Combine 13. Won the lottery which got him a seat on the very first plane evacuating the American POWs from Moosburg. Retired as a Lt. Col.

2nd Lt. Thomas F. Jeffers – Bombardier, 458th Bomb Group, 754th Squadron, flying out of Horsham St. Faith, England. He was shot down on his third mission to Fassberg, Germany, flying in a borrowed B-24 called Rhapsody in Junk. He flew out early that morning knowing that all his roommates had been killed the day before over Caen, France, flying in his crew's plane that they had borrowed. Jeffers was picked up in a farmer's field in Blick, Germany, a tiny farming community not far from the hometown of several of his wife's relatives. Nine of his crew survived, but the top turret gunner was found dead on the ground and was buried in a German cemetery. Jeffers was transported to Stalag Luft III and lived in Block 128, Combine 5. While there, his first child was born. He was later liberated at Stalag VIIA in Moosburg, Germany. He went on to be a career Air Force officer, retiring as a Lt. Col. He died June 24th, 2004. Jeffers is the subject of his daughter Marilyn Walton's book, Rhapsody in Junk: A Daughter's Return to Germany to Finish Her Father's Story.

Vernon Burda – B-24 Navigator, 781st Bomb Squadron, 15th Air Force, stationed at Pantenella (Italy). Shot down on his 30th mission over Vienna, Austria, July 16, 1944. SLIII Center Compound, Block 43, Combine 7.

Lt. Morris F. Epps - B-24 Liberator bombardier, 448th Bomb Group, 714th Squadron, served with “The Mighty Eighth” out of Seething, East Anglia, England. On his fifth mission (June 18, 1944) his plane was shot down over Hamburg, Germany. He was captured by the Luftwaffe, taken to Dulag Luft and then to Stalag Luft III where he was placed in the South Compound, Barrack 128, Combine 13. On January 27, 1945, he was in ill health when the South Compound was ordered to lead a forced evacuation of Stalag Luft III. After marching 35 miles in 27 hours, his section rested in a glass factory in Muskau and then departed, leaving the sick behind with the West Compound men. He later moved to a pottery factory, a paper factory, and finally to another pottery factory where he joined the men of Center Compound with whom he completed the fifty-two mile march and the subsequent 72-hour boxcar ride. His journey ended at Stalag VIIA in Moosburg, where he stayed until liberated on April 29, 1945. After liberation, he returned home to his wife in Knoxville, Tennessee. He sought a life of helping others and began a career in education after college, working in Virginia and New Jersey. He dearly loved teaching and spent several years in the classroom. Afterwards, he served in a number of administrative leadership positions, including superintendent of schools.

It is with a grateful heart that Epps’ daughter acknowledges the following fellow Kriegies who shared the POW experience with him and who (after Epps’ death in 1998) helped her to deepen her understanding of the experiences that molded her father into the special individual he became. Of particular help were Harold Garman (Center Compound), Chuck Conner, Bud Hinckley, Alexander Jefferson, Charles Woehrle, Chuck Yant (all of South Compound), and those who attended the 2005 POW reunion in Tucson.

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Dates: WWII POW Forced March Reenactment

The reenactment of the forced march experienced by the Allied POWs from Stalag Luft III in 1945 is scheduled for January 27 - 30, 2009, on the 64th anniversary of the original march. We will be walking over 50 miles in four days, just as the POWs did in 1945. Be sure to "stay tuned" - we'll be updating the blog daily with pictures and (hopefully) video!


The link to more pictures is here
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Stalag Luft III POW Forced March Reenactment - Jan, 2009

You might want to follow the action in late January, 2009 as more than a dozen children of former Stalag Luft III POWs participate in a reenactment of the forced march of POWs ordered by Hitler as the Russians advanced in the bitterly cold winter of 1945. The official press release follows with contact information at the end:

It was sixty-four years ago that their fathers were evacuated from the German prisoner of war camp, Stalag Luft III at Sagan, Germany. This officer’s camp, where the famous “Great Escape” took place in 1944, was hidden in the pine forests of what is now Zagan, Poland, in an area known as Upper Silesia. There, the men called “Kriegies” (German prisoners of war) waited out the war. Now their children will pay tribute to them in a unique way.
On January 12th, 1945, two-hundred-fifty Russian divisions with numerous tanks covered by an unbroken line of artillery, and supported by seven-thousand-five-hundred tactical aircraft, emerged from the eastern bridgeheads and swept across Poland in a little more than two weeks. Altogether, there were two-and-a-half million Russians. If all went well, the Red Army would soon be in Berlin.
On January 16th, the Russians launched their winter offensive. By January 25th, news arrived that the spearhead had advanced three hundred miles across snowy Poland before it paused for a short time at the Oder River at Steinau forty-eight miles due east of Sagan where the camp was located.
On January 27th, at a 4:30 p.m. staff meeting in Berlin, Adolf Hitler’s growing concern about the Russian Amy now having crossed the Elbe River reached its peak. To prevent the Russians from liberating the Kriegies, and to preserve his options to use the men as hostages, Hitler ordered an immediate evacuation of thousands of Allied POWs in camps lying in front of the Russian onslaught, 10,000 of which were from Stalag Luft III. With Soviet Marshal Ivan Konev’s southern army within twenty kilometers of the camp, the ill-clothed Stalag Luft III prisoners had little time to plan their journey and had no idea where they were going. A uniform thought was repeated throughout the camp.
“They’d never move us at night!”
But orders came, and Colonel Delmar Spivey, Senior American Officer in Center Compound, marched into the theatre during an evening performance and made a stunning announcement.
“The Goons (German guards) have just come in and given us thirty minutes to be at the front gate,” he said somberly. “Get your stuff together and line up.”
Of especial irony, Colonel Charles Goodrich, the Senior American Officer in South Compound, made a similar announcement from the theater stage where the Kriegies were watching a production of “You Can’t Take It With You!”
Hitler’s order signaled the start of a march clearly in violation of the Geneva Convention which stipulated that prisoners were not to be marched more than 12.6 miles in 24 hours. The march began in bitter cold and ended with a grueling boxcar ride to Bavaria to other over-crowded camps in Germany.
Silesian winters were known for howling winds that could turn snow and ice into stinging missiles. The winter of 1945 was the coldest winter on record in over fifty years in Germany and Poland. Dressed in mis-matched French, British and GI army issues, the prisoners were reduced to a motley collection of underfed hoboes stumbling forward to be swallowed up by the night. The ten-thousand men were off on a journey that would be frozen into their psyches for a lifetime.
The two-thousand men of South Compound, first out, left at 11:00 p.m. and formed a column a mile long as they cleared the way by tramping down the six inches of snow for the eight thousand that followed behind. The line of prisoners from all compounds within the camp would eventually stretch for twenty miles. South Compound marched thirty-five miles in the first twenty-seven hours with little food and one four-hour stop in barns and stables before arriving in Muskau for a rest in a glass factory for two days. They continued to march fifteen additional miles to Spremberg for a total of fifty-two miles. Other compounds followed them along the icy roads to Spremberg.
For the men of the South and Center Compounds, the march ended with a seventy-two hour boxcar ride from Spremberg to Stalag VIIA in Moosburg, Germany, arriving on February 1st. The men of West Compound were transported first to Stalag XIIID at Nürnberg, Germany, where they stayed until just after Easter when they were marched to join the others at Moosburg. Royal Air Force prisoners of the North Compound marched with their allied counterparts, and American prisoners from the adjacent compound called Belaria also joined the ranks along the frozen roads and in the fetid box cars.
Remembering and paying tribute to their fathers, a group of “Kriegie Kids,” many decades older than their fathers had been, will re-enact the forced march returning to Poland Jan. 24th, 2009, to once more march out in the snow from what remains of Stalag Luft III. They will pass by the same weathered barns where their fathers slept and visit the Catholic Church where Center Compound crowded in for warmth and refuge sixty-four years earlier. The marchers will stop in Spremberg where their fathers, many of whom were very sick and exhausted, were finally fed some warm barley soup before they were loaded into the over-crowded filthy boxcars to be transported to Stalag VIIA.
This memorial trip, deemed “The Road from Sagan,” is open to anyone who had a loved one march out of the camp. A bus will be provided for those who are unable to march the entire route, and the group will stay in hotels along the way. The marchers will fly into Berlin and fly home from Munich. The cities of Dresden, Erlangen and Nürnberg will also be visited. The trip will conclude on Feb. 3rd. The trip can be followed daily at http://cloudcorridor.blogspot.com/ which has been set up particularly for students. Anyone wishing further information can contact:

Evelyn McLaughlin
970-884-9005 (Colorado)
kmclaughlin@gobrainstorm.net
OR
Marilyn Walton (Ohio)
513-523-2016
waltonma@woh.rr.com
OR
Valarie Burgess (Wyoming)
307-674-4080

The link to more pictures is here
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The RAF's Great Escape Hut

The British Royal Air Force has opened a replica of the "Great Escape" hut on the site of the WWII prison camp for captured Allied airmen, Stalag Luft III, in what is now Zagan, Poland. Click on the title above to read all about it.

Dedicated on August 17, 2008, the hut is half the original length and features interior furnishings similar to the originals. See the dedication video at: http://www.raf.mod.uk/downloads/project104grandopening.cfm

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Stalag Luft III - NOVA's Website on the Great Escape

NOVA features an engaging site on the topic of the Great Escape (click on the title to access it). They feature this picture of the barracks at Stalag Luft III. The camp was vast - featuring several sections, and at one time it housed as many as 10,000 Allied prisoners.

Its evacuation in January of 1945 during the coldest Winter on record, represented an attempt by the Germans to prevent the advancing Russians from liberating their Allied hostages. Read more!

Stalag Luft III and the Great Escape

Stalag Luft III was the camp made famous by the "Great Escape." Check out this NOVA site to experience one of the tunnels that the POWs built and used for the escape in March of 1944. It was less than a year later when my father marched past the tunnels to leave the camp, as the Germans sought to move their "hostages" to a safer location before the arrival of the advancing Russian armies.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/greatescape/harry.html


The link to more pictures is here

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