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Robert Nelson, a gunner on a B-24 bomber in World War II, shares some memorabilia from his book. These are photos of his wife and first son that he received while he was held in a prison camp.
KATHLEEN ELLYN | SPECIAL TO THE STATESMAN JOURNAL
Robert Nelson, a gunner on a B-24 bomber in World War II, shares some memorabilia from his book. These are photos of his wife and first son that he received while he was held in a prison camp.

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Stayton veteran recalls his 418 days spent as a POW

Robert Nelson has compiled a book about experience

November 12, 2006

Robert Nelson spent more than a year as a Nazi prisoner during World War II, but it's a distant memory now for the Stayton resident who rarely thinks of his days on the front line.

Nelson doesn't talk much about his war years, and he keeps his Purple Heart, air medals and numerous other service medals in their boxes, neatly stored away in his Stayton home.

Now more than 80 years old, Nelson says he rarely talks of his sacrifice to the country and the world. He's only recently begun sharing his experiences from his time in the military with the group of friends he meets for coffee at Rumors in Stayton every morning at about 6:30 a.m., and that only may be because others are asking him about it. He received his POW medal just 18 months ago and his friends' interest in the prison camp he was incarcerated in has been piqued lately. Nelson recently saw a show on television about archeology studies being done in the prison camp he once occupied.

"They're digging down 30 feet looking for artifacts. I couldn't believe it!" he said.

Part of history

The camp was Stalag Luft III, in Sagan, Poland -- made famous by the movie "The Great Escape."

Though Nelson didn't escape the camp with the famous British soldiers who made the attempt, it wasn't because of a lack of effort. He said American soldiers on the other side of the camp were digging tunnels, carrying dirt out in their pant-legs, or standing watch to warn of approaching guards. But few tunnels made it all the way out to freedom. Most were discovered after months of work and the guards would fill the tunnels with water to collapse them.

And then the men would start a new tunnel.

Written account

Nelson has managed to save a book full of memorabilia from the 418-day experience, a remarkable document if he can be persuaded to show it.

He got the blank book from a tank driver in the camp, he said, and though most men were forced to burn their books for warmth on a forced march from Sagan toward Nuremburg shortly before liberation, he managed to keep his and "get warm by other guys' fires," he said.

The book contains a little bit of everything: cigarette papers, matchbox covers, a label from a care package from home, photos of his pregnant wife, invasion money, lists of prisoner slang and their meanings, tree leaves collected on his first walk as a prisoner, his prison ID, a list of the food they ate on their forced march from Sagan to Nuremburg, pictures and jokes drawn by other servicemen, news clippings and an invitation to a prison-camp music program that was used to distract their guards as a tunnel project progressed.

"While we were making the noise, why, they were pulling dirt," he said. The book also contains all of Nelson's letters from home.

"We were allowed three letters a month and two postcards," he said.

The book seems to break Nelson's experience down into manageable chapters. Stories are sparked by a scrap of paper, a drawing, or a name.

The call of duty

A newspaper clipping of a Liberator B-24 bomber bristling nose guns, turret guns and tail guns, recalls his early training on 17 bases before he went overseas.

He was trained to be an engineer/gunner and could operate any of the guns, but mostly manned the two .50-caliber M2 guns in the top turret.

There were 10 men in the crew, he recalls, and he was eventually posted to the town of Cergnolia in Southern Italy with the 15th Air Force in February of 1942. He was in the 459th Bomb Group.

He flew 16 missions out of Cergnolia bombing in the German-occupied Balkans, he explained, and was on a bombing raid to Budapest, April 13, 1944, when his plane and the wing-man's plane were hit by German anti-aircraft fire.

"One of the best guns ever made," Nelson said.

They came down over Imotski, what was then a city in Yugoslavia.

"We got hit, and it killed everybody, but four of us and the navigator had his leg half-off at the knee," Nelson recalled. "They shot two B-24's down right together. Our left wing man, they shot the wing off of him and he just about hit us, and then we got it. The pilot, copilot and bombardier all were killed. There were five of us left out of 20 in the two planes."

Heading toward camp

Nelson's ability to re-examine his past has developed considerably and he can pinpoint the towns featured in his story on a modern map of the Balkans.

He points to the town of Mostar, Yugoslavia in what is now Bosnia, where he and the other survivors were taken to the hospital.

He remembers the ride.

"The first ride we got was on a 1931 model A truck," Nelson recalled. "It was so rough it felt like we were going down a creek bed, and poor old Paul Hox, our navigator, was laying there with his leg from his knee down looked like a chunk of liver before they amputated it."

Hox survived the amputation, though their radioman, whose name Nelson can no longer recall, died at the hospital. Nelson suffered a shrapnel injury to a foot and ankle. The crew was eventually transferred to Stalag Luft III.

That trip, he recalls, was depressing, but decades later he can now chuckle at the irony of it.

"I had my escape kit with me and my flight jacket on and I took my maps and $48 worth of gold seal money -- escape money -- in my jacket. When we got up there in Belgrade they went past an incinerator and they opened the door and threw all my clothes in the incinerator and there went all my money and my maps."

Life was hard in the camp, despite letters and care packages from home, and food was very scarce. Nelson dropped 54 pounds from what was a slim, young man's frame during his stay.

"Sometimes there were 25 of us to a loaf of bread," he said.

Painful march to freedom

The worst, however, was the eventual hike from Sagan to Nuremberg, Bavaria in January of 1945 during which they plowed through snow, slept on the floor of a tile factory, were packed into livestock cars 50 to 60 men per car, and eventually arrived at Moosburg -- where a camp built to hold 14,000 now housed 130,000.

Fortunately their suffering there was short-lived as Patton's army liberated them just over a year later.

Then, they went from lean times to fat times, Nelson said. After air transport was arranged for them, they were flown to Holland and feasted on eggnog to fatten them back up.

"Our stomachs were the size of a silver dollar," Nelson said. "We drank all the eggnog we could stand. I can't drink it, yet today."

Nelson is able to laugh about that now, too.

Just the memories now

That's enough talk about a war that occurred a lifetime ago for Nelson. He has places to go now and people to see. He's planning a family Thanksgiving in his little home south of Stayton and he and Sparky, his Jack Russell terrier, will be at coffee at Rumors at 6:30 a.m. to visit with the other men. The medals go back in their boxes; the memories return to the book.

It's good to bring them out, remember the fallen, honor the experiences, and realize the sacrifices made a difference in the world today. But Nelson is too busy living in the present now to be consumed by the past.

 
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