This story is written by WWII Veteran and POW Charles 'Chas.' Looper, who grew up in the Lake Lindsey area, near Brooksville. Looper writes about his 27th and last mission which was a part of Battle of the Bulge. His unit was flying P-47's over Luxembourg when he was shot down in enemy territory. This is the first of two segments to be published.
We took off in late December to try to help the war effort by shooting up things in enemy territory. After take-off, we spread out into what we called battle formation-probably about 50 yds. apart. This gave each of us room to move about freely when the flack came up at us. They used 20mm guns at lower level and 40 mm guns mixed in. Also, they used 90mm that could reach much higher. You could usually tell by the color of the smoke when the shell exploded what you were running into. To the best of my memory, we had just bombed and shot up some trucks and were back up to 8 or 10 thousand feet when someone (I believe it was George Riegler from Lutz) called out "Bogie at three o' clock high." I looked up to my right and saw an Me-109 heading for the deck. I watched him go under my right wing and banked over to my left to catch sight of his plane again.
I was going to tell my Flight to break right and follow me down and try to catch up with him. Well, that was the last I saw of that 109. The next thing I saw was lines of green tracers going past my nose. Since our tracers were reddish white, I knew I was in trouble. Now I don't know if that was the same plane that I was after or not. We later found out that there were many Germans around us that I did not see. Anyhow, I immediately began a very tight turn to the left. Another stream of tracers went past the nose of my plane. I was turning so sharply that I was in a high speed stall. My plane was buffeting (kinda like bouncing). I thought I was out turning him, but a large hole appeared in my left wing and another near my left foot. Then the fire flared up into my cockpit about as high as my knee. It went down slightly then came up a little higher.
I just headed west back toward our side of the lines. I found out later that Lt. Lenton-next to me had looked over and seen me in a Luftbury circle with the 109 in pursuit, and he chased him off my tail. (I was able to write to his family just recently to thank his wife for his help in saving my life. Lt. Lenton has passed away, but I wanted his family to know about his much needed help in saving my life.) I stayed with my plane as long as I thought I should-sitting on top of a tank of high octane gasoline with fire close to where I was sitting was kinda worrisome-I called my flight and told them that I was going to bail out. I pulled off my oxygen mask and other gear and rolled over and hit the slipstream.
I got about halfway out when my parachute hung up on some part of the seat. I just pushed real hard on the seat and broke loose. I cleared the plane (many pilots have hit the rudder or elevators) and began my free fall hoping I was in allied territory. I wanted to fall as far as it was safely possible as you are like a sitting duck when your chute opens. I began to spin; as I didn't want to get tangled up in my parachute, I pulled the ripcord. I felt a sharp jolt and it seemed as if I had almost stopped in mid-air. It's funny what goes through a person's mind when things are happening so fast. Since this was my first parachute jump, I practiced pulling on my canopy lines to see if I could guide the chute in order to help control where I was going to land. As I got closer to the ground, I noticed that I was coming down quite rapidly. I heard what sounded like a rifle shot just before I hit. I landed in a pine tree and climbed down to the snow-covered ground.
I wanted to get away from the chute, as I knew someone would be checking it out as soon as possible. I saw several troopers headed toward where I had come down. As soon as I saw their helmets, I knew I was in German territory. As I was moving away from the tree where I left my chute, I saw the six troopers coming along in Indian fashion, I noticed the helmets and knew they were Germans. They were carrying machineguns and I didn't usually carry my 45 pistol, so I was prepared to holler "comrade"!--but as I was standing still next to some pine trees, they just walked right on past me.
I moved rather swiftly on in the direction from which they came. It was about 11:00 o'clock in the A.M.-I found a nice patch of woods and tried to sleep. There was plenty of snow, so no lack of water; but I was getting kinda hungry. Those spruce twigs weren't too appetizing, but gave me something to chew on. As nighttime came on, I began to travel toward our lines. At that time Gen. Patton and his tanks were moving several miles a day. My plan was to climb a tall tree and watch the show. I was not about to hide on the ground and let the German troops back over me with American troops shooting at them- then the German troops shooting past me at our G.I.'s. I figured being up a tree was a sound idea.
As daybreak arrived, I holed up again and tried to get some sleep. I heard a lot of loud shouting, and saw a squad of men going along with a field piece, (with all that shouting I had made up my mind that the one that could sound off the loudest must be in command). I began to dislike the German language. Soon, they got the gun in place and began firing. Pretty soon, I heard a distant "boom" and heard a shell coming past their gun. I guess you could call it a duel with cannons. Well this was entertaining for a while until an American shell exploded so close to me that I heard a piece of the shell hit into the trees and into the dirt. This duel did help my plans though- at that time I knew a little about how fast some shells traveled. When I would hear the Amer. gun sound off, I would begin to count the seconds that it took to get to our area. I figured that I was just a few miles from the American lines.
I scraped the Air Force insignia from the arm of my leather flight jacket, and buried all the Belgium money I had. We survived the G.I. shelling and it began to get dark- so, I was off again and was beginning to look for a good tree to climb. To prove to you that I was not a hero, I came across what looked like some communication lines and didn't cut them! I did think about it, but I figured that as soon as they noticed their messages weren't getting through, they would trace out the trouble and find my tracks and set the hounds onto me. As I was crossing an open area, I saw what looked like a man in a heavy over-coat. I froze and watched. He barely moved and I dashed toward a patch of trees and hid behind a large one. Shouting broke out and also some shooting. I saw flames from the pistol being used and it looked as if he was firing in the air to get me to come out. If he was shooting straight up, I figured he could shoot all night,---I was wrong!. Part of my leg was sticking out past the tree and I felt a tug at my pants leg and a hurting in my right leg. Then I figured it was time to shout out "COMRADE."
Since I didn't know German I didn't know whether they were saying FREEZE, or COME OUT. I began to raise my hands and slowly move toward them. After searching me, they took me to a kinda shack. One man began asking me where my buddy was. I told him that I was alone as my plane carried only one person. He said "We are going to look for him, If we find him, you are shot." They were gone only a short time-(ever sweat in the winter time?) They didn't find a "Buddy." When they searched me, I found a handful of raisins in an inner pocket underneath my outer flight suit. Spruce boughs are a poor second to good old raisins.-Oh well, you win some and you lose some. They then sent me off with a lone peon walking behind me with a cocked pistol at my back. I finally talked him into putting the hammer down-I didn't want to get shot accidentally. He motioned for me to take off my leather jacket. I pointed out that it was cold and for him to give me his old green pullover sweater.-Again, being no hero, I could have given him a hand chop across the back of his neck as he shucked the sweater over his head. After the uneven trade, we finally came to a farm house. I spent the night with a crew of soldiers on duty. I slept on the floor as they went about their assigned duties. I saw a bazooka they were using. One had an American carbine. I wondered about the fate of the original owner. He seemed to like that handy little rifle. Well, being a survivor, I tried not to cause them a whole lot of trouble and was under the care of their system until April, 28th. 1945.