Alone

As Jim and the other three survivors started swimming slowly to the shore, they had no idea of the extent of the tragedy of the May 17 Ijmuiden Mission. They had seen, just before their B-26 Marauder was forced to ditch, the lead plane in the Squadron piloted by “Moose” Stillman, snap roll and crash upside down into a sand dune and knew that none of the six crewman on that B-26 could have survived. (Some time later, when Jim and the others were official prisoners of war at the Stalug Luft III camp, Moose miraculously walked in one day and his first words to the entire group of prisoners, many of whom thought they were seeing a ghost, were, “Who’s the son-of-a-bitch who’s been spreading the word that I’m dead.”)

Later that day at the Bury Saint Edmonds base in England, all anxiously awaited the return of their bombers. The Estimated Time of Arrival (ETA) had been 1250. No word had been received when the ETA came and went and intense apprehension spread throughout the base. Shortly after the ETA, a listening post of the British Royal Air Force (RAF) reported that they had intercepted a German radio transmission confirming that two B-26 bombers had been shot down and crashed in the North Sea. These bombers were attempting to return home from the target. At 1330, no planes had returned and it became obvious that all were lost, ten out of the eleven B-26 bombers that set out that day had been shot down. One of the eleven had turned back before crossing the coast and made it safely home on one engine. Forty of the sixty airmen in those ten planes lost their lives that day.

But Jim and the others knew nothing of this of course. It was a long and tiring swim in the wide Maas Canal and as they approached the shore, they saw standing along a steep embankment 50 or maybe 75 German soldiers with their rifles all drawn. As the survivors pulled themselves up on the bank, standing in front of them was a very good looking and surprisingly nice young German officer wearing what Jim guessed was his summer dress uniform because it was a white coat. In fact, he was immaculately dressed. With his gun pointed at them, he said, "I think for you gentlemen, the war is over." What was going to happen now, they didn't know, but for the moment they were just thankful to be alive.

It turns out that this phrase, “I think for you the war is over”, was taught to German soldiers and used regularly when capturing American or British soldiers. The Mighty 8th Air Force Museum in Savannah, Georgia has created a full scale replica of one of the Stalug Luft prisoner of war quarters, which were originally intended to house eight prisoners. These quarters accommodated four times that number toward the latter stages of the War. Over the arched entry way to this Museum display, this German “Welcome” phrase is inscribed.

Jim and the others crawled up the bank and were guided over to a position where the German’s had placed defensive guns right along the canal. There must have been eight or ten 20-millimeter guns at that one location. The airmen began to understand at that point, looking at these guns, what they had run into in the air.

The four airmen were divided and told to sit along the bank about 40 feet from each other. They were kept apart so they couldn't talk to each other and perhaps develop some plan of escape though that would have been impossible. Likely, they also didn’t want Jim and the others to discuss any common approaches to the interrogations which were soon to follow.

It was now about noon. It was a sunny day in May, and yet the air was still a little cool and the water in the canal had been frigid, so they all remained cold. Though the German soldiers were intent on keeping the airmen apart, the soldiers in the unit stationed at this point were nice enough to come out and give each one of the men a blanket that they wrapped around themselves; and there they sat wondering, "Okay, what happens next?" Despite the outward civility of the German soldiers, for all the airmen knew, they could at any moment be shot in the back of the head.

They sat like this, each alone in his own thoughts and fears, for three or four hours, perhaps grateful to be alive, but saddened looking at the Mass Canal where two of their friends remained and who would never return. They still had no idea how many friends had been lost that day