November 4, 2022 • 20 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, flying for the United States in WWII was dangerous work, and the numbers show for it. In the Eighth Air Force alone, 26,000 men paid the ultimate sacrifice—one half of the casualties in the entire U.S. Army Air Force. It was only by sheer grit and a little bit of luck that Steve Snyder's father, Howard, managed to return from Europe alive, as he and his crew had been shot down over Belgium. Here's Steve to tell the story.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we returned to our American stories. Up next, a
story from Steve Snyder, author of a fantastic book, shot
Down the true story of Pilot Howard Snyder and the
crew of the B seventeen Susan Ruth Today, Steve shares
are Less a story of survival, determination, and America's efforts
(00:30):
to beat back Nazi Germany. From this guy, let's get
into the story. Here's Steve. Being a combat crewman in
the eighth Air Force was the most hazardous, dangerous duty
assignment in the United States military during World War Two.
(00:53):
Twenty six thousand men were killed. That's more than the
entire Marine Corps fighting in the Pacific, and another twenty
eight thousand men became prisoners of war after their bombers
were knocked out of the sky by either German fighters
or anti aircraft fire. And it was dangerous from the
time they took off to the time they landed. Back then,
there was no air traffic control, there was no radar.
(01:17):
Usually the weather was sucked in and it was all
based on visual sights, so you couldn't see anything until
you've got above the cloud layer. So mid air collisions
were not uncommon. On trying to form up, and then
they had to face the elements. These planes weren't pressurized
back then, so above ten thousand feet you'd have to
go on oxygen or else you'd pass out in a
(01:38):
couple of minutes and could die. Plus, it was so
cold at the altitudes they were flying. It was minus
forty to sixty degrees below zero, so frostbite was a
huge problem. Then when they got close to the target,
they would run into anti aircraft fire or flack flak
was the German or abbreviation for the German word for
aircraft defense cannon. And even when they made back to England,
(02:00):
they faced many dangers. Again. The weather could be lousy
and overcast and stocked in and they couldn't even find
their bases. You could have planes that had crewmen that
had been killed or seriously injured men who needed immediate
medical attention. These bombers could be running out of gas,
they could have suffered a lot of battle damage, engines
(02:23):
out landing gear that wouldn't come down. So it was
especially bad in the early years of the war in
nineteen forty two and nineteen forty three, Even though they
implemented a mission limit of twenty five in the spring
of forty three, it was statistically impossible to complete twenty
five missions in nineteen forty three. The average number of
(02:45):
missions flown it was only six before being shot down
and actually culminated in the fall of nineteen forty and
referred to as Black Week. They lost one hundred and
forty planes, that's almost fifteen hundred men and four missions.
The worst day was Black Thursday, the second Swinfurt mission
on October fourteenth, two P seventeens were sent and sixty
(03:09):
of them were sent shot down. And it wasn't until
the P forty seven thunderbolts were added that these bomber
formations finally had fighter planes that could escort him all
the way to the target and back again. My dad,
like like most World War Two veterans, you know, he
(03:31):
was pretty humble guy about it. He didn't talk a
lot about it. So I don't think most people except
for the immediate family and friends members of his church,
really knew that he was in the eighth Air Force,
or he was a B seventeen pilot, or he was
shot down. Well, my dad and I had a great relationship.
(03:56):
He was a very loving father and dedicated father. He
was a tough guy. My two sisters and I we
always kind of compared him to John Wayne. He was
that kind of guy. Was six foot three, he was
a big guy, was no nonsense guy. It's a disciplinarian.
You know. There was black or white, there was no
gray areas. He was a devout Christian, had very strong morals.
(04:17):
But he didn't talk a lot about the war. And
I knew the basics when I was growing up. I
knew he was a B seventeen pilot. He was stationed
in Europe with the eight there Force. His plane was
named the Susan Ruth after my oldest sister, who was
one year old at the time that he went overseas
and then he was shot down over Belgium and he
was missing in action for seven months. But it wasn't
(04:39):
until nineteen eighty nine that my dad finally started talking
a lot about the war. In nineteen eighty nine, in August,
the Belgium American Foundation in Belgium erected a memorial to
my dad and his crew, and my dad and the
three other crew members that were still living at the
time went over for the dedication and there he was
reunited with all these Belgium people that hit him during
(05:00):
the war revisited these places where he was hidden, and
that brought it all back, and after that he started
talking a lot about it. Yesterday he sent us seven,
nineteen forty one, a date which will live in information
(05:25):
the US. Most of the people in the in the
in the US were against getting into a war that
was brewing in Europe. They didn't want to get dragged
into another conflict and involving the European nations like they
did in World War One. So there was a strong
sentiment about staying out of the conflict. After Germany invaded
(05:48):
Poland in September of nineteen thirty nine. Back then, the
US is very provincial. There was no TV, you know,
there's things by radio. You know, you didn't get much
news about things that were happening in other parts of
the world. So that was a huge shock. When Japan
bomb Pearl Harbor. I mean, the general public had just
(06:09):
no feeling or belief that that could happen, and they
were in the country was in total shock when it
did happen. My mother at the time, you know, she
was really scared. My dad was up and he was
stationed at Fort Lewis Washington at the time, and my
mother decided to go up and visit him over Christmas
that year after the bombing because the future was very uncertain,
(06:32):
and then that's when she got pregnant to nine months
later Susan Susan Ruth was born. The only reason that
he went into the Air Force is because, you know,
he had a new bride baby on the way, and
he didn't think he could support him very well on
a private's pay in the Army. So that's why he
(06:55):
volunteered to join the Air Force where he could make
more money, especially if he could make it through pilot
training become an officer. So that's the only reason he
really went into the Air Force rather than just staying
in the Army. But it was a good decision, and
pilot training was really rough. Forty percent of the cadets
that entered pilot training washed out. It was it was rigorous.
(07:17):
During primary training, he was really unhappy just being a
newly wed and away from his bride and away from
his little baby daughter. He was really lonely, you know.
He didn't care about training really or the war. All
he could think about is being away from my mother.
(07:38):
But gradually, you know, that passed, and then it kind
of became exciting, you know, flying airplanes and getting ready
to gear up to fight in the war. So it
became an adventure. When they were assigned overseas of the
(07:59):
European Theater of Operations, my dad and his crew they Dalhart, Texas.
They went to Scott Field in Illinois where they were
given a brand new B seventeen to fly over to England.
B seventeen had a ten man crew of four officers
the first pilot, copilot, navigator, and bombardier, but there were
only three of the crew were married at the time.
(08:23):
But then my dad was the only crew member to
have a child, and so the crew came together, the
four officers and the six enlisted men. That would be
a good name for the plane, after the pilot's little daughter.
So that's how it became the Susan Ruth. And you've
(08:43):
been listening to Steve Snyder tell the story of the
Eighth Air Force in which his father served. Twenty six
thousand men were killed in the Eighth Air Force, more
than all of the US Marines killed in the Pacific.
This was hazardous duty. When we come back more of
Steve Snyder telling the story of his dad and Moore.
Shot Down is his book. We continue with it here
(09:05):
on our American story, and we returned to our American
(09:41):
stories in our story with Steve Snyder, author of Shotdown.
Let's pick up where we last left off. It was
a mission on February eighth of nineteen forty four Frankfurt, Germany.
The night before the crew my dad, the copilot, navigator
(10:02):
and bombardier, spent the night at the Falcon Pub and
they really tied one on. They said they had hangovers
the next morning, but getting up to ten thousand feet
and going on that pure oxygen sobered him right up.
But it was a beautiful day to fly, my dad said.
It was a clear blue sky, visibility was great, and
they went through their bomb run and they dropped their
(10:23):
bombs successfully. But during the bomb run their bombay doors
were hit by flak and they couldn't get them back up.
As a result, they caused a dragon the plane. They
lost air speed and they fell behind the bomber formation
heading back the bases in England, and they were singled
out by two German flock Wolf one ninety fighters like
(10:44):
lions or wolves coming down on prey. They swooped in
and attacked the Susan Ruth. All of a sudden, everything
just blows up, oxygen tanks and the cockpit catch fire.
My dad actually was knocked out for a brief period
of time. Came to know he's frightened. He looks over
at George Ike as co pilot. You know, he's in shock.
(11:07):
He's motionless, he's frozen. He's so scared. The six enlisted
men were all behind the bombay, so he doesn't know
what's going on there. So he has the other guys
bail out. Being the commander of the crew, he's the
last one to bail out of the plane. And they
have to remember that none of these guys had bailed
out of a plane before. But my dad's coming down
(11:30):
and he could make out objects on the ground, trees
and building. So he pulls his rip cord and he
comes down into some trees and his parachute got hung
up on some branches and he dangling twenty feet off
the ground and couldn't get down. But fortunately for him,
a couple of young Belgium men, Henri Franken and Raymond Durvan,
(11:51):
came to his rescue. Before the Germans got there. They
saw his plight, went back to the farmhouse, got a
ladder and a rope and helped him down a tree.
It seccurred early afternoon, so they told him to stay
put in hide till nighttime, as they thought it was
too dangerous to try to move him in daylight with
German patrols combing the area. That night, they came back
and got him, took him to their van farmhouse. He
(12:14):
had some minor shrapnel wounds in his left leg. The
woman of the house, Raymond's mother, treated his wounds and
he only stayed there one night because again they thought
it was too dangerous for him to stay there any
longer than that with those German patrols still in the area.
So the second night, Belgium customs officer Political Can came
(12:35):
on a tandem bicycle to take my dad to a
safer location. The Belgian people who hid my dad and
other members of his crew, and an't down dearman for
that matter, were unbelievably brave people. They risked not only
their lives but the lives of their family and friends.
Because of the Belgium secret police that Gestapo found out
(12:58):
about it, they'd be arrested, tortured and either sent to
a concentration camp or shot. They were unbelievably strong people.
From there, he was moved from place to place to place.
How long he stayed in any given location depending on
how brave the people were lived there and how dangerous
Belgium underground thought it was for him to stay there.
(13:18):
He might spend one night, he might spend six weeks. Finally,
my dad got tired of hiding. But the word came
that the Allies had landed at Normandy on d Day,
June sixth, and he decided to get back in the fight.
And he decided to join the French resistance. He felt
there were US men out there dying, fighting and dying
to win the war, and he felt it was his
(13:40):
duty to get back into the fight. His Belgium helpers
tried to talk him out of it because it was
so dangerous. I mean, he could be killed fighting against
the Germans, or if the Germans captured him, he would
have been shot on the spot as a terrorist. But
he said, well that, you know, fine, if you won't
help me, I'll just go by myself. So but one
(14:02):
of another one of his helpers Amy Cools escorted him.
They rode bicycles over the Belgian border into France to
hook up with a unit of the French resistance. French
resistance was called the Mackie or Maquis, and they were
made up of small, independent, ragtag guerrilla groups, all acrost
of France. Their job was to mission was to harass
(14:23):
the Germans. They would sabotage railroad lines, disrupt communications, assassinate
German officers, attack convoys. Mackie group my dad joined with
was led by a French lieutenant who had escaped from
a German prisoner of war camp, and they stayed in
a farmhouse and Waller's Alfonia, France, just across the border.
(14:45):
Seven months after being shot down, word came that there
were US troops in the nearby village of Treylon, France.
So on September second, nineteen forty four, my dad walked
into town and the town square, walked up to an
army major actually it was element of Patton's Third Army,
identified himself and interrogated him to make sure he was
who he said he was, and then he caught a
(15:07):
ride on a convoy taking German prisoners to Paris, and
then hopped on a transport from Paris back to England
and went back to his base, where he sent a
telegram to my mother of Western Union Telegram saying fit
as a fiddle, Honey banked the money because he had
all that back pay coming. Well. Five of the crew
made at home. Five of them did not. Two of
(15:28):
the crew were killed in the plane. Three of the crew,
Joe Mugel waisted gunner, Richard Daniels bombardier, and Roy Holbert,
the flight engineer, were picked up immediately after they bailed out.
Richard Daniels and Joe Musual had extremely serious injuries and
they all three became prisoners of war, but Joe Mugual
(15:49):
and Richard Daniels were repatriated back to the US before
the war ended because of the seriousness of their wounds.
One other crewman, the tail gunner Bill Schlinker. He was
also hit and missing an action for seven months and
invaded capture. But unlike my dad who was moved from
place to place to place and then ended up joining
the French resistance, Bill Schlinkers stayed with one place the
(16:12):
entire time. The other three members of the crew, George Ike,
the co pilot, Robert Benninger, the navigator, and John Pendrock,
another waist gunner. They evaded capture for a couple months
and they were hiding in a makeshift hut in the
woods just outside of Chamai, and a Belgium collaborator ratted
him out to the Germans. They took him into the
(16:33):
Chamai schoolhouse, which is still there today, interrogated him and
drove him back out in the woods and murdered all
eight of them. So there's tragedy and triumphed in the
story involving the Belgium people of the underground and members
of my dad's crew and another eight Air Force B
seventeen crews. Of all the people that or evolved in
(17:00):
the shotdown story, the only person who's still alive is
Hans Burger, the LUFWAFFA pilot that shot down my dad's plane.
That was a thrill finding Hans, I can tell you.
During my research, my wife Glinda said, well, why don't
(17:20):
you try to find the German pilot that shot him down?
And I'm thinking she's naive, she has no idea what
she's talking about. It's ridiculous. I did, but look I good,
like a good husband. I did what she told me
to do, and I found Hans Burger and the man
Michael mom beat is his name in Belgium who would
contacted me was a Lufwaffa historian and written a number
(17:42):
of books about the Lufwaffa and New Hans, and he
asked Hans if I could contact him to talk to him,
which Hans said, okay. But unfortunately my dad died in
two thousand and seven, so no, my dad never met him.
World War Two was the defining woman in my dad's life,
and at one point in time hans path and my
(18:02):
dad's path crossed, and so Hans is a part of
my dad's life, a part of his, part of his story.
In in nineteen eighty eight, the Belgium American Foundation built
a memorial in the village of Monsou Embraschees and asked
him if he would come to the dedication ceremonies for
this memorial. And my dad and my mom were talking
(18:25):
about it and goes, you know, I don't know, I
don't even know this guy. Just get a letter from
out of the blue, and there they were debating whether
or not going or not. Then Paul de la Haye
sent him a second letter, and in this one it
had the program for the event which listed my dad
as the keynote speaker. So my dad says my mother,
I goes, well, I guess we gotta go now. I
(18:46):
probably wouldn't have written the book if it wasn't for
two Belgium gentlemen, doctor Paul de la Haye and Jacques Lalowe.
During the war, they were young boys and greatly affected
by it. They saw firsthand the tross committed by the
Nazis against their family and their friends. And later in
life they became local historians and they interviewed all these
(19:06):
Belgium people and members of the Belgium underground about events
that took place involving my dad and his crew, and
they documented their testimony, and they gave me unbelievably detailed
information about events that took place involving my dad and
as a crew that would have been lost forever without
their dedicated research. So I owe them a huge debt,
(19:31):
and we owe him a huge debt as well. A
special thanks to Monty Montgomery anti Jim Watkins for putting
this story together, and also for Steve Snyder for writing
this book about his father. The book is shot down.
The true story of Pilot Howard Snyder and the crew
of the B seventeen, Susan Ruth, the story of Steve
Snyder's dad, a love story between father and son, between
(19:53):
troops and pilots and aviators. In the end, the love
story of our American gis many of them pay in
the ultimate price to defend freedom against the Nazi menace.
This story here on our American stories
And we returned to our American stories. Up next, a
story from Steve Snyder, author of a fantastic book, shot
Down the true story of Pilot Howard Snyder and the
crew of the B seventeen Susan Ruth Today, Steve shares
are Less a story of survival, determination, and America's efforts
(00:30):
to beat back Nazi Germany. From this guy, let's get
into the story. Here's Steve. Being a combat crewman in
the eighth Air Force was the most hazardous, dangerous duty
assignment in the United States military during World War Two.
(00:53):
Twenty six thousand men were killed. That's more than the
entire Marine Corps fighting in the Pacific, and another twenty
eight thousand men became prisoners of war after their bombers
were knocked out of the sky by either German fighters
or anti aircraft fire. And it was dangerous from the
time they took off to the time they landed. Back then,
there was no air traffic control, there was no radar.
(01:17):
Usually the weather was sucked in and it was all
based on visual sights, so you couldn't see anything until
you've got above the cloud layer. So mid air collisions
were not uncommon. On trying to form up, and then
they had to face the elements. These planes weren't pressurized
back then, so above ten thousand feet you'd have to
go on oxygen or else you'd pass out in a
(01:38):
couple of minutes and could die. Plus, it was so
cold at the altitudes they were flying. It was minus
forty to sixty degrees below zero, so frostbite was a
huge problem. Then when they got close to the target,
they would run into anti aircraft fire or flack flak
was the German or abbreviation for the German word for
aircraft defense cannon. And even when they made back to England,
(02:00):
they faced many dangers. Again. The weather could be lousy
and overcast and stocked in and they couldn't even find
their bases. You could have planes that had crewmen that
had been killed or seriously injured men who needed immediate
medical attention. These bombers could be running out of gas,
they could have suffered a lot of battle damage, engines
(02:23):
out landing gear that wouldn't come down. So it was
especially bad in the early years of the war in
nineteen forty two and nineteen forty three, Even though they
implemented a mission limit of twenty five in the spring
of forty three, it was statistically impossible to complete twenty
five missions in nineteen forty three. The average number of
(02:45):
missions flown it was only six before being shot down
and actually culminated in the fall of nineteen forty and
referred to as Black Week. They lost one hundred and
forty planes, that's almost fifteen hundred men and four missions.
The worst day was Black Thursday, the second Swinfurt mission
on October fourteenth, two P seventeens were sent and sixty
(03:09):
of them were sent shot down. And it wasn't until
the P forty seven thunderbolts were added that these bomber
formations finally had fighter planes that could escort him all
the way to the target and back again. My dad,
like like most World War Two veterans, you know, he
(03:31):
was pretty humble guy about it. He didn't talk a
lot about it. So I don't think most people except
for the immediate family and friends members of his church,
really knew that he was in the eighth Air Force,
or he was a B seventeen pilot, or he was
shot down. Well, my dad and I had a great relationship.
(03:56):
He was a very loving father and dedicated father. He
was a tough guy. My two sisters and I we
always kind of compared him to John Wayne. He was
that kind of guy. Was six foot three, he was
a big guy, was no nonsense guy. It's a disciplinarian.
You know. There was black or white, there was no
gray areas. He was a devout Christian, had very strong morals.
(04:17):
But he didn't talk a lot about the war. And
I knew the basics when I was growing up. I
knew he was a B seventeen pilot. He was stationed
in Europe with the eight there Force. His plane was
named the Susan Ruth after my oldest sister, who was
one year old at the time that he went overseas
and then he was shot down over Belgium and he
was missing in action for seven months. But it wasn't
(04:39):
until nineteen eighty nine that my dad finally started talking
a lot about the war. In nineteen eighty nine, in August,
the Belgium American Foundation in Belgium erected a memorial to
my dad and his crew, and my dad and the
three other crew members that were still living at the
time went over for the dedication and there he was
reunited with all these Belgium people that hit him during
(05:00):
the war revisited these places where he was hidden, and
that brought it all back, and after that he started
talking a lot about it. Yesterday he sent us seven,
nineteen forty one, a date which will live in information
(05:25):
the US. Most of the people in the in the
in the US were against getting into a war that
was brewing in Europe. They didn't want to get dragged
into another conflict and involving the European nations like they
did in World War One. So there was a strong
sentiment about staying out of the conflict. After Germany invaded
(05:48):
Poland in September of nineteen thirty nine. Back then, the
US is very provincial. There was no TV, you know,
there's things by radio. You know, you didn't get much
news about things that were happening in other parts of
the world. So that was a huge shock. When Japan
bomb Pearl Harbor. I mean, the general public had just
(06:09):
no feeling or belief that that could happen, and they
were in the country was in total shock when it
did happen. My mother at the time, you know, she
was really scared. My dad was up and he was
stationed at Fort Lewis Washington at the time, and my
mother decided to go up and visit him over Christmas
that year after the bombing because the future was very uncertain,
(06:32):
and then that's when she got pregnant to nine months
later Susan Susan Ruth was born. The only reason that
he went into the Air Force is because, you know,
he had a new bride baby on the way, and
he didn't think he could support him very well on
a private's pay in the Army. So that's why he
(06:55):
volunteered to join the Air Force where he could make
more money, especially if he could make it through pilot
training become an officer. So that's the only reason he
really went into the Air Force rather than just staying
in the Army. But it was a good decision, and
pilot training was really rough. Forty percent of the cadets
that entered pilot training washed out. It was it was rigorous.
(07:17):
During primary training, he was really unhappy just being a
newly wed and away from his bride and away from
his little baby daughter. He was really lonely, you know.
He didn't care about training really or the war. All
he could think about is being away from my mother.
(07:38):
But gradually, you know, that passed, and then it kind
of became exciting, you know, flying airplanes and getting ready
to gear up to fight in the war. So it
became an adventure. When they were assigned overseas of the
(07:59):
European Theater of Operations, my dad and his crew they Dalhart, Texas.
They went to Scott Field in Illinois where they were
given a brand new B seventeen to fly over to England.
B seventeen had a ten man crew of four officers
the first pilot, copilot, navigator, and bombardier, but there were
only three of the crew were married at the time.
(08:23):
But then my dad was the only crew member to
have a child, and so the crew came together, the
four officers and the six enlisted men. That would be
a good name for the plane, after the pilot's little daughter.
So that's how it became the Susan Ruth. And you've
(08:43):
been listening to Steve Snyder tell the story of the
Eighth Air Force in which his father served. Twenty six
thousand men were killed in the Eighth Air Force, more
than all of the US Marines killed in the Pacific.
This was hazardous duty. When we come back more of
Steve Snyder telling the story of his dad and Moore.
Shot Down is his book. We continue with it here
(09:05):
on our American story, and we returned to our American
(09:41):
stories in our story with Steve Snyder, author of Shotdown.
Let's pick up where we last left off. It was
a mission on February eighth of nineteen forty four Frankfurt, Germany.
The night before the crew my dad, the copilot, navigator
(10:02):
and bombardier, spent the night at the Falcon Pub and
they really tied one on. They said they had hangovers
the next morning, but getting up to ten thousand feet
and going on that pure oxygen sobered him right up.
But it was a beautiful day to fly, my dad said.
It was a clear blue sky, visibility was great, and
they went through their bomb run and they dropped their
(10:23):
bombs successfully. But during the bomb run their bombay doors
were hit by flak and they couldn't get them back up.
As a result, they caused a dragon the plane. They
lost air speed and they fell behind the bomber formation
heading back the bases in England, and they were singled
out by two German flock Wolf one ninety fighters like
(10:44):
lions or wolves coming down on prey. They swooped in
and attacked the Susan Ruth. All of a sudden, everything
just blows up, oxygen tanks and the cockpit catch fire.
My dad actually was knocked out for a brief period
of time. Came to know he's frightened. He looks over
at George Ike as co pilot. You know, he's in shock.
(11:07):
He's motionless, he's frozen. He's so scared. The six enlisted
men were all behind the bombay, so he doesn't know
what's going on there. So he has the other guys
bail out. Being the commander of the crew, he's the
last one to bail out of the plane. And they
have to remember that none of these guys had bailed
out of a plane before. But my dad's coming down
(11:30):
and he could make out objects on the ground, trees
and building. So he pulls his rip cord and he
comes down into some trees and his parachute got hung
up on some branches and he dangling twenty feet off
the ground and couldn't get down. But fortunately for him,
a couple of young Belgium men, Henri Franken and Raymond Durvan,
(11:51):
came to his rescue. Before the Germans got there. They
saw his plight, went back to the farmhouse, got a
ladder and a rope and helped him down a tree.
It seccurred early afternoon, so they told him to stay
put in hide till nighttime, as they thought it was
too dangerous to try to move him in daylight with
German patrols combing the area. That night, they came back
and got him, took him to their van farmhouse. He
(12:14):
had some minor shrapnel wounds in his left leg. The
woman of the house, Raymond's mother, treated his wounds and
he only stayed there one night because again they thought
it was too dangerous for him to stay there any
longer than that with those German patrols still in the area.
So the second night, Belgium customs officer Political Can came
(12:35):
on a tandem bicycle to take my dad to a
safer location. The Belgian people who hid my dad and
other members of his crew, and an't down dearman for
that matter, were unbelievably brave people. They risked not only
their lives but the lives of their family and friends.
Because of the Belgium secret police that Gestapo found out
(12:58):
about it, they'd be arrested, tortured and either sent to
a concentration camp or shot. They were unbelievably strong people.
From there, he was moved from place to place to place.
How long he stayed in any given location depending on
how brave the people were lived there and how dangerous
Belgium underground thought it was for him to stay there.
(13:18):
He might spend one night, he might spend six weeks. Finally,
my dad got tired of hiding. But the word came
that the Allies had landed at Normandy on d Day,
June sixth, and he decided to get back in the fight.
And he decided to join the French resistance. He felt
there were US men out there dying, fighting and dying
to win the war, and he felt it was his
(13:40):
duty to get back into the fight. His Belgium helpers
tried to talk him out of it because it was
so dangerous. I mean, he could be killed fighting against
the Germans, or if the Germans captured him, he would
have been shot on the spot as a terrorist. But
he said, well that, you know, fine, if you won't
help me, I'll just go by myself. So but one
(14:02):
of another one of his helpers Amy Cools escorted him.
They rode bicycles over the Belgian border into France to
hook up with a unit of the French resistance. French
resistance was called the Mackie or Maquis, and they were
made up of small, independent, ragtag guerrilla groups, all acrost
of France. Their job was to mission was to harass
(14:23):
the Germans. They would sabotage railroad lines, disrupt communications, assassinate
German officers, attack convoys. Mackie group my dad joined with
was led by a French lieutenant who had escaped from
a German prisoner of war camp, and they stayed in
a farmhouse and Waller's Alfonia, France, just across the border.
(14:45):
Seven months after being shot down, word came that there
were US troops in the nearby village of Treylon, France.
So on September second, nineteen forty four, my dad walked
into town and the town square, walked up to an
army major actually it was element of Patton's Third Army,
identified himself and interrogated him to make sure he was
who he said he was, and then he caught a
(15:07):
ride on a convoy taking German prisoners to Paris, and
then hopped on a transport from Paris back to England
and went back to his base, where he sent a
telegram to my mother of Western Union Telegram saying fit
as a fiddle, Honey banked the money because he had
all that back pay coming. Well. Five of the crew
made at home. Five of them did not. Two of
(15:28):
the crew were killed in the plane. Three of the crew,
Joe Mugel waisted gunner, Richard Daniels bombardier, and Roy Holbert,
the flight engineer, were picked up immediately after they bailed out.
Richard Daniels and Joe Musual had extremely serious injuries and
they all three became prisoners of war, but Joe Mugual
(15:49):
and Richard Daniels were repatriated back to the US before
the war ended because of the seriousness of their wounds.
One other crewman, the tail gunner Bill Schlinker. He was
also hit and missing an action for seven months and
invaded capture. But unlike my dad who was moved from
place to place to place and then ended up joining
the French resistance, Bill Schlinkers stayed with one place the
(16:12):
entire time. The other three members of the crew, George Ike,
the co pilot, Robert Benninger, the navigator, and John Pendrock,
another waist gunner. They evaded capture for a couple months
and they were hiding in a makeshift hut in the
woods just outside of Chamai, and a Belgium collaborator ratted
him out to the Germans. They took him into the
(16:33):
Chamai schoolhouse, which is still there today, interrogated him and
drove him back out in the woods and murdered all
eight of them. So there's tragedy and triumphed in the
story involving the Belgium people of the underground and members
of my dad's crew and another eight Air Force B
seventeen crews. Of all the people that or evolved in
(17:00):
the shotdown story, the only person who's still alive is
Hans Burger, the LUFWAFFA pilot that shot down my dad's plane.
That was a thrill finding Hans, I can tell you.
During my research, my wife Glinda said, well, why don't
(17:20):
you try to find the German pilot that shot him down?
And I'm thinking she's naive, she has no idea what
she's talking about. It's ridiculous. I did, but look I good,
like a good husband. I did what she told me
to do, and I found Hans Burger and the man
Michael mom beat is his name in Belgium who would
contacted me was a Lufwaffa historian and written a number
(17:42):
of books about the Lufwaffa and New Hans, and he
asked Hans if I could contact him to talk to him,
which Hans said, okay. But unfortunately my dad died in
two thousand and seven, so no, my dad never met him.
World War Two was the defining woman in my dad's life,
and at one point in time hans path and my
(18:02):
dad's path crossed, and so Hans is a part of
my dad's life, a part of his, part of his story.
In in nineteen eighty eight, the Belgium American Foundation built
a memorial in the village of Monsou Embraschees and asked
him if he would come to the dedication ceremonies for
this memorial. And my dad and my mom were talking
(18:25):
about it and goes, you know, I don't know, I
don't even know this guy. Just get a letter from
out of the blue, and there they were debating whether
or not going or not. Then Paul de la Haye
sent him a second letter, and in this one it
had the program for the event which listed my dad
as the keynote speaker. So my dad says my mother,
I goes, well, I guess we gotta go now. I
(18:46):
probably wouldn't have written the book if it wasn't for
two Belgium gentlemen, doctor Paul de la Haye and Jacques Lalowe.
During the war, they were young boys and greatly affected
by it. They saw firsthand the tross committed by the
Nazis against their family and their friends. And later in
life they became local historians and they interviewed all these
(19:06):
Belgium people and members of the Belgium underground about events
that took place involving my dad and his crew, and
they documented their testimony, and they gave me unbelievably detailed
information about events that took place involving my dad and
as a crew that would have been lost forever without
their dedicated research. So I owe them a huge debt,
(19:31):
and we owe him a huge debt as well. A
special thanks to Monty Montgomery anti Jim Watkins for putting
this story together, and also for Steve Snyder for writing
this book about his father. The book is shot down.
The true story of Pilot Howard Snyder and the crew
of the B seventeen, Susan Ruth, the story of Steve
Snyder's dad, a love story between father and son, between
(19:53):
troops and pilots and aviators. In the end, the love
story of our American gis many of them pay in
the ultimate price to defend freedom against the Nazi menace.
This story here on our American stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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