11/11/2009 6:11:00 AM
Mayer veteran shares WWII experiences, time as POW
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Joe McCray at age 28 in the Army Air Corps.
Courtesy Photo |
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Joe McCray today at age 95. He lives in Mayer.
BBN Photo/Sue Tone |
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By Sue Tone
Special to the BBN
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On Aug. 21, 1944, the right engine of the B-26 bomber stopped in mid-flight and the pilot couldn't restart it. Bombardier Joseph McCray looked down over northern Italy from the nose of the plane and saw two or three shots coming straight towards the plane.
"One went right through the middle of our gas tank," McCray, 95, said. "Somebody was with me. There had to be. With over a thousand gallons of hundred-octane gasoline, that would have taken care of five or six planes, but it just blew a hole out. All the gas leaked out and we left the plane, we jumped out."
McCray and five crew members, plus a photographer who was along for the ride, bailed out over German-occupied territory. Three of the crew were never picked up, he said, but German soldiers were waiting on the ground for McCray and pilot Joe Armstrong.
"When I was picked up by Germans, well, they pick you up with dogs. You don't move. You just stand still 'til they tell the dog to move," McCray said this past week from his home in Mayer.
McCray's daughter, Margaret Hogg, was 3 years old when her father enlisted at age 28. Only recently has she heard him speak about his experiences during World War II.
"He never talked about it, never bragged, never opened up, except to his grandfather," Hogg said.
McCray enlisted in the Army Air Corps the day after Pearl Harbor, and flew 66 missions. His job was to fly over Italy and Germany, knocking out bridges, trestles and roads in order to destroy all transportation routes of the German army. At one time at the northern end of Italy, he spotted a train, and his crew confirmed it was a whole command of German soldiers.
"Our first bomb took the trestle out about 20 feet ahead of the first engine. The cars kept coming down and rolling off 300 feet into the Po River," McCray said.
France's President Charles de Gaulle came out three days later to award the Croix de Guerre to McCray's unit, but McCray wasn't there. The Germans already had captured him. (He finally received the medal in 1991.)
Six months later, the German guards took some of the prisoners, McCray included, to the food locker where the soldiers threw open the doors and told the men to carry what they could.
"They told us the plan was to stay ahead of the approaching Allies for maybe three to five months. They said 'We will not feed you. We will give you no water,'" McCray said.
He and his combine partner, Donald McQuade from Pittsburgh, stuffed the lining of their uniforms with cigarettes, which probably saved their lives, he said. They traded with villagers for food during the 93-day forced march from Feb. 6 to April 26, 1945.
McCray said he never took his shoes off for the entire 93 days. Every night, the Germans found a barn to put up the men. They scrounged for any kind of grain to carry and chew on during the next day's march.
When the Germans led them through Berlin, McCray said they could see workers pushing bodies into the ovens and could smell the burned corpses.
In late April 1945, around day 90 or 91, the German commander discharged his men. The soldiers dropped their weapons and ran off, McCray said. The prisoners kept walking.
They were getting close to a place called Bitterfeld when McCray saw a man, an American, on the other side of a field. He was twisting from side to side and McCray didn't know what he was doing, but that didn't stop him from running to the American.
"I just said, 'American, American'" McCray said, his voice breaking. "I put my arms around him. He told me his name was Bell. He was from Chicago."
He returned to his buddies at the side of the road who yelled at him for being crazy. He had just run across a minefield.
Once back with Allied Forces, the prisoners stripped down and threw clothing and shoes onto a big fire.
"They threw kerosene on us by the bucketful. I admit, we had a lot of life on us," McCray said.
He weighed 89 pounds.
"Honestly, I don't think I had very long to go," McCray said, shaking his head.
The tears came again as he talked about eating a piece of stale bread across the room from someone without food.
"I don't know how you can sit there and eat and watch somebody dying. The prison camp was not a joyful place. Everything you did had to be - well, you had to live."
After a two-week wait to catch a boat back to the States, McCray shipped out with 5,000 other returning soldiers. He said he remembered a band greeted them playing a popular song called Don't Fence Me In.
"Sometimes I'll think back on a lot of things and wonder how did I get through that? Why am I here? I don't know. There was no pleasure to it, I'll tell you that." He paused. "The good Lord is a very good fellow to know."
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Posted: Monday, November 16, 2009
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Very touching article!
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