Edward Cunliffe
95TH BOMB GROUP (H)
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT
2007 REUNION SAVANNAH, GEORGIA
(Interviewed by Tom and Peggy Cozens)
EC: My name is Edward Cunliffe, and today’s date is May the 22nd, 2007. The place is Savannah, Georgia. As I said, I’m Edward Cunliffe Sr., one month short of my 85th birthday. After graduating from Audubon High School at the age of 16, I went to work at New York Ship Building Corporation, located in Camden, New Jersey. It was a large important ship building company for the United States Navy. That was in the year 1939. Hitler’s military machine of Germany was beginning to conquer all of Europe, and sinking American ships off our coasts with his submarines. I joined the Army Air Force to become a bombardier, but scored too low on a manual coordination test to continue on that course, and became a gunner. After a year of training with 50 caliber machine guns, I joined nine other men. Lieutenant Maddox, a pilot, later killed in action. Lieutenant Kuckling, a co-pilot, killed in action. Lieutenant Krejci, a navigator – excuse me. Lieutenant Maddox, a pilot, is still alive. Lieutenant Kuckling, a co-pilot, was killed in action. Lieutenant Krejci, a navigator, alive. Lieutenant Boren, a bombardier, killed in action. Also five gunners: Sergeant Brown, missing in action; Sergeant Borden, killed in action; Sergeant Jerstaad, killed in action; Sergeant Radcliffe, killed in action; and Sergeant Jones, killed in action. I was assigned to be the tail gunner, one of the three survivors now. Again, we trained about a year in our positions, flying a B-17 in the United States at Sioux City, Iowa, uh, South Dakota. Then they assigned a new B-17 to us to fly to England, which we did with a stop at Iceland. Once in England, we were sent to Horham Air Field to join the 95th Bomb Group as a replacement crew as our losses were very large at the start of the air war. During our six missions of bombing Hitler’s war machine, his fighter planes hit our ship with rockets, and they set fire, plus did explosive damage to the plane. The crew managed to get out of the ship with parachutes, but five did not survive the event for unknown reasons. A couple of German soldiers were waiting for me with their guns at the ready position when I landed in a field. After surrendering, they took me to local jail by a motorcycle side car ride, and put me in a cell with a couple other airmen who had been captured from another downed plane. Then we went by box car. We were taken to Austria and put into a prisoner of war camp called Stalag 17B – a barbed wire complex that held many other captured airmen. And it was well guarded by German soldiers. We had very, very limited amounts of water, food, heat. And it was only with some help from the Red Cross that we survived. As the Russian soldiers advanced into Austria, the Germans marched us out of our camp, and after a 250 mile walk deep into Germany, we were put into a woods surrounded by guards. Patton’s Third Army eventually liberated us near the end of the war. And my 13 months of imprisonment were over. I was returned to America in a captured German ship. And after some rehabilitation, was discharged out of the army. I went back to my old job at New York Ship Building Company, and also Drexel night school. I’ll single out three events that happened in the prison camp. A German guard shot at me once as I was headed to a nearby house to ask for food. Near the end of the war, a couple of the fellas on the march did this and were rewarded. But I guess I got caught at the wrong time. Another event was in the prison camp, I read everything I could get my hands on. And since the Red Cross had sent books in there, I believe one time I tried to figure out how many books. It was under a hundred books, but just under a hundred. The third event I’ll mention was – I was the only crew member left to be in Stalag 17B. So I seldom talked to anyone. And I didn’t realize this until my – until I was about 84 or 83. I realize now I talked so little in that year, it could be written down on just a couple of pages of paper. I sort of found that out when I was talking to a psychologist in a VA treatment. OK, that’s it.
TC: Let me ask you some questions, if you don’t mind.
EC: Sure.
TC: Do you have any real outstanding memories from training?
EC: Outstanding memories? Well, not too pleasant. We trained in the winter time at (Iowa). And it was pretty rough out there, and we lost some crew members – total crew members in planes. But that’s the bad news, I guess. But, you know, it was tolerable. Got through it all.
TC: You said you flew six missions. It was on the sixth mission you were shot down.
EC: I guess. You know, you aborted some missions. You went up and what was counted as a mission, I guess it had to be across the Channel or something. I don’t know. I think it was around the 6th mission. I’m just going to say around the 6th mission.
TC: Do you remember, with any of the prior missions, anything in particular about any of those missions.
EC: Yeah. On the very first mission, it was nine hours. I think it was down to Bordeaux in France. And we didn’t encounter any German fighters or anything. But going down, we had to cross some water when we got down to Bordeaux. And there was a little tiny boat down there. I think it was two boats. And they started shooting at us. Well, of course we could see the shells were bursting up near us, but not the – And I was sitting in the tail there, and I exclaimed to the crew, I said, “They’re shooting at us! They’re shooting at us!” (chuckle) I was surprised, you know. But the ball turret gunners, they opened up and were firing back. Whether they could hit anything or rain down on them, I don’t know. That was one of the things. Not too much other – sitting in the tail, I had the unpleasant experience too on one of the missions of seeing – I think their 88’s might hold five shells. I’m not sure. And their fifth shell was pretty far away – or the first shell was pretty far away, but it kept creeping up and up and up closer to the tail. All the time I was waiting until it was over, you know. The whole clip was shot and they didn’t get us. I don’t know of anything else off hand. It was such a short time there. It was so limited.
TC: What memories do you have of Horham?
EC: What?
TC: Of Horham, of the air base, your accommodations, meals.
EC: Well, being so short of time on missions, I never got off the base in England. And I really was just between – besides the missions, I think they had us a practice mission perhaps. It was just too much regimentation to say I did anything other than did what they told me at the right time.
TC: Did you get many days off?
EC: No, never off. No off days.
TC: Either training or flying?
EC: Training, yes. Training from - before we were assigned a plane – Kearney, Nebraska we picked up a plane. But they transported us by plane back to New Jersey – transported me. I don’t know what it was – a length of time. And then we went back and picked up our plane. I think that happened that way. Yeah.
TC: It occurs to me as a tail gunner, it seems like the tail gunner and the ball turret gunner were in a way in the most isolated positions on the plane. I mean waist gunners had somebody right by them – turret gunner, all that. What was that like? You’re stuck way in the back of that plane.
EC: Yeah, I didn’t particularly think about that angle. It wasn’t a concern of mine. I figured wherever you were in the plane, it didn’t make much difference. Where that shell was going to get you, you couldn’t avoid it wherever you were. It didn’t make much difference. I practiced a lot of flying in the States in the tail of the plane. It was rather bumpy at times. More bumpy than other parts of the plane. You could see a lot.
TC: What’s it like, as far as sitting in there, because it seems like it’s also fairly cramped.
EC: You’re on your knees. You’re on your knees in there. You’re really kneeling in there, with a little piece of seat underneath your fanny. And like I say, the first mission was nine hours. Now I can’t – I shouldn’t put this in here – but I can’t ride an hour and a half without my legs getting tired and I have to get out of the car. But it wasn’t that kind of a deal then that bothered me. You know, for the nine hours I was in there. I guess the little support you got too was a help for the seat.
TC: What was the funniest thing that happened to you while you were in training?
EC: Didn’t have any. Didn’t have any funny things that I can recall ever. That’s pretty dull, isn’t it? (Laughing) Can’t help it.
TC: How about at Horham? Any humorous incidents that you remember?
EC: In training?
TC: Yeah, but now in England.
EC: In England? No, nothing in England. England was all work the time I was there. But no, I don’t recall.
EC, Jr.: Chasing the cows there?
EC: Oh yeah. That wasn’t in England. That was in the States. We came down – three planes were flying in practice formation. We were down on top of the ground, close to the ground. And we ran over farms, you know? And the cows would all scatter – it was quite interesting to see the cows scattering in all directions. But we got socked in - on one of our training night missions we had to land in a little town up in North Dakota – Watertown, I believe it was. It was a little two horse town. But when they found out we were in town, the women all got together and they got the girls together and they all came down to local watering hole. We had a good time in there, talking. One of the girls tried to take my high school ring and I had to struggle to get that back. She was adamant though in taking that. I really had to get kind of really rough up against the wall and really – I was going to take it off because I wasn’t going to let her have it.
TC: Ed, do you remember any stories your Dad’s told? (Laughter)
EC, Jr: Yeah, he’s been pretty quiet about it. I picked up bits and pieces of it.
EC: Yeah, funny about that ring because, after 40 years when I remet the navigator and the pilot together, that was the first thing they said to me. They said, “Why did that girl want that ring?” They couldn’t figure out what had happened about that. I guess they expected her to go for them because they were officers, you know. (chuckle)
TC: So have you seen the other crewmen much, then, the pilot and the navigator?
EC: Not a lot. I’ve seen them maybe four times. I came down here to Dollywood – it wasn’t Dollywood – it’s got another name down there, right where Dollywood is. Anyhow, I met the pilot and the navigator, and we all got together down there. So the next time we got together, I invited them up to New Jersey and we rented a place at the shore. And it was only about four times that we met. That was two of them. And I’m not sure where the other two were. We had a good reunion. It was unfortunate – the co-pilot was a first generation German. And his parents just couldn’t understand the pilot was alive, and their son was not, you know. So that was unfortunate, and it was hard on the pilot. He now has Alzheimer’s.
TC: With the crew, is there anything you can tell us about the other crew members, the ones who didn’t make it? It might be difficult, but sometimes with these legacies, the oral histories, it’s an opportunity for a family of someone that was killed or missing in action, to just give additional information about, you know, a brother or…
EC: No, I don’t have anything like that, I guess. The radio operator had just married before we started over. And when I came back, they invited me – they lived in Illinois, I imagine it was. So I was doing some hitchhiking, and there was a little town in Illinois – a one horse town. I got a ride in a cement truck, and when I got to town, and walked in, the whole town was looking at me, walking down the street. A one block town, you know. But, I met the family, but I couldn’t help them any. I guess they wondered what happened to their son. And I couldn’t tell them. I don’t know what happened to the rest of the crew that didn’t make it. But they treated me very nicely, and gave me a horseback ride, and so forth. I guess they were just glad to see someone that had been close to their son.
TC: Yeah, I can imagine. Two of my father’s brothers, I’m actually named after both of them. Both were killed in training accidents during the war.
EC: Were they? Yeah, there was a few crews wiped out. You know that’s quite a few men. You know you have the bunks in the barracks. Empty barracks there one day, I mean empty bunks, and another time there was another crew wiped out, right close to you. We didn’t hear any details or anything. They crashed, you know.
TC: On the day that you were shot down, do you have any more that you’d care to share about that? It must have been a very powerful and I’m sure difficult experience.
EC: Well, I took it in stride. I had no idea that this was going to happen. I thought I was either going to be living or dead at the end of the war, you know. But when I came down and I emptied my chute in front of me, the two guards had been following me on a motorcycle. And of course, I put up my hands and they pushed me along. One of them had a motorcycle, and they put me in the side car. And the fella took off and he went down this dirt road, and the muffler fell off the motorcycle, and he turned around and came back, and off we went to a local jail. Like I say, there were a couple other flyers that they had picked up.
???
EC: No, they never said to me. They said it to a lot of people, “For you, the war is over.” Their V’s and their W’s were quite the thing in the German language. “Anyone crossing the varning vire vill be shot vithout varning.” (Chuckle) And I believed them (Laughing). I laugh now, but I believed them then. When we first went into the prison camp at night time, they gave us a shower, cut off our hair, gave us a shower. I think it’s the same type of a situation that they later, they fumigated our clothes, our flying outfits, by putting them in a room, and I think dropping chemicals in to fumigate it. I think they later used that their own purposes to get rid of people. But anyhow – there was something – oh, they gave us back our clothes. That was about the only shower I had. But we didn’t mind, because everybody smelled. But anyhow, they gave us wooden shoes. And we started up a little incline towards the camp. And it was muddy; had rained. And walking in those Dutch shoes, you know, it was a little bit different. And I remember the guard along side a couple, or back, I don’t know where it was. He said, “Anyone fall out of line,” – pretty good English – “Anyone fall out of line,” he said, “sent to hell.” Or something like that. Hell was in the word. Anyhow, they were going to shoot if you fell out of line. Well, you know, with the muddy shoes, I thought I’m going to try very hard not to fall out of line. (Laughing)
TC: So they took your boots, then?
EC: The Red Cross, I think, furnished. For quite a while, I didn’t have – I had my flight suit. And in fact, it was black because I had snuck around a piece of soft coal in the boxcar that they transported us in to Austria. I was up near the stove, I got a little warmth that way. I was pretty black. It was a couple of weeks, I think, before I got some other clothes through the Red Cross. And they got shoes – regular Army shoes to us. If it hadn’t been for the Red Cross for food, and that clothing, that’s the clothing I got, period, we wouldn’t have survived it very long. You couldn’t keep on going. The food they gave you was inadequate to be survival.
PC: Lots of things go through your mind, and you just can’t even imagine. I mean the days must have been really long.
EC: I read a lot. Did I mention that? Yeah, it must have been the best thing I could have done for myself.
TC: Do you remember the names of any of the books that you read?
EC: That’s how I found out that it was pretty far up the line – under a hundred – because I’d written them down after I came back. There were all kinds – anything I could – biographies, or novels. Now I can’t remember any of them. Can’t remember any of them. I guess people had volunteered books – ones they wanted to get rid of, I guess, And they just gave to the Red Cross, and the Red Cross managed to – it’s a wonder Red Cross reached us, because our planes were shooting up all the trains that were traveling around. We were fairly close to Vienna. We were near a town called Krems, which is very close to Vienna – I’d say 40 miles, or 50 miles from Vienna. But you’d never know. It seemed like we were out in the farmlands, you know, where we were.
TC: I have a couple more questions, if you don’t mind. What was your day like, your routine that you had?
EC: Well, you fell out, they’d roust you in the morning to roll call – count you to see how many people, prisoners, they had. And then, I guess they’d bring in the hot water tub. And if you had some coffee from the Red Cross package, you could make yourself, you could put a teeny, weeny bit – color the water a little bit and think you were drinking coffee. Like I said, then I, if I could, rested in the bunk reading. And sometimes we were called out three times. Most of the time it was twice. No work, since we were Sergeants. The Germans honored that – rank had priveleges. They honored that, because even the American officers were treated better than we were. And they warned us – we elected a government in the camp – and the government warned us not to complain to the Red Cross or the Geneva Convention or whoever it was that came into the camp, about our conditions, because they would tell it to the Americans, and the Americans would retaliate maybe, and then the Germans would hear that, and they’d retaliate, and so it would just be worse on us because we started out worse. Which was good advice, I think. But I understand the Germans had it pretty nice over here – had it pretty good, especially down… There were 17 prison camps down here of Germans, down south. But then we had, I worked at Campbell Soup when I came back, Quite a few Germans stayed. I don’t know if any Americans stayed when they were there, but quite a few of the German prisoners stayed after they found out what the States was like.
???? (buzzing sound on tape)
EC: The machinists, they have their metallic – metal mind. One of the chief bosses at the Campbell Soup company was a former prisoner – American army.
(buzzing continues)
EC: Yeah, I did a complete circle, as far as hating Germans. I mean ________________
As much as anybody else. Some of them, a lot of them were normal people, not too political.
PC: (Question about calendar)
EC: Yeah, they had a, what do you call them, a little radio – crystal set – somewhere. We’d get BBC news, and then they would transport it all to the different barracks. One fellow would stand on the table and read the news out. They’d put guards at each end – our own guards – that would say that no Germans would be able to hear what was going on. And he would read the news to us. So we kept up. In fact, we heard when the invasion happened – D-Day – it was a big day for us, because we started to see – not really – but it was encouraging anyhow. We weren’t going to be one of them _________ people for Hitler to rebuild his city like he said he was going to make us rebuild the cities.
TC: Alright, well I think that’s great.
EC: Okay?