News-Info-Alerts

Re: The Hardships of Captivity

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: September 21, 2003

"Former POW shares hardships of captivity: Palominas man captured after bomber was downed

BY BILL HESS Herald/Review

FORT HUACHUCA -- As Norman Wiseman sailed out of New York Harbor in the 1940s, he looked at the Statue of Liberty and said, "Lady, I'll see you again sometime."

Even though he made that promise as an Army Air Force bomber crew member, Wiseman said there were many days near the end of the war when he thought he would not be able to keep his word.

Soon to be 82, he spoke to nearly 175 people at the fort's annual POW/MIA Honors and Remembrance luncheon Thursday.

"Most (American) people have never lost their freedom," Wiseman told the audience. "When you lose your freedom, everything is taken from you."

Former prisoners of war who, like Wiseman, know what captivity means, sat in the audience.

Wiseman's trip into nine months of German captivity began Aug. 10, 1944. A flight engineer and top turret gunner on a B-24 Liberator, he was halfway through his 33rd bombing mission when his plane was hit over Linz, Austria.

Wiseman jokingly said he completed 32 and a half missions on flights that took him over Austrian, Bulgarian, French, German, Hungarian and Italian targets.

He eventually was sent to a German POW camp in Poland, where the accommodations were far from pleasant. Food was limited to potatoes, carrots and other root vegetables, and black bread that was made of 27 percent tree flour. "That's sawdust to you people," he said.

As Soviet forces drew closer to the POW camps, the Nazis decided to move nearly 10,000 enlisted men from the complex of four camps to Germany.

The march of 650 miles took nearly three months as the Germans took the POWs away from the approaching Soviet forces, and later the American and British forces.

It has been a long time since he has had a flashback to that drawn-out march, but Wiseman said he experienced one Wednesday morning as he walked a little way in the post's POW/MIA walk-a-thon.

"When I saw all those people in the walk-a-thon it brought back that memory," he said.

During the forced march, that began on Feb. 6, 1945, thousands of prisoners were broken up into small groups of about 250 each, Wiseman said.

Food was hard to come by, "and any little animal was fair game," Wiseman said, The creatures "went right into the stew."

A POW bumper sticker sums up the feeling of those who have suffered captivity when it comes to food and animals, he said. The sticker states: "I love animals, they all taste good."

For about two months, he and the others had no opportunity to take a bath. The only change of clothing they had was to turn inside out and then outside in what they wore, shaking the lice out, he said.

There were so many lice infesting a person's clothes that "it looked like a snowstorm" when the garments were shaken, he said.

British forces finally freed the POWs.

After his experience as a POW, Wiseman flew 100 missions during the Berlin Airlift, bringing food and supplies to Germans in West Berlin who were cut off by a Soviet blockade.

He worked for the Air Force as a member of the Research and Development Group, helping test new aircraft, including cold weather endurance testing in Alaska.

After retiring as a master sergeant, he worked for the Boy Scouts of America. After he retired from that organization, he began a third career performing maintenance on all types of machine ship equipment.

Now a Palominas resident, Wiseman said to survive as a POW takes three things: "Faith in God, faith in the country and a will to live."

Perhaps the most vivid thing about his POW experience is returning to the United States.

The ship he was on entered New York Harbor and passed the Statue of Liberty.

"There wasn't a dry eye on that ship," Wiseman said as he began to choke up with emotion. "I kept my promise to the lady."

© 2003Sierra Vista Herald"