Re: 19 and a POW

Date: April 28, 2004

"World War II Remembered - Tough tail gunner

By DEAN BAKER, Columbian staff writer

Elmer Edgell was just 19 years old and only a few months away from his home in West Virginia's coal mining country in 1945 when Germans shot down the B-24H Liberator bomber in which he served as tail gunner.

    He and three other airmen survived the crash. Today, Edgell, 78, is a retired Bonneville Power Administration electrician who has lived in La Center for the past 11 years. He and his wife, Louise, flew to Rotterdam on Monday where he'll be honored as a hero on May 4, World War II Remembrance Day in Holland.

    Edgell is the only crewman still alive from the 446th Bomb Group airplane that was hammered to the ground by German flak while returning to England from a bombing run to Bayreuth, Germany, on April 5, 1945. The crew was flying at 500 feet elevation and looking for German U-boats (submarines) at the time.

    Edgell and two others were captured and taken to a German prisoner of war camp. Another crewman escaped. He was Sgt. Norman Durette, the waist gunner, from San Antonio.

    G.A.C. Schoehuizen, deputy mayor of the Rotterdam suburb of Barendrecht, wrote to Edgell three weeks ago to tell him that he is the only American survivor of that incident. Schoehuizen invited Edgell to the ceremony installing a monument to honor his crew, as well as an Australian fighter pilot killed in a nearby crash on the same day.

    Named on the monument will be the four Americans killed: radio operator Sgt. Leo Coyle Jr., of Portland, Maine; nose gunner Sgt. Raymond Theisen, of Sheridan, Wyo.; pilot Lt. Robert Lajoie, of Ithaca, N.Y., and crew chief Sgt. Darrell Waas, of Glendale, Ariz.

    "The plane blew up shortly after it crashed," said Edgell. "We had orders to bail out, but a shell came through and hit my chute. It didn't explode but it hit me hard, busted the chute off me all over the floor and set it on fire. If it had gone off, I wouldn't be here."

    The airplane's co-pilot, Lt. Edward Bebee of Lowell, Mass., was getting ready to bail out when the plane was hit by flak. But through the smoke, he saw Edgell and navigator Clinton Hill, of Michigan, were wounded and unable to get out. He yelled he'd take the plane in.

    "Then we crashed. Man, the plane hit hard. I thought my leg was torn off. I slammed into the waist gun. Then I was flying through the air outside and skipping along the ground like a rock on water, and one of the landing gears was sliding around with me and a bomb was right there. When I came to I was jammed up against the landing gear and there was a thousand Germans around or maybe more. Seemed like a hundred was pointing rifles at us."

    Later he heard there were 33 planes shot down that day.

    Edgell suffered a broken bone in the chest and a dislocated hip.

    "I was lucky," he said.

    Bebee was badly hurt. "He had a compound fracture of his arm," said Edgell. "He should have been in critical care. And I told him, 'I ain't going to fly with you no more,' and he says 'Why?' And I says, 'You need some practice on your landings.'"

    Smiling, Bebee replied, "I'm your commanding officer and I'm giving you a direct order get away from the plane before it explodes. Go, or I'll have you court-martialed."

    Edgell said he had to laugh at that. But, fearful of an explosion, he crawled out and asked the Germans to get the co-pilot out. He gave them his pistol and six packs of cigarettes, and they rescued Bebee.

    The Germans separated the survivors after taking them all to a hospital in Rotterdam. After he was released from the hospital, Edgell was sent to a POW camp at Aalsmeer, Holland.

    On the way, he was forced to stand in freezing weather on a plank rigged to the front of a command car. Standing beside him on the plank was an alleged Dutch underground fighter. They were bound to the hood ornament as the car drove through the freezing weather. The underground fighter, dressed only in a light shirt and trousers, passed out. Edgell temporarily lost the feeling in his hands before they were allowed back in the car.

    "They threw him on the floor and let me put my feet on him to get him warm," Edgell said. "They said they were taking him to The Hague for a trial. I often wonder what happened to him."

    At the prison camp, Edgell lived in a room with five other bomber crew members. They were fed a slice of brown bread and a bit of cheese on one day, then a cup of thin broth, a small potato and a piece of bread on the next day.

    "Of course, the people there didn't have anything to eat, either. They were starving in Holland."

    The men were liberated by the Canadian army. Edgell's weight had dropped to 120 pounds.

    Fit, he weighs 160 now. Fifty-nine years after World War II, the broken bone in his chest has never healed properly, he said. It still hurts when he twists the wrong way.

    The memories sometimes hurt, too, he said.

    "But we were lucky," he said. "Really lucky."

    DEAN BAKER writes about history, military affairs and agriculture. Reach him at 360-759-8009 or e-mail dean[dot]baker[at]columbian[dot]com

© 2004 by The Columbian Publishing Co. Vancouver, WA"