Nederland man tells POW tale
By Ashley Sanders - The News staff writer
NEDERLAND - With icy wind seeping into his military-issued overcoat, working its way past the two wool blankets striped from his prison bunk for added warmth, the cold cut ever deeper into his bones as Rayford Guzardo took another step toward his future freedom and the preservation of his life.
Walking on this frigid trail, lost somewhere in the German countryside, Guzardo's mind wandered to the events that led him down this dismal path. There, accompanied by 8,000 allied soldiers like himself, Guzardo was forced to embark on a 600-mile death march.
Still seared in his mind today more than 60 years later, and as other area soldiers are coming home from another war - the experience is something Guzardo would never have imagined when he was a young man growing up in Southeast Texas.
Following his 1942 graduation from Nederland High School, 18-year-old Guzardo never could have dreamed that in a little more than two years he would have fought in a World War, survived a plane crash and been taken a prisoner of war.
Through the years, as Guzardo lived nearly his entire life in Nederland, raised a family and eventually retired from Guzardo's feed store in 1999, the old soldier can still imagine the horrors of war, how he nearly died on the battlefield - and how he lived to come home to Southeast Texas though he had feared he would never see the flat, coastal land of his home again.
Guzardo's harrowing story begins in late 1942. A young man seeking adventure, Guzardo enrolled in the Southwest Aeronautical Institute in Dallas.
"We learned about the assembly of planes, like riveting," Guzardo said. " Some guy came in one day and offered some of us a job at an aircraft factory in San Diego. We were going to build B-24 bomber planes."
On arrival in San Diego, Guzardo began working as a sheet metal technician, actually shaping the metal that would encase the B-24 planes. Like many other young men of his era, Guzardo returned home early from a shift at the factory to find a notice from the U.S. government regarding his draft into the U.S. Army.
In February 1943, Guzardo reported to St. Petersburg, Fla. to begin his regular military training. An all-star gunning talent, Guzardo was soon switched to the Air Force branch and made a tail gunner, ironically on a B-24 bomber plane.
After meeting his crew, which numbered two pilots, a navigator, and seven gunners, Guzardo and his men were introduced to their plane.
"In New York, following training, I was issued my own plane," Guzardo said. "When I got to it my pilot was all shook up because the plane was numbered 13. I said that is nothing, that is Lucky 13. And, you know that is what we named her. She would prove to be some kind of lucky too."
That luck that Guzardo spoke of would kick in July 7, 1944.
Hooked into the leather strap that connected him to the oversized bomber gun, Guzardo and his men were engaged in a battle over southern Italy when the "Lucky 13" took a hit from an enemy German plane.
"It was my 43rd mission and the ball gunners' and navigators' 50th mission," Guzardo said. "You get to go home after completion of your 50th mission. Anyway, we were over Foggia and lost one of our engines. We couldn't keep up with our formation and we fell back. We were by ourselves and just trying to make it back to Yugoslavia and land. Our ball gunner was by now drenched in gasoline and we were just rocking along, when I know a gun no bigger than a 40 mm shot us again."
Quickly thinking, Edward J. Murphy, the pilot of the "Lucky 13," began to bank the plane in preparation for a crash landing.
"We knew we were running out of fuel," Guzardo said. "One more hit would have blown us up. So, Murphy performed a crash landing. When we hit the ground we still had one engine. One minute later, it wouldn't have been a landing, it would have just been a crash. See, the plane was pretty lucky."
Finding themselves in enemy territory, Guzardo and his men, all safe following the crash, crawled out of a small waist window and found themselves surrounded by angry Hungarian wheat field workers.
"People came out of the fields with pitchforks and farming tools aimed at us," Gazardo said. "The pilot said he saw the Hungarians pointing at the trees like they were going to hang us, but the women there saved us."
German soldiers arrived after the crash and herded the crew into a wagon and proceeded to cart them to a jail that Guzardo described as the equivalent of Alcatrez.
"They kept us there about a week for interrogation," Guzardo said. "Then they put us on a train to a prison camp close to Poland."
A prisoner at Stalag Luft IV, a prison for enlisted men, Guzardo was finally given the opportunity to write home to his concerned mother, who had received a Western Union telegram listing her son as missing in action.
"I was at that prison from July to February," Guzardo said. "One night, the lights didn't go off right at 10, like they usually do. The German guards said they were going to leave the lights on for an extra hour because we were getting our walking papers tomorrow. The Russians were getting close and the Germans feared that if the Russians got us they would give us back to the Americans and we would be flying again in a few days. So, Feb. 6 we began marching."
Guzardo walked 600 miles in the coldest winter that Germany had seen in 100 years, in just under 52 days.
"We walked 15 miles a day and slept in barns," Guzardo said. "There was snow and ice all over the ground. We were given one boiled potato a day and sometimes a pitcher of hot water and some instant coffee. There was hardly any water to drink. When we got to Fallingbuster, we saw a lot of German troops retreating our way and British tanks were closing in on them. I was so glad to see them."
With his horrible trek concluded, Guzardo was rescued and released to come home. Although he arrived home to Nederland with little pomp and circumstance, Guzardo said he was thrilled to be back home with his family.
© 2005 Port Arthur News -Port Arthur, TX