Three buddies are bound by memories as prisoners of war in WWII
By Johanna D. Wilson - The Sun News
MURRELLS INLET-There are three men, bound by memories that will not fade, who share a friendship forged with stories of the horrors and humanity of World War II.
Lt. Col. Earle Kelly, Park Swan and Gene Westfall may not have otherwise cemented a fellowship, now four years old, if it were not for their belief that they speak a language foreign to most.
"I don't talk about being a prisoner of war unless I'm with these two men right here," said Westfall, 83, as he sat at a table within VFW Post 10420 in Murrells Inlet with Kelly and Swan. "They understand me."
These men experienced trials most Americans only see in movies or perhaps imagine in their minds as prisoners of war when Adolf Hitler obsessed over ruling the globe.
They didn't know each other then, but as it has for many, the Grand Strand drew them - and their memories - together.
Every second Wednesday at noon they meet at the post to remember, reason and sometimes make light of their former situations.
"We shared bad times and we appreciate good times," said Westfall, an Army machine gunner who was a POW for 14 months in Germany.
"Gene's right," said Swan, 84, a retired Army major who was a prisoner of war for five months. "We can tell war stories."
"Almost any veterans of foreign wars can tell you war stories, especially after a couple of beers," Westfall added.
All three laughed then.
At the same time, shades of sadness were evident in their eyes. All of them, at one point or another, fight wars in their mind.
Kelly was beaten by a crowd of Hungarian civilians after his B-24 crashed in an open field - and that was before they tried several times to hang him from a nearby tree.
Swan, who has three Purple Hearts, got half of his teeth knocked out by a German soldier for assisting a comrade whose eyeballs were hanging on his cheeks.
Westfall was a living lice museum. The parasitic insects had made their home in his clothes, which he did not change for three or four months.
They believe their memories are necessary, although recalling them calls for rehashing pain.
That's why, on a recent Wednesday, as smells of cigarette smoke and grilled hamburgers waft through the post, each listens to the other's reflections. Just because each man wants the others to know that they care and understand.
Kelly shares first and the most. Swan and Westfall listen intently.
The oldest of the three, at 88, Kelly is 6-feet 1-inch tall. He is lean, but not skinny as he was during the war.
"I weighed 170 pounds when I was shot down, and I weighed 98 pounds when we were liberated," said Kelly, as his comrades listened intently, although they know his story almost as well as he does. "I'm convinced that if the war had went on for two more months that 50 percent of us would not have gone home. It took me five years to put some weight back on."
On Sunday, Sept. 10, 1944, Kelly's B-24 bomber plane was shot down while he and his crew were on a mission in Vienna.
"Vienna was rated the second most heavily defended target in Europe, after Berlin, of course," said Kelly, whose plane was one of 18 shot down that day. "They had an estimated 1,200 guns circling the city, and you couldn't fly over any part of Vienna without 750 of them bearing on you from some angle."
At 25,000 feet, Kelly bailed after he and his crew of 10 men were hit four times.
He floated over to Hungary and landed in an open field.
Hungarian civilians saw him land and came over and pummeled him.
This is a detail Kelly initially forgets to mention, until Swan reminded him of the harrowing detail.
"He didn't tell you that when he hit the ground they started beating the heck out of him and tried to hang him," Swan said, shaking his head in disbelief and disgust.
"Either the rope was too short or the limb was too high," Kelly said, a prisoner of war for nearly a year. "All I know is that they couldn't get the other end of the rope. They tried two or three times to hang me."
He might have died if it were not for two Hungarian soldiers that appeared with guns and took him into town.
Eventually, Kelly found himself in a cell within a castle.
Straw was on the floor. A fat rat was there, too, and it licked dried blood from Kelly's face as he slept.
"I jumped up and went stomping on the rat in the dark," Kelly said. "Finally, I just collapsed."
No food or water was given to him until Wednesday when a guard slid a cup of bean soup and bread hard as a rock across the floor to him.
At one point during his time as a prisoner of war, Kelly walked 100 miles in seven days along with 2,000 other POWs in Germany in minus-25 degrees temperatures.
Kelly remembers arriving in Mooseburg, which was where Nazis were burning up 5,000 Jewish people each day at the Dachau Concentration Camp.
"Black smoke from Dachau floated over our camp, and we smelled it all day long," Kelly said.
On April 29, 1945, General George S. Patton Jr.'s 14th Armored Division liberated Kelly, who ended up at Ingolstadt, an airfield in Bulvaria, Germany, in May 1945.
Swan was also there, although neither man knew the other.
When Swan, who was captured Jan. 9, 1945, got out of prison camp five months later, he was sent to Miami Beach for rehabilitation.
Military heads promised he would be out of the Army in 24 hours.
"I don't want to get out," Swan told them. "I want to stay in."
They thought he was crazy and sent him to a psychiatrist.
He went back to serve in Germany in October 1945.
Swan never left.
"You can ask me the last time I was in Germany, and I will tell you last night," Swan said. "I get these flashbacks, bad dreams and nightmares. And you know what? They don't have anti-nightmare pills. There is no such thing."
He's got two friends, though, willing to share those nightmares with him no matter the time of day.