Veteran POW On The 'Great Escape'

BBC News - UK



Some surviving inmates of the German prisoner of war camp, immortalised by Hollywood as Stalag Luft 3, have returned to the site at Zagan in Poland to commemorate the anniversary of the escape attempt.

Frank Stone helped dig the 348-foot tunnel right under the noses of the German soldiers but he did not make it into the final escape party.

Of the 76 allied airmen who made their break for freedom using the tunnel, known as Harry, 50 were subsequently shot after being recaptured and only three men managed to get away completely.

Mr Stone, who spent the war as a prisoner in the camp, told Robert Hall what it had been like on the night of the 'Great Escape'.

Dan Doughty: An Unsung Hero

WEAU-TV 13 - Eau Claire, WI, USA

Posted: 5:28 PM Mar 25, 2009
Last Updated: 9:45 PM Mar 25, 2009
Reporter: Meghan Kulig
Email Address: meghan.kulig@weau.com

You could call this month’s Unsung Hero an inspiration. He’s a man who gave up years of his life for his country.

Ladysmith-native Dan Doughty served with the Air Force and went to Vietnam in the mid-1960’s. The now 75-year-old flew about 170 missions – before spending nearly 7 years as a prisoner of war.

During that time, he says his wife and four children were left wondering when they’d see him again.

He recounts his experience as a POW:

"I had always wanted to be a pilot from when I was a little kid during World War II. I went to Vietnam as a technical recon pilot flying the RF 101,” he said.

"I was shot down April 2nd of 1966. I was going quite fast and quite low to the ground when I was hit. The aircraft exploded and I had to eject. I was captured almost immediately after I hit the ground. I was in North Vietnam and captured by a local militia group. It was several days then before I was turned over to the regular Army. It was over a month after I was captured before I finally made it to Hanoi, the main prison system."

"Some of it was just downright miserable,” he said. “Once they started formal interrogations then it turned to brutal torture that lasted for days on end. Spent the first 13 months in solitary confinement. I guess I weighed 185 lbs. when I got captured and I got down to around 115 or 20 lbs."

"I didn't see that I was doing anything heroic, I was trying to keep myself alive and defend my country even though in captivity. We still had a job to do. I never lost hope. I was born an optimist and I always knew we were gonna' get out of there quite soon. The quite soon just kept getting longer and longer. I had a guy tell me one time, Dan, we're gonna' go home soon. Maybe not this year, maybe not next year, but we're gonna go home soon."

In 1973 – nearly 7 years after his capture – Doughty did go home to a hero’s welcome in Ladysmith.

He says he was in the same prisoner camp as John McCain. But, he never met him until a couple weeks before he went home.

Military Channel Presents 'RETURN TO TARAWA'

Trading Markets (press release) - Los Angeles, CA, USA

Military Channel Presents RETURN TO TARAWA, a Documentary Capturing World War II Veteran's Crusade to Preserve a Sacred Battlefield Turned Trash Dump
Tue. March 24, 2009; Posted: 01:06 PM

SILVER SPRING, Md., Mar 24, 2009 (GlobeNewswire via COMTEX) -- In Military Channel's world premiere of RETURN TO TARAWA, World War II combat veteran Leon Cooper embarks on what he considers his final mission -- to preserve the hallowed ground of one of World War II's deadliest battlefields at Red Beach on Tarawa Island. This battle was the U.S. Navy's first major amphibious assault and over 1,600 American servicemen fell at Tarawa Island, a fortified Japanese stronghold about 2,500 miles southwest of the Hawaiian islands and currently within the Republic of Kiribati. RETURN TO TARAWA documents Cooper's stirring trip back to confirm first-hand the reports of the desecration of Red Beach, which is littered with piles of garbage, rusting debris and possible lost gravesites of servicemen still listed as missing in action. While an emotionally charged experience for the eighty-nine-year-old Cooper, this journey further propels his mission to clean-up and restore this sacred battleground by making it a permanent war memorial for all those who fought and died there. Narrated by actor Ed Harris, RETURN TO TARAWA premieres Friday, April 24th, at 10 PM ET on the Military Channel.

Cooper's first combat experience came in November of 1943 as a U.S. Navy landing craft officer charged with leading a group of Higgins Landing Crafts in the first wave of the Battle of Tarawa. The battle became known as "Bloody Tarawa" because over 1,600 marines and sailors lost their lives and more than 2,000 were wounded over the course of the three-day conflict. Cooper cannot escape the painful memories of seeing hundreds of his fellow countrymen fall around him and now, he lives with the gut-wrenching knowledge that the site of their ultimate sacrifice has become a garbage dump. Therefore, Cooper has dedicated himself to securing the support of the U.S. and Republic of Kiribati in restoring Red Beach to its original pristine condition. RETURN TO TARAWA tracks Cooper's efforts to have his comprehensive restoration plan implemented including building a modern incineration facility, which would relieve the island's chronic issues of refuse disposal. Cooper is seeking the support of the U.S. government to fund this program and establish the beach as a permanent war memorial including moving the Memorial to the 2nd Division Marines from its current location in a parking lot.

During his journey, Cooper meets with non-profit organizations dedicated to searching for the hundreds of U.S. servicemen still listed as missing in action from the Battle of Tarawa. Nearly 65 years later, these volunteers are using declassified documents, archive photographs and ground-penetrating radar to identify and locate what was suppose to be temporary gravesites that still may exist on the island. These organizations hope their efforts will assist the U.S. government in returning the remains of these MIA's to their families and provide these heroes a proper burial back home on U.S. soil.

RETURN TO TARAWA is kicking off Military Channel's History Fridays, which will premiere historical documentaries on Friday nights starting April 24. Weekly premieres after the world premiere of RETURN TO TARAWA include BATTLE OF THE ATLANTIC, May 1 from 8-11 PM; TIMEWATCH: HIMMLER, HITLER & THE END OF THE THIRD REICH, May 8 at 10 PM; FATAL ATTRACTION OF ADOLF HITLER, May 15 from 9-11 PM; AMERICAN ARSENAL, May 29 at 10 PM; and FROM GENEVA TO BAGHDAD: RULES OF WAR, June 5 at 10 PM.

RETURN TO TARAWA, www.returntotarawa.com, is produced by Vanilla Fire Productions. For Vanilla Fire Productions, Steven C. Barber and Leon Cooper are executive producers and Tamara Henry is associate producer. For the Military Channel, Jane Latman is executive producer, Deborah Adler Myers is senior vice president of programming and Clark Bunting is president and general manager.

About Military Channel

The Military Channel brings viewers compelling, real-world stories of heroism, military strategy, and significant turning points in history. The network takes viewers "behind the lines" to hear the personal stories of servicemen and women and offers in-depth explorations of military training, aviation technology and cutting-edge weaponry. As the only cable network devoted to military subjects, it also provides unique access to this world, allowing viewers to experience and understand the full spectrum of human drama, courage, and patriotism intrinsic to the armed forces, as well as, the long-held traditions of the military. For more information, please visit military.discovery.com.

Taunton Will Hold Annual POW/MIA Ceremony

Taunton Daily Gazette - Taunton, MA, USA

By Kendra Leigh Sardinha
GateHouse News Service
Posted Mar 24, 2009 @ 02:30 PM


Taunton — The Taunton Area Vietnam Veterans Association will be holding their Annual POW/MIA Remembrance Day Ceremony, at noon March 29 at the Vietnam Memorial on Church Green.

Everyone is welcome to join us to remember the remaining 1,742 POW/IA’s left in Southeast Asia.

They will be reading the names and honoring the 39 from Massachusetts. “Dog Tags” will be hung on the “Sign Post” for each of these soldiers.

Mayor Charles Crowley will say a few words about Taunton’s commitment to this issue. Senator Marc Pacheco and Rep. James Fagan have also been asked to speak. Michaela Gordon will again join us by singing a few songs.

The main speaker will be John Bouchard, former U.S. Marine, Disabled Vet, served in Vietnam 68-69.
Bouchard has been active in the POW/MIA Issue for many years.
He was a three-time Post Commander of the Attleboro VFW and 3 times Post Commander of the American Legion.

Currently, he serves on the POW/MIA Committee co-chair of the Post 21 DAV.

N.J. Man 'Choked Up' Over POW Bracelet

The Northwest Florida Daily News - Fort Walton Beach, FL, USA

He had kept Bud Day's bracelet for 40 years
March 23, 2009 - 8:12 PM
Wendy Victora

For nearly 40 years, Fred Myers has kept the silver POW bracelet within sight. Most recently, he's had it clipped to his truck visor.

Myers, like countless other Americans, bought the bracelet during the Vietnam War. Instructions were to keep it until the prisoner of war whose name you wore came home.

Last week, looking for closure, the Farmingdale, N.J., man got on the Internet and typed in "Col. George Day" - the name engraved on the silver cuff. He learned that Day was very much alive in Northwest Florida.

Col. George "Bud" Day, who spent six years in captivity, is a Shalimar attorney and outspoken advocate for veterans.

"I was choked up," said Myers of learning that "his" POW was still alive. "I was shocked that after all these years I could talk to him."

He added that the bracelet has been all over the world with him.

The two men spoke and Myers agreed to mail the bracelet back to Day.

It won't be the first one the octogenarian has received. Day has trouble estimating how many bracelets have been returned over the years, but he guesses the number to be in the hundreds.

He has donated some to museums and hangs others on his Christmas tree. One is in a plastic paper weight. Others have been straightened and mounted on a plaque.

Day said that it was fascinating to him and other POWs to learn that Americans were wearing bracelets with their names on them.

"There were not many indications that we were getting supported," he said. "When we learned of that, it was a great morale booster."

Day said he was glad to hear from Myers.

"I told him I was very proud of him for wearing the bracelet," he said. "It was personally very rewarding to me and he gave me a good feeling to know that he, like so many other Americans, (was) supporting us."

Word Of 'Hump' Crash Site Kindles Images Of Father Son Knew Only From War Stories

Las Vegas Review Journal - Las Vegas, NV, USA

By KEITH ROGERS
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL

Two weeks before John Lenox was born, his father went missing in action. Sixty-five years later, Lenox had almost lost hope he would ever know exactly what happened.

As a youngster growing up in Hartford, Conn., he was told only that his dad died in a plane crash in World War II.

"When you're young and you don't have something, you don't necessarily miss it," he said Wednesday. "My mom never spoke too much about my father. She just said, 'OK. This is your father. He was killed in the war.' We never got a lot of details."

Later in life, he learned a few things. The plane crashed while flying a supply route over the "Hump," the name pilots gave to the treacherous eastern Himalayan Mountains.

But the retired financial manager for Fortune 500 companies, his 92-year-old mother, Frances, and his older brother, Bill, knew one thing for sure: Staff Sgt. Alvin Jack Lenox was never found.

Frances Lenox said after the War Department had declared her husband dead in a letter on Sept. 10, 1945, she tried to stay focused on life with her sons.

"I just went on and had to live every day and take care of things," she said. "My brother used to say, 'Now you've got those boys. You've got to raise them. You go on with that.'"

She took the $4,000 from his military life insurance and bought a summer cottage on Long Island Sound. Going there was therapy for her, John Lenox said, and provided fun-filled memories for him and his brother.

There also were keepsakes from his dad, like the black-and-white photographs in the family album that Alvin Lenox took on his first stint in the Army. That's when he was stationed in Hawaii in the mid-1930s and got to meet such celebrities as slugger Babe Ruth, comedian Jimmy Durante and pilot Amelia Earhart.

"You can't help but think, 'Gee. Wouldn't it have been great to know him.' And then, that's not going to happen," John Lenox said, sitting with his mom at the dining room table in his North Las Vegas home.

"We would love to be able to find the remains and bring them back for closure. But what are the probabilities of that after 65 or 66 years?" Lenox said. "They can't even find them. They don't have any idea where it went down specifically. And so you say, 'OK.' That's just what you have to accept. That's the way it's going to be, but there's always hope."

Hope finally came through last month in a phone call. A Lenox family relative in Connecticut was contacted by a relative of another of the five crew members in that C-87 cargo plane on its fateful flight from Yantai, China to Joraht, India, on Aug. 9, 1943.

Word had circulated that an adventurer from Prescott, Ariz., named Clayton Kuhles had traveled to the Himalayas in October and found pieces of the wreckage containing the plane's construction number on a bamboo-covered slope about 8,000 feet up.

"When we got the call kind of out of the blue, I wasn't quite sure how to react," John Lenox said, describing how the weight of the moment began to sink in.

"Then when I went to the Web site and saw the listing of the plane and the identification of the men on board, it was really emotional. I didn't think it would be, but it hit me pretty hard.

"I talked to my brother and I said, 'How do you feel?' He says, 'You know I'm torn. I don't know exactly how to feel, because obviously we didn't know the man; but he was our father and this is an important issue now to try to get his remains back,'" John Lenox said.

Kuhles, whose hobby is to find World War II planes that went down flying the Hump, had posted a report about the find on his Web site, including paperwork he filed with the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command.

After tracing records of the plane to its mission, he listed the dead Army Air Corps airmen as Staff Sgt. Alvin J. Lenox, radio operator; Cpl. Donald A. Johnson, crew chief; 2nd Lt. John W. Funk, navigator; 1st Lt. John T. Tennison, co-pilot; and Capt. Tom Perry, pilot.

"This site was almost a five-day trek. It was definitely one of the more interesting because of the river crossings and the jungle," the 55-year-old Kuhles said by telephone Thursday.

With the help of a guide and two interpreters, Kuhles interviewed an elderly Mishmi tribesman, Ayema Keche, who was in his late teens or early 20s when the plane went down.

"He was out hunting and he witnessed the plane crashing and saw the fire," Kuhles said. "When he got there, the wreckage was still smoldering three or four days after the crash. ... He told me he buried the remains and salvaged bits and pieces of the plane that he could use at the village."

According to John Lenox, his father's plane was returning from airlifting military supplies, equipment and personnel to the Chinese government and allied forces after the main land route through Burma was seized by the Japanese.

"The best information we have is that the plane was shot down. Japanese gunfire hit the plane," he said.

Although much of the information can't be verified, Lenox believes his father's last radio transmission were words to the effect, "'We've been hit. We're going down.' And that was it. Communication was cut off at that point."

Kuhles, who has documented 15 crash sites since 2000, said most planes that crashed flying in that part of the Hump didn't go down as a result of enemy fire, however.

"I'm not aware of any Japanese attacks in that area," he said. "In the vast majority of cases, crashes were usually from navigational error or weather. Either way, the mountain and the plane collided."

Strong winds often blew planes off course, or icy conditions added weight to the aircraft, causing them to lose altitude. Matters were complicated by trying to navigate at times in zero visibility.

"It was Russian roulette," Kuhles said.

After reading books about flights in 1940s-vintage aircraft over the Hump and knowing what his father had told his mother, John Lenox said it's "a miracle that any of these planes made it."

"These guys were flying planes that were kind of wired together," he said.

"My mom would tell me that my father would write letters saying, 'These things are flying coffins.' Every time a new plane comes in, they don't fly the new plane. They strip it and keep the others going.

"One plane could keep a half a dozen other planes flying. The experience must have been just unbelievable," he said.

Regardless of what happened to that transport plane on Aug. 9, 1943, John Lenox said his family and those of the other crew members are trying to launch a congressional effort to have a recovery team sent to the crash site to search for remains.

He realizes, it could take years "before they will even undertake the task. It's just so remote."

"I would like to be able to bring him back and bury him in Connecticut," he said.

Contact reporter Keith Rogers at krogers @reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0308.

Kilroy Takes Up Search For Missing London Flyer

London Madison Press - OH, USA

Saturday, March 21, 2009

By JANE BEATHARD
Press Contributor

The fate of a Madison County airman lost during World War II has drawn the attention of U.S. Rep. Mary Jo Kilroy. Kilroy represents Madison County as part of Ohio’s 15th Congressional District.

Kilroy’s office contacted London resident Jean Boyd last week after a story appeared in The Madison Press about U.S. Army Lt. John W. Funk. Boyd is a distant cousin of Funk who disappeared in August 1943 while flying a dangerous mission over the Himalayas.

Remnants of the flier’s long-missing C-87 cargo plane were located last fall by a private, Arizona-based organization that works to resolve the fate of aircraft lost in World War II. Nearby, searchers found five graves — presumed to be those of Funk and four other Army airmen who crewed the plane.

Paul Tencher, Kilroy’s director of communication, said the congresswoman “got interested right away” and intends to press the U.S. Department of Defense and the White House to recover the bodies from the northeast India crash site and return them to the United States for reburial.

In a statement to the Press, Congresswoman Kilroy had this to say: “Lt. John Funk has earned the full military honors befitting of an American hero. My job will be to ensure his memory is preserved and his family is allowed to participate in laying this soldier to rest. The discovery of Lt. Funk’s remains reminds us of the tens of thousands of men and women that served our country in its moments of need, but whom were never recovered. We will work with the Department of Defense and the White House to ensure an expedient return.”

Arizona businessman Clayton Kuhles led the expedition that found Funk’s plane. Kuhles turned information and photos from the crash site over to the U.S. Defense Department’s Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) in Hawaii. It’s now up to JPAC to attempt a recovery. Unfortunately, most of JPAC’s efforts are directed toward recovering those lost in the Vietnam War, with only about 10 percent of the agency’s budget allocated for World War II soldiers, sailors and airmen, Kuhles said.

Tencher said JPAC repatriates about 10 bodies a year from each military service branch. Kilroy wants the Funk’s C-87 moved up the priority list.

Lt. Funk grew up south of London in a family of seven. His siblings included the late George Funk, as well as Frances Pinnegar and Dorothy Hull — all London residents.

Tencher encourages anyone interested in promoting the recovery of Lt. Funk’s body to work through Kilroy’s office and the normal repatriation procedure.

The congresswoman can be reached at 1299 Olentangy River Road, Suite 200, Columbus, OH 43212.