WHAT TO DO WITH ENEMY PRISONERS?
Richard Reeves
BERLIN -- On Sept. 14, 1948, Capt. Kenneth Slaker of Lincoln, Neb., was making his sixth flight as a Berlin Airlift pilot, bringing food and fuel to the World War II enemy capital, which was blockaded on land and on rivers by the army of the Soviet Union. The United States Air Force, along with Great Britain's Royal Air Force, was trying to keep alive more than 2 million people in West Berlin, which was surrounded by East Germany and hundreds of thousands of soldiers of the Red Army.
"The Russians say they will shoot down any aircraft that strays out of the Berlin air corridor, and that captured airlift pilots will be treated as spies. ... If you should find yourself down in the Soviet Zone, we cannot say that you should turn yourself in, or that you should try to escape. There is no published or firm policy on this, and it would be up to you or your crew as to what action you would want to take."
Both engines of Slaker's C-47 cut out over East Germany's Harz mountains. He and his co-pilot, Lt. Clarence Steber of Memphis, Tenn., bailed out less a thousand feet above the ground. Slaker landed in a potato field and was unconscious for four or five hours. He heard German voices when he came to at dawn and crawled into a forest. Standing and turning, in great pain, he walked straight into an East German farmer.
"I'm an American pilot on the airlift," said Slaker, who spoke some German. The German, whose name was Rudolph Schnabel, reached into a coat pocket and showed the pilot the discharge papers he received after two years as a prisoner of war in an American camp outside Kearney, Neb.
"Americans were good to me," Schnabel said in workable English. "Americans capture me, save my leg." He pulled up his pants to show scars on his leg, which had been put back together in an American field hospital after he was run over by a tank. To make a long story short, Schnabel recruited friends and smuggled Slaker across the border to an American checkpoint in West Berlin.
To read the remainder of the article go to: http://www.theusdaily.com/articles/v...2&type=Opinion
Richard Reeves
BERLIN -- On Sept. 14, 1948, Capt. Kenneth Slaker of Lincoln, Neb., was making his sixth flight as a Berlin Airlift pilot, bringing food and fuel to the World War II enemy capital, which was blockaded on land and on rivers by the army of the Soviet Union. The United States Air Force, along with Great Britain's Royal Air Force, was trying to keep alive more than 2 million people in West Berlin, which was surrounded by East Germany and hundreds of thousands of soldiers of the Red Army.
"The Russians say they will shoot down any aircraft that strays out of the Berlin air corridor, and that captured airlift pilots will be treated as spies. ... If you should find yourself down in the Soviet Zone, we cannot say that you should turn yourself in, or that you should try to escape. There is no published or firm policy on this, and it would be up to you or your crew as to what action you would want to take."
Both engines of Slaker's C-47 cut out over East Germany's Harz mountains. He and his co-pilot, Lt. Clarence Steber of Memphis, Tenn., bailed out less a thousand feet above the ground. Slaker landed in a potato field and was unconscious for four or five hours. He heard German voices when he came to at dawn and crawled into a forest. Standing and turning, in great pain, he walked straight into an East German farmer.
"I'm an American pilot on the airlift," said Slaker, who spoke some German. The German, whose name was Rudolph Schnabel, reached into a coat pocket and showed the pilot the discharge papers he received after two years as a prisoner of war in an American camp outside Kearney, Neb.
"Americans were good to me," Schnabel said in workable English. "Americans capture me, save my leg." He pulled up his pants to show scars on his leg, which had been put back together in an American field hospital after he was run over by a tank. To make a long story short, Schnabel recruited friends and smuggled Slaker across the border to an American checkpoint in West Berlin.
To read the remainder of the article go to: http://www.theusdaily.com/articles/v...2&type=Opinion
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