Thursday, Nov. 8, 2007

World War II vet's diary tells the story of becoming German prisoner of war

by Clarke Davis

One of the happiest days in Willard Ratz’s life was when he enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps.

That was in March 1941 — nine months before the attack on Pearl Harbor.

“I felt like I had a real home for the first time. This was my niche,” he said. Another happy day would come when he learned his days as a prisoner of war would soon end.

He was born in Valley Falls in 1915 but before he completed grade school his mother died. His father, unable to care for him and his sister, farmed them out to aunts and uncles and whoever could provide a home.

He alternated between Ozawkie and Valley Falls schools and then graduated from a McAllen, Texas, high school. He had followed his father to south Texas where picking and packing grapefruit was the work to be had.

A straight-A student, he was offered free tuition to a university but he was “too broke to afford clothes and books.”

It was deep into the Depression, so he became a truck driver, making long hauls loaded with fruits, vegetables, and cottonseed.

There had been war in Europe since Germany invaded Poland in 1939 and Ratz had little doubt it would one day involve the United States.

“I knew we were going to get into it, like it or not,” he said.

Taking the oath to join the Air Corps was his happiest day, he said, because up to that time he had basically been an orphan.

When he was growing up during those hard times, people didn’t need another mouth to feed, but now, for the first time, he felt he had a home.

Willard Ratz was older than most men signing up for service and, maybe because of that, was always handed a lot of responsibility in his assignments while state side. He was first trained as a radio operator and radio maintenance.

Two weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor he was at a base near Sacramento, Calif., and put in charge of conducting pre-flight on three single-engine planes every morning.

“I’d never seen one before,” he said.

After twice volunteering for overseas duty, he was assigned to a B-17 crew. It was 1944 before he made it to Wales and made his first bombing run. He was assigned to another crew, which was short a radio operator.

It would be his one and only bombing run and he would sit the rest of the war out in a German prisoner of war camp.

The experience is told best from his own diary written in perfect penmanship while a POW. It’s titled, “My Last Day of Liberty and Freedom”:

"On Sunday, Oct. 15, 1944, while on a bombing mission in which our target was a factory in Koln, just as we arrived at the I.P., our bomber, a B-17, was badly hit by enemy flak. Two of our engines, three and four, had ceased running. The prop was gone from number three and number four had a feathered prop and was also blazing with fire. "

The order came for the crew to “hit the silk.” Most of the crew bailed out and landed in the city of Koln, but Ratz would jump much later after trying to get the tail gunner out.

"I had to give it up after deciding that the tail gunner was dead. I then tried from three different positions, radio room, left and right waist, to contact the pilot or someone in the nose of the ship, providing someone was still left in the plane, but could contact no one. I then decided that the time had come for me to jump."

While crawling to the waist door, the red handle of his parachute pack snagged on something and the chute partially opened.

". . . there I stood 27,000 feet in the air with the plane on fire, low on oxygen, and a parachute that was partly opened. . . I decided my only solution to the situation was to try to stuff the chute back into the canvas pack and fasten it again. After what seemed like an eternity, I finally succeeded and then jumped out. "

He dropped over 20,000 feet before opening his chute in order to provide a smaller target for a German soldier and give him more time to hide should he be spotted.

Ratz landed in “no man’s land” between the German and American lines, 15 to 20 miles south of Aachen in the center of the concrete tank traps in the Siegfried Line. Artillery from both armies were firing over his head.

He spent 9 1/2 hours dodging German soldiers before being captured. At one point he actually walked into an underground German pill box that was full of German soldiers. Careful not to panic, he walked out without being noticed.

“They ignored me completely,” he said.

After capture he was taken to an underground block house in the Siegfreid Line. He was interrogated, given food and water, and taken in a Volkswagon to a small town to be held as a prisoner in a civilian home where five German soldiers were billeted.

For the next three days he would be marched farther into the interior of Germany, put up at night in civilian homes, until he reached a small POW camp at Euskirchen.

"It was nothing more than a blocked off alley and was, I believe, the dirtiest hole I have ever seen in my life. We hardly had enough water to drink and the food was very scanty. For breakfast we were given a cup of ersatz coffee, two slices of black bread, a small cube of Tafelmargerine, and a very small piece of sausage. For dinner we had a cup of very thin soup, if it could be called soup, and for supper we had only a cup of ersatz coffee. There we slept on loose straw that was almost alive with fleas and lice. Life was very miserable at this camp."

He was there four days before orders came to evacuate the town because the allies were breaking through the line. Ten Air Force men were moved to a town near Frankfurt and the next day he and 70 others were sent to Wetzler. There they were deloused, fed, and given Red Cross clothing and a Red Cross food parcel.

From here they shipped out to Stalag Luft IV at Kiefheide. Ratz would remain here until Jan. 30. When the Russian army got too close to this camp, the men were put in box cars and sent to Stalag Luft I at Barth, arriving there Feb. 3, 1945.

They were worried at one point while the train was sitting in the marshalling yard at Stettin because the area was bombed both day and night by the Allies. But this time only one plane flew over.

“At Wetzler, I found two of the men who were with me on the plane and had bailed out over Koln,” he said.

Ratz remembers a bit of humor at Stalag Luft 1. He said the camp commandant was not unlike the comic commandant on the TV show “Hogan’s Heroes.” One cold morning he was standing on ice when he gave the Hitler salute and when he clicked his heels together he did a prat fall.

“That was our day’s entertainment,” he said. At this camp he suffered a case of shingles.

They were at Barth when the Russian army arrived.

"We were all expecting to be liberated soon, but did not know until one morning, May 1, 1945, we looked out at the guard towers and saw American MPs in the towers. The German soldiers had all left the camp during the night of April 30 and had turned the camp over to Col. Zemke, our commanding officer. . . Since it is taking such a long time to start evacuating us from here, quite a number of the soldiers are taking off on their own to meet our own soldiers near Rostock. . . Today, May 6, the Russians herded about 50 head of cattle in to the compound by the side of the barracks. Looks like we’ll have a lot of steaks."

Willard’s written account of those days note that the rapid advance of the Russian forces caused a quick evacuation of the camp by the Germans, who were too hard pressed for personnel to take the prisoners. There were 10,000 prisoners and only 45 left to guard them.

The town fell under Allied control May 1, but on the 3rd, as the first Russian forces arrived in town, a two-hour reign of terror ensued. Many citizens, fearing the Russians, commited suicide. The camp was practically destroyed except for the barracks and offices.

The main Russian army arrived and established martial law to put an end to the chaos.

“We had more fear of the Russian soldiers than we did of the German soldiers,” he said. “The Russians would pull a gun on us to get us to understand them. It didn’t work.”

Contact was made with Eisenhower’s headquarters and the POWs were ordered to stand fast and await planes, which would arrive and fly them out.

"So here we are, free men, yet confined as always to this camp and still “sweating it out.” If anything the days seem to pass even more slowly than before, because we are so near and yet so far away from home."

As the men wait for the day they will be taken away, explosions can be heard as the Army uses explosives to destroy everything of military value so nothing is left for the Russians.

The Russians provided plenty of cattle and hogs for the Americans to butcher along with truck loads of flour. The men were treated well under the Russians and Ratz eventually took a trip into Barth and saw one of the concentration camps.

The civilians appeared to be walking around in a daze, he reported, but relieved the war was over. The stores were unmolested and some were still operating.

"I also saw the concentration camp on the airdrome where the civilians who did not agree with the Nazi government were placed behind electrically charged barbed wire where they were left practically to their own fate, which for some of them, wasn’t so good, as quite a few of them died."

On May 11 Ratz joined in a looting party and came away with a few souvenirs. The commander informed the men that cargo planes were expected at any time. B-17s and C-47s began landing the afternoon of May 12 and the next day they were flown to France.

In France they would be given shots, clothing, and moved to various locations. His final diary entry states:

Boarded the Liberty Ship William Few and pulled out of the harbor June 6 at 2:30 p.m. "

Willard was awarded the Purple Heart, Bronze Star, POW Medal, and Good Conduct medal. He studied engineering at DeVry University when he came home and had a long career as a civilian purchasing agent with the U.S. Navy. During his retirement he lived in the Ozarks, but came home to Valley Falls in 2001.

The LinnWood resident will celebrate his 92nd birthday next Thursday.