Those P-51s were really friendly!
              Knowing Baseball Helped to Pass the Exam!
               BY SIDNEY H. WILLIG, Staten Island, N.Y.
     This is the navigator's account of the odyssey of the Jennie-O,
 a B-17 of the 96 BG, 338 Sqdn., out of Snetterton Heath for Nov. 21,
 1944.
     It was the 10th mission for the Lloyd Worden crew. Target was
 Mersburg in East Prussia.
     After being shot up badly on final approach, we found that ex-
 tensive flak damage made it impossible to release our bombs and
 maintain altitude, and so we headed for home.  On the way, the bom-
 bardier, Bonnie Bonekat, released the bombs by hand from about
 3,500 feet.
     As we approached Zwolle, with only one engine still functioning,
 we were so low that we were being fired on by hand weapons on the
 ground. At that point, friendly P-51s picked us up and escorted us
 to a crash landing near Appeldorn, in northern Holland.
     After landing, we split into two parties. Lt. Blackburn, Lt.
 Bonekat and Sgt. Haydl went with me, determined to make a total
 evasion effort.
     Our group, following escape instructions, scaled a fence that
 took us into a wooded area, where we hid until dark. Then we moved
 out and tried to get as far as possible before dawn.  We continued
 to hide for eight days.  At that time, I watched a farm house and
 when the farmer came out, we came out of the shrubbery. In my col-
 lege German, I said, "We are Americans. Can you help us?"
     He motioned for us to go up the ladder to the loft of his barn.
 Soon, two young men in civilian clothes came to see us, all smiles.
 But suddenly one put a pistol to my head and the other covered the
 rest of our group. They seemed to think we might be German plants
 because the Germans were rounding up escapees from Montgomery's
 debacle at Arnhem and trying to infiltrate the Underground.
     What followed would be a great movie script. Being an avid
 sports fan, I was able to convince them I really was an American. I
 had to give details of the pennant races, the World Series, famous
 sports figures. After we passed the exam, they put away their
 pistols and we were accepted.
     First they took us to a big barn full of Brits and Canadians who
 had escaped at Arnhem. They gave us winter outer uniforms minus in-
 signia and most important, black shoes. Then we were taken to our
 first safe houses in pairs.
     We stayed at a number of Dutch houses. The Boer farmers had food,
 including American corn which was dropped for Underground distribu-
 tion by British planes at night.
     We stayed for a long time with the Van de Munt family in Barne-
 veld. A grandson, Gerard, has provided me with family pictures and
 of us and our plane.
     In the 1970s, mv wife Eleanor and I went back to the area and
 gave a huge party for about 50 people at the Amersfoort Inn.
     Eventually Bonnie and I stayed with the Vedders, south of Barne-
 veld.  One evening, Mr. Vedder and his wife took me down a road on
 their property, and raising a circular chunk of earth like a sewer
 cover, disclosed a Dutch Jew they had been hiding there since friends
 brought him from Rotterdam. I spent several evenings with him because
 he spoke English well.
     One day Bonnie and I heard a Jeep pull up and tWO Canadian offi-
 cers shouted, ~Come on out, Yanks!" They ere gathering intelligence.
 The Germans were threatening to inundate the Dutch farmland with salt
 water. The four of us met two German soldiers a short distance away
 and took them unresisting prisoners. Just sat them on the front of
 the Jeep and moved out.
     Later Bonnie and I got a lift to Paris. When we landed there on
 April 18, 1945, after 148 days as MIA, we were told that we'd be de-
 briefed soon. We were billeted at the Hotel du Lafayette adjacent to
 what is now the "Old" opera house.
     At the U.S. post exchange, our souvenir German Occupation money
 was changed for francs. I went to the commercial telegraph office
 and sent Eleanor a telegram, the first word she had that I was safe
 since she got the MIA letter. The P-51 pilots had said that we were
 alive leaving the plane. She clung to that.
     I soon was put on a "C" ship back to the States.
     A few years a go, those of the crew still alive met at Worden's
 home at Lake Geneva, Wis., and recounted our stories.
     (The story of how the Jennie-O was lost on the Mersberg mission
 is described in "Snetterto Falcons," the history of the 96BG,
 page 204.)
 U.S. Air Forces Escape/Ecvasion Society Communications March 1, 1998
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