War memories vivid for Copperfield man, service buddies

Howard Pauling survived plane crash in Europe

ZEN T.C. ZHENG, HOUSTON CHRONICLE Published 5:30 am, Tuesday, May 24, 2011



Faded black-and-white photographs, framed military medals, an out-of-print memoir and scrapbooks of decades of tattered newspaper clippings were scattered on Howard Pauling's chess table at his home in Copperfield.



The 89-year-old thumbed through memorabilia and smiled and nodded at times during the conversation with his buddies James Prusa, 88, and Henry McCowan , 90.



In 1943-44, the three were part of the 10-member crew of the B-17 bomber Big Stoop based at a U.S. Air Force base in Rattlesden, England. Piloted by Pauling, that Flying Fortress bomber flew 23 missions to German-occupied territories in Europe during World War II.

The Big Stoop crew belonged to the 708th Bomb Squadron of the 447th Bomb Group of the U.S. 8th Air Force. Pauling, who headed the crew, was a lieutenant while Prusa and McCowan were gunners and sergeants.



On April 11, 1944, the Pauling crew was flying a mission over Stettin, Poland. At 30,000 feet, several German antiaircraft shells burst near the bomber, destroying two of its four engines. Pauling attempted to steer the bomber north to Sweden, a neutral territory, but the loss of engine power forced a crash landing in a soybean field in Ibsker on the east coast of the Baltic island of Bornholm in Denmark.



The 10 men immediately split in pairs. Pauling and five others succeeded in escaping, but Prusa and McCowan and another pair were captured by German soldiers.



In an account prepared in 1987 for a war museum project in Denmark, Pauling detailed his exodus from Bornholm. With the help of Danish villagers, he and fellow escapees secured a boat to flee the island. The boat was spotted and picked up by a Swedish steamship. The escapees were brought to Sweden and transferred to a U.S. Air Force base in England.

Prusa and McCowan were bunk buddies in prison and maintained their connection throughout their life, but the rest of the crew lost contact with one another.



"They thought we had all died after we were captured," said Prusa.



Finding lost friends



Two decades after the war, Prusa began looking for his crew.

"It was a great friendship that none of us would forget," he said.

As a golf course superintendent traveling the country, he would look up the names of his flight crew in a phone book at each hotel where he stayed during business trips and make calls.

In 1969, Prusa sent a letter for Pauling to an Allenwood, Pa., address where Pauling had lived before moving to El Paso.



The residents of the house were on vacation, and a neighbor was picking up mail for them. The neighbor, who knew Pauling, found Prusa's letter and forwarded it to Pauling in El Paso, thus reconnecting the two old friends.

Through phone calls and letters that included self-addressed stamped envelopes and postcards to those who may have information, Prusa's perseverance resulted in finding eight members of the crew.



In 1985, for the first time since the crash landing, seven of the eight met at a reunion in Wichita, Kan., that was sponsored by the Boeing Co. and the Eighth Air Force Association.

"When we first got together, we didn't recognize each other, but the memories came back. It was emotional," Prusa said.



An eighth crew member was unable to attend the reunion due to a stroke, Prusa said. Years later he found the ninth member and the widow of the 10th.

A string of reunions and exchanges of letters and cards have followed.

Savoring memories



Since the 1985 reunion, Prusa, who settled in Vermilion, Ohio, and McCowan, a retired chemical operator living in the neighboring city of Avon Lake, have visited Pauling in Texas several times.



Pauling, who retired from active duty in 1973, had lived in El Paso working as a real estate agent before moving to Copperfield. In May, he again invited Prusa and McCowan to spend a few days at his home after the two men attended an ex-prisoners-of-war reunion in San Antonio.



"We had planned this for a long time," said Pauling's daughter Vicki Hyde. "Dad was all excited about seeing his buddies again."



As the three men sat around the table, it was story time.

Prusa said of Pauling, "He was a real good pilot, a great guy, absolutely."

Observing the Geneva Convention, Germans allowed Red Cross representatives monthly visits to the prison camp, where inmates anxiously waited for a Red Cross parcel containing cigarettes, crackers and vitamin-fortified chocolate bars, McCowan recalled. One of the exciting moments was when Red Cross brought toilet paper, he said.



Prusa remembered some "clever" American prisoners who made crystal sets - a popular early version of radio receivers - from scratch using materials found in the camp to tune to British Broadcasting Corp. programs. That was how news about the war was spread among inmates.

The prisoners were forced to walk 286 miles for 19 days in the bitter winter snow from Krems to Braunaus in Austria to evade Russian and American forces. While Prusa and McCowan had shoes, many others didn't, they said.



Prusa and McCowan said they seldom share POW stories.

"You can't talk to people who were not prisoners of war. They can't comprehend, not even our own families," Prusa said. "Those were not the happiest days in our life."



Since the crash landing, Pauling has constantly relived the experience of flying a B-17 in his mind, Hyde said. In March, through the Collings Foundation, she arranged for him to board a Flying Fortress on a 20-minute flight from Tomball to Pearland. After the aircraft landed, Pauling was helped to get in the pilot seat.



"Very exciting. It brought back old memories," he said, adding that sitting in the pilot seat "was the best part."



Despite the harsh war experience, love blossomed in the three men's lives after they returned.

In May 1944, Pauling married Jean Pauling, whom he was engaged to before he enlisted. Hyde said her mother was the first to report to Pauling's parents that he was alive after the crash landing from a Swedish reporter's news story that was reprinted in an Allenwood newspaper.

After two of his wives died, McCowan married Edna McCowan.



A lead singer of a barbershop quartet that performed at weddings, McCowan said he was too distraught to sing after his second wife died. But 30 years later, he was persuaded by a neighbor to join The Golden Crescent Chorus, the Lorain Chapter of the Barbershop Harmony Society, and has been with the group since.



Prusa, who lost his wife of 51 years in 1998, isn't considering marrying again. "It's only been 13 years," he said. "It's too soon. Give me a chance!"

[email protected]