Carl Ward had finished 3 years of High School when he enlisted in the Air Corps in November 1942. Trained as a gunner, he was sent overseas and assigned to the 92nd Bomb Group / 407th Bomb Squadron. Usually serving as a Tail Gunner, he had changed places and was in the Right Waist Gunner position on board B-17 # 42-30726 on the fateful 14 October 1943 mission to Schweinfurt, Germany. As told by him to his daughter Ruth Ann, he landed by parachute in a field in Germany and was about to be shot by the Germans, as had just been Tail Gunner S/Sgt William Woodward. Carl Ward’s life was saved when a courageous German woman begged the German soldiers not to shoot him. Ward was thus taken prisoner and first sent to Stalag Luft 3 in Sagan, Poland. As that was a camp reserved mostly for officers, he was later transferred to Stalag XVIIB near Krems, Austria, where he spent a year and a half in Barrack 17A there. Prisoner of War (POW).