World War II veteran who turns 103 on Memorial Day recalls his months as POW in Germany

George Stowell Burson had brisket and potato salad for lunch last week. It was a far cry from the two loaves of bread per week that he and 19 other officers had to share as prisoners of war in Germany in World War II.

Burson, who turns 103 years old on Memorial Day, said he was in charge of cutting the loaf for all the men to share. "I was the one who could slice it into the thinnest pieces," he said.

The retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel now lives at Brookdale Northwest Hills, a senior living center in Austin. He spoke Wednesday about his memories of being shot down while flying over Germany in World War II and later serving in the Korean War. He received the Purple Heart and the Distinguished Flying Cross for his service.

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Burson, who grew up in Fillmore, Calif., on his parents' citrus ranch, enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Forces in 1942. By that time, he said, he was married and putting out fires for the U.S. Forest Service.

On Sept. 12, 1944, Burson was a co-pilot in a B-17 bomber in the 359th Bombardment Squadron headed to Germany from England, he said. It was his third mission, and the plane was hit in the tail area by either a cannon or a rocket near Berlin.

"The pilot said we better bail out," Burson said. "I put both feet in the navigator's back and pushed him out, and I went out with him, and the airplane blew up."

The pilot and one other crew member died in the explosion, Burson said. When he landed with his parachute in a field near the town of Klein-Mutz, about 30 miles north of Berlin, the only injury he had was a sprained ankle.

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A man pulled up in a horse-drawn cart and spoke to him, Burson said. He said he could understand him because he studied German in high school and college. The cart driver led Burson and the plane's navigator to a police officer, who later took them to a pub, Burson said.

"My three crew members from the airplane were already there up against a back wall drinking beer with everybody else," he said.

Burson said he was later interrogated but gave only his name, rank and serial number. The Germans already knew the bases where he had trained in the United States, he said. After the interrogation, he was taken by train to a POW camp for officers called Stalag Luft I in Barth, a German town by the Baltic Sea.

He lived with 19 other men in a room with bunk beds in wooden barracks at the camp, he said. For the first few weeks, the soldiers got packages from the Red Cross that included a can of Spam and a chocolate bar. The Germans drove nails through the cans of Spam so the prisoners had to eat it quickly before it spoiled and couldn't save it to use in an escape attempt, he said. But then the aid packages stopped, he said.

The only other food the Germans provided besides bread was rutabagas, root vegetables that the prisoners ate raw because they were not able to cook them, Burson said.

To pass the time, the men made cards out of cardboard or walked around the camp. They also gathered snow and boiled it, Burson said.

"The Germans were always sneaking underneath the barracks to listen to our conversations, so we poured the boiling water down on them until the Germans shot at us and we stopped," he said.

Once a week, the British prisoners, who were held in different barracks, passed a piece of paper over a wall with news of the war, Burson said. The British knew what was going on because they had made a radio and hidden it from the Germans, he said.

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The Russians liberated the camp in May 1945 after the Germans "slipped away" one night, Burson said.

"We were happy to see them — I'll put it that way," he said.

By that time, Burson had been at the camp for nine months and weighed about 90 pounds, he said. When he was captured, he had weighed about 150 pounds.

The freed prisoners were flown in B-17s to Camp Lucky Strike in France to recover, Burson said. It was there that General Dwight D. Eisenhower awarded him a Purple Heart, he said.

After Burson was shipped back to the U.S., he finished a degree in forestry at Oregon State University and worked at the Oregon State Forestry Department. In 1948, he returned to the Air Force and flew 50 missions in the Korean War in an F-84, a fighter-bomber jet.

After the Korean War, Burson trained pilots and flew transport planes at U.S. Air Force bases all over the world, he said. Air Force officials told him in 1966 that he could get promoted to colonel if he oversaw a unit flying F-105 jets in the Vietnam War, Burson said.

"I didn't want to do that again," he said. So he retired.

Burson then went back to college, got a teaching certificate and taught math at a middle school in San Antonio for 12 years until 1980, he said. When he retired, he and his wife, Becky, flew around the country in his Piper Comanche single-engine plane. His wife died in 2007. The couple have four children, including his daughter Mary Jane Burson, who lives in Austin.

When asked why he thought he had lived so long, Burson said with a laugh, "I'll be damned if I know." But he also said he never drank much and never inhaled smoke when he puffed on cigars.

His sight is now limited due to macular degeneration, and he uses a scooter because he broke his leg a few years ago. If he could have lived his life differently, he said, "I would just work for the forest service."

"I wouldn't go to war."

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: World War II veteran remembers being POW in Germany for 9 months