Issue 15.13
The military abbreviates or Acronyms just about everything so this is called MIA. As my crew and I were flying our bombing missions over Germany, when one of the other crews was shot down, and unless we saw the bomber blow up and could confirm that all of the crewmen were killed, then they were listed as MIA.
When our crew was flying some of our later missions, when we were at a mission briefing, the intelligence officer took his turn in front of the assembled men of the three Squadrons that were flying that day. He said “Some of our missions are to the far reaches of your range and like this mission is for the request and benefit of the Soviet army. That means that if your aircraft is in trouble and you know that you can not make it back to base in England, then this is your priority. First, try to make it to a field in liberated France or Belgium or The Netherlands, if that is out of the question. Then try to make it to neutral Sweden or Switzerland. Only as a last resort will you go the shorter distance east and land in Soviet occupied territory.” We all thought that was something to think about.
We wondered the reason for that intelligence briefing. We were often told that if we were shot down in Germany and if we were able, we were to avoid crowds of German civilians because these people are very angry about their cities being destroyed and the have killed many downed flyers. If we found ourselves on the ground in occupied Denmark or The Netherlands you would have some chance of avoiding capture if you could enlist the aid of these anti German civilians. We would have almost no chance of evading capture and internment if we were down in Germany. If a mob of civilians caught us, we had a good chance of being pitch forked to death. If we would be caught by the German army or the Luftwaffe we would have a good chance of surviving because they mostly observe the rules of the Geneva Convention.
However if the SS takes us, these people are less apt to go by the rules of warfare. In all fairness, the Americans and the British do not observe these rules completely. We had one crew that got back to our base after they crash landed right on the front lines. Part of the crew members made it back to our Polebrook base but it took them about two weeks. They told how one American officer ordered two of his men to take this German prisoner back to Battalion Headquarters (about one mile) and be back in fifteen minutes. That was one way to order his execution. The Soviet Union was made up of a number of concurred countries so many of those people sided with Hitler to gain independence. The Cossacks openly went this direction and fought against the USSR. At the end of the war, many different groups were repatriated to their own country. The Cossacks didn’t want to go back because they knew what would be waiting for them. All of these officers were shot and the enlisted men were all sent to work Gulags for the rest of their lives. The Americans knew this so some of these Cossacks were not returned. This made Stalin mad so some of the Americans that were in Soviet hands were never returned to the US. After the end of WW 2 the US listed eleven thousand members of the Eighth Air Force (which my crew was a part of) as missing in action. I never did find out what they did with that figure because all of a sudden they did not list that figure and they didn’t add that to the number of Eighth Air Force flyers Killed in Action.