A Downed Navigator Flees for His Life

By Andrew Carroll | HistoryNet  | 0 comments  |  Print This Post  |  Email This Post

Since I was fifteen I have wanted to make a parachute jump, and were it not for the circumstances under which this one was made I think I would have enjoyed it.

When I was certain the chute was open, I looked up and saw the white silk billowing and swaying in the wind. It was very quiet and you have no sensation of falling until you near the ground—just floating in space. My face and right hand had been burned quite badly and hurt like the very devil. A thousand thoughts ran through my head as I was falling. It took about ten minutes before I hit the ground so I did have time to think. First of all I wondered what you would think not hearing from me for a long time—I was quite certain I would be captured by the Germans and taken to a prison camp in Germany.

I thought then that I had been very seriously burned, but miraculously I will have only some very small scars on my face, and they will disappear in a year….

When I could distinguish objects on the ground I began to think of landing—I didn’t want to break a leg because then all chance for escape would be gone. As it was I might possibly hide in the hills which were all around. I could see I would hit the ground in a green valley and I could see hundreds of people looking up at me.
When I was high in the air I could see one other parachute from our plane—only one—that meant eight had died. I had hoped the other man and I myself would land together but he was two or three miles beyond me—I learned later, in German hands! When I hit the ground I relaxed and rolled, and when I stood up found I was unhurt except for my burns.

A parachutist is always a sensation, but that is especially true in this country where I fell. People—at least two-hundred—quickly gathered around me to see the strange sight. Of course I didn’t know if they were friendly, but I soon learned they were….

About that time a young fellow rode up on a bicycle and spoke to me in broken English! He had lived in America for eleven years before coming here. He told me I must hurry. The Germans were coming for me, and that he would take me to a Partisan who would hide me from them. I had to trust him, so we both rode bicycles along a road for 4 kilometers to another little village….

When we arrived at the village I met the Partisan (named Korelli) and his wife—who also had lived in America and could speak a little English—who were to become my friends, and who were later to sacrifice much to save my life, or at any rate to save me from a prison camp. They gave me wine and let me rest a few minutes, and then Korelli said I must go with him up into the hills because the Germans would soon be there.

My burns hurt like hell, and I knew if the Germans got me I would at least have a doctor, but by then I was damned determined not to be captured whatever the cost. I have always said I’d hate to be captured—a matter of pride. I guess I’d just do about anything to prevent it.

The letter ends abruptly for reasons that are not known. Fowler eventually made his way to safety and returned to his squadron on July 4, 1944. He survived the war and came home with no additional injuries. Fowler’s children did not find the dramatic letters their father wrote from behind enemy lines until after his death at age fifty-eight in 1979.

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