BIO
Name: Earl “Bo” ClineAge: 98Branch of military: U.S. Army Air CorpsYears of service: 1943-1945
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On Dec. 23, 1944, Earl "Bo" Cline, second lieutenant in the U.S. Army Air Corps, was wounded and captured into a German prison camp.
It was during the Battle of the Bulge, the last major German offensive campaign on the Western Front during World War II. After being held up by inclement weather for several days, Cline recalls that his group's mission was to hit up a German village in Ahrweiler.
They were to pick up an escort, but after they'd changed their initial point, the escort didn't show. He remembers his tail gunner motioning to what he thought was their escort, but it turned out to be fighter planes.
Their plane was hit.
Cline was a bombardier navigator in 391st bomb group 574 squad, Ninth Air Force, and was up in the nose when a shell shot right between his pilot and co-pilot and right through his Plexiglas wall before they noticed their engine was on fire. He was called out of the nose, and his group fell out of formation.
Cline, who now lives in Chattanooga, remembers being the last one out and diving out of the bombardier door.
"I'm Catholic, so I had a rosary in one hand and a [parachute] in the other," Cline, 98, said. "It was a really startling thing. [There was] so much confusion and noise, and then suddenly it was all quiet. The plane was going one way, while I was floating down about maybe 1,500 feet."
While diving down, he was searching for a place to run to and decided on a railroad track with some woods alongside it.
"Once I landed, I started to get out my chute. I was pretty scared, pretty nervous. What's next, you know? Here I am behind enemy lines, all by myself."
Two German soldiers confronted him as soon as he landed. They didn't speak English, and he didn't speak German, so they motioned for him to follow them.
"They pointed down the railroad tracks, so I started walking ahead of them," Cline said. "That was one of my scariest moments. I heard the click, and I thought they were getting ready to shoot me. I turned around and saw he was just taking the clip out of the gun, which was a big relief."
After Cline was captured, he was transferred to many locations before arriving at the final prison camp three weeks later. He described it as a pretty miserable place where he was given only black bread, soup and cheese or cabbage to eat. Prisoners slept on wood shelves with mattresses that felt like burlap. They each got one blanket, and would pair up so they could sleep under two blankets. They were always hungry and always cold.
Prisoners and soldiers were forced to stand out for hours on the compound every day in the cold until all 3,000 of them were accounted for. This went on for seven months.
"Once we were freed, we immediately had clean clothes, plenty of food, and a path home," Cline said. "We were rehabilitated and discharged. After that, for me, the war was over."
Years after they were freed, Cline and his 16 fellow prisoners planned vacations together every year for 25 years. Cline said that because of everything they went through together, their bonds were closer than family. He is the only one alive out of the 17.
"Veterans from World War II are just about to disappear," he says. "Most of us are in our mid-90s now, unless they went to war at 17. Time is running out for veterans."
Natalia Perez can be reached at nperez@southern.edu.