Floating down into Nazi gunfire, 2000 feet above the German town of Goeppingen, Bremen resident and Army Air Force Captain Don Demmert wasn’t thinking of his mother, his brother fighting in Italy, or the insurance job he left behind in Orange, New Jersey.
“I was thinking if I made it down I’ll get a promotion and more money,” Demmert said with a laugh at his lakeside Bremen home.
Demmert, 87, recently received the distinguished French Legion of Honor for his part in liberating France from Nazi Germany. The airman flew numerous stealth missions over France to drop vital supplies to the French Resistance. His wartime bravery was honored at a presentation from the French embassy June 5 in Williamsburg, Va.
On July 21, 1944, Demmert was deep into his ninth mission over Germany when his B-17 bomber took a direct hit.
“Gunfire struck our number one engine and I saw the wing turning iridescent like an empty tea kettle burning on the stove. It was literally melting before my eyes so I gave the call to bail out,” he said.
Demmert was one of the lucky few who escaped the doomed bomber, an escape complicated by inexperience and Army fiscal politics.
“Officers never practiced bail outs because of the amount of money invested in them. So this was unrehearsed. The pilot, who might have saved my life, landed in a tree and forgot to cross his legs. He was skewered,” Demmert said.
Captured immediately after his parachute hit the ground, hostile German nationals greeted Demmert saying “for you the war is over.” Concerned about a radio operator who had taken a chunk of shrapnel to his leg, Demmert used his rudimentary German speaking skills to request medical aid from the unsympathetic mob.
“I had taken a German class in high school but didn’t do well because my grandmother did my homework for me. She did well. However, I knew enough to ask for help,” he said.
The downed Americans were immediately rounded up and taken by flatbed trailer to an interrogation center in Frankfurt. After a brief stint in solitary confinement, Demmert was transferred to Stalag Luft 1 prison camp in Barth where he would spend the next 10 months of his life.
“The Germans operated their POW camps under the rules of the Geneva Convention,” he said. “Officers were not allowed to be conscripted for work. So our biggest problem was the tedium. We couldn’t work.”
While the relative comfort was a far cry from the hard labor regular GI’s toiled through, life wasn’t pleasant at Stalag. The cramped quarters and constant stench of “honey pots,” latrines, were burned into his permanent memory along with a lingering peripheral neuropathy from the steady diet of wartime cuisine.
“After a while we stopped looking at what we were eating,” he said. “The only meal they served was this barley type glop that would start moving after they set it down. It was the weevils and insects for protein. I was down about 100 pounds.”
Stalag 1 offered classes in accounting, staged special theater acts, and allowed Demmert to form a swing quintet to satisfy his passion for music. As a member of various dance bands and an accomplished string bass player before the war, this small nod to culture afforded Demmert the opportunity to provide a bit of serenity for his fellow prisoners proving he said, that “wonderful times” can be found under the most adverse of conditions.
“They would drag these people in who were a bloody mess. The music was a pick me up and I was proud of it,” he said.
The Russians liberated the Stalag 1 prison on May 1, 1945, a greeting both welcomed and feared by POWS and ordinary Germans alike.
“They were full of vodka. Many of them were very Mongolian with high leather fur coats and big Cossack hats. The German townsfolk literally hid in their houses. These were dangerous men,” he said.
After a short stay in a French rehabilitation center and “a little French money,” Demmert made his way to newly liberated Paris where his eyes were opened to the tremendous relief Europe was experiencing.
“Somebody found a mimeograph machine and we started cranking out passes,” he said. “Of course, being commissioned officers, I could sign yours, you could sign mine and nobody would know the difference. Paris was full of elation and wild. They loved Americans but in a way resented us, too. We were suddenly the haves and they were the have nots.”
Demmert initially pursued the application process for the medal as a tribute to his fallen B-17 pilot, George Boudrey, but was told the honor was only available to living veterans. After proving through official military flight logs that his wartime missions included aid to France, a prerequisite, his application was finally accepted. Upon getting the phone call at his winter home in Williamsburg, Va., Demmert was elated and relieved. The ceremony also provided a lesson into the respective craftsmanship of American and French medallion making.
“The woman from the embassy whispered to me that the American medals are made much better,” he said.
Demmert spent his post war years working in New Jersey for the Monroe Calculating Machine Company. Married with three sons, Demmert and his wife Hildagard recently celebrated 52 years of marriage. He began vacationing in Maine 50 years ago eventually buying his piece of “paradise” on Pemaquid lake where he and Hildagard pursue master gardening.
The bond Demmert felt with his fellow Stalag prisoners turned into a lifetime of friendships and eventually a full scale reunion in 1990. Curiously, he adds, many of his fellow POWs married what he calls women of a “certain personality” that must be “conducive to being married to a former prisoner of war.”
“There must have been some commonality in our training and background because everyone, especially the wives, got on so well. We all picked highly intelligent women who were good decision makers,” he said.
Time and age has reduced the remaining survivors to a handful but Demmert carries on with his mission to honor his fallen friends. Of the 16 million Americans who served in World War II, only approximately 2 million remain, and are dying at the rate of 1000 a day. After returning from a recent tour of European war camps, Demmert still sees a world fraught with problems.
” We have to remember these lessons because evil takes many shapes. Tyranny is never easy to spot. Our story is one that shouldn’t have to be told again, ” he said.
