(Second in a series on Daddy’s POW experience.)

My dad, J. Fred Eden III, joined the US Army Air Force in April of 1942 shortly after World War II began and flew with Eighth Air Force, 445 Bomb Group as a navigator on a B-24 Liberator.

His plane was hit by an anti-aircraft shell— ack-ack, Daddy called it — and he had to bail out. He ended up in Stalag Luft Ein in Barth, Germany, and spent 15 months there. 

His name is listed in the book Behind Barbed Wire  by Morris J. Roy. 

The dedication to the copy Daddy gave to his mother. Apparently a year after his return.

Daddy never talked about his war experience or the POW months very much, so my knowledge of all that is a bit sketchy, especially the time frame. But I know the general outlines of the story. 

I remember often how his hairline would rise as he watched episodes of “Hogan’s Heroes” or movies with scenes of the bombers similar to his… he laughed at the antics of the prisoners in Hogan’s group, and assured us that it was nothing like that in reality. He didn’t say much else. 

After Daddy graduated from Mercer University in Macon, he worked in the railroad shop there. When the war broke out, he signed up with the Navy as a pilot, but that was short-lived. He was in the Navy flight school from July of 1941 through January of 1942. The story he told was that he accidentally lined up to land on a taxiway instead of the runway during an instructional flight. His instructor said, “Son, we could teach you to fly, but we just don’t have time!” 

The demands of the war were intense. 

Daddy said when he got processed out of the Navy, he walked down the street directly to the Army Air Force recruiters’ office and said he wanted to sign up for whatever they needed, so he got sent to navigator school in B-17s, the famous Flying Fortress.

But when he got assigned to a duty squadron in England, they put him in a B-24. He went to England in October of 1943.

The process of navigation was the same for both aircraft, and he also served as the bombardier, looking through a sight and releasing the load of bombs at the right time to strike the target. His missions were strikes on the ball-bearing plants deep in Germany, a strategic mission to hinder production of the tanks being used in Hitler’s invasions of neighboring countries.

After only a few missions, Dad’s plane was hit, which was apparently fairly common, judging from the large number of airmen in his camp –  the Luft refers to airmen.

He said that his parachute opened, he looked up at the plane, and it exploded. I remember well this part of the story, as he always related with great feeling that at that moment, looking at the burning plane he had left mere seconds ago, he was convinced that God had saved him for some purpose, and he resolved to find that purpose and dedicate himself to it. 

That was the arc of his life! 

The son and grandson of Baptist ministers who taught and worked at Mercer, he realized that his pulpit would be a weekly newspaper rather than a church. He spent his life in pursuit of that dedication. 

The dedication at the beginning of the book.