I'm glad I'm alive - Music has been his passion and career, but in 1944, he was a prisoner of war in Germany

KERNERSVILLE -- On Aug. 6, 1944, John Anderson was on a bombing mission near Berlin when German anti-aircraft fire hit his B-17. The plane went into a spin. For a time, the centrifugal force was so strong that Anderson couldn't move, much less make his way toward the door in the tail to escape.

He thought he was a dead man.

Instead, his fate was to become a prisoner of war.

Today, Anderson is 86. Music is a passion, and before being drafted in early 1943, he com-

pleted a degree at the Conservatory of Music in Kansas City, Mo. After being discharged on Oct. 11, 1945, he received a master's degree and embarked on a career that began as the assistant band director at the University of Georgia and closed as chairman of fine arts at Georgia's Columbus College, now Columbus State University. Along the way, he earned a doctorate and met and married his wife, Hazel. They had six children. Their third child, Lezah Arney, lives in Kernersville, which is how they ended up in Kernersville.

In 1944, Anderson was a 21-year-old Army Air Corps tech sergeant serving as the radio man in the 388 Bomb Group, 561 Squadron. In June, on his third mission, he had flown in support of the D-Day Invasion. The Aug. 6 mission out of England to bomb a tank factory was the crew's 24th. The flak was heavy.

"You could feel the plane get hit," Anderson said. "I looked up and suddenly the front of the bomb bay was in flames. I was reaching for the fire extinguisher when the order came to bail out."

Because of the fire, he started toward the tail. Not seeing the ball-turret gunner climbing up from below, Anderson tripped over him and went sprawling. By the time they both got up, the plane had gone into a spin.

"You couldn't move," Anderson said. "We decided this is it. After a while -- it seemed like a lifetime -- the force is gone. Relief comes."

To this day, he has no idea what stopped the spin.

"The fact that we came out of the spin was sort of a miracle," Anderson said.

Once he reached the door, he hesitated because it looked as if he might be thrown into the tail. In that moment of hesitation, the door ripped off and he shot out of the

plane. Falling backside down, he could see his boots and socks fly off. Spinning, he knew he had to do what he could to control the spin before opening his parachute.

Once he stabilized a bit, he counted to 10 three times before pulling the rip cord. When he did, he had a scare: "It came off in my hand -- nobody ever told me that."

The parachute opened. He landed in a field. First came a farmer armed with a pitchfork, then a soldier, finally a local policeman. He wasn't afraid, he said. "I'm glad I'm alive."

The next day found him -- still barefoot -- in a German jail with a couple of other members of the crew. Eventually, they would learn that all nine men on the plane made it to the ground alive and that their plane was one of six shot down.

Anderson eventually ended up in Stalag Luft IV. The food was minimal -- no breakfast, soup with some vegetables and, rarely, a scrap of meat for lunch, potatoes for dinner. Red Cross boxes helped a bit. Anderson says he knows it sounds odd to say this, but he found parts of the experience really satisfying. He became the leader of the camp choir, and so many fellow prisoners wanted to sing that he started a glee club, too.

Paper was at a premium, and he would write down music on the back of Chesterfield cigarette wrappers. When he came into possession of two hymnals, he considered them real treasures. After the Germans evacuated the camp because of the Russian advance, he had to abandon them in a barn during a forced march because they became too heavy to carry.

By then, it was the winter of 1945 -- "the wind was so strong you could almost lean into it and it would hold you up" -- and, when his feet froze, he was no longer able to march and was put on a train.

By the time American forces liberated him from another POW camp at 8:37 a.m. on April 16, he had dysentery and weighed about 100 pounds, down from the 130 he weighed before being shot down. He still vividly remembers the scent of the loaf of white bread that they gave each of the liberated prisoners.

"The smell of that bread was unbelievable," he said. "I ate it immediately."

kunderwood@wsjournal.com
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