Ed Wallace, B17G Pilot, 94th Bomb Group, 332 Squadron

Ed Wallace was born in June 1920 in Philadelphia, PA, and moved

to North Carolina with his parents in 1935. He graduated from high
school in 1939, enlisted in the Army Air Force in 1941, and was
sent to Morrison Field, Florida. From there he was sent to Australia
for Cadet Training, spending time in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane,
and Darwin before being shipped to Port Moresby, New Guinea.
He was eventually recalled to the US for pilot training:
Preflight training in San Antonio, TX
Basic training in Waco, TX
Advanced training in Lubbock, TX
B-17 training in Quero, TX
Following graduation from flight training, during which his two best friends were killed in
training crashes, Ed ferried a B-17 from Bangor, Maine, to Scotland and was then
stationed with the 94th Bomb Group in Bury St. Edmunds, England.
Throughout this training, Ed never received a pass to go home, so he mailed a letter to
his sweetheart, Irene, back home in Kenly, NC. He included a small ring and asked her
to marry him. Irene accepted the proposal and had her sister put the ring on her finger.
It would be 4 years before they saw each other again.

Ed flew 15 bombing missions over Germany before being shot down. He was captured
and spent 14 months as a POW.
• The Final Mission
Ed and his crew were not supposed to fly that day and were sent up as a
substitute for another B-17. They were assigned to fly “tail end Charlie”, the
last plane in formation. This position was normally assigned to the least
experienced crew and they shouldn’t have been back there. Before reaching
their target the formation was attacked by German fighters and their plane
was hit and began losing power. They salvoed the bombs and dropped out of
formation. Since there was no fighter cover, they decided to head for
Switzerland and safety.
Before they could make it, their plane was attacked by a lone FW-190 and
caught fire. The crew bailed out early, before receiving the emergency bailout
alarm, leaving the two pilots on board.
With the plane on fire, Ed was at the hatch ready to jump when he
remembered that he’d left his cigarettes back in the cockpit. He went back up
and grabbed the pack of smokes because he figured he wouldn’t have any
where he was headed. They left the burning plane, opened their chutes, and
landed in several feet of snow at the foot of the Alps. After landing, they
buried their chutes and began walking along railroad tracks, hoping to make it
into Switzerland.
• Captured
After walking in the snow for about ½ hour, a train came along and stopped.
German troops poured out and captured them. They were transferred to a
nearby German fort and put into a cell.
While in the cell, Ed was given black bread so hard and nasty he couldn’t eat
it. Not wanting to offend his captors, he hid the bread under his mattress.
Ed Wallace, B17G Pilot, 94th Bomb Group, 332 Squadron

Shortly after being put in the cell, the pilot who had shot down his plane
stopped by, resplendent in his German pilot’s uniform. Neither could speak
the other’s language, and he told Ed through an interpreter, “For you the war
is over.” The he gave him a loaf of black bread and left.
Shortly after his capture, Ed was moved from the fort to Frankfurt, Germany,
where he was held five days. There he was interrogated and kept in a cell
that was alternately freezing cold and burning hot. One night, the prisoners
were moved to an air raid shelter when the British conducted a night time
bombing raid. Throughout the raid, all but one of the prisoners knelt and
prayed that they would not be killed. The one who did not, stood up and
cursed God and everyone else. After the raid was over and the lights came
on, that one man was found dead, killed by a steel support beam dislodged by
the bombing.
After five days, the prisoners were marched through Frankfort to a train
station. Along the way city residents who had gathered on the bridges they
walked under showered them with garbage and sewage. They were put on a
train and sent to Stalag Luft III, where Ed would spend the next 11 months.
One day in December, 1944, due to the advancing Russian armies, the
prisoners were told to get their belongings together and get ready to leave.
They marched through 10” of snow all night and all the next day, throwing
their belongings away as they got too weak to carry them. During the rest of
the march the prisoners did stay one night in a glass factory where the ovens
kept them warm. Other nights they were housed in barns and on farms, until
they were finally put on a train. After two days on the train, packed so tightly
in boxcars that they could not sit down, they arrived at another POW camp
near Moosburg, Poland. This camp was already full, so most of the arriving
prisoners were assigned to tents and rations were poor.
After 3 months in Moosburg, they knew from their clandestine radio that the
battle between US and German troops was getting close. Shortly before the
camp was liberated, retreating German troops arrived at the camp with the
intention of executing prisoners. The camp guards were members of the
German home defense force, the Wermacht, which was made up mostly of
men too old to fight in the regular army. These men refused to let the regular
army harm the prisoners and they eventually continued their retreat.
The prisoners could hear the fighting, first cannon fire in the distance and then
small arms fire as the fighting got closer. One day, Ed saw the American flag
hoisted to the top of a smokestack in Moosburg. To this day, he says that
was the happiest day of his life, and the lack of respect shown to our flag
today still angers him. Not long after this, an American tank from Patton’s
army broke down the camp gates, and POWs climbed all over the tank.
There were 20,000 to 30,000 American, British, and Russian POWs in the
camp when it was liberated. The Russians were treated much worse than the
American and British prisoners.
After a few days in the camp, Ed and the other American prisoners were flown
to Leharvre, France, to Camp Lucky Strike, for processing back to the States.
Ed Wallace, B17G Pilot, 94th Bomb Group, 332 Squadron

The ex-prisoners were told not to leave camp and take a chance of missing
the trip back to the states when their number was called. Many ignored this,
and Ed went into Paris for one night, sleeping in the street.
Ed was eventually put on a troop transport for the trip back to the States. His
first sight of America was the Statue of Liberty, and then the New York
skyline.
To this day, he can’t remember how he made it from New York back to his
home in North Carolina. There was no phone at the farm so he just showed
up on the front porch unannounced.
Ed had been gone more than 4 years – from May, 1941, until his return in
1945, without leave. Soon after his return, Ed and Irene were married and
are now celebrating their 67th year of marriage.

Submitted by Bill Wallace, Ed’s proud son