Retired real estate businessman William T. Follis Jr. graduated Bellingham High School in June 1942, then enrolled at Washington State College, in Pullman. Excerpts from his World War II recollection follow ...
Because of the wartime conditions and the uncertainty of if and when I might be drafted, I decided to enlist instead. I was confined to the college infirmary and had to sneak out a window, hitchhike a ride to Geiger Field near Spokane, and enlist in the U.S. Army Air Corps.
In May of 1944 I received my wings as a bombardier and second lieutenant's commission. Our crew was assigned to the Pyote Army Air Base near Pecos, Texas, for training on B-17 Flying Fortresses.
Our bomber crew went overseas in a convoy between New York and Liverpool, England. Our first mission was to Nuremberg, Germany, on Sept. 8.
On Sept. 10 and Sept. 12 our target was an ordinance depot on an island in the Elbe River at Magdeburg, about 75 miles west of Berlin. Formations of heavy bomber and fighter groups assembled over the English Channel in the early morning of Sept. 12.
It was estimated there were 1,800 heavy bombers accompanied by 1,000 fighter escorts, which formed one of the longest warplane streams over Europe during WWII. We arrived at our target over Magdeburg about 11:30 a.m.
There was heavy flak from anti-aircraft gunfire on the ground. From the nose of our B-17, I observed the aircraft immediately ahead of ours getting a direct hit and exploding in midair, with no chance of any crew members surviving. Other nearby planes in our formation received various degrees of damage.
We had just released our bomb load and the pilot had made the turn for the return to our base when we were attacked from the rear by German Focke-Wulf 190s. Our tail gunner was killed on the first pass by the enemy fighters. After the second pass, our plane was on fire in four places.
The pilot gave the signal to bail out. The navigator, co-pilot and I went out the nose hatch; the engineer, radio operator ball turret and waist gunners went out the rear exits.
I remember being circled by a German fighter plane as I drifted to the ground and saw the pilot waving at me. I landed on a housetop in a small rural village and was surrounded by German civilians with rifles, knives and pitchforks. They put up a ladder so I could reach the ground, whereupon I was taken to a horse stable and locked up overnight.
The following morning I was turned over to the German military and marched several miles to a small outlying railroad station where the other surviving members of our crew were being held. The seven survivors and two German guards then boarded an old train. After several hours we arrived at a Luftwaffe base at Brunswig.
By train, we traveled to Frankfurt and nearby Oberursel for solitary confinement and interrogation. The German interrogation officer was a one-legged major who had lost his leg at the Russian Front. He had a rather complete file on me, including knowledge of my family, my father's business, when and where I was married, along with articles from The Bellingham Herald with respect to my military training and when I was sent overseas.
After 10 days in solitary and being threatened with execution as a spy, I was sent with about 200 other U.S. airmen to a transient POW camp at Wetzlar. After one week we were taken by rail boxcar to Stalag I at Barth, on the Baltic Sea, about 150 miles north of Berlin. I arrived at Stalag 1 on my 20th birthday, and was confined there until the camp was liberated by the Russian army in early May of 1945.
Shortly after the war ended on May 8, the Russians permitted the 8th Air Force to fly in from England and take us out. In a day and a half, a steady flight of B-17s loaded and left with 7,500 American airmen and 1,500 British who had been captured at Dunkerque, France, in 1940. We were flown to France at a very low altitude over Poland, Germany and France and were able to see the devastation of the towns and cities.
