Movie about pilot Joe Moser's story of WWII survival to premier in Bellingham

Joe Moser of Ferndale nearly died in a plane crash during World War II and spent two months in a hellish German labor camp, yet he considers himself a lucky man.

Lucky, of course, that he survived. Beyond that, he's lucky his story has been wonderfully preserved in "A Fighter Pilot in Buchenwald," his 2009 tale of survival written with the help of Bellingham author and businessman Gerald Baron.

Now, thanks to another fortuitous connection, Moser's story has been told again in "Lost Airmen of Buchenwald," a documentary that will premier July 16 at Mount Baker Theatre.

A quiet man with a resonant voice, Moser didn't set out to become the object of media attention. He first agreed to be interviewed for a newspaper story back in 1982, and didn't sit down with Baron to begin work on his book until five years ago.

Now his story is on film. Mike Dorsey, a California filmmaker and TV producer, was already working on a documentary about his grandfather, Elmer Freeman, another flier shot down over France and sent to Buchenwald, a Nazi slave labor camp. Dorsey met with Baron after learning about Moser's book and they agreed to widen the documentary's focus to include Moser.

Then, while in Europe last year to shoot footage and to mark the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Buchenwald, Dorsey met several more Allied airmen who had spent time in the camp.

Baron, who helped write and finance the film, is the executive producer. Two other Whatcom County men - Duane McNett and Frank Imhof, who is Moser's first cousin - are associate producers, for their financial and other help.

Baron's son Chris, an Emmy-nominated photographer, is the film's director of photography.

The two-hour film features interviews with Moser, Freeman and five other airmen who survived the ordeal, plus combat footage, graphic photos and footage from Buchenwald and other German camps, even a cartoon primer on how pilots like Moser should escape a wounded a P-38 by turning the plane upside down so they could bail out without hitting the plane's tail section.

Moser, now 89, and Dorsey will be at the premier to answer questions.

"I can't get used to the public eye I'm in," Moser said. "I just don't feel like I did that much to warrant it all."

People who know Moser's story may beg to differ.

A STORY UNTOLD

Like many WW II vets, Moser at first spoke little about his war years, in part because people just wouldn't believe that he and 167 other Allied airmen - including 82 Americans - had spent two months in Buchenwald rather than in a humane POW camp, as called for by the rules of war.

A Ferndale farm kid, Moser grew up wanting to fly, and got his wish when he passed the test to fly a P-38, the Army Air Corp's one-man fighter.

In August 1944, during his 44th mission over Europe, German guns positioned near decoy trucks downed Moser's plane over the French countryside. One of Moser's boots snagged when he tried to bail out, and he barely escaped before the plane crashed into a stone farmhouse.

German soldiers quickly sent him to a prison near Paris, where he joined other Allied airmen. The Germans called them "terrorist fliers" and shipped them in train cattle cars to Buchenwald.

While not a formal extermination camp, Buchenwald was nonetheless a brutal place. The airmen slept outdoors on rocky ground. Prisoners shriveled on a meager diet of foul food. Those too weak to work were killed and burned. More than 50,000 people died there.

Moser and the other airmen survived, in part, because they were soldiers. Under the command of their ranking officer, a flier from New Zealand, they marched and exercised together, and watched each other's backs. Phil Lamason, the New Zealander who is interviewed in the movie, resisted German demands that the airmen work in Buchenwald's factories.

"I'd follow him most anywhere," Moser said.

FREE OF BUCHENWALD

The airmen received help from a surprising source, the German air force. Somehow - the film explores one theory - Luftwaffe officers learned the fliers were at Buchenwald.

Perhaps it was mutual respect among airmen. Perhaps it was the Luftwaffe's disdain for the cruel Gestapo and SS members who ran Buchenwald. Whatever the reason, they escorted the airmen - other than two who died and nine too sick to travel - to a POW camp farther east, the same camp later made famous by the movie "The Great Escape." Moser later learned he and the other airmen had been scheduled to be executed at Buchenwald just four days later.

In early 1945, the airmen were marched west through frigid winter weather because Russian troops were advancing from the east. Moser collapsed and nearly died, but two prisoners carried him to the next village and he revived. Three months later, U.S. troops liberated the camp holding the airmen and 130,000 other prisoners.

Consider the thousands upon thousands of WW II soldiers who died in action, never able to recount their experiences in their own words. Or the thousands who came home but couldn't find the heart, the words or the help from a writer to preserve their stories.

Luckily, Moser escaped that fate. His story survives.

"He is, in a sense, a symbol for a lot of people who never have been recognized," Baron said.

COMING UP

What: Premier of "Lost Airmen of Buchenwald."

When: 7 p.m. July 16

Where: Mount Baker Theatre.

Tickets: $10 adults, $8 seniors 65 and older, $5 students. For advance tickets, visit the theater office at 104 N. Commercial St., call 360-734-6080 or go to this mountbakertheatre.com webpage.

WATCH "COMING HOME - THE 45th MISSION"

In 2010, Joe Moser got a chance to fly again in a P-38, thanks to the Bravo 360 Flight Foundation. This photo documentary helps tell Moser's story: