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Jesse Chambers
World War II Veterans Visit
World War II veterans spoke to a group of sixth graders at Homewood Middle School on March 2, 2017. The veterans spoke about wartime experiences and answer questions from students.
2 of 5
Jesse Chambers
World War II Veterans Visit
World War II veterans spoke to a group of sixth graders at Homewood Middle School on March 2, 2017. The veterans spoke about wartime experiences and answer questions from students.
3 of 5
Jesse Chambers
World War II Veterans Visit
World War II veterans spoke to a group of sixth graders at Homewood Middle School on March 2, 2017. The veterans spoke about wartime experiences and answer questions from students.
4 of 5
Jesse Chambers
World War II Veterans Visit
World War II veterans spoke to a group of sixth graders at Homewood Middle School on March 2, 2017. The veterans spoke about wartime experiences and answer questions from students.
5 of 5
Jesse Chambers
World War II Veterans Visit
World War II veterans spoke to a group of sixth graders at Homewood Middle School on March 2, 2017. The veterans spoke about wartime experiences and answer questions from students.
The men and women who served in the U.S. military during World War II – the biggest, bloodiest armed conflict in human history – are, sadly, dying by the thousands every day.
That made it even more special that two World War II vets made a presentation to a group of nearly 100 inquisitive sixth-graders at Homewood Middle School on the afternoon of Thursday, March 2.
Jim Fullerton, 94, and Don Young, 92, both residents of the Danberry at Inverness retirement community, shared some of their wartime experiences as members of what newsman Tom Brokaw famously dubbed “The Greatest Generation.”
Fullerton, a native of Rochester, N.Y., served as a bombardier on two B-17 bombing runs over Europe with the U.S. Army Air Corp before being shot down and spending the rest of the war in prisoner of war camps in Germany.
Don Young, 92, is a Hillsboro, Ill., native who served in the U.S. Army from March 1943 to February 1946. He did not see combat but served at numerous wartime posts stateside and overseas, including his final post as a sergeant working in accounting at the famed Schofield Barracks in Hawaii.
Family connection
Young’s appearance was particularly special for his granddaughter, Desiree Thomas, a sixth-grade teacher at HMS who helped arrange the visit.
“It definitely means a lot” that Young came to visit her school, Thomas said. “It’s just really impactful to know that someone that close who grew up in a historic time that I now teach to my children, so it’s really meaningful for him to take time to talk to them and spend time with them.”
Thomas and her students had spent about four weeks talking about World War II in class. “It is something that is very interesting to them, and I tell that this is probably their last time to talk to people in person about this experience,” she said.
Fullerton's epic story
Much of the presentation was taken up by Fullerton’s detailed discussion of his enlistment and training, his service with the U.S. 91st Bomber Group and his time in German captivity.
After a relatively uneventful first mission, Fullerton and his fellow crew members flew a long mission with 17 other bombers to take out a fighter-plane factory deep inside Germany but ran into fierce resistance from German fighters.
“Mr. Hitler thought we were about to wipe him out,” Fullerton said. “He sent everything he had.”
The mission was successful, according to Fullerton. “We wiped out the fighter plant,” he said.
But the fighter attacks continued unabated as the U.S. planes begin their flights home.
“We had almost made it to the Danish coast when the No. 3 engine was hit by a rocket, and the co-pilot was killed instantly,” Fullerton said.
“The aircraft began to drop,” he said.
It became clear to the crew what they needed to do. “We had agreed that if we lost control of the aircraft that it was every man for himself and that we would bail out,” Fullerton said.
Fullerton and the navigator were the only two men – out of 10 crewmen – who were able to bail out of the doomed bomber and survive.
They parachuted into the water and were picked up by a German patrol boat, where Fullerton – who had suffered a minor wound to his right arm – received some unexpected hospitality.
“The skipper took me down to his personal cabin and insisted that I lie down on his bunk, even though I was bleeding,” he recalled. “He gave me a shot of schnapps.”
Into captivity
After a couple of other stops, Fullerton was taken by train to a prison camp in southern Germany called Stalag Luft III, which would serve as his home from October 1943 until January 1945.
Fullerton, when asked by a student how prisoners were treated by the Germans, said that conditions overall were “fair,” even though they rarely had enough heat and often had insufficient food.
The sixth-graders were also fascinated that Fullerton, who had some photographic training and had worked at Eastman Kodak, snuck a small 35mm camera into the camp.
He used it – secretly, so the camera would not be taken by the Germans – to document enemy activities in the camp.
“Once I was told to get pictures of the German officers without them knowing,” he said.
In January 1945, with Russian troops moving deeper into Germany, Hitler had many prisoners of war moved. Fullerton and his group were forced to embark on a long march in snow and ice and 20-degree temperatures to another POW camp.
The men ultimately walked over 50 miles with little rest. “At the end, we had a lot of men drop out who couldn’t make it,” Fullerton said.
Appearance by Gen. Patton
In May of 1945, the American prisoners were liberated by the U.S. Third Army under the command of the legendary Gen. George S. Patton.
Two days after U.S. troops arrived, Patton himself came to the camp, according to Fullerton.
Patton stood up on a small concrete structure to make a speech, and Fullerton stood right underneath him.
“'Alright, you so and so’s, I will have you out of here in three days,’ he told us,” Fullerton said, who noted that Patton used a long stream of obscenities but kept his promise to get the prisoners out quickly and send them on their way to France.
Learning first-hand
Young was pleased by the interest and enthusiasm the sixth-graders showed today. “I was glad to see that,” he said after the presentation. “Desiree told me they would have some questions, but I was surprised by how alert and receptive they were.”
And Young said that students can learn a lot about World War II from hearing first-person accounts. “Even though they can read about the war in their history books, when you can hear about it directly from someone like Jim (Fullerton) – especially given the experience he had – it really rings true,” he said.
Dealing with mortality
After the presentation, Fullerton described his feelings at being one of only two men to survive that fateful second mission over Germany.
“You just counted your blessings, I guess,” Fullerton said. “I don’t know how to describe the feelings. You worked with these guys. You got close to them. Obviously, you are sad. But at the time, the shock – you didn’t think about it. It was only later that you thought about it.”
He recalled a life-and-death moment he experienced with his close friend, Paul Kahl, during the forced march between prison camps in January 1945.
“On the walk, toward the end, Paul and I were together, and he said, ‘Jim, I’ve had it. I’m not going any farther,’” Fullerton said. “He lay in the ditch. I started cussing him. He was religious. He didn’t really cuss. But I cussed him with every word I knew, and I got him up.”
Fullerton retired as a chemical engineer at Eastman Kodak in Rochester and has lived at Danberry since 2009.
Young is a University of Alabama graduate and accountant who served as chief financial officer at UAB.