Fallbrook WWII veteran talks about being captured by German forces and life as a POW

Though it’s been over 70 years, WWII veteran Don Foulkes can still vividly remember the details of Oct. 13, 1944, the day he was captured by German forces and became a POW.

Ninety-three-year-old Foulkes, a Fallbrook resident, shared his wartime memories during a talk at the West Coast Ammo store in Temecula on Saturday, Aug. 29. The talk was presented by the World War II Experience, an educational nonprofit organization, and West Coast Ammo, its sponsor.

Dr. Linda Dudik, founder of the WWII Experience and organizer of the monthly veteran talks at West Coast Ammo, gave background information on Foulkes before he spoke. She explained to the audience that he flew out of Italy with the 15th Air Force’s 449th Bomb Group, known as the 'Flying Horsemen' and his squadron was the 717th.

Dudik said Foulkes was the bombardier in a B-24 Liberator and was responsible for accurate and effective bomb drops over enemy targets.

On Oct. 13 1944, Foulkes’s plane, named "Old Faithful" was shot down after a bombing run over Vienna, Austria. It was his 28th mission. Along with others in the crew, he parachuted out of the plane and landed in a field in Hungary. He was soon approached by 10 Hungarian soldiers and captured. Hungary was one of Germany’s allies.

Foulkes said the soldiers were carrying long rifles that looked like they’d been left over from "the turn of the century." The soldiers stole the signet ring his parents had given him and his watch. One of the soldiers spoke English and asked Foulkes, "You know my cousin in Chicago?"

"No, I told him I didn’t know his cousin," Foulkes said,

which caused the audience to laugh.

Then the English-speaking solider commented to Foulkes that it was a "bad day."

"I realized I was in Hungary, but suddenly realized it was Friday the 13th, October, 13th, 1944," Foulkes said.

He was taken into custody and transported by train with other POWs to Stalag Luft III, 100 miles southeast of Berlin.

Years later, Hollywood made this POW camp famous with the movie "The Great Escape," according to Dudik.

Foulkes, who enlisted in the Army when he was 22, recounted in great detail how he and his fellow POWs survived from day to day. He was a POW for seven months.

"Life in a prison camp was sorta different," Foulkes said, comparing it to the jails he had been held in on the way to the camp.

"The big thing was food and fuel," he said. He explained that the Red Cross issued parcels of food that were theoretically enough to feed one person for a week.

"I was told we were on half parcels," he said. "We got half a parcel, the Germans got the other half. They were in deep trouble too as far as that goes."

The parcels contained foods such as sugar, powdered milk, Spam, and raisins. One of Foulkes fellow POWs had cooking skills and used his ingenuity to make a mincemeat pie one time for 14 men to share. The pie maker had traded his cigarettes to get the necessary spices for the pie and used raisins and Spam for the filling. The crust was made from crackers. "You have never, ever seen such precision in cutting 14 pieces of pie," Foulkes said, laughing.

For fuel, the Germans gave them coal to burn in a pot belly stove, but it wasn’t enough to keep them warm, according to Foulkes. At night, when the Germans were unaware, the POWs removed bed slats from their bunks and pried up floor bars with a crowbar that someone had managed to get a hold of. They used the bed slats and floor boards for firewood, he said.

Foulkes said a typical day started with the Germans waking them so they could go outside and be counted. Sometimes the Germans counted them at night, inside the barracks. One night, the POWs decided to pull a prank on their captors by placing some cabbage and rutabagas in a bunk and covering them with a blanket to look like a person. When the Germans counted prisoners that night, they were amazed to find one more. When the Germans left, the vegetables were removed from the bunk and two prisoners crawled into one bunk together. When the Germans returned for a recount, they were shocked to be short two prisoners. The POWs enjoyed the prank, but not the Germans.

"We didn’t make too many friends that night," Foulkes commented.

By April 1945, the Germans had moved thousands of POWs, including Foulkes, to Moosburg, another camp north of Munich. The U.S. 14th Armored Division liberated it on April 29, 1945.

Foulkes remembers that day well. He said they noticed it was quiet and that the camp’s guards had left. Suddenly the quiet was shattered by an artillery shell whistling overhead and a POW jumped through a glass window from outside and landed unscathed in front of Foulkes and the others. Then Foulkes said he heard someone shout, "Hey, the U.S. Troops are coming!"

It was General George S. Patton’s Army and it crashed a tank through the camp’s wall. "We were saved," Foulkes said.

He added that he and the other POWs were impressed by Patton and how he appeared with his shiny helmet, Eisenhower jacket, and pearl-handled pistols.

"He spoke to us," Foulkes said. He can’t recall Patton’s exact words, but he basically told them they were free.

Foulkes soon returned to his hometown of Peabody, Mass. Following the war, he said he married, had children, and worked for General Electric as a sales manager.

For more information on the veteran talks, visit www.wwiiexperience.com.