One of the things that sets Bombing Hitler's Hometown apart from most other books about the air war is that I weave in the stories of many people who found themselves under the bombs. I was able to do so only with the help and generosity of friends and associates in Austria. Here are some details that didn't make it into the book.
We meet Ambros Klammer, who, on April 25, 1945, was a ten-year old Austrian schoolboy, on pages 149-150. Young Ambros was sitting with his back against the wooden wall of the barn on his family's farm when Miss Lace, a B-24 Liberator with the 461st Bomb Group, came down over the nearby village of St. Georgen am Walde. Miss Lace had been damaged over Linz, and Ambros later wrote about what he saw.
On that day, due to the pleasant warmth of the wooden wall behind me, I was watching what was going on in the sky longer than usual. Suddenly I noticed a single plane that was dragging a black smoke trail behind and was heading directly for our house. I guessed that this plane had been hit by anti-aircraft fire above Linz and was obviously about to crash.
Ambros knew the bomber, which was losing altitude rapidly, had little time left.
As I was dead scared, I wanted to run into the house. At that moment the plane with its black smoke trail was thundering dangerously just above our house when I saw that some dark lumps were falling out of the plane. I shouted into the house “bombs!” a1nd, already alerted by the deafening noise of the plane, everybody rushed outside, expecting an explosion.
Much to his surprise, Ambros noticed that the dark lumps sprouted parachutes, which began slowly gliding toward the ground. Two drifted away, but one came down a only few hundred meters away, behind a small wooded area. Together with a policeman who was on holiday at his parents' house, Ambros hurried toward the parachutist's landing area to render aid.
Having crossed the small forest, we noticed the light-colored parachute shimmering in a shrub not far from us. Carefully approaching, we immediately saw that the man was in a bad situation, entangled in ropes and branches, unable to free himself. The soldier was an American. We were not able to communicate but noticed from his unmistakable gestures that he wanted to surrender and asked us for help. We helped him get out of the parachute and got him out of the dense underbrush. Since he had no obvious injuries and was able to walk, we moved towards the nearby village of Ottenschlag.
On their journey, some children from the neighborhood approached.
We all kept at a respectful distance from the foreign soldier. Apparently, in an attempt to take away our shyness, he suddenly produced chocolate from his bag and shared it among us children. Because children in those days hardly ever got chocolate, I remember this gesture particularly well.
Ambros and his policeman companion handed the American over to two soldiers, who already had the other two parachutists in custody. From there, they were taken to an artillery unit under the command of an Austrian officer, who, as told in Bombing Hitler's Hometown, attempted to draft the Americans into his anti-Nazi crusade.
After the commotion died down, Ambros returned to the site of the flier's landing.
I went back to the place where the parachutist had landed and disentangled all the usable parts of the parachute as well as all sorts of ropes from the scrub. For most of them precious use was found in the house and they served us well for a long time.
Meanwhile, in the town, the mayor, Josef Haas, was angry when he heard about the callous treatment that a local Nazi sympathizer had shown toward the body of Lt. William Jones, the copilot of Miss Lace who perished over Linz and went down with the ship. Haas waited until nightfall, then proceeded to the crash site with a small party under the cover of darkness. There, they exhumed Jones's body and reburied him in the village cemetery under a small cross bearing the inscription "For you, too, a mother weeps."
When a fanatical Nazi party official learned of Haas's act of humanity, he ordered Haas executed. Local Austrian soldiers on site refused to carry out the orders, and by the time the Nazi official dispatched members of the SS to do the deed, Haas had gone into hiding, where he remained until the war ended.
In June 1947, Haas assisted US Graves Registration Service members in locating Miss Lace's crash site and the location of Jones's grave. Haas's help allowed the Americans to identify the fallen airman and reinter his remains in the Long Island National Cemetery in New York. Haas passed away in 1968 at age 69.
Decades later, Ambros Klammer followed in Haas's footsteps, becoming the mayor of St. Georgen am Walde. He passed away in 2016.
For their compassion and humanity, we thank Mayors Haas and Klammer. May they rest in peace.