[The following is a 4-page letter written by Willie Jones to Rudy Menchl. I just banged out a transcription not worrying about proper formatting or anything like that. Scans are also posted here along with the transcription] Myrtlewood
July 1, 1945 Dear Rudy, I received a letter from Alderson the other day. He sent me your address so I decided to write you. I was happy to hear that you and the others got to Switz. We worried a lot about what happened to all of you. We received the cards you wrote us in February 1945. I wrote you back but you were in the States by that time. We were happy to get the cards. It told us something about I was sorry to hear about ‘Dick’. [Victor Dickerson] I guess the rest of us were lucky. P.O.W. life wasn’t too good but we got out alive and back to the states and that is what counts. Ralph and Harry are O.K. I got a letter from Ralph yesterday. He and I was together all the time. Harry went to the hospital and came in camp later. I got a letter from Ritter the other day. He is doing fine. I would like to see you and the others. I wish we could all get together someplace. But I guess we will have to wait until after get out of the Army. I don’t know what the Army is going to do with me. How are you getting along now? Fine I hope. Did you make 1st Lt.? I hope so. We had a lot of fun together and I enjoyed being on the crew with all of you. My people had the picture of the crew that was sent home from Grand Island enlarged. It is a nice picture. Ralph, Harry and I could have gotten away in Italy but we were wounded. I couldn’t get up when I hit the ground. I was shooting at a plane under the stabilizer when Alderson said “Fighter at 3 O’clock. I went to shoot him but he shot first. Harry and i both went down. I had just got up and back at my gun when Ritter said for us to bail out. Ralph was blown to the waist. I was hit in the arm and leg and I hurt my back somewhere. Harry was shot in the leg. We are all OK now. I will close at this time. Write to me at Myrtlewood, Alabama. I will be here until the 7th of August. I got a 60 day furlough. Sincerely yours, Bill
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On April 25, 2016 the citizens of Pavone del Mella came out to honor the Bum's Rush crew by dedicating a memorial plaque in their name. This comes a year after the first screening of the Bum's Rush documentary
In case you've not see the documentary yet it's ready to go and we've finally managed to get some subtitles transcribed, translated and inserted. [They are not perfect and the run a lot fast after a while. But we'll fix them and in the interim you'll know what we're talking about referencing the documentary.] [A 4-page letter written by Ralph Kramer to Rudy Menchl on June 23, 1945] Hello Rudy - Finally managed to get back home again. It’s like coming back into a new life once again, but I’m gradually catching up to time. Being out of circulation for awhile doesn’t improve your up to the date facts any, I’ll say that much. I know you’d like to hear a little bit of my story for there are plenty of things I’d like to ask you, well here goes - Very few minutes after landing on the ground the Jerries had me. My back and legs were sort of numb from the explosion in the bomb bay & radio room so I couldn’t walk, add this to being knocked out upon hitting the ground and you can see why I was taken. Bill & Harry were both in the same fix. Harry from some 20MMs in the knees, leg, arm and head. He was the hardest hit; Bill was also shot up a bit, he also hit the horizontal fin for we had to jump from the waist window. Some 20’s had jammed the waist door shut, so Tex and I got rid of the right waist gun so we could get out. They had us together in a hospital in Verona for a couple of days and then put us on a train to Germany. The sweat box at Frankfurt was our destination, Dulag Luft, you may have heard of it. There Harry was taken out and sent to the hospital but Bill & myself stayed together. From there we were shipped to Krems, Austria {Stalag XVII B) where it seemed as tho we spent a lifetime. The latter part of March 1945, the Russians began to make it pretty hot for the Jerries where we were, so they evacuated camp the 8th of April and marched us westward towards out lines. It wasn’t all a Sunday School picnic while we were on the road. Outside of Braunau, Austria while laying in a wooded sector, our camp, our own boys, managed to get back into American hands again. From then on, May the 3rd, is the day it was homeward bound. It’s still pretty hard to realize it is all over and I’m back again, for good I hope. How did you come through it all, OK I hope? I had a letter from Alderson and George they are both well. I was in hopes that we could all get together again, but it’ll have to wait until the whole mess is over. I don’t know what they intend doing with me July 31st. I report in to Atlantic City, N.J. where I’ll get the lowdown. I’d like to hear from all the boys again. Write when you have the chance. Sincerely, Ralph Of the 10 men aboard the Bum's Rush 3 of them were captured by the Germans and held as Prisoners of War. The men would be transferred from POW camp to another but all three would eventually find their way to the infamous Stalag 17b in Krems, Austria. I can't begin to imagine, let alone describe, the conditions under which they were made to endure. My Grandfather Harry L. Cunningham was held captive for close to 2 years and even if you were staying at the Ritz-Carlton that's a whole lot of time to be away from home. This article is a pretty good one to serve as some idea as to what it was like in the camp: http://www.americainwwii.com/articles/stalag-17-b/
From Ralph Kramer to Rudy Menchl dated June 23, 1945. It's incredible [and incredibly difficult] to read this and I am blown away by these men.
PLEASE NOTE: I know this is a long-ish post and it’s sort of a continuation of THIS TUMBLR POST that I really encourage you to check out. It's the best way I know how to give you an idea of the things that lead up to this site and I think if you give this a go and plow through it you’ll come out on the other end thinking it’d been worth it. I really do. I'm Jason McHenry and my Grandfather is Harry L. Cunningham. He was the waist gunner on the Bum's Rush, a B-17F Flying Fortress, which was shot down on October 6, 1943 in the little town of Pavone del Mella, Italy. Harry has always been the most important person in my life and I've missed him just non-stop since he died. Genealogy has always been something I really, really dig. I think since I was a kid I’ve loved it after hearing stories and tales about my family from my family. I started keeping track of this stuff just for the sake of posterity and memory and for the fun of it. After the internet it became easier and I fund more information in a month of using Ancestry.com than I probably did in the decade prior. I go at it in spurts and every couple of years I’ll sign up for another round of the paid websites and grab all of the new info I can find and then give it a rest for a while. Recently I was at it again and I had been looking around for new information about my Grandfather. He was the only real hero I’ve ever had and he was a waist gunner on a B-17 in World War II. The name of the plane was “Bum’s Rush” and it was shot down and my Grandfather was captured and he spent years in a POW camp before being liberated and coming back home. I had some of his papers and letters and one in particular was fantastic. It was a letter to him from another crew member on his plane. Some of the crew parachuted too but they managed to escape to Switzerland and avoided being taken prisoner. The letter explained what had happened to the rest of the crew on that day and in the days to follow and it was a monumental thing to read. The letter was just 4-5 pages and I have read it close to a hundred times and I also scanned and transcribed it to post on one of my websites. Between then and now there have been some really disastrous losses of data and the long and the short of it is that I don’t really have any of it anymore. I can only seem to find the first page of the thing. [There is still an old hard drive that may be able to pan out if the right person has a look at it. I am not the right person.] |
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