Hero Found: The Greatest POW Escape of the Vietnam War Read Online Free

at home, peering out a third-story window. A single-engine fighter with a big white star on its fuselage swept so low and so close to the house that the boys could see the pilot in the cockpit. The canopy was open, and they clearly saw the pilot’s goggles atop his head and the white scarf around his neck. The plane roared past, aiming for the train station down the hill, its loud guns spitting out yellow flashes. The aircraft then pulled up abruptly in a steep climbing turn, and was gone as quickly as it had appeared.
    For Dieter, the close encounter would be unforgettable and life altering. He had never seen anything so exciting. Not at all fearful, he had been mesmerized by the flying machine that soared above the earth with the freedom of a bird. Years later he would describe it as “like an Almighty Being that came out of the sky.” He decided then and there that he would grow up to fly a plane just like that one. From then on, he later explained, “little Dieter needed to fly.”
    Attacking Allied planes would return on other days, making quick low passes over the town’s train station. Railroad workers learned to keep onlythe older locomotives on the tracks, while parking the newer rolling stock inside a nearby tunnel. The children came to regard the flyovers more as amusement than as danger, for they lasted such a short time and inflicted no casualties or damage on homes and shops. Before the smoke and dust cleared, older boys would be eagerly running along the railroad tracks picking up spent bullets, and, if they were really lucky, “an entire cartridge belt to wear proudly.”
    For the youth of Wildberg, their enjoyment would be short-lived.
     
    Maria and her sons neared the top of a steep hill when the “ground erupted.” Never before had they heard the high-pitched whistling sound of bombs dropping or the “deafening booms from their explosions.” They scrambled under the cover of old, fallen timber, and hugged the ground. Covering their ears, they prayed as the earth shook beneath them.
    They did not emerge until after the bombers were gone. When they did they looked anxiously in the direction of Wildberg but could not make out anything through the dense foliage. All around them was silence, not even the chirping of a sparrow. On their way back they met a group of armed men with leashed German shepherds. They said they were looking for an enemy pilot who had landed nearby in a parachute, and asked Maria if she had seen anyone. Maria said no, and hurried on with her boys.
    As Maria and her sons left the woods, they entered a sunlit meadow where they came upon a stunned villager standing with two tethered cows.
    “Everything is gone,” said the woman. “Everything.”
    At the outskirts of Wildberg, the first dead bodies they saw were those of horses and cows lying stiffly on their sides or backs. The heat and smoke grew intense as they entered town. Many structures were flattened and in cinders; others were ablaze, including the shoe repair shop, which filled the air with the pungent smell of burning leather. Wildberg’s seventeenth-century castle had burned to the ground, and the village church and school were also destroyed, as were rows of houses and shops.
    Maria and her sons realized with horror that the debris on the ground included arms, legs, heads, and other human body parts. They darednot look closely for fear of recognizing the remains of friends and neighbors.
    Turning a corner, they were surprised to see in the distance that their home was still standing, although the houses on either side were gone.
    Their next-door neighbor Mrs. Bohler had been visiting a friend in the hospital when the bombs fell. She had hurried home to find her husband and nine children dead. Her husband—still with binoculars around his neck—and the children had been outside watching the planes fly over.
    As they came closer, Maria saw that the wooden frame of their house was intact but most of the plaster walls