Gregory A. Freeman - The last mission of the Wham Bam boys : courage, tragedy and justice in World War II

THE LAST
MISSION
OF THE
WHAM BAM
BOYS

ALSO BY GREGORY A. FREEMAN

Troubled Water: Race, Mutiny, and Bravery
on the USS Kitty Hawk

Fixing Hell: An Army Psychologist Confronts Abu Ghraib
(with Col. [Ret.] Larry C. James, PhD)

The Forgotten 500: The Untold Story of
the Men Who Risked All for the
Greatest Rescue Mission of World War II

Sailors to the End: The Deadly Fire on the
USS Forrestal and the Heroes Who Fought It

Lay This Body Down:
The 1921 Murders of Eleven Plantation Slaves

THE LAST
MISSION
OF THE
WHAM BAM
BOYS

COURAGE, TRAGEDY, AND
JUSTICE IN WORLD WAR II

GREGORY A. FREEMAN

THE LAST MISSION OF THE WHAM BAM BOYS
Copyright Gregory A. Freeman, 2011.
All rights reserved.

First published in 2011 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN in the U.S.a division of St. Martins Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.

Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world.

Palgrave and Macmillan are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.

ISBN: 978-0-230-10854-7

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Freeman, Gregory A.

The last mission of the Wham Bam boys : courage, tragedy, and justice in World War II / Gregory A. Freeman.
p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 9780230108547

1. World War, 19391945AtrocitiesGermanyRsselsheim. 2. LynchingGermanyRsselsheim. 3. Rsselsheim (Germany)History20th century. 4. United States. Army Air ForcesAirmen. 5. World War, 19391945Aerial operations, American. 6. World War, 19391945CampaignsGermany. 7. Bombing, AerialMoral and ethical aspects. 8. Civilians in warGermanyRsselsheim. I. Title.
D757.9.R87F74 2011
940.5405dc22

2010044091

A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.

Design by Letra Libre

First edition: June 2011

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Printed in the United States of America.

For my father, Jerry Freeman

A man is truly dead only
when we stop speaking his name.

CONTENTS

Eight pages of photographs appear between pages 96 and 97.

PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS

Note: Ages listed are ages at the time of the incident in 1944.

CREW OF THE WHAM! BAM! THANK YOU MAAM

Second Lieutenant Norman J. Rogers Jr.: Pilot, from Rochester, New York, twenty-four years old

Second Lieutenant John N. Sekul: Copilot, from the Bronx, New York, twenty-two years old

Flight Officer Haigus Tufenkjian: Navigator and bombardier from Detroit, Michigan, twenty-three years old

Staff Sergeant Forrest W. Brininstool: Engineer from Munith, Michigan, twenty-eight years old

Staff Sergeant Thomas D. Williams Jr.: Radio operator from Hazleton, Pennsylvania, nineteen years old

Sergeant William A. Adams: Nose gunner from Klingerstown, Pennsylvania, nineteen years old

Sergeant Elmore L. Austin: Left waist gunner from Edinburg Falls, Vermont, nineteen years old

Sergeant Sidney Eugene Brown: Tail gunner from Gainesville, Florida, nineteen years old

Sergeant William A. Dumont: Belly gunner from Berlin, New Hampshire, twenty years old

RESIDENTS OF RSSELSHEIM, GERMANY

Josef Hartgen: Foreman at the Opel plant, Nazi Party member, air raid warden, forty-one years old

Kathe Reinhardt: Sister of Margarete Witzler, thirty-eight years old; husband is in the German army, serving on the Russian front; runs a tobacco shop in Rsselsheim with her sister Margarete Witzler.

Margarete Witzler: Sister of Kathe Reinhardt, fifty years old

Johannes Seipel: Farmer, sixty-five years old

Otto Hermann Stolz: Nazi SA member, or brown shirt, thirty-one years old

George Daum: Machinist at the Opel plant, forty-five years old

Lonie Daum: George Daums wife, mother of three, age unknown

Heinrich Barthel: Instructor at the Opel plant, forty-three years old

Johann Opper: Railway switchman, Nazi Party member, sixty years old

August Wolf: Machinist at the Opel plant, forty-three years old

Friedrich Wst: Blacksmith, Nazi Party member, forty years old

Karl Fugmann: Efficiency manager at the Opel plant, forty-two years old

Phillip Gtlich: Farmer and tavernkeeper

Franz Rinkes: Member of the Hitler Youth, sixteen years old

Georg Jung: District Catholic priest of Rsselsheim

Jacob Hoffman: Evangelical minister in Rsselsheim

WAR CRIMES GROUP

Major Luke P. Rogers: American war crimes investigator

Lieutenant Colonel Leon Jaworski: American chief of the Examination Division of the War Crimes Branch, Chief of the Investigation Division, prosecutor in the Rsselsheim case

INTRODUCTION

THE FIRST WAR CRIMES TRIAL AFTER World War II did not involve concentration camps or Nazi policy making, and the defendants were not high-ranking German military officers and political leaders. They were ordinary men and women, some elderly, all residents of a small city in Germany that had no prison camps or SS facilities. There was no obvious reason for them to be the first target of the Allies attempt to restore justice after a terrible war.

They were on trial for what they did to eight young American men, good men who found themselves the focal point of a citys rage against the horrors of modern warfare. These young Americans and these otherwise unremarkable German civilians came together in what would become a historic test of morality, personal strength, and respect for the law under the most horrendous conditions.

The crew of the Wham! Bam! Thank You Maam, a B-24J bomber based in England, clashed with the residents of Rsselsheim toward the end of a conflict that brought a type of warfare and a level of destruction almost unimaginable only a few years earlier. When the war in Europe ended in 1945, sixty German cities had been destroyed and 593,000 people had diedmost of them civiliansfrom Allied bombs. Ninety-one thousand Allied airmen died in the European bombing campaign55,000 British and 36,000 Americans. Most of the German deaths came in 1944 and 1945, during the last year of the war, a result of the Allies becoming increasingly proficient with their bombing campaign, which showed little mercy when it came to inflicting damage on civilian targets as a means to hasten the end of the war. The airmen who flew the bombers were mostly young men who wanted to help end the Nazis takeover of Europe, and the Allied bombardment was successful in that respect. But destroying Hitlers war machine came at a steep price, both for the Germans on the ground and the Americans in the air.

The Wham! Bam! story reminds us that behind every statistic about the airmen, soldiers, and sailors killed in war is a man with a family, a man whose absence leaves questions and heartache that linger for generations. And for some families, the nature of the mens deaths is an added burden, as their loved ones died not quickly or easily but in terror and agony.