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Under frigid conditions in December 1944, one mission threw 1st Lt. Blake and his P-38 Lightning into the Battle of the Bulge—a major offensive where the German Army launched a surprise attack with hopes of capturing Antwerp and drive a wedge between the British and American forces in northern France.
The mission also resulted in a Purple Heart medal and a prisoner of war experience for Blake, born Lewis Robert Blakeney who embraced the volunteer spirit growing up in Tennessee.
Blake, about a month away from his 88th birthday, recalled his POW experience—during his second tour of duty in World War II—from his daughter’s home in the Weber area.
Other stories, from when he enlisted to fulfilling tours as a fighter pilot in WWII’s Pacific Theatre and later in the Korean and Vietnam wars, were shared as well. Those tales will have to be told another day.
Pictured: Lewis Robert Blakeney, POW of German Army in World War II
Yet his recollection and years of service further seem quite fitting for Veterans Day, an American holiday honoring military veterans this week.
Trouble in the Ardennes
Approximately a year after his first tour in the South Pacific and sixth months after marrying Donna Maxwell, of North Minneapolis, Blake signed up for a second tour—this time in Europe after D-Day and near the war’s end around October of 1944.
His 24th birthday was just a month or less away.
He flew combat missions from his base in Belgium, a low-lying country on the southern shore of the North Sea and bordering Germany.
In support of American ground troops in the daunting Ardennes forest, Blake and fellow pilots aimed for the German Tiger Royal tanks. “Napalm was the most effective weapon on tanks,” said Blake.
In contrast, an anti-aircraft flak gun also proved to be effective as a 40mm shell hit the bottom of his P-38 at 5,000 feet.
“It hit right under me,” recalled Blake, referring to just below his seat in the cockpit. “It was hot.”
By instinct he accelerated west and away from German territory and bent “everything over the front end.” Knowing the weapons his plane was carrying, and suffering from the unbearable heat, he opened the top hatch, stood up and let the pressure force him out and likely over the tail of his plane.
Blake immediately began his first parachute jump.
On his way down, he saw his plane crash and explode.
After pulling his own rip cord, he began to hear bees buzzing...except it was bullets zipping by from enemy ground fire. “Fortunately, they were bad shots,” he said.
Pictured: Blake flew this P-38 plane (right) in the Pacific and Germany during WWII.
Blake’s parachute then got hung up in some trees growing from the Ardennes’ forest floor. Though he was able to reach the ground and head what he thought was west, recent snowfall enabled Germans in pursuit to easily follow his tracks and capture him.
Blake became a prisoner of war, along with 13 American ground troops. And the group of POWs only grew as Germans picked them up on their way to be interrogated.
“We walked all the way to Frankfurt where I was interrogated by a bartender from New Jersey who had gone back to fight for Germany, his home country. He spoke better English than I did,” Blake remembered.
“Turned out they knew as much about us as we did about them,” he recalled in surprise of German intelligence. “They knew about my first tour in the Pacific. They had names and pictures of everyone in my squadron.”
Yet interrogators persisted on a single question, one that could have allowed the German Army to divide and conquer that region. “They wanted to know where our pipelines were,” said Blake, noting the Germans figured they could have reached the coast with control of the fuel lines at issue.
As a POW for about five months, he kept quiet. He didn’t recall any unusual punishment or torture while held captive, except the Germans saw to it that small servings of food, if any at times, were provided.
Blake recalled he and other captured troops would pick up morsels of food, such as potatoes and carrots, when the German Army made brief farm stops before arriving at the prison camp.
When transporting Allied airman in the public eye, German soldiers would cover them with blankets to keep the people from killing them, Blake explained, since the people knew it was their bombs that destroyed their towns and livelihoods.
His prison camp consisted of four to five compounds, each containing 300 men who slept two to a bed on triple-level bunks.
“My camp was north of Berlin, in a little town called Barth, said Blake of his POW location just south of the Baltic Sea. “We tried tunneling out, but it was too sandy and well secured.”
On May Day 1945, a few days before the end of the war, members of the Russian Army arrived and liberated the prison camps. Starved, the American men were free and uncertain what to do.
“Many guys waited for planes,” said Blake. “I walked west (not wanting to be shot down again) until I found a bicycle and liberated that. Then I liberated a horse and hooked it up to a wagon (again, liberated) and rode the wagon to the river—the cut off point.
“I spent the night with a group of Russians who put me up in an apartment,” he added.
Crossing the river, Blake discovered a building occupied by British troops who weren’t exactly friendly, so he walked out the back door.
His journey through Germany continued with the liberation of a fourth mode of transportation: a Volkswagon. Armed with a pistol he found along the way, he “influenced” the vehicle’s owner for the keys. The luxury started thanks to a push from some German kids hanging out in the neighborhood.
Driving through northern Germany, he spoke to people along the way and learned that his squadron was in Frankfurt am Main. When he reunited with his squadron, they hardly recognized him.
“I had lost 50 pounds, and I was 165 when I was shot down,” Blake remembered.
His European tour, as well as the second World War, was over. Blake flew over 100 missions in the Pacific and nearly 10 in Europe. And his collection of medals shows the impact he had in serving his country.
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