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TI: So let's go back to when you were in the German prison camp, so World War II, and while you were there, I guess you saw something really interesting.

LP: We heard this noise coming, and it's all sounded like... well, you wouldn't know, but when a bomb, when they let go of a bomb on a plane and it's coming down, it whistles. It makes a whining noise. Well, we heard this coming, but we were up in the mountains. And we heard it coming and we went out to see what the heck it was. And then these three German fighter planes came over and they had big German cross on the side of 'em and no propellers. We had never heard of a jet. We'd never heard of anything... we couldn't figure out how these damn planes could fly without a propeller. So that's the story he's trying to tell you.

TI: And were the jets going faster than --

LP: No, they were going slower. They were three, and they were kind of alongside of each other, and they were just, I think they were new and they were just out testing 'em. They weren't trying to fight with anybody, they'd just fly 'em around getting used to 'em, I suppose. When we seen these three planes coming right over the top of us... and that's another thing. A German plane, fighter plane comes through there and two Americans were behind him, they were trying to get him. And they let two bursts go right in the prison camp where we're at and killed forty of our guys.

TI: So these were American --

LP: American planes that were firing on a German fighter plane. And I don't think the American pilots knew that we were there because we were in the mountains and trees and they were real low. And this German might have known and came over the prison camp intentionally, I don't know. But anyway, they fired and they killed forty guys, forty of our prisoners. Those guys that fired on us probably never know it ever happened.

TI: That's tragic.

LP: So maybe we didn't need that part of the story.

TI: No, that's actually a powerful story.

LP: And then they put 'em all on a wagon they had there, and they were stacked like cords of wood. I came around a building and there's all these guys laying dead on this wagon. I just happened to be in the right place. And one more thing. I went through all this, and I come back with a little scar on my knee, that's all I got. See that scar? That's all I got.

TI: And how'd you get that scar?

LP: I jumped through a barbed wire fence down a bank, and they were shooting at me, and I jumped, dove over a bank and I went through a barbed fence and the barbed wire cut me. They wanted to give me a...

TI: A Purple Heart?

LP: A Purple Heart for that up here at Vandenberg -- not Vandenberg, Camp Beale, and I said, "You don't give Purple Hearts for barbed wire fence cutting you." They would have gave it to me if I would have accepted it, but that's how the guys got Purple Hearts that were with me, guys that got wounded. I didn't think that you should get a Purple Heart for a barbed wire fence.

TI: That's a good story, too.

LP: I got enough stars up there, though, from battle, but not from being wounded. I didn't get, I was lucky.

TI: So during that battle where there's that valley, that's when you got stars for that action?

LP: It was for the Ardennes Forest, Battle of the Bulge, the whole battle. I didn't know that, I really didn't know what you were gonna do or I could have brought... it's in a showcase, I have it in a...

<End Segment 13> - Copyright &copy; 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.