Published Sept. 4, 2000
Hendersonville Times-News

http://www.blueridgenow.com/article/20000904/EXTRAS02/9040321/0/search

POW Never Quit Hoping for Freedom

By Kerra Bolton Fisher
Barbed wire could not restrain Troy McCrary’s hope of freedom during the 449 days he spent in a Romanian prison during World War II.
“Being red-blooded Americans we never gave up hope,” said McCrary, 79, of Hendersonville. “We might have been behind barbed wire, but we never gave up.”
As an assistant radio operator and waist gunner in the Army Air Force, McCrary was a member of a 10-man crew shot down in 1943 during Operation Tidal Wave.
Tidal Wave was an ambitious air offensive in which the Army Air Force deployed bombers targeting Romanian oil fields and refineries to destroy a rich source of German fuel supply.
Five B-24 “Liberator” plane groups carrying 10-man teams and 178 four-engine heavy bombers departed the air base in North Africa on a low-level mission on Sunday, Aug. 1, 1943.
Each of the planes was fueled with 3,100 gallons of gasoline and carried 4,300 pounds of bombs for the 2,700-mile trip. At the time, it was the longest mission ever attempted by the Army Air Force and resulted in the most highly decorated air raid in the war.
The crew flew for more than eight hours before reaching the target area, a series of Romanian refineries located just beyond the smokestacks. The plane was hit by anti-aircraft fire, setting one engine on fire. The plane crashed near the riverbed garden of a Romanian princess. That princess was said to befriend Allied soldiers imprisoned in Romania. After the war, she toured the United States visiting former soldiers.
“One person was killed, and nine of us got off the plane,” McCrary said. “After we got out of the plane, some of the men were hurt and had to surrender.”
But McCrary and another member of the crew escaped immediate surrender. They hid during the day and traveled at night en route to Yugoslavia.
They spent three days without water before sneaking into a small village near daybreak in an attempt to get some water out of a well.
“Before we could get the water back up from the well, we were surrounded by peasants with pitchforks in their hands and were captured,” McCrary said.
The statistics of what was lost during the mission are burned in his memory. According to McCrary, there were four bomb groups, with 52 planes lost, 520 men who went down and 120 men taken prisoner.
“The Tidal Wave mission was one of the most costly and expensive the Air Force ever undertook,” he said. “We don’t know what happened to the others. They either died in the planes, died when they crashed or died in the air. We don’t know what happened.”
But on the ground, both the Germans and Romanians were fighting over who got to keep the American prisoners of war. The Romanians won the deal, and McCrary’s group was transferred to a prison in Ploesti, a town in the southeastern corner of Romania.
The American prisoners were divided by rank, with officers in one prison and enlisted men in the other.
McCrary was placed in the enlisted camp with 60 other men in an old brick house ringed by a double-layer of criss-cross barbed wires. Guard-towers were stationed in four corners of the area.
“They meant business,” he said. “We were under very close surveillance.”
Meals consisted of barley soup and black bread, which, McCrary says, “weighed five pounds” and sunk to the bottom of their stomachs like a brick falling to the bottom of a lake.
“They (Romanians) treated us as best as they could,” McCrary said. “They were all right.
The Romanian prison was a far cry from the Crab Creek community where McCrary grew up.
He was a 1939 graduate of the former Flat Rock High School and was drafted in September 1942 at the age of 21.
“I was just a crazy youngster who didn’t know anything,” he joked. “I hadn’t flown before I went into the service.”
Upon completing his training, McCrary did stints in Salt Lake City, Utah; Tucson, Ariz.; El Paso, Texas; and Denver, Colo.
But all the training in the world could not prepare McCrary for having his freedom snatched from him.
The prisoners coped by spending time in the exercise yard, where they managed to play a few rounds of volleyball.
Along with the volleyball games, their spirits were uplifted by sightings of American planes flying overhead in March 1944.
“When you could see the American planes getting that close to you, there was always cause for good hope,” McCrary said. “One of the guys built a ham radio, and we could get the British Broadcasting Company.”
The prisoners hid the radio and listened to British broadcasts detailing the Normandy and Anzio invasions. They also heard when Germans in Paris surrendered to the Americans in 1944
The Romanian government surrendered to Russian troops in September 1944. The prison guards cut the barbed wire and cautioned the Americans to head for the woods should the Germans approach the prison.
The Americans waited three days until a Romanian truck pulled into the camp one dark night, when the rain pounded the pavement.
“They pulled a canvas over our heads and drove through German lines all night until we reached a small town 15 to 20 miles southeast of Bucharest,” McCrary said. “The people in the village took us into their homes, fed us and looked after us for two weeks.
Then the 15th Air Force division took the embattled prisoners on the long journey home, flanked by a fighter plane escort. The prisoners made stops in Naples, Italy; Algiers, Algeria; Casablanca, Morocco; and England before touching down on American soil.
Two weeks before Christmas, on Dec. 13, 1944, McCrary returned to his home and family in Henderson County. He was bathed in tears and hugs as family and friends welcomed the hero home. While he was in the Romanian prison, the military presented his family with the Distinguished Flying Cross.
“The worst news any mother or wife or family could get was being notified that their loved one was missing in action,” McCrary said. “About three months after, they (his family) received a telegram telling them I was a prisoner of war in Romania. The longer the person is alive, there’s always hope.”
McCrary remained in military service until October 1945, when he was given an honorable discharge.
He took on a variety of jobs. He was raised on a farm and found work on a dairy farm. He also drove a milk truck before getting a job with a trucking company. He eventually retired from a trucking career in 1987.
He had two boys and a girl, now ages 48, 47 and 43, respectively. McCrary’s first wife died in 1996.
McCrary lost his eyesight to macular generation last year and is completely blind. But his new wife, Chris, whom he married in 1998, helps him keep a good sense of humor.
Wartime memories are tucked in the back of McCrary’s mind. At times, they are unfolded and dusted off during reunions with other former American POWs or when an inquisitive young person bothers to ask.
“I don’t think any person knows what freedom is until they lose it and recover it,” McCrary said. “It was a very serious war and a lot of people died, but we were defending democracy. We were keeping it alive.”