Colin’s Comments (group member since Dec 16, 2012)

Colin’s comments from the THE WORLD WAR TWO GROUP group.

My great uncle was a merchant seaman, who was torpedoed in the N. Atlantic, ironically by a friend of mine, Reinhard Hardegen.

I heard that there may be a film about Lt.Hiroo Onoda, whom I interviewed. He came out of the Philippine jungle in 1974 thinking the war was still going on.

Just an FYI, I knew and interviewed Jimmy Stewart, and he and Gen. Doolittle confirmed what several German officers told me. Hermann Goering had a 100,000 mark bounty Stewart;s head for the pilot who shot him down. Hitler matched that with the same bounty on Gable's head, because Gone With the Wind was Eva Braun's favorite film. Stewart retired as a Brig. General.

The late actor Charles Durning (Oh Brother Where Art Thiu', et al) had the Silver Star, Bronze Star and at least 2 Purple Hearts, and took a gun position on the cliffs at Pont du Hoc with the Rangers on D-Day.

Actor Sterling Haydon parachuted behind the lines with the OSS in Yugoslavia.

Actor comedian George Gobel was a Marine instructor pilot who did not see combat. His famous line was: "We were very effective. Not one Japanese plane got past Omaha."

Heavyweight boxing champion Max Schmelling, whom I interviewed, jumped into Crete with the German paratroopers in may 1941.

Actor Robert Clary (Hogan's Heroes) was in Buchenwald death camp.

Actor Donald Pleasance played the blind pilot "Colin" in the Great Escape. Ironically, he was a RAF bomber crewman who has been in that same camp during the actual escape.

Steve McQueen was a Marine in the 1950s who had the navy Marine Corps Medal for heroisim, saving a marine drowning who fell off a ship in Alaska. he was court martialed for painting a tank in pink camouflage on a bet and driving it through town.

German actor Kurt Jurgens' family hid a famil of Jews from the Gestapo during the war.

German actor Hardy Krueger ('A Bridge Too Far," et al) was a Hitler Youth conscript, issued a panzerfaust to kill tanks.

Princess (later Queen Elizabeth) drove an ambulance in London during the Blitz. She once crawled into a collapsed building, with an unexploded bomb, to comfort a pregnant women until rescue could be effected.

Ed McMahon (Johnny Carson's sidekick on the Tonight show for three decades) was a retired Marine Corps Colonel in the reserves, with about 100 missions in Korea flying Corsairs.

There are many more, but these are a few.

Dyess is a legend

I dated a girl from Colombia once, and her cousin and his family had moved to Argentina in the early 1970s. I met this guy, who spoke fluent English without an accent. he had been an Argentine interrogator during the war there. Three of my buddies were also in the Falklands, two paras and Royal Marine. Interesting collection of stories.

I interviewed two Germans, one airman (Hajo Herrmann and a U-Boat crewman) and two British men who were part of convoy PQ-17. Look that one up. Horrifying indeed.

You may like my book The Star of Africa: The Story of Hans Marseille, which covers the air war from both German and Allied perspectives, and a very good story. In fact we have film interest in the book also.

I interviewed about 20 guys who did years in the gulag system, some even longer than Hartmann. Amazing really, and will be the subject of another book in the future.

Albert also told me of when he fired an 88mm round into a KV-1, the turret blew off and went 20 feet in the air carrying the commander with it, while next to Otto Carius (also interviewed) hit one, the shell ricocheted and destroyed the KV next to it. A second round finished off the first target. His gunner had loaded the HE round in error, instead of AP, but found it worked great on KVs.

In my book Night Fighters the Germans interviewed discussed the probably compromise of Enigma. The navy changed its code system, the Luftwaffe did not.

I interviewed a well known Knight's Cross Oak Leaves German Tiger commander, Albert Kerscher who told me of the time they were in a big tank battle, and the dust and smoke limited visibility to only ten feet or so. He bumped into three T-34s, who did not recognize his German machine, they could hardly see each other. They began yelling at him in Russian to cover their flank while they attacked. He reversed, and killed all three tanks.

My newest book The German Aces Speak II has one interview with Erich Hartmann. He described the war, and his 10.5 years in the Soviet gulags.

I interviewed and knew Lt. Baron Burkhard von Muellenheim-Rechberg, the senior surviving gunnery officer on the Bismarck, and he also wrote a book many years ago. Good story.

May I suggest reading an old book, "The White Rabbit" which most will find interesting.

I would also suggest a film about Aussies in Vietnam, called "The Odd Angry Shot", with a good recognizable cast.

If you want to read a couple of books on Vietnam, one I coauthored, but the other written by Col. Nick Rowe who was a friend and my recruiter, see "Five Years to Freedom" and "Noble Warrior", good stories in the first person.

On another note, Obama would not even qualify for a security clearance to serve in the military, nor have his academic credentials been presented publicly to impress me, as a former professor and Special ops veteran, that he even bears those limited qualifications. He was a product of liberal affirmative action, pushed along and supported by like minded types. Sad but true.

Obama is so far out of his depth he is drowning. I knew Reagan and Bush Senior, and Obama is and was no way qualified for the position. The wave of liberal social hope and change brought him into office, much like the post Weimar people of Germany clinging to anything that would raise their fortunes. Both Germany and America paid a price, and in our case the interest is still mounting.

Mike wrote: "For those interested in the individual experiences of U-boat men, this is a book I enjoyed when I read it, admittedly decades ago: [book:The Golden Horseshoe: The Wartime Career of Otto Kretschmer,..."

I knew Otto well, and stayed at his home in Malaga, Spain, great guy. Ironically his neighbors were Leon Degrelle and Sean Connery. Good times.

FYI to the old crew, I have been taking a lot of hits on my books dealing with my interviews with German fighter pilots. I am now being labeled as a Nazi sympathizer, or an apologist. Simply because I relate the humanity displayed by the "other side' is not revisionist history, it is ignored history in my humble opinion. Feel free to chime in. Wait until my book of SS interviews comes out!