| HeraldNet - Snohomish County's online news source |
 FRIDAY, MARCH 19, 2010 12:27 am |
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Local News 
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Former prisoner of war humble about his own story Alex Moir doesn’t think he did much.At 21, he was a B-24 Liberator co-pilot when his bomber was shot down over Germany. He spent months at Stalag XIII-D, a World War II prison camp the Germans called Nurnberg Langwasser. Moir calls it “a hell of a camp, with horrific quarters and supplies.” He was beaten on the day of his capture, Dec. 4, 1944. Until April 29, 1945, when he was liberated by U.S. troops at Moosburg, another prison-of-war camp, he survived on starvation rations. All that, and what you hear from the 86-year-old Marysville man is humility. “I didn’t seem to do much for the war effort,” Moir said Tuesday. “I haven’t done what other people have done.” Raised on the big island of Hawaii, where his father worked for a sugar company, Moir was already at Long Beach Junior College in California when the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor plunged his country into war. By 1943, he had joined the Army Air Corps. Before he turned 21, he was flying a four-engine bomber. A member of the 8th Air Force 2nd Division 44th Bomb Group, he shipped out from New York to Liverpool, England, in October 1944. His B-24 crew was based at Shipdham, near the east coast of England, when 2nd Lt. Moir took off on his first mission of the war. That first B-24 mission would be his last. The heavy bomber normally carried a crew of 10. On that day, they were missing the ball-turret gunner. Flying through icy air to the steady drone of engines, they were over Germany when antiaircraft fire took out two of four engines. In one spin, they dropped from 20,000 feet to 10,000 feet. They flew on as best they could but soon had to parachute out, not knowing where they were. In fact, they were within 40 miles of the Swiss border and safety. Landing with their chutes in a field outside the German town of Freiburg, in short order they were captured by civilians. “There wasn’t any use running,” Moir said. A man he thought had a rifle in fact was holding a pipe. Moir said he was beaten with the pipe, and his fingers were broken. Two of his crewmen were killed. The navigator’s skull was crushed by the man with the pipe, Moir said. And the nose gunner, who had a gun, was shot to death. “I was very lucky,” Moir said. From the Freiburg jail, he was sent to an interrogation center, where he spent four days in solitary confinement. Officers and enlisted men were separated for different camps, and Moir was treated at several hospitals before ending up at the Nurnberg (in English, Nuremberg) POW camp. His daily diet was a piece of black bread and “phony coffee” for breakfast; dehydrated vegetable soup for lunch; and at night, “barley soup complete with barley worms.” The Red Cross sent packages to the camps, but what was supposed to be a weekly supply for one man had to be split among a dozen. Moir figures the Germans kept the rest. “We’d just get a taste,” he said of parcels that contained canned food, cigarettes and chocolate. Despite dark memories, acts of kindness shine through. An American nurse who’d been captured helped him at a Frankfurt hospital. After she was freed, she contacted his parents in Hawaii to let them know he was safe. He spent February to April of 1945 at the Nurnberg camp, and then was sent on a nine-day march to the camp at Moosburg. There, the Americans could hear Patton’s 3rd Army battling the Germans. “They shelled each other over the camp,” Moir said. On his final day of captivity, “one American tank commander had a brother in our camp,” Moir said. “He was allowed to smash down the front gate.” Like so many thousands of his generation, Moir came home and raised a family. He served as an Air Force reservist, retiring as a lieutenant colonel. He worked for the Boeing Co., first as a mechanic and later as a customer coordinator. Today, he’s a fitness enthusiast. He works out five days a week, and plays racquetball. “This exercise stuff is terrific. I have a ton of friends when I walk in here,” Moir said Tuesday at the LA Fitness club at Everett Mall. The exercise shows in his muscled physique. What doesn’t show is any sign that this man went through hell while serving his country. He is modest, like so many heroes. At great cost, they won a great victory. Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460, muhlstein@heraldnet.com. |
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- Teams from Snohomish County join in search for Colton Harris-Moore on Orcas (10)
- Riders take to Community Transit's Swift buses (9)
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- Woman gets 17 months for lies, bribery (4)
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