SAN FRANCISCO – Lee “Shorty” Gordon, believed to be the first American prisoner of war to escape from a German camp during World War II, has died. He was 84.
Gordon died Tuesday of complications from surgery at a Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in Menlo Park, according to his daughter, Cherie Gordon.
Gordon, who made two failed escape attempts from Stalag VIIA – including one on a bicycle while yelling the only German he knew, “Heil, Hitler” – succeeded on Oct. 13, 1943, according to historian Robert Doyle.
“Shorty was a committed natural escaper,” Doyle said. “There was nothing that was going to keep that man in that camp.”
The Southern California native was serving as a ball turret gunner with the Army Air Corps’ 305th Bomb Group when his B-17 was shot down over Wilhelmshaven, Germany, on Feb. 26, 1943. He survived the parachute landing, but was captured by German troops, his daughter said.
After two failed escape attempts, Gordon tried again, trading identification tags with an Australian POW to gain access to the outdoor work area of the Moosburg camp where he bribed guards with coffee and cigarettes and hid in a bathroom stall until dark. He then hopped a fence when a guard’s back was turned and walked out of the camp, Doyle said.
Gordon rode freight trains to France, where he made contact with a Resistance group that helped him reunite with the Allied forces.
More than a year later, on Feb. 27, 1944, Gordon arrived safely in England.
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