Sabol was born in 1924 and knew when the war broke out that he would have to serve in one branch or another. He chose the US Army Air Corps. He had some military bearing having been a member of the Civilian Conservation Corps after he finished high school. His two older brothers were Seabees [Annotator's Note: US Navy Construction Battalion] and one of them forbid Sabol from following them into the Seabees. He enlisted in September 1942 with a travelling aviation cadet board. He had volunteered back in the summer of 1942 but was rejected due to a deviated septum. He wanted to be a pilot. After basic training in Fresno, California he went through a college training program and then on to Santa Ana, California for classification. There he was classified as a pilot. After his college training he took nine weeks of preflight training in Santa Ana. Then it was on to primary flight training where he flew twin engine Stearman's [Annotator's Note: Stearman PT-17 primary flight trainer aircraft]. From primary he went to Garner Field, California for basic flight training flying the BT-13 [Annotator's Note: Vultee BT-13 basic trainer aircraft]. Sabol wanted to be a P-38 [Annotator's Note: Lockheed P-38 "Lightning" fighter aircraft] pilot. Most of them wanted to be a fighter pilot. Sabol was sent to twin engine fighter school in Douglas, Arizona. When they arrived the director of training, Major Moore, informed them that they would not be trained as fighter pilots, they would be trained as bomber pilots. After completing advanced flight training in Douglas, Arizona Sabol went into B-17s [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 "Flying Fortress" heavy bombers]. The transition from twin engine aircraft to four engine planes was difficult but Sabol did it.After combat crew training in El Paso, Texas Sabol was sent to Lincoln, Nebraska where they picked up a brand new B-17. They flew the new plane to Liverpool, England where he was assigned to the 305th Bombardment Group then based at Chelveston. He made the journey overseas in January 1945 and began flying combat missions in February 1945. His first combat mission was bombing Tiger [Annotator's Note: "Tiger" is the nickname of the Mark VI heavy German tank] factories in Kassel, Germany. Sabol was shot down on his sixth mission. He had flown missions to Kassel, Bremmen, Berlin where he was shot down, U-Boat [Annotator's Note: German abbreviated term for submarine] pens in Swinemunde, and Cologne. Sabol's last mission was March 18 [Annotator's Note: 1945]. They lost an engine to antiaircraft [Annotator's Note: antiaircraft artillery fire, also referred to as flak] while they were on their bombing run. They wanted to drop their bombs on the target and strayed from the rest of the formation. A German Me262 attacked them and set their #3 engine's fuel tank on fire. Sabol knew about the Me262 jet fighter and the rocket powered Me163 aircraft. He thought the plane was going to blow up. He was flying as copilot. He let his pilot know what had happened and he gave the signal to bail out. Archie, the top turret gunner and Sabol bailed out over German lines and were captured. The rest of the crew bailed out over Russian lines. 

Sabol was flying at 28,500 feet when he was shot down. He had heard about other guys being shot at by fighter planes on their way down but he was not. He followed his training and hid his chute. At that stage of the game, he had been warned not to act like a hero because the German civilians were raising hell with some of the guys. He even hid his .45 caliber pistol in some weeds so no one could use it on him. The Hitler Youth showed up. They were a scary bunch. They gave Sabol some cause to be worried until an adult sergeant arrived. During this time he didn't know what was going to happen to him but was glad that he wasn't hurt. He had heard from reports that the darndest things could happen. One soldier manning a flak battery tried to back hand Sabol but he ducked. They took him to a civilian jail. His flying boots were taken from him and he was forced to walk through a gutter. An older couple in their 50's rode their bicycles alongside the group. The old lady had some compassion for him. The couple left and when they returned they had sandwiches which they gave to the guards. Sabol was given half of a marmalade sandwich. He was placed in a civilian jail cell by himself. As the day wore on more men were placed in the jail. After a while they were assembled and taken across Berlin to Stendal for interrogation. His first encounter was with a sergeant who asked him the routine questions but he only replied with his name, rank, and serial number. When it was agreed that he wasn't going to talk anymore he was sent to talk to a major. The major offered him a cigarette and apologized for the quality of it. The Germans had some quiet ways of scaring them. They would threaten to turn them over to the Gestapo.A group of them [Annotator’s Note: prisoners of war (POWs)] were put on a train that took them north to a prison camp. There were about a dozen of them that were headed to Stalag Luft I in Barth, Germany on the Baltic Sea under the guard of a sergeant. About midwa through the trip the train stopped and an SS officer tried to convince the sergeant to turn them over to him but the top sergeant refused to do so.Sabol arrived at the camp about a week after being shot down.

Stalag Luft was for airmen only. Luft is the German word for air. There were 8000 or 10000 of them there. There were about 1500 RAF [Annotator's Note: British Royal Air Force] folks there too and 500 Russians.Barracks held 207 or 205 or 210. There were 10 rooms of 20 soldiers in double stacked bunks. There was a stove in each room for the men to cook using low grade coal. Sabol remember the 207 because they would have roll call several times a day where the Germans would count them and that was the number. He doesn't know of anyone who tried to escape.Sabol thought that the war would end within a few months. He based that on what he knew before he was shot down.They had a radio which was how they got information all of the time. They got the word that President Roosevelt had died on 12 April [Annotator's Note: 12 April 1945]. Some of the men wore black armbands.As the war progressed to an end they got word that Himmler, the head of the Gestapo, was going to see to it that the prison camps would be strafed by German fighters. There was a good deal of governance within the camp and the senior Americans had trenches dug next to all of the barracks that the men could jump into if they were strafed. They did all of the digging with milk cans that came in the parcels provided by the Red Cross.They got a half of a Red Cross parcel a week that contained some cheeses, Spam, and cookies. They subsisted on the parcels. The Germans were starving themselves. Once a week the Germans would make a big pot of soup with horse meat. They got a bucket of soup on Saturdays.The toughest part about being a POW was the uncertainty of where you were going. They wondered how things would work out.A P-47 [Annotator’s Note: an American fighter plane] flew over the camp giving them the thought that our flyboys ruled the skies. They could hear the Russian guns booming. Before long the Russians showed up and proceed to liberate them. The senior American commander, Colonel Zemke [Annotator' Note: US Air Force Colonel Hubert A. "Hub" Zemke], asked the Russians not to tear the fences down because he didn't want the men to scatter. The Russians were happy to be liberating the prisoners. Sabol was liberated on 8 May [Annotator's Note: 8 May 1945], the day the war ended there.In anticipation of the Russians getting there, the Germans planned to leave and take all of the prisoners to the west. Col. Zemke convinced them that it would be futile to try to do that because the Russians were on their tails. The Germans left the Americans and British but took the Russian prisoners with them. Soon after that a jeep arrived with an American major and a sergeant in it. Sabol scribbled a note on a scrap of paper that was sent to his parents. That was the first news they got of his liberation. By the time the men in the jeep showed up the Russians had already cleared out.The Eighth Air Force passed the word that they would be flying all of the POWs from Stalag Luft I out. There was an airstrip next to the camp and B-17s came in and flew them out, forty to an airplane. They had built wooded floors in the planes for the men to stand on. They were flown to Reims, France.Sabol flew a B-17-G. He had trained in the F but flew the latest model which was the G.He was shot down by an Me262. The German pilot got three airplanes on that pass. If he had fired five feet to the left he would have gotten both pilots. Sabol got to see one [Annotator's Note: a German Me262] up close later at the airbase next to Stendal. He spoke to some P-51 pilots who said that they were amazed at the way it performed. Even though the P-51 was a high performance airplane they couldn't do much with a Me262.Sabol believes that wars will continue and that the young people will have to defend us.He is very proud of our military.