Gilbert Shawn was not shipped to basic training. Instead, he went to an air field in Kentucky as a cadet. Shawn took a test and was told he would be going to pilot training. First, he was sent to primary school where he learned to march and ride a horse. After primary, he went to basic then advanced training, where he was trained in multi-engine school. Shawn was a copilot for four months with a pilot he liked. He ended up in a hospital with pain in his appendix, where he was told to go to first pilot school. He was sent all over the country for the various schools he attended. In first pilot school, he was given a crew to train with. Shawn was excited about having a crew and liked all the men. They learned how to work together as a team to drop bombs.

Gilbert S. Shawn flew with Jimmy Stewart [Annotator's Note: later US Air Force Brigadier General James "Jimmy" Stewart; American actor], who was an operations officer. He later served under him in Diss, England. Shawn thought he was a very nice guy, but strict. Stewart always carried a gas mask. In England, he was sitting with his crew and some women. Stewart joined the group with a beautiful woman and all the lights started going out. When the lights came back on, Stewart jumped up and told them all to meet him in his office the next day. In his office, he took away their weekend leave, but Shawn never found out why. During a training flight, Shawn was flying with Stewart. Shawn's bombardier accidentally dropped all the bombs instead of one. They watched as the bombs dropped around a highway. They flew closer to the bomb site and all the people on the road started running away. Stewart joked that the civilians thought the bomber would shoot its machine guns at them next. He later dressed down the bombardier. One time, Shawn was losing engine pressure, so he brought his plane back to the base. When he did, Stewart chewed him out, but apologized the following day. Shawn crashed during a mission once after getting hit by flak [Annotator's Note: antiaircraft artillery fire]. Before he crashed, he called for emergency units to meet him on the field. He almost hit a group of trees after landing. An Englishman came out to inspect the crash, but Shawn collapsed from the adrenaline. He was driven to the club and given a drink. He called his base and Stewart answered and asked how the he and the crew was, then had the crew brought to the base.

[Annotator's Note: Gilbert S. Shawn served in the US Army Air Forces as a pilot flying Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bombers in the 703rd Bombardment Squadron, 445th Bombardment Group, 8th Air Force.] Every mission was difficult. On one mission, Shawn's target was a munitions factory in Germany [Annotator's Note: Zwickau, Germany]. The mission had been delayed for some time. There was fog on the way to the target. Shawn would lose sight of the other planes in his formation. Just as they got to Germany, the bombers were called back to England. On their return trip, they were attacked by German fighters who quickly downed five bombers. The bombers had a fighter escort, but they would get lost in the clouds. Shawn kept calling for fighter support. Shawn jumped out of his plane [Annotator's Note: Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bomber, serial number 41-29118, named "Nine Yanks and a Jerk", shot down 12 April 1944] and saw P-40s [Annotator's Note: Curtiss P-40 Warhawk fighter aircraft] circling under him. His tail gunner [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Forces Staff Sergeant Martin E. Clabaugh] and radioman [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Forces Technical Sergeant Frederick J. Cotron] were killed. Some of the people in that flight were on their first mission. His copilot immediately jumped out without helping Shawn unhook from the plane. When he landed, he could not find any of his crew. He found some of them about a month later in a town [Annotator's Note: Perwez, Belgium]. Three escaped and hid in a house. The Germans were looking for them and shot the house they were hiding in. The men were hiding with a Belgian family. The Belgians convinced the Americans to surrender. The Germans put a bayonet to the first man. The second crewman was making jokes to the Germans when he surrendered. They were all imprisoned and treated like spies. Shawn found all that out after the war. When Shawn jumped out of his plane, he did not look up. When he hit the ground, he lost his boots and broke a leg from the impact. Immediately some locals came up to him asking if he was American. Shawn left them and made it to a tree, which is when he saw a man about 50 feet away. The man brought him into some woods. The man left him after telling him he would be back early in the morning. Shawn started working with the Belgian underground [Annotator's Note: also called the Belgian Resistance, collective term for resistance movements].

After ditching his plane [Annotator's Note: on 12 April 1944 over Perwez, Belgium], Gilbert S. Shawn worked with the Belgian underground [Annotator's Note: also called the Belgian Resistance, collective term for resistance movements]. The night he was found by the underground, he was brought to a small, camouflaged room, where he spent the next two days hiding. On the third day, he was brought to a deserted house in a town. They brought a doctor to look at his leg. On the fourth day, he met a man who started asking him questions. He was given a change of clothes and picked up by a chauffeured car. He was involved in a car accident and he tried to crawl away so he would not be captured. A man walked up and put him in another car. He was driven to a house, where he was treated well by the lady of the house. She treated all downed airmen well. He read many western books while his leg healed. One day, he was told by the gendarmerie [Annotator's Note: paramilitary police] he would be moved. Shawn drank a lot of beer during this time. The underground put pistols to the driver's head for spying, but they let him go. That night, he moved to another house with the gendarmerie chief. The Germans would inspect their weapons while Shawn hid upstairs. The Germans conscripted locals to work jobs in Germany. The Gestapo [Annotator's Note: German Geheime Staatspolizei or Secret State Police; abbreviated Gestapo] raided houses in the area looking for Belgians that did not report back for work.

[Annotator's Note: Gilbert S. Shawn was a prisoner of war after his aircraft was shot down on 12 April 1944.] After four months, the invasion [Annotator's Note: D-Day; the Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944] began, and Shawn was moved again. He thought the German MPs [Annotator's Note: military police] looked very good in their uniforms. All of the downed aviators were sent [Annotator's Note: by the Belgian Resistance or underground] to the Ardennes [Annotator's Note: Ardennes Forest, primarily located in Belgium]. There were two other aviators moved, but Shawn did not meet them for another month. He was moved because of the invasion. A German truck pulled up and Shawn's navigator was on it. Shawn hitched a ride on the same truck, but when it sped up, he jumped off. The Belgians came to see Shawn's navigator, who was wounded when he fell off the truck. An old lady helped by getting a doctor. The doctor explained that he would help him no matter who he was. The navigator was left behind, and Shawn did not see him again until close to the end of the war. Shawn then arrived in a camp in the forest. It was a small building with a stove and three bunks. Shawn and the other airmen made more bunks. Eventually, there were 14 men living in the camp. Someone in the town would make bread for them and every man had to occasionally cook for everyone. There was a local man living nearby that was working for the Germans. Some of the gendarmerie [Annotator's Note: paramilitary police] and Americans raided the house. There were 21 men by that time. They tore down various things in the house and stole some of the things the man owned. In August, they were listening for the Germans and received a signal that there was a breakout in France. Shawn could hear the German tanks in the forest going towards the Americans. Eventually, the tanks started retreating. They received word that the Germans were coming towards them. The Americans ran out of the house and into the forest. After some time, they ran across some fishermen. Shawn and a British man he was with asked the man for a route to the nearest town. The man was the Count of the district and helped the two men get back in contact with the underground [Annotator's Note: Belgian Resistance, collective term for resistance movements]. People were not allowed to enter the woods because the underground owned it. The man tried to give Shawn a package of food, but Germans started shooting at him, but they did not enter the woods. Shawn made it back to the underground.

Eventually, Gilbert S. Shawn was brought to the American lines [Annotator's Note: by the Belgian Resistance or underground]. The Belgians tried to describe the American jeeps. They were on the other side of a nearby river. The village was near the advance of Patton's [Annotator's Note: US Army Lieutenant General George S. Patton, Jr.] army. The people in the village left, so they only found empty houses. There was a stone bridge that had been blown up, but the Belgians put planks down so people could cross the river. There were German tanks shooting into the area. Shawn made it to the other side and there was an American jeep with a machine gun pointed at them. Shawn kept telling them they were Americans and had to explain why they were in that town. Shawn was brought back to the American lines and saw all the GIs [Annotator's Note: government issue; also, a slang term for an American soldier] in the area. He was happy and excited it was all over. He wrote a letter to his family as soon as he could. His father did not believe it was a real letter.

Gilbert S. Shawn was born in 1921 in New York City [Annotator's Note: New York, New York]. He grew up in Manhattan [Annotator's Note: Manhattan is one of the five boroughs in New York, New York] and had two brothers. One was a colonel in the Air Force who owned a jeep that he said belonged to General Leclerc [Annotator's Note: Free French Army General Philippe Francois Marie Leclerc de Hauteclocque]. His other brother was a doctor. His father was a successful contractor until the Great Depression [Annotator's Note: Great Depression; a global economic depression that lasted through the 1930s]. Shawn majored in advertising in college and started working for Sears [Annotator's Note: Sears Roebuck and Company] when he graduated. After the war ended, Shawn went back to work at Sears, but was told about a job with a studio. He got the job and ended up being the president of the studio. Shawn was in a barber shop when he heard about the attack on Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. He did not know where it was, but they thought the Japanese would raid California. Shawn got a high draft number, which would have let him wait longer than other people. He decided to enlist with the Air Force since he knew how to fly a little. After enlisting, he waited three months to hear back from the Air Force. He kept telling people he was in the service because he was getting a paycheck from the military. He was also working at the same time and ended up getting three paychecks. In 1942, he received his orders to report to boot camp. Because the Air Force was full, he had to wait to go to boot camp. The military told him not to quit his job until he received his orders. He did not have a college degree when he went into the service.