Martin Richard was born in Grand Chenier, Louisiana, south of Lake Charles in June 1924. His father was a cattleman and his mother was a homemaker. All of the children went to college. He ended up being a geophysicist. He was in pre-med when the war came along. He attended LSU [Annotator's Note: Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana] and was a freshman when he heard Pearl Harbor had been bombed [Annotator's Note: Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. He had graduated high school at 16. He was in Grosse Tête [Annotator's Note: Grosse Tête, Louisiana] visiting a relative when the attack happened. They went back to the campus and marched on the President's office because they thought they could whip the Japanese in six weeks. He told them the best thing they could do was go back to their studies. That was the best way to serve their country. He was in ROTC [Annotator's Note: Reserve Officer Training Corps] at LSU. At that time, freshmen and sophomores at LSU had to be in ROTC. Freshmen had to clean the upper classmen's rooms. There was a lot of hazing [Annotator's Note: initiation rituals] back in those days. If you stayed in ROTC in your junior and senior years, you became an ROTC Officer, but by that time, Richard was in the service.

When Martin Richard was inducted into the service, he could choose his branch of service. You could not volunteer, you had to wait to be drafted. He had learned enough by then not to volunteer for anything. He ended up at Camp Beauregard [Annotator's Note: Pineville, Louisiana]. A friend of his did the assigning there, and he told Richard he better go in the Army Air Corps. Richard had not thought about it one way or the other. His friend was older than him and probably knew sleeping in a warm bed at night was good. He took tests at the camp and was assigned to the Air Corps at Keesler Field [Annotator's Note: now Keesler Air Force Base, Biloxi, Mississippi] for basic training and aircraft mechanics. He then went to gunnery school in Harlingen, Texas and then to Salt Lake City [Annotator's Note: Salt Lake City, Utah] for assignment. He picked up an airplane in Topeka, Kansas and flew to Grenier Field [Annotator's Note: now Manchester-Boston Regional Airport] in New Hampshire to Labrador [Annotator's Note: Newfoundland, Canada], to Iceland, to Ireland. He did more training there going back and forth across the Irish Channel. He was then assigned to the 44th Bombardment Group, one of the better groups, so he was excited. He had been made a flight engineer in Salt Lake City. He had the airplane mechanics training for B-24s [Annotator's Note: Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bomber]. The others had no formal training. He was the younger guy and he was more or less in charge of enlisted men who had worked on the line longer than him. They got along really well. Up until the year before this interview [Annotator's Note: this interview was recorded in March 2005], they had a reunion just about every year. They were close. Richard had only been to Texas and New Orleans [Annotator's Note: New Orleans, Louisiana] before he ended up in Ireland. The men in his crew were from all over. One guy was from Boston [Annotator’s Note: Boston, Massachusetts]. His Boston accent was probably worse than Richard's Louisiana accent. He was one of two Jews on their crew. None of the enlisted men had a problem with this, but an officer did. He was at a different camp from them. [Annotator's Note: difficult to follow what he means]. They [Annotator's Note: non-Jewish men] did not know what was going on, but the Jews knew [Annotator's Note: Richard is referring to the Nazi's treatment of Jews in Europe]. The tail gunner wore the Star of David all the time. He ripped it off on the way down and threw it away [Annotator's Note: he must have bailed out].

Martin Richard's first mission [Annotator's Note: from Cheddington, England] was 6 June 1944, D-Day [Annotator's Note: Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944]. By 13 August, he had flown 33 missions. At the time, they only had to fly 30 missions to go home. This was to be their last mission and they did not have much time to play around the countryside. He did get one pass to London [Annotator's Note: London, England]. Other than that, they trained all the time. They lived in barracks with about five crews, 30 men. Nobody in their barracks ever went home; every one of them got shot down. They had a mess hall for food. When they would fly a mission, they would get a better breakfast. When they did not fly, they would get lamb from Australia and that was not too good. There were three of them that buddied together: Darrel Larsen [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Forces Staff Sergeant Darrell E. Larson, left waist gunner] from Ventura, California and Kenneth Beckwith [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Forces Technical Sergeant Kenneth E. Beckwith, radio operator] from Oklahoma. Beckwith messed up his ankles when he bailed out because he was overweight. He froze when getting ready to go out. The airplane was on fire and Richard kicked him out of the plane. Richard thinks he is the one in the best health of the others who are alive. The bombardier works at the VA [Annotator's Note: Department of Veteran's Affairs] in Boca Raton, Florida. He is Jewish and he is the one who had the hard time. [Annotator's Note: Richard mentions in another clip that this man had a hard time with the persecution of the Jews by the Germans.]

Martin Richard's first mission was almost complete catastrophe. [Annotator's Note: He flew his firts mission on 6 June 1944, the same day as the Allied invasion of Normandy, France.] When you have never been in combat, you realize you should have worked harder in practice. They were attacked by the Luftwaffe [Annotator's Note: German Air Force]. Luckily, none of them were shot down. They had air superiority that day and everybody was safe in that respect. The antiaircraft people were so busy on the ground that they could not worry about the ones in the air but it was still stressful. They left in the dark. Usually they would wake up about four o'clock in the morning, eat breakfast, and then get a briefing on what to expect. They would go through another session as to what had transpired. Their target on D-Day was the front lines around Caen [Annotator's Note: Caen, France]. The Luftwaffe made a pass at them with Focke-Wulf Fw-190s. Their wings looked like they were on fire and Richard knew it was fire coming at him. He thinks the Germans were more scared than he was that day. As the engineer, Richard would preflight the airplane and make any minor repairs in the air that he could do. He could help the pilot get extra thrust from the engines for extra speed or extra strength. The plane cannot take that for more than five or ten minutes. Coming to Europe, they left Iceland in a blizzard and the plane was going down over the Atlantic. The deicers were not working on one engine. It was Richard's job to fix that and he did. The pilot used to say to the crew that Richard had saved their lives.

Martin Richard does not really recall his first debriefing on D-Day [Annotator's Note: Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944]. He remembers they always got whiskey. It was Irish whiskey and was terrible. They saved it for the end of all of their missions but somebody else took it. There were little towns where they could get things. He only recalls drinking beer. He was a technical sergeant. He flew missions over Berlin [Annotator's Note: Berlin, Germany] where the flak [Annotator's Note: antiaircraft artillery fire] was so thick it looked like they could land on it. It felt like popcorn hitting the airplane. Berlin was terrible. Some missions over Munich [Annotator's Note: Munich, Germany] were bad. They went to Pölitz [Annotator's Note: now called Police, Poland], an oil refinery in Poland. It was really well protected. On that mission, Richard was in the 2nd Air Division along with the 392nd Bombardment Group, 8th Air Force. They had been on submarine patrol and the Germans had it in for them. The Germans would really attack them, and it was close enough that it would scare the others. On the mission to Pölitz, they were over the Baltic Sea when the Germans knocked that whole group out of the air. That is 48 planes and 480 men. It got so bad that group was disbanded. Another group the Germans had it in for was the 100th Bombardment Group [Annotator's Note: nicknamed "The Bloody 100th"]. Another mission [Annotator's Note: on 12 March 1945] was around Swinemünde [Annotator's Note: now Świnoujście, Poland] and Peenemünde [Annotator's Note: Peenemünde, Germany, the V-2 rocket research and production center], where the Germans were working on heavy water for atomic bombs. They hit that and supposedly killed around 10,000 scientists.

On Martin Richard's last mission, the British were pinned down on the beachhead around Caen [Annotator's Note: Caen, France]. He thinks it was a stupid assignment for them. They had three targets and were flying in line at 18,000 feet. They normally flew at 25,000 feet or higher. If there was antiaircraft fire and they were flying that low in a straight line, they were dead ducks. That is how they got shot down. The first burst of flak [Annotator's Note: antiaircraft artillery fire] was about a mile off. They laughed and said they were going home. The next burst got them. It hit between numbers three and four engines, setting them on fire. Richard sat at the top turret normally. After the first few missions, the ball turret had been done away with to increase aircraft speed. The assistant engineer flew the top turret and Richard stood between the pilot and copilot. The pilot called in and said to abandon ship. Richard hung around as long as he could. He knew they were over the front lines and if he could turn the airplane back, fly a few miles, and then bail out, they would be okay. But they all got out of there in a hurry. The crew landed a long time after the pilot and Richard did. The pilot delayed pulling his ripcord until he almost reached the ground. Richard's parachute did not open. He finally tore it open, so he and the pilot were together. They were captured by the antiaircraft group and put in a French farmhouse. They dug a hole in the roof to try and escape that night. They were taken away before nightfall though. The pilot kept trying until he did escape.

[Annotator's Note: Martin Richard's Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bomber was hit by antiaircraft fire near Caen, France on 13 August 1944.] The aircraft was descending pretty fast. Martin Richard bailed out, his parachute was swinging back and forth, and it was scary. He landed in a field and hid in the hedgerows. The Germans would come within six feet of him but could not see him. They started shooting into the hedgerows and he came out. He went to a farmhouse where his pilot was. They were moved by car and the Germans were looking into the air the whole time. They were worried about being shot by the fighter pilots. They went to a farmhouse where he and the pilot tried to dig out. The next day they were put in an apple orchard. There were about 300 infantry and 20 fliers there. An ambulance came by and a P-47 [Annotator's Note: Republic P-47 Thunderbolt fighter aircraft] strafed it, killing the driver. The Germans were mad at anyone who flew so they pulled out an axe and were going chop the heads off the fliers. A P-38 [Annotator's Note: Lockheed P-38 Lightning fighter aircraft] pilot started arguing with the Germans and told them they were strafed because they were carrying ammunition in the ambulances, which they were. He was a cocky guy and Richard does not think he returned after the war. He saved their lives though.

Martin Richard was moved to several different places. They were in some town between the frontlines and Paris. They could hear Patton's [Annotator's Note: US Army Lieutenant General George S. Patton, Jr.] guns, so they were moved again. They got to Paris and were paraded around town. They stayed in a convent and were told that if anyone escaped, the Germans would kill ten prisoners for everyone who did. They were then moved by truck. That was dangerous because anything that moved would be strafed by the American Air Forces. The prisoners would wave anything white they could find. The fighters did see they were prisoners, but some got shot. There were a lot of German convoys along the highway that had been shot up and had dead people who had been left there. They were interrogated at a Dulag [Annotator's Note: Dulag Luft prisoner of War interrogation and transit camp near Frankfurt, Germany] for three days. Richard was interrogated by a German who had gone to Yale [Annotator's Note: Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut] and sang "Yankee Doodle Dandy" [Annotator's Note: a song from the 1942 musical of the same name] to him every day. Richard only gave name, rank and serial number. Colonel Gabreski [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Forces Colonel Francis Stanley "Gabby" Gabreski], an ace flying P-47s [Annotator's Note: Republic P-47 Thunderbolt fighter aircraft], who got shot down was there. Richard saw him leaving with German officers. Richard was told that they thought so much of his flying that they took him to dinner. Richard's copilot name was Lanier. His brother graduated from West Point and was an OSS officer [Annotator’s Note: Office of Strategic Services, pre-runner of the Central Intelligence Agency; wartime intelligence agency] in France. He was captured at the same time as his brother but because he was a spy, they acted like they did not know each other. A bombardier, Irwin Stovroff [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Forces First Lieutenant Irwin J. Stovroff; Stovroff's oral history is also available on the Digital Collections website], who was Jewish, was being interrogated. The interrogator knew everything about him. Stovroff asked him how he knew all of that. The interrogator told Stovroff that he had been the German officer's paperboy in Buffalo, New York. The interrogator did not put Jewish down as his religion, so he helped him. Later on, they found out he was Jewish, and he had a hard time. He told Richard he was afraid for his life. Richard says the Jewish community knew more about what was going on than the rest of them did.

Martin Richard was taken to Gross Tychow, Poland [Annotator's Note: Stalag Luft IV, Gross Tychow, Pomerania, now Tychowo, Poland] over several days. The Germans were continually repairing their railroads. They were packed in the railcars and could only stand up. They hardly ever got water or food and the conditions were unsanitary. They were locked in the car in a marshalling yard all night in Berlin [Annotator's Note: Berlin, Germany] during an RAF [Annotator's Note: British Royal Air Force] bombing raid. He stayed in Stalag Luft IV until 28 January 1945. They then marched for 86 days from Poland to near Leipzig in southern Germany. They slept in fields and barns and it was cold. If you saw the Battle of the Bulge [Annotator's Note: 1965 American film], you know how cold it was. Richard had an overcoat as well as his uniform. He only got one bath this entire time and was covered with body lice. It was hard to sleep. When he was liberated, he was put in a room with about two feet of DDT [Annotator's Note: Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane; developed as an insecticide] on the floor. It got rid of the lice. [Annotator's Note: Richard pulls out an article by Senator Mark R. Warner from Virginia about that march. He reads an excerpt from it that describes the terrible conditions and the physical impacts on the individual soldiers, including death.] The men were liberated by the 104th Infantry Division on 26 April 1945. They were moving away from the Russians. The Germans did not want them to be liberated. He never felt that he was not going to make it. He never thought he would get shot down either. He was just optimistic.

Red Cross packages would come once every few weeks. Even though Martin Richard smoked, he saved his cigarettes. He would trade them for food. They would not just take them. He traded his watch for food, a loaf of bread was about it. He tried to eat sugar beets and got sick. He was in a farmyard that had a water well. He drank water from it and got very sick. They were in a barn then for three or four days. When the 104th Infantry Division came in and liberated them, Richard thought those boys were big. [Annotator's Note: Richard laughs.] The Army Air Forces people were not tall men as the spaces are cramped. These guys were big. The German guards put a bunch of old soldiers to march with them as guards. An old guard tried to get in the truck with the prisoners and the American soldier would not let him. They were all excited. They went to Halle [Annotator's Note: Halle, Germany] and stayed for a week. They were then flown by P-47 [Annotator's Note: Douglas C-47 Skytrain cargo aircraft] to Camp Lucky Strike [Annotator's Note: one of the transit and rehabilitation camps in France named after popular cigarette brands; Lucky Strike was near Le Havre, France] in France. He was there for five or six weeks before getting a ship home. They were fed well there. He came back on the USS Admiral W. S. Benson (AP-120) and were trying to break the world record. They made it in five days. They came across a mine in the open ocean. They were shooting at it with the cannons and missing. A GI pulled out his rifle and went on the deck and hit it on his first shot. [Annotator's Note: Richard laughs.] He had quite a few souvenirs before he got shot down but somebody else got all of that.