Robert Bueker was born in July 1924 in Omaha, Nebraska. He finished high school in 1942. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks if he remembers living through The Great Depression, a global economic depression that lasted from 1929 through 1939 in the United States.] He had a wonderful childhood. As a child you do not realize you do not have money. They were never without food or a house. He grew up with children who became lifelong friends. He had three sisters and two brothers. They lived in the city and moved around within it with five different houses. His father worked for the railroad. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks if he remembers the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941.] He was playing hockey. One of the children was the son of a veterinarian and had a farm that had a pond. That was their winter hangout area. They built a cave with a stove in it. They had finished their game and heard the news on the radio in the car. There were four in his car and all of them immediately said they were going to enlist. They enlisted. He and his older brother already had pilot's licenses. He had gotten his at age 14. They used to mow lawns and a doctor they worked for had a large lot. Omaha is hot and humid in the summer. It took two days to the doctor's lot and yard. He brought them water and then asked if they wanted to learn to fly. He had an airplane and had not time to fly it. It needed to be flown. The mechanic gave them flying lessons. They got fly all summer anytime they wanted to at no cost. It was wonderful. By the time of the war, they were kind of tired of flying. His brother was three years older and was accepted immediately when he enlisted. Bueker was put on hold due to still being in school. His brother wanted to try something else and became a navigator. They were very close. When Bueker went in February 1943, he also went into navigation.

Robert Bueker had navigation training in Hondo, Texas. He was in San Antonio [Annotator's Note: San Antonio, Texas] on weekends. They had College Training Detachments [Annotator's Note: a United States Army Air Forces program established at more than 150 colleges and universities around the country to provide prospectice pilots, copilots, bombardiers, and navigators with additional higher education prior to their entry into a flight training program] due to a backlog of people. The training was very intense. He was there for about four months and got 17 college credits in very highly scientific mathematics. He first went to Santa Ana, California and then to flying school and navigation training. He was trained properly. He did not have a day's leave [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time] in the first four years. He thought he would get a week's leave after training, and he intended to get married then. His wife-to-be had set the arrangements in Omaha [Annotator's Note: Omaha, Nebraska]. On the day he graduated, the leaves were cancelled, and he was told to proceed to the overseas training site. He went to Italy from Newport News [Annotator's Note: Newport News, Virginia]. First, he went to Fresno, California to get his crew and then to what is now Edwards Air Force Base, which was Muroc Army Airbase then [Annotator's Note: Muroc Army Airfield in Kern County, California]. They did overseas training there for overwater flights. He was scheduled to go to Japan to fly in B-24s [Annotator's Note: Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bomber]. Once training was finished, they were told they were going to Europe instead. He went up to San Francisco [Annotator's Note: San Francisco, California] to Hamilton Field [Annotator's Note: now Hamilton Air Force Base in Novato, California]. From there he went to Newport News and then by boat [Annotator's Note: across the Atlantic Ocean]. That was quite a journey. They went on what had been a French cruise ship, Athos II [Annotator's Note: SS Athos II]. They had five-course meals and wine for dinner. They had open decks in the evening because it was summer. They were unescorted. It was more like a vacation than war. They docked in Naples, Italy then took a train to Cerignola [Annotator's Note: Cerignola, Italy] to the 454th Bomb Group [Annotator's Note: 454th Bombardment Group, 15th Air Force]. The day they arrived they got a tent that had been previously occupied. The previous tenants were casualties. There was only one aircraft there that belonged to their group. All of the rest had been shot down. The remaining one was riddled with 20mm bullet holes. That was the one his crew got. It was an old D-model called "Buzz Job." It was the only aircraft in the group that started and finished the war. It had several different crews. He was in a different aircraft when he was shot down.

[Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Robert Bueker to describe the Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bomber he was a navigator on with the 454th Bombardment Group, 15th Air Force.] It had a lot of faults, but it carried twice the bomb load of a B-17 [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber]. It [Annotator's Note: the B-24 Liberator] was nicknamed "the flying coffin" because it tended to fall into pieces if it crash-landed. He always carried in the back of his mind that he did not want to go down with the aircraft. In the air, it was a very good aircraft and could flyer higher than the B-17. They normally could get to about 27,000 feet. The Davis wing [Annotator's Note: aircraft wing design] was a long narrow wing and losing speed meant losing airflow. The ability to fly it when the aircraft was damaged was affected. During a basic mission, as navigator, Bueker would plot course after they were in formation. He would maintain course position during the mission until the bombardier flew the aircraft on the actual bomb run. His only free time was when they crossed the Alps [Annotator's Note: highest and most extensive mountain range in Europe] coming back [Annotator's Note: from a mission] and the pilot could fly on radio contact. His first mission was a milk run [Annotator's Note: slang term used by American airmen to describe an easy combat mission] to a marshalling yard in Nis, Yugoslavia [Annotator's Note: now Niš, Serbia]. It was a close run, and they had some flak [Annotator's Note: antiaircraft artillery fire] batteries on railroad cars. They lost three aircraft to the mobile flak guns. When they returned, Colonel Aynesworth [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Forces Colonel, later Brigadier General, Horace D. Aynesworth] asked if anyone had seen the flak guns. Bueker was the only one who raised his hand. Then he got put on navigational group plotting for each day's missions. It turned out to be a real chore even though he enjoyed it most of the time. They had a lot of rain in 1944 so they did not have successive missions day after day. They would just sit in the tent. Officers received a bottle of bourbon a month as a ration and enlisted men received a six-pack of beer once a month. They would all get together with four bottles and six six-packs and go to the enlisted quarters and drink. They mostly dropped 500 pound bombs. The ends of bomb cases were steel and made excellent flooring for their tents. Field mice could get in and live under it. They would run between the holes in the floor. The men all had .45 sidearms [Annotator's Note: .45 caliber M1911 semi-automatic pistol] and they would target practice shooting the mice while sitting there. After there were too many holes in all of the tents, their sidearms were taken away from them. That was their fun. He did go into Cerignola [Annotator's Note: Cerignola, Italy] twice. It was a farm town in the breadbasket of Italy, planted mostly in grains and some grapes. The PX [Annotator's Note: post exchange] was in town. They good relations with the civilians. The locals worked in the mess tents cooking K-rations [Annotator's Note: individual daily combat food ration consisting of three boxed meals]. They occasionally added local greens to them. Eating was usually done in their own tents.

Robert Bueker and his crew [Annotator's Note: in the 454th Bombardment Group, 15th Air Force] had a lot of secondary targets on their missions which were rail marshaling yards going through the Alps [Annotator's Note: highest and most extensive mountain range in Europe] and the Brenner Pass [Annotator's Note: a mountain pass through the Alps Mountain range that forms the border between Italy and Austria]. Linz [Annotator's Note: Linz, Austria] was the big one on the northern side of the Alps and three or four on the southern side. If there was heavy cloud cover over the Alps, they could not fly over the thunderheads. They got caught in them one day and the 15th Air Force lost 11 aircraft through temperature inversion that tossed them all over the sky. Meteorological information was very inaccurate. Their primary targets were oil facilities at Blechhammer [Annotator's Note: Blechhammer, Germany], aircraft factories out of Vienna [Annotator's Note: Vienna, Austria], and Munich [Annotator's Note: Munich, Germany] as the big hub. Ploesti [Annotator's Note: Ploesti, Romania] was before his time. The B-24 [Annotator's Note: Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bomber] could carry 20 500 pound bombs and most missions were a success. The German Air Force was pretty much out of the picture by then. The big losses were from antiaircraft, which it always had been. The Germans became very adept at determining the altitude of the bombers. They would send up boxes of flak [Annotator's Note: antiaircraft artillery fire] and not aim at individual aircraft. The bombers had no choice but to fly right through it. Blechhammer was the worst for that. They had nine minutes they had to fly through it and there was no other way. They were at the extreme edge of their gas capacity and could only fly in one way. That meant the Germans could set up a screen of flak in the right spot. That created the biggest losses. Bueker flew 23 missions.

Robert Bueker flew 23 missions [Annotator's Note: with the 454th Bombardment Group, 15th Air Force]. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Bueker what happened on his 23rd mission.] He cannot and will not go into many of the details of the mission for security purposes. They were not shot down. Their aircraft was sabotaged. The engines ran wild, and the feathering buttons had been detached. The pilot was trapped in the aircraft and had to go down. The rivets started popping. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Bueker if he has any idea of who sabotaged the airplane.] He does and that is what he will not go into. He bailed out and the rest of the crew went down. The pilot had given the order to prepare to bail. The navigator stands right over the escape hatch when at his worktable. The bombardier, the nose gunner, and navigator all go out that hatch. There is only one headset between the navigator and bombardier. When the pilot gives the prepare to bail signal, the navigator gives the headset to the bombardier who then hand signals the navigator to go. He was on the hatch and passed the microphone. The bombardier gave him the signal and he pulled the hatch. He pulled his chute and did not see any other parachutes. He saw the aircraft way downstream from him. They were on a heading of Vis [Annotator's Note: Vis, Croatia] which was an emergency landing field. The incident had occurred over Hungary, and they had made a turn to try and make it to Vis. They were within sight of the Danube [Annotator's Note: the Danube River]. He realized he was the only one who came out. He never knew the reason why. Half of the crew was killed when the plane crash landed in Yugoslavia. The "flying coffin" nickname [Annotator's Note: nickname given to the Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bomber due to its tendency to come apart in crash landings] held true. The pilot, copilot, radio operator, and engineer made it. The men in the rear and the bombardier were killed. Bueker later met up with the pilot and co pilot in the interrogation camp. Bueker felt isolated when he bailed out, but he was looking for an escape route. He could see the Danube and knew he had to get across it. Yugoslavia was partially pro-Western, partially pro-Communist, and partially pro-German. Mihailović [Annotator's Note: General Dragoljub "Draža" Mihailović, Yugoslav Army (Chetnicks)] was the leader of the pro-Western part and Bueker wanted to get to his area. He was not paying attention to his drift, and as he approached the ground, he was coming into high-power lines and had to spill his chute at about 80 feet. He free fell into a wet cornfield. He was hiding his chute in a corn stack. He had lost his shoes and was cutting some of the chute for footwear. A farmer came behind him with a shotgun. He did not know then he was injured. Then next day he became paralyzed from the waist down for a few days. The farmer took everything of value. There were soldiers in Letenye [Annotator's Note: Letenye, Hungary] who took over and kept him overnight. They were Hungarian. Bueker had his first good meal since he had gone overseas.

A small contingent of Hungarian soldiers from Letenye [Annotator's Note: Letenye, Hungary] took Robert Bueker and kept him overnight in a house [Annotator's Note: after he had to bail out of his stricken aircraft]. He had his first good meal since he had gone overseas. It was meatloaf with a whole egg. After that, the guard was having fun. Bueker had not had sleep in four days. He had had four straight days of bombing runs only slept on the return trips. He was mentally numb. The guard took his belt off, put it around his neck, and pointed to his watch to indicate he was going to be hanged. Bueker paid no attention and got a good's night sleep. The next day a Luftwaffe [Annotator's Note: German Air Force] captain came in and took over. He went to Győr, Hungary and met up with four other American airmen and five UK [Annotator's Note: British] airmen. They were kept there for two or three days and then had to walk in snow. Bueker had no shoes and got frostbite on his toes. They then went by train eastward. He knew Budapest [Annotator's Note: Budapest, Hungary] was surrounded by Russian troops and that 300,000 SS [Annotator's Note: Schutzstaffel; German paramilitary organization] were given orders to stay and fight to the death, which they did. He went to Budapest. They were under continuous Russian artillery for a few days before getting on a train to Oberursel [Annotator's Note: Oberursel, Germany] outside of Frankfurt, Germany to an interrogation center. The Luftwaffe interrogated them. They were treated pretty well physically. It was a calculated mental torture to wear them down. A British prisoner was across the hall from him. He told him they would not keep him more than 30 days, but he would not last more than 20. Bueker figured it out that after isolation you kind of lose it all. There was not even a bucket to do his waste in [Annotator's Note: use the bathroom]. There was one light bulb that he could not reach. There was one window about eight feet off the ground. They had a radiator. It was hot in the room. The heat would get to him, and he would pound on the door for the guard. It was about 110 degrees in the room. They would then turn the heat off completely. The guard would not come again until they were freezing and then they did the routine over again. The idea was to keep them awake all the time, while being nice and pleasant the whole time. That went on for ten days. He was interviewed twice during that time. They tried to get them to violate the Geneva Conventions [Annotator's Note: standards for humanitarian treatment in war]. They had his parent's names, address, where he went to school and more. He would only give them his name, rank, and serial number. When they returned, they brought him clothes and walked him down a hallway. He was taken to his pilot and copilot with a German captain in a small room with high ceilings. There were Walt Disney [Annotator's Note: Walter Elias Disney; American entrepreneur, animator, writer, and film producer] characters painted on the walls. Bueker broke out in laughter at the "stupid pictures." It was his pilot's birthday and they brought in a cake and gave them cigarettes. They were then taken into another interrogation room. He thought this was going to be bad as they must have found out that they had the first radar bombsight on their aircraft.

Robert Bueker and some other men were taken into interrogation [Annotator's Note: after being captured in Hungary]. He thought this was going to be bad as they must have found out that they had the first radar bombsight on their aircraft. They did not know anything though. The next day they left there and went to an interim camp at Wetzlar, Germany. The Red Cross [Annotator's Note: Red Cross, an international non-profit humanitarian organization] was there. They gave them a suitcase and items of clothing they were missing. Bueker was without shoes since bailing out and his feet were in bad condition. The Red Cross gave them toothbrushes but no toothpaste. The Germans gave them a hard bar of something to brush with, but they never had any water anyway. They could only go to the restroom facility once a week for a shower. He moved to Stalag Luft I in Barth, Germany on the shores of the Baltic [Annotator's Note: the Baltic Sea]. It was a large camp with four compounds of 2,500 men each. The first compound [Annotator's Note: designated the South compound] was all British, who were set up quite nicely. Germany abided by all the rules of the Geneva Conventions [Annotator's Note: standards for humanitarian treatment in war] then. They had plenty of food at that time. As the war went on, camp two [Annotator's Note: designated the West compound and later called North 1] was built for mostly Americans. It had a big community hall and dining hall. Compound three [Annotator's Note: later called North 2] was built and had a dining hall and barracks only. Compound four [Annotator's Note: later called North 3] had nothing but barracks. That is where Bueker was. No one ever used the dining hall because there was no food by then. He reached Stalag Luft I in December 1944. They got half of a Red Cross parcel each week. They were supposed to get a full parcel each week. They were supplemented sometimes with rutabagas, potatoes, or sugar by the Germans. They got bread. The German supplements got shorter and by mid-January [Annotator's Note: January 1945] the supplements were gone, and they started only getting a quarter parcel a week. By March [Annotator's Note: March 1945], food just quit coming. [Annotator's Note: Bueker starts talking about the laundry room when the tape cuts.]

Robert Bueker [Annotator's Note: while a prisoner of war in Stalag Luft I in Barth, Germany] was treated quite well by the Germans and better than he expected to be treated. There was no medical care though. They had one man, Robert Jordan [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling; unable to identify], who had bailed out of a B-17 [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber] at high altitude. His chute straps broke his pants apart and froze his genitals. When he hit the ground, it [Annotator's Note: his genitals] was encased in ice. The Germans were laughing at him. He was in terrible pain because the skin came off. They built him a box that could cradle it so he could sleep. It did finally heal. The 15th Air Force suffered 65 percent casualties in aircrews. It was a brutal war. If you survived it, you were one of the lucky few. The navigator bailed out, was picked up by the Austrian underground, put in civilian clothes, and was later captured trying to get into Yugoslavia. Once he got out of uniform, he was no longer under the Geneva Conventions [Annotator's Note: standards for humanitarian treatment in war]. By the time he made it to camp, the SS [Annotator's Note: Schutzstaffel; German paramilitary organization] had broken both his legs and arms in torture. When they arrived like that, there was no medical help. Some had been sent to a hospital for German Army men before they got to the camp. They were very fortunate. Inside the camp, the Germans just did their jobs. The prisoners had fun with some of them. The restroom was a separate building that stood by itself. Part of it was a latrine they could use during the day. There were two guards there. When the guards would meet, they were exposed. A prisoner went up and put a rotten potato on his rifle barrel. He marched with that all day. He got chewed out in German. That was their entertainment. They would take a plank of wood and throw it up against the fence as if they were going to escape. By the time the guards could swing around to shoot, they had moved away. They were structured in the camp in a military organization. They had different committees and rules. The bartering committee had a prominent role. Cigarettes were the medium of exchange for trade. Red Cross parcels contained two packs of cigarettes. They would trade cigarettes for food. A lot of men stored their food for escape attempts. If anything got mold or bugs, they would eat it anyway. They would occasionally get meat, like a horse that had been strafed in the fields. It might be a couple days old and full of maggots, but they would cut it up and eat it.

Robert Bueker [Annotator's Note: while a prisoner of war in Stalag Luft I in Barth, Germany] and the men in the camp had a bartering committee. They had an idea to get a guard who would barter and trade. They slowly made more complex bartering and they could get a radio tube. The other compounds would barter for the other pieces. They built one [Annotator's Note: a radio] and it was kept in Compound One, which was the British camp. They had no way of getting the news passed to the other three compounds. They carved out a bedpost to be hollow to keep the radio stashed in. A Catholic priest from Scotland parachuted into the camp to provide religious services. He would bring the news to the other compounds in his watch on airmail stationary on Sundays. Hearing confessions gave him enough time to give the paper to the administrative people in the compound. It worked out well. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Bueker how he felt learning the Germans were losing the Battle of the Bulge or German Ardennes Counter Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945.] They were winning in the beginning and that was a real blow. They kept up with all of it. The Russians liberated his camp [Annotator's Note: on 1 May 1945]. They knew they were coming, and they could see the artillery when it was still 60 miles away. They sent out a contingent to meet them. The morning they came in, they took a tank and rolled down the wire. The Russians were wearing black armbands in recognition of the death of Roosevelt [Annotator's Note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States]. The Russians treated them well. They drove in around 50 head of cattle for fresh meat and brought in potatoes. Bueker's pilot was Yugoslavian and could understand Russian. They let them out of the camp, and they went to the German airbase and spent the day there. At the end of the day, they were starting back towards town, and they came across a compound with electrical wiring. The gate was open. There were three barracks there that were full of dead people. He went room to room and counted bodies and there were around 5,000 of them. It was an underground aircraft factory, and the dead were political prisoners that were working there. They were on the verge of starvation when the Germans abandoned them and locked them in. Bueker and his pilot stayed in town. This was 1 May [Annotator's Note: 1 May 1945], and it was springtime, and it was later than they thought. The first Russian guard post told them the curfew was on. They stayed in the Russian Army headquarters in Barth where they were having a party. Bueker and his pilot were invited but they declined. They got an entire hotel to themselves. He still has some souvenirs from it. He slept on a feather bed that night. They returned to camp the next morning and went back out through the lines. They ran into a Russian tank outfit who gave them some vodka [Annotator's Note: an alcoholic beverage]. They stayed with them for the day. They found a rowboat and made a sail but could not sail anywhere. They came back and were taken to the camp commander, Colonel Zemke [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Forces Colonel Hubert "Hub" Zemke], who told them they would be the last to leave. They did ten days later, and the war was over.

Robert Bueker returned to the United States in early July [Annotator's Note: July 1945]. He went to Reims, France first where they only had canned beets to eat. They went into town. His pilot was an art buff and wanted to see the windows in the Reims Cathedral [Annotator's Note: Notre-Dame de Reims]. The roof and windows were gone though. They went by truck to the coast of France where there were four camps. He went 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] and there was nothing to eat there. It was as bad as prison camp. They had been told they were going to London [Annotator's Note: London, England] to hotels, but they were in tents on the cold, damp coast. Eisenhower [Annotator's Note: General of the Army Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower, Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force; 34th President of the United States] came out to give a talk. People were not ready to listen. He tried to give reasons why they could not go to London due to minefields [Annotator's Note: areas where mines, stationary explosive devices triggered by physical contact are buried] in the area. The minefields were all marked. These ex-POWs [Annotator's Note: prisoners of war], including Bueker, went AWOL [Annotator's Note: absent without leave] across the minefields and went to Paris [Annotator's Note: Paris, France] for a week or so. They got a draw against their back pay. They could sell their cigarettes to the French. It went on openly, so money was never a problem. They met a Canadian who had been in Arnhem, Holland who had taken refuge in a bank [Annotator's Note: during the Battle of Arnhem, part of Operation Market Garden, 17 to 26 September 1944 in Arnhem, Netherlands]. Some of the soldiers blew the vault and used Dutch guilders [Annotator's Note: currency of the Netherlands until 2002] for poker chips. When he was given leave [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time] to Paris, he came in with bags with 300,000 dollars in Dutch guilders. They spent it all in a couple of days between five of them. They bought all the seats in the Lido Club [Annotator's Note: Lido de Paris, cabaret and burlesque show in Paris, France] and had all the G.I.s [Annotator's Note: government issue; also, a slang term for an American soldier] come in for free entertainment. Bueker returned to Camp Myles Standish in Boston [Annotator's Note: Boston, Massachusetts]. He called his wife who was not in and talked to her mother. He went to Fort Leavenworth [Annotator's Note: in Leavenworth, Kansas] and then to Omaha [Annotator's Note: Omaha, Nebraska] around 2 or 3 July [Annotator's Note: July 1945]. Bueker got discharged and then went back in. He got 90 days leave first when he got home. He was officially discharged in early January 1946. He feels it is important to talk about World War 2 and teach children about it and what life was like in that point in time. It is history they should know.