· RUEL SK

The Bail Out
105
the Jerries wanted them for - to pick up the dead bodies of their fallen comrades.)
"Lying on the ground, was the body of one of our men who had landed without a
chute. We picked him up to put him in the horse-drawn wagon, every bone in his body was
broken, his head was flattened. A Gennan removed one of his two dogtags and put it in an
envelope. 1 glanced at the second dogtag and saw the name of Bateman.
"Then, we went in a pasture and 1 found two legs. He was an officer as he had his
'pinks' on. In the middle of an open field, we came across a radioman named Joseph
Gilfoil, who was Eppley's friend. He had a bad leg wound, but came down in a chute. He
was lying in a pool of blood and was dead.
"We traveled up and down the hills and forests and did not return to the village until
well into the evening. We returned to jail to receive a loaf of bread and some ersatz coffee.
Later that evening, we were picked up by a Wehnnacht truck, which was filled with
wounded men from the 445 th . Some of them were in very bad shape, with terrible wounds.
Among them we found Lt. Gerald Kathollying near the tailgate in considerable pain. We
thought that his back was broken."
(The Luftwaffe soldiers came in at 11 :00 PM to pick up Raymond Ray. His fellow
ainnen carried him in the flat bed truck to a hospital at Eisenach. The able men carried all
the wounded to an emergency room on the second floor. Others were kept in the basement
of the Eisenach city hall. There were at least 20 to 24 ainnen with all kind of wounds,
including burns. Some could not walk. There was little first aid available except for gauze
dressing, salve for burns and aspirin.)
Engineer/Top turret gunner Howard Boldt (BAYNHAM crew)
"Night came and I decided to attract some attention so 1 gathered some of the
needles from the tree and started a fire. 1 was careful not to set the whole woods on fife, as
1 did not want that much attention. Just as I got my fife going I heard an air raid siren in the
distance. I figured the British bombers were coming and then I heard them. I knew that
they flew very low so I put my fire out real quick, as I did not want them shooting at me.
"I became very thirsty and I remembered seeing what I thought might be a pond
about hundred and fifty feet from me. The only way 1 could move was in a sitting position.
I would raise my behind and go backward dragging my legs. I made about a hundred feet