After being escorted by Swiss Morane Fighters to Dubendorf Airfield near Zurich, the Super Ball crash-landed, collapsing the landing gear upon contact with the ground. The navigator, LTC Mahaffey recalls: "To say Woody's landing was an outstanding feat of airmanship would be an understatement. After skidding to a halt, we all piled out. The bombadier, Dick Davis, couldn't distruct the bombsight so while we were still airborne he pulled it out of his mount, pounded it on the floor (I can still see it bouncing up and down), and then dropped it out the escape hatch at about 8,000 feet. Naturally, my distruct mechanism on the "G" box didn't work either, so I pounded it a few times also. On coming to a stop at Dubendorf, we were immediately surrounded by armed guards, searched and taken into interrogation. We gave the usual name, rank, and serial number routine. It didn't matter, the Swiss knew all about us." Later, the officers were separated from the enlisted and placed in separate quarters. In all, 16 bombers made it to Swizerland that day, the highest of any day of the war. LT Mears would spend time at several camps, beginning with a 21 day quarantine at Chaumont, near Neuchatel. On the 11th of April he was moved to Camp Moloney, located at Adelboden. The following photos were taken at Chaumont and Adelboden. The first photo in this series is of 52 officers from 13 different crews who were shot down the same day as my grandfather and made it to Switzerland.
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After Adelboden, LT Mears and LT Carroll were sent to Davos on the 30th of June, and the enlisted men were sent to Wengen. On the 29th of September the two tried to escape from Davos, but were caught and sent to a concentration camp called Wauwilermoos as a result. There were three concentration camps in Switzerland (as opposed to regular internment camps), Wauwilermoos, Hunnenburg and Diablerets. Wauwilermoos was probably the worst of the three. The airmen were sent to the camps without any trials or military tribunals, and no limits to the time of confinement were set; both clear violations of the law of war. The law of war at the time (the 1907 Hague Convention and the 1929 Geneva Convention) required that only disciplinary punishments be used on escaping POWs, not to exceed thirty days in length. Although internees were not explicitely codified as being entitled to POW protections until the 1949 Geneva Conventions, the position of the International Red Cross and the U.S. Government was that internees should recieve these protections "by analogy," since internment in a neutral country was by definition intended to be under superior conditions than in a belligerant nation. Therefore, under the laws of war any punishment of an internee beyond 30 days required a trial and legal representation. The camps were not only military facilities, but also Swiss federal prisons. As such, they were populated by hardened criminals. See photos of Wauwilermoos
LT Mears and LT Carroll both spent 30 days at Wauwilermoos, with no hygene facilities to shave, shower, or brush their teeth. Rations were cut down to the level of bare subsistence; the food was brought once a day in slop cans. The airmen slept on straw, and their latrines were surrounded in ankle-deep mud created from the sewage overflow. Red Cross aid packages were confiscated by the camp commandant, a fanatical Nazi by the name of Hauptman (Captain) Andre Beguin, and prisoners were often beaten or placed in solitary confinement to enforce discipline. The soldiers received no medical aid because of the commandant, a member of the Swiss Nazi party who kept several prostitutes at the camp for his personal use. Following the war, this man was court-martialed by the Swiss government for his war crimes, and sentenced to several years in prison himself. 1LT Ferris Martin, a 351st bombardier in the 510th squadron who was also interned in Wauwilermoos, noted in his diary when both LT Mears and LT Carroll were moved to his barracks complex in Wauwilermoos: "OCT 14: They moved four officers down to us to take the place of those sent to Davos -- Bob Carroll, George Mears, Snyder and a boy from Milwaukee."
According to LT Carroll, the American military attaché in Switzerland, Brigadier General Barnwell Legge, finally arranged for the men to sign a 30-day parole in exchange for their release from the camp. The attaché was generally disliked by the American airmen; he was slow to help the first internees sent to Wauwilermoos, insisting that they deserved to be punished for attempting to escape. The earlier military prisoners in Wauwilermoos suffered the worst treatment, partly because they had no representation. There was no accountability for these atrocities because the US embassy did not apply appropriate pressure on the Swiss, although they did eventually lodge complaints. BG Legge actually did work extensively on behalf of U.S. internees, trying to arrange for their release and repatriation, and even coordinating escape networks. However, for the sake of appearances he officially ordered American airmen not to escape, largely as a cover to placate the Swiss authorities. Unfortunately, many of the airmen never received notice that the order was a ruse, and so they frequently branded Legge as a turncoat and attempted escaped without the help of the U.S. Legation- efforts that were often unsuccessful. Why many airmen were unaware of the Legation's efforts on their behalf is unclear, and indicates an inexcusable lack of communication between the Legation and the internees (the latter often housed in mountain camps far from the Legation in Bern.
Once the 30-day parole was arranged, both officers were released back to Davos on the 13th of November. LT Carroll remembers that he was separated from LT Mears sometime around this point- they both arrived back in Davos together, but soon lost track of each other until they were both back in the U.S. Both officers promptly attempted to escape again from Davos at different times in December, and were sent to a new concentration camp called Les Diablerets. They both made their successful escapes from this camp, which was the easiest concentration camp to escape from because of its location in the French part of Switzerland. LT Mears escaped from Les Diablerets on the 4th of January, 1945, and LT Carroll escaped on 8 January 1945.
The Swiss were a neutral country in WWII, and it was their legal duty to prevent the American internees from escaping. If they did not intern US aviators, they risked invasion by the Nazis. However, some of their methods and camps were questionable at best, and at worst were de facto violations of international law. In my grandfather's case, he successfully escaped from Les Diablerets by smuggling himself over the French border under a load of hay in a wagon. Once in France, he was able to send a telegram to his fíance, containing only the words "Quit work". Evidently, she knew exactly what this meant. Not long after, he was on a plane headed back to England. LT Carroll recalls having to cross Lake Constance, and then seeking out the French Resistance, or Maquis. He spent 8 days traveling to Lyon from Annecy, France, where he was given a flight to Herrington, England. From there he flew to Stone on the 20th of January, to London on the 24th of January, and finally to his base at Seething by the 26th. LT Carroll was stationed at Seething as part of the 714th squadron of the 448th bomb group. Neither LT Mears or LT Carroll had any additional combat duty in the ETO after their escape; the AAF would not send air crews back to duty in the same theater after their repatriation, since they might be treated very badly or executed if they were shot down and captured again. Also, interrogation might have revealed the underground channels that they used to escape successfully. This regulation is still codified in the law of war, reflected in U.S. policy in paragraph 196 of FM 27-10.
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