Purple Drops Tatted Necklace

Purple Drops Tatted Necklace, originally uploaded by ambrosianbeads.

New necklace...the second one using the pattern I designed for my mom's birthday necklace.

Source: http://ambrosianbeads.blogspot.com/2011/10/purple-drops-tatted-necklace.html

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A gunner's survival in Nazi territory

Alex Antanovich Jr. is shown at a World War II unit reunion decades after his incredible wartime survival story.


By Scott Beveridge


Allied air assaults over France and Germany during World War II were seeing their greatest successes in the last week of May 1944.


The daylight bombing raids were targeting strategic German-held railroads to cut off enemy supply lines, while others were pounding the French coast to drive back enemy forces.


Nearly one thousand heavy bombers were flying the missions that also were aimed at airfields and chemical and fuel stations.


The B-24 Liberator, LONI, carrying a crew of nine, however, did not fare so well. It crashed on May 30, 1944, near Rheine, Germany, after three of its four engines failed and the entire crew had bailed from the plane.


Eight crew members were captured and held by the Nazis as prisoners of war.


Meanwhile, U. S. Army Air Force Sergeant Alex Antanovich Jr. of Cokeburg, Pa., evaded capture.


He would be led by civilians to members of the antiwar movement in Holland, where he was fed, clothed, and sheltered for the next ten months.


?I was in constant fear,? said Antanovich, recalling his story that had the makings of a suspenseful war novel.


His plane had taken off that day at 6:53 a.m. from Mendlesham, England, carrying fifteen, five hundred pound bombs.


More than eighteen thousand B-24s, their wingspans spreading a 110 feet wide, had been produced in Detroit, Michigan, by Consolidated Aircraft Corporation for the war effort.


They created the largest air fleet of its kind at the time.


Antanovich, who was then 21 years old, had been trained to fire all of the plane?s ten machine guns. World War II bombing crews faced some of the worst dangers in combat.


?They were shooting at us,? he said, while discussing his military experiences when he was eighty-two years old.


?You could lose your life on takeoff. You?re loaded down to capacity. There?s no place to hide.?


He had received his training at Blythe Army Air Base in California. His crew used LONI to fly to England, following a route over Florida, South America, Africa, and Wales.


The crew called itself the League of Nations Inc. because its members all hailed from different ethnic backgrounds.


They gave the plane its identity by combining the first letters of the crew?s nickname.


Antanovich entertained himself on the flights to England by watching the lights in the cities at night.


?I was going to fight a war.?


Little else was on his mind.


He had only been in England for a month and on four previous missions to Germany when his plane crashed.


It dipped from formation with two of its engines smoking before it reached its primary target.


Other members of the 34th Bombing Group flying in nearby planes then lost sight of LONI; no one reported seeing any parachutes. The sixty-six-foot-long plane?s legacy was cut short before an artist had the time to paint its name on its side.


?When the pilot said to bail out, I was in the tail of the plane. The pilot said to throw stuff out to lighten the load. A short time later, the tail gunner who stayed on the intercom said: ?Bail out,? and away he went.?


Antanovich was afraid to jump from the plane, having never done so before during his military training.


?Why jump if you may never have to??


Being the last one left in the tail of the plane, Antanovich looked over the bomb bay to see what the pilot and copilot were doing, hoping they were gaining control of the flight.


The copilot was readying for his jump, and Antanovich knew he had no choice but to do the same thing.


?I went to the Lord.?


He believed in God, but was not an especially religious soldier.


?I asked the Lord for help. I got a warm feeling over my body. I walked right over to that escape hatch and away I went. I lost my fear.?


Over the course of the next several days, nearly everything Antanovich did  went against what he was taught to do in the event he became missing in action.


When he regained his bearings on the ground, he realized he had become separated from his crew.


He had been told to run in such a situation, and to keep on the move for twenty-four hours.


?I went deeper into the woods and covered my parachute and started running.?


He came upon a house, and went in another direction, only to spot another.  At that point, he went into the thicket and decided to attempt sleep.


?I thought, ?Where am I going to run to?' If I kept running, I could have gotten killed.?


Several hours later, he awoke to the sound of a boy pumping water and decided to start walking again.


He found himself back where he hit the ground and hid the parachute. He made the right move because he stumbled upon a friendly stranger while walking across a bicycle path. He whistled to get the man?s attention, asking him in French if he spoke that language.


The man shook his head, no.


Antanovich then asked him if he spoke English, and again, the man shook his head, no.


Antanovich pulled out a pocketbook that was part of his survival kit and designed to translate English phrases into the German language.


He used it to inform the stranger that he was hungry, and in exchange, was given a handful of sugar.


He also learned he was near Rheine, Germany, after showing the stranger one of the maps from the gear he carried. He was forty miles west of his B-24?s target and twenty miles east of Germany?s border with Holland.


?I said: ?I?m American."


The stranger, who turned out to be a Prussian, then flapped his arms in the air as a signal that he understood Antanovich was an airman.


The man then pointed Antanovich in the direction of German-held Holland.


Antanovich set his compass and walked the remainder of the day and well into the night.


Tired and weary after nightfall, he decided to make a bed of pine needles under a tall pine tree, where he slept his first night in Germany.


Antanovich was unarmed. He understood that German troops were killing American soldiers on sight because the country was quickly depleting it resources.


The Germans barely had enough supplies to care for their own soldiers. He had no idea just how much danger he was facing on his first full day in enemy territory.


That same day, one of Hitler?s shadow men, the Reichsleiter Martin Bormann, approved criminal combat methods under a German lynch law.


By doing so, Bormann gave his seal of approval to mob justice, instructing German civilians to kill any Allied soldiers they encountered.


The next morning, Antanovich came upon railroad tracks and decided to follow them straight toward Holland.


That could have been seen as a mistake, as well, because German soldiers were guarding the rail lines. He ducked for cover into the woods upon spotting a man in the distance.


That was when he stumbled upon a man and woman milking cows, a couple who helped him to reach safer quarters.


?I said I was an American and I was hungry.?


The couple gave him a sandwich; his only food in two days. They took him to to a house and introduced him to an English-speaking woman.


?She said: ?I know a man who knows a man who knows where to find the underground.??


The woman made a telephone call before escorting him by bicycle to a crossroads to meet another contact.


?She said she didn?t want to see him or him to see her.?


His survival kit also contained silk maps of Holland, France, Spain, and Belgium, as well as three cigarettes.


He had been advised to hold on to his belongings. But instead, he gave everything away to those who helped him along his way, except the maps of Holland and Belgium.


?Anything I had they asked for, I gave it to them,? he said. ?I had a full pack of Camels. They told us not to smoke American tobacco because it was sweeter smelling and (the enemy would) recognize it.?


He even shed his Army Air Force uniform for civilian clothes as a disguise after reaching the underground.


His journey eventually took him to the home of Otto and Elisabeth Montagne on the outskirts of Hengelo, Holland.


They were among many anti-Nazi couples in that area who secretly shielded Allied soldiers who became separated from their units.


Their visitors usually stayed in their home for three or four days until plans were made to return them to England, through France, Spain, and Portugal. Spain temporarily held such MIAs as illegal immigrants before sending them to Portugal and England, Antanovich was told.


That escape route, however, was closed after Allied forces stormed Normandy, beginning June 6, 1944, in what became the largest amphibious invasion in history.


Antanovich?s parents, Alex and Mary, received word on June 16, 1944, from the War Department that their son was missing in action.


His younger brother, John, was part of an Army Air Force B-17 flight crew serving in the United States.


During his time in Holland, Antanovich was hidden in 16 different houses; some for a few hours and others for a month or two.


He found himself sandwiched under trapdoors on occasions when German troops searched from house to house, looking for railroad workers to help them reopen supply routes.


The Montagnes shared their home with him and three other soldiers for seven months.


Mrs. Montagne provided them with clothing from a nearby textile factory, giving them identical dark blue shirts with vertical stripes to identify them to others involved in the antiwar movement.


The men even wore wooden shoes and distinguishing hairstyles and mustaches to appear as local residents.


Mrs. Montagne often walked with a cart great distances to gather enough food to feed her guests.


Food was being rationed, and each house was permitted to use electric lights for one hour a day. Two rabbits from the barn provided dinner for Christmas, a meal that also included cheese crackers and pudding.


Antanovich and his companions lived out their long days in boredom, either reading, holding conversations, or learning to speak Dutch.


They sometimes occupied their time by playing games of Battleship, using scraps of numbered paper as game pieces, or singing songs around a piano.


The Dutch liberation effort, meanwhile, began to intensify by March 1945.


Resistance fighters ambushed Nazi General Hans Ratter on March 6, 1945, and more than one hundred Dutchmen were killed in retribution two days later.


Antanovich spent that month hiding in a hut in the woods with an armed member of the Canadian Royal Air Force.


Hitler?s army was under attack from all fronts.


?You could hear the gunfire getting close,? Antanovich said.


By the end of the month, Allied forces were racing across collapsed German defenses. On April 1, 1945, they had German troops surrounded in the Ruhr basin, while British troops rolled into Hengelo that same day.


Antanovich was rescued by members of the Welsh Guard after walking arm-in-arm to freedom with a young Dutch woman.


He was taken to the Guard?s headquarters in Brussels before being sent to a U.S. military facility in Paris, France.


?I had no identification.?


He was later returned to England to be identified by members of his bombing group, only to find all of his possessions gone.


To his relief, he was told the other members of his air crew had survived German prison camps.


On April 24, 1945, his mother was told by the military that he was returned to active duty and being rotated back to the United States.


Following the war, Antanovich went home to rural Washington County and married the former Betty Porter. The couple had two sons, Alex and David, who died in childhood, and a daughter, Yvonne.


He worked as a coal miner in Beth-Energy Corporation?s Cokeburg Mine, from which he retired in 1985 after working in the coalfields for twenty-four years.


He said it was amazing to be part of such a great generation, one that witnessed serious hardships and major triumphs.


?The men of today will never compete with, compare with what we went through. We went through the Great Depression. We saw the TV come in. When I was a kid, farmers were working with horses ... the doctor would come in a horse and buggy.?


Antanovich also began attending church after returning home from the war.


One day while reading the Bible, he came upon a verse in Psalms that states: ?I sought the Lord, and he heard me, and delivered me from all my fears.?


He said those words offered him the best explanation for his surviving such a dangerous, incredible experience during the war.


(This story was written for a 2005 oral history project at Duquesne University, Pittsburgh.)

Source: http://scottbeveridge.blogspot.com/2011/11/gunners-survival-in-nazi-territory.html

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Botany Bay

Kent that is, not Australia

Source: http://microcosmic.blogspot.com/2007/08/botany-bay.html

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An idea

70's invitation, originally uploaded by Vintage LOVE.

From the same photostream as the last pic, how cute would this one look embroidered up? Circa 1970's.

Source: http://stitchybritches.blogspot.com/2008/09/idea.html

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Carefree

According to a new government census India's tiger population has fallen drastically during the past five years, with poaching and urbanisation cited as the probable reasons for the decline.

Tigers are poached for their body parts - skins are prized for fashion and tiger bones are used for oriental medicines. India is home to 40% of the world's tigers, with 23 tiger reserves in 17 states.

Source: http://microcosmic.blogspot.com/2007/08/carefree.html

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Green Droplets Tatted Necklace

Green Droplets Tatted Necklace, originally uploaded by ambrosianbeads.

My Mom's birthday was this week so I decided to try a pattern that was in my head to make a necklace for her in her favorite colors. After some tweaking of the stitch count, I got it to shape around the neck nicely, and used exactly the number of fringe beads I had on hand. This pattern was so successful, I think I will make a video tutorial when I'm in the mood.

Source: http://ambrosianbeads.blogspot.com/2011/09/green-droplets-tatted-necklace.html

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Superior 140 : 7 kitten motifs

It's time for some DOW tea towels. I love to stitch a kitteh, and these ones are so sweet they will give you the proverbial toothache! Little kittys doing household tasks, we can never get enough of them. Neither it seems could Superior brand transfers, for I have a lot of transfers from that particular company that feature cats.

Kitty is ironing, hanging out the washing (wearing roller skates no less), singing at church, sweeping the floor, mending clothes, having a tea party, and on a tricycle doing the shopping. All the time she has a little friend doggy or a stuffed toy to help her. The relationship between cats and dogs in transfer-land always amuses me, as it has little relation to real life cat-dog interaction. Unless of course, in this transfer below, the doggy is about to come and nip her on her posterior. That would be like my animals - Lola can't see a cat bottom go past without chasing it.

Of course, like all good homemakers, she's providing tea for all (that's one of my founding principles, "tea for all") and little stuffed teddy, kitty and bunny are happy to play along. As the pattern says, these are meant to be for days-of-the-week towels, but they'd look cute on children's quilts or bed linen as well. Whilst I don't want to muscle in on the Vogart hyperbole, in my opinion:

These darling designs are quick and easy to sew, and a choice of gay, bright colours will make your towels come alive and add fun to your modern kitchen. Children will love their own towels stitched with Miss Kitten and her friends, and a set will make washing hands no longer a chore! Just stitch these designs and instantly you will become more attractive, and they will bring good fortune and friends into your life. Your home will be beautiful, your children, beaming with health, rosy cheeked and perfectly scrubbed and well behaved, and your husband will cherish the perfect homemaker that he married.

Ooops, think I'm getting carried away now.... help me!......argh....

Source: http://stitchybritches.blogspot.com/2008/06/superior-140-7-kitten-motifs.html

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New viking knit project

Viking knit #4, originally uploaded by ambrosianbeads.

As with most of my projects, this one was actually started 6 months ago. I started beading the agate slab back in December...I had it sitting around and it just appealed to me to give it a peyote beaded edge. Today I'm hoping to give it the final touch of a bail...in the meantime, I worked on making a viking knit chain in black coated copper wire. I used 26 gauge wire and it worked out nicely in single weave, could've been too stiff in double. I always guess at the final length and stopped weaving at 11", hoping it would reach at least a comfortable choker length...well, lo and behold, it passed that length and I even have enough to make a bracelet. In this Flickr set, you can see the progression of "draws" (meaning each time I pulled it through the drawplate...it's what I call them, not sure if that's correct). Next after threading on the pendant, I will attempt to close off the ends with some copper caps and add a clasp...stay tuned for those pics !

Source: http://ambrosianbeads.blogspot.com/2011/05/new-viking-knit-project.html

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Harmony

For the land where it's a great travesty
To harm a stork's nest in a pear tree,
For storks serve us all...
I am homesick, Lord!...

Cyprian Kamil Norwid

Source: http://microcosmic.blogspot.com/2008/01/harmony.html

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Triangle Earrings

I love to make beaded triangles as do many beadweavers, but when I submit items for jurying at Potomac Fiber Arts Gallery, there is a limit on what we call "like items." In other words, don't submit production work, or work that is so similar, it looks like you just cranked out a batch of the same design even if using different colors...making it a little tough on the beaded triangle addict. Hence this design which I came up with around midnight, the night before jurying. I turned the ol' triangle on its edge, added a moonstone oval drop bead and voila, a new design (for me at least). This pair went in the gallery, but I can make another just like it in case someone orders from my Etsy shop...did I mention, I LOVE TRIANGLES ???

Source: http://ambrosianbeads.blogspot.com/2011/08/triangle-earrings.html

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I Quit My Day Job.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/HowToMakeArt/~3/LtHEa7tYkMQ/i-quit-my-day-job.html

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Chaos and Insects

If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.

E.O. Wilson

Source: http://microcosmic.blogspot.com/2007/08/chaos-and-insects.html

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Botany Bay

Kent that is, not Australia

Source: http://microcosmic.blogspot.com/2007/08/botany-bay.html

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Old, fragile glass Christmas ornaments fetch high prices

This antique German Christmas ornament can be yours for $120 at a Washington, Pa., antiques and collectibles mall. (Scott Beveridge/Observer-Reporter)

By Scott Beveridge

WASHINGTON, Pa. ? Pennsylvania's famous five-and-dime retailer F.W. Woolworth single-handedly defined the decor of the American Christmas tree on a lark.

He purchased a $25 box of German blown-glass ornaments in the 1880s to see if they would sell in one of his stores, only to witness them disappear in two days.

He went on to make a substantial fortune of $25 million by importing and selling the ornaments produced in Lauscha, Germany, inexpensively and mostly one at a time, according to the 2004 book, "Pictorial Guide to Christmas Ornaments & Collectibles."

"Then after World War II no one wanted to buy from Germany," said John Taylor, a Peters Township, Pa., antiques dealer of collectible Christmas ornaments.

Today, glass ornaments made in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s are highly collectible, and sell for as much $500 apiece.

Taylor has one such hand-painted decoration shaped like a clown selling for $120 at Black Rose Antiques & Collectibles in Washington Crown Center mall in North Franklin Township.

"They are so expensive because they are so fragile," Taylor said.

Buyers at auctions have been known to pay $20, he said, for one of the ornaments, even when half of it is broken.

"I'm seeing some crazy things."

These ornaments are rare, "hot items" for a number of reasons, said Inez Gilotty, owner of Main Street Antiques in Monongahela.

"So many get broken. Collectors are picking them up," she said, adding that many relatives keep them when estates are being settled.

"It's very slim pickings. We're not even finding them in houses now," Gilotty said.

Those who are now dying in their 70s and 80s, she said, leave behind Christmas decorations they collected in the 1950s, such things as large, red, plastic bells with lights and aluminum Christmas trees. And those items also are highly collectible.

"They are looking for something like Grandma had," said another Peters Township dealer, Jim Kairys, who has been selling Christmas ornaments at Canonsburg Antique Mall.

"Christmas sells year-round," Taylor added.

America really has the town of Lauscha to thank for antique glass ornaments, Kairys said, because it once was known as the glass Christmas ornament "world capital."

It produced 95 percent of these decorations sold around the globe until 1940, when the war decimated much of Germany.

The town's glassmakers originally made kugels, or large glass ball window decorations, witch balls and garden panoramas. Someone eventually suggested they would look good, much smaller, hanging on candlelit Christmas trees, Kairys said, drawing reference from "Pictorial Guide
to Christmas Ornaments & Collectibles."

The first known order for such Christmas tree kugels arrived in 1848.

"A lot of this stuff had mercury in it to make colored glass," Taylor said. "The coloring is on the inside. Just don't drink from them."

(This article first appeared in the November/December 2011 Living Washington County magazine published by the Observer-Reporter)

Source: http://scottbeveridge.blogspot.com/2011/11/old-fragile-glass-christmas-ornaments.html

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How to Get Out of an Art Funk

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/HowToMakeArt/~3/yWL80zDbONA/how-to-get-out-of-art-funk.html

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Panic, condemnation and redemption follow the deadly 1948 Donora smog

Pollution from unsightly mills didn't stop Donora, Pa., from hosting elaborate downtown parades in the early-to-mid-1900s. (Donora Historical Society photo)


By Scott Beveridge

DONORA, Pa. ? Nothing seemed out of the ordinary in smoggy Donora, Pa., the week before deadly air pollution would kill 19 people there in one day in late October 1948, and lead to more deaths in the coming days.

As Halloween approached Donora police Chief Pykosh issued an angry rant in the local newspaper after pranksters had scattered coal furnace ashes about town.

"Fun is fun, but when it becomes a downright nuisance, then it's time to get tough," Pykosh stated in The Herald-American before announcing the borough's Halloween parade would be postponed until Nov. 1 if the weather left it unfit for the march.

That Friday, Oct. 29, the newspaper appeared to have made no mention of the putrid air that had already begun to settle over the town along the Monongahela River Valley about 30 miles south of Pittsburgh. The Halloween parade went off as planned that weekend, even though fewer participants showed up because of the smoggy weather.

The dead were lining up by the end of the day Saturday, and two locals hospitals were overflowing with patients complaining about pneumonia or heart-related symptoms, the newspaper finally reported two days later.

On Monday, the newspaper announced borough council had called an emergency meeting the previous evening to call for an immediate survey of the problem by the U.S. Public Heath Service.

A panic had set in that Sunday, when a light rain had begun to clear the air. However, another fog began to roll in while the borough council meeting was underway, prompting fears it "would cause additional suffering," the newspaper article indicated.

Many people were already blaming the deadly air on the U.S. Steel zinc plant hugging the Mon River.

Charles Stacey, president of the local board of health, opened the council meeting with a strong indictment on the town's zinc and steel mills.

Stacey complained about reports the company had not modernized its mills since 1915, and he announced "it should go out of business" if the allegations were true.

Meanwhile local physician William Rongaus appeared at the meeting showing signs of fatigue and stress, and he "bluntly described the deaths of the 19 persons as murder."

"In my opinion," Dr. Rongaus declared. "I believe something should be done about smoke coming from the mills. The fumes are killers. They are silent killers."

Pittsburgh's health director, I. Hope Alexander, was by then warning of a pneumonia epidemic in Donora as a result of the smog.

"Right now the air in Donora has a heavy concentration of sulphuric acid plus some of the volatile compounds of zinc," Alexander stated in a Nov. 1, 1948, newspaper report by the United Press.

"The smoke from the zinc works at Donora is of a very toxic variety," he further warned borough residents.

The deadly smog story, though, had by the following Wednesday dropped off the local newspaper's front page above the fold - even though it had already made national headlines. Elsewhere the newspaper reported funeral rites would be held that day for three smog victims. Meanwhile, it also reported a North Carolina resort had offered an all-expense paid escape from Donora to fresh Southern air to 50 Donora residents.

Ironically, it only took the U.S. Health Department just five days from that deadly Saturday to declare the mills hadn't contributed to tragedy.

"There was no evidence found that will incriminate any one particular plant as being the source of the atmospheric contaminant over the weekend," Dr. Duncan W. Holaday of the health service's industrial hygiene division announced at a news conference in the borough on Nov. 4, 1948.

Holaday said there was no one in town that weekend to sample the air  when the smog was at its worst, and he also declared the air safe to breath after the resumption of mill production, the Donora newspaper reported.

Of course, we know more than five decades later that either Holaday had been misled or he was participating in a cover-up in the days after what became the nation's deadliest pollution event.

A 2008 review of federal court archives by the Observer-Reporter newspaper in Washington, Pa., uncovered evidence suggesting the company had taken air samples that weekend. However, the results of the internal testing of that air were never made public.

(This story is part of an continuing series of essays, "The Gamble on Donora Steel," which can be located along the right sidebar of this blog.)

Source: http://scottbeveridge.blogspot.com/2011/11/panic-condemnation-and-redemption.html

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The large Hawaiian with attitude

Reader Lori Wheatley passes along this clever advertising sign outside a Charleroi, Pa., restaurant, one she snapped in the days before the Pittsburgh Steelers lost in a big way to the Baltimore Ravens in their first regular season game.


Paolo's Pizza & Pastaria combined its name with that of Steelers strong safety Troy Polamalu and then topped it with ingredients associated with the Pacific state where many people mistakenly think the football star was born. 


"After seeing this I realized how much this rather creative sign embodies the Pittsburgh spirit and true love for our team," Wheatley stated in an email.


Regardless of whether Paolo's staff knows how to spell Hawaiian, this restaurant at 411 Fallowfield Ave. makes some of the best pizza in the Mon Valley.

Source: http://scottbeveridge.blogspot.com/2011/09/large-hawaiian-with-attitude.html

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Handbound Sketchbook

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/HowToMakeArt/~3/80AcPyRwKuw/handbound-sketchbook.html

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A cat in a pumpkin

Happy Halloween

As you can see I know someone who is talented with a pumpkin carver. And the Internet always needs more cats.

Source: http://scottbeveridge.blogspot.com/2011/10/cat-in-pumpkin.html

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A gunner's survival in Nazi territory

Alex Antanovich Jr. is shown at a World War II unit reunion decades after his incredible wartime survival story.


By Scott Beveridge


Allied air assaults over France and Germany during World War II were seeing their greatest successes in the last week of May 1944.


The daylight bombing raids were targeting strategic German-held railroads to cut off enemy supply lines, while others were pounding the French coast to drive back enemy forces.


Nearly one thousand heavy bombers were flying the missions that also were aimed at airfields and chemical and fuel stations.


The B-24 Liberator, LONI, carrying a crew of nine, however, did not fare so well. It crashed on May 30, 1944, near Rheine, Germany, after three of its four engines failed and the entire crew had bailed from the plane.


Eight crew members were captured and held by the Nazis as prisoners of war.


Meanwhile, U. S. Army Air Force Sergeant Alex Antanovich Jr. of Cokeburg, Pa., evaded capture.


He would be led by civilians to members of the antiwar movement in Holland, where he was fed, clothed, and sheltered for the next ten months.


?I was in constant fear,? said Antanovich, recalling his story that had the makings of a suspenseful war novel.


His plane had taken off that day at 6:53 a.m. from Mendlesham, England, carrying fifteen, five hundred pound bombs.


More than eighteen thousand B-24s, their wingspans spreading a 110 feet wide, had been produced in Detroit, Michigan, by Consolidated Aircraft Corporation for the war effort.


They created the largest air fleet of its kind at the time.


Antanovich, who was then 21 years old, had been trained to fire all of the plane?s ten machine guns. World War II bombing crews faced some of the worst dangers in combat.


?They were shooting at us,? he said, while discussing his military experiences when he was eighty-two years old.


?You could lose your life on takeoff. You?re loaded down to capacity. There?s no place to hide.?


He had received his training at Blythe Army Air Base in California. His crew used LONI to fly to England, following a route over Florida, South America, Africa, and Wales.


The crew called itself the League of Nations Inc. because its members all hailed from different ethnic backgrounds.


They gave the plane its identity by combining the first letters of the crew?s nickname.


Antanovich entertained himself on the flights to England by watching the lights in the cities at night.


?I was going to fight a war.?


Little else was on his mind.


He had only been in England for a month and on four previous missions to Germany when his plane crashed.


It dipped from formation with two of its engines smoking before it reached its primary target.


Other members of the 34th Bombing Group flying in nearby planes then lost sight of LONI; no one reported seeing any parachutes. The sixty-six-foot-long plane?s legacy was cut short before an artist had the time to paint its name on its side.


?When the pilot said to bail out, I was in the tail of the plane. The pilot said to throw stuff out to lighten the load. A short time later, the tail gunner who stayed on the intercom said: ?Bail out,? and away he went.?


Antanovich was afraid to jump from the plane, having never done so before during his military training.


?Why jump if you may never have to??


Being the last one left in the tail of the plane, Antanovich looked over the bomb bay to see what the pilot and copilot were doing, hoping they were gaining control of the flight.


The copilot was readying for his jump, and Antanovich knew he had no choice but to do the same thing.


?I went to the Lord.?


He believed in God, but was not an especially religious soldier.


?I asked the Lord for help. I got a warm feeling over my body. I walked right over to that escape hatch and away I went. I lost my fear.?


Over the course of the next several days, nearly everything Antanovich did  went against what he was taught to do in the event he became missing in action.


When he regained his bearings on the ground, he realized he had become separated from his crew.


He had been told to run in such a situation, and to keep on the move for twenty-four hours.


?I went deeper into the woods and covered my parachute and started running.?


He came upon a house, and went in another direction, only to spot another.  At that point, he went into the thicket and decided to attempt sleep.


?I thought, ?Where am I going to run to?' If I kept running, I could have gotten killed.?


Several hours later, he awoke to the sound of a boy pumping water and decided to start walking again.


He found himself back where he hit the ground and hid the parachute. He made the right move because he stumbled upon a friendly stranger while walking across a bicycle path. He whistled to get the man?s attention, asking him in French if he spoke that language.


The man shook his head, no.


Antanovich then asked him if he spoke English, and again, the man shook his head, no.


Antanovich pulled out a pocketbook that was part of his survival kit and designed to translate English phrases into the German language.


He used it to inform the stranger that he was hungry, and in exchange, was given a handful of sugar.


He also learned he was near Rheine, Germany, after showing the stranger one of the maps from the gear he carried. He was forty miles west of his B-24?s target and twenty miles east of Germany?s border with Holland.


?I said: ?I?m American."


The stranger, who turned out to be a Prussian, then flapped his arms in the air as a signal that he understood Antanovich was an airman.


The man then pointed Antanovich in the direction of German-held Holland.


Antanovich set his compass and walked the remainder of the day and well into the night.


Tired and weary after nightfall, he decided to make a bed of pine needles under a tall pine tree, where he slept his first night in Germany.


Antanovich was unarmed. He understood that German troops were killing American soldiers on sight because the country was quickly depleting it resources.


The Germans barely had enough supplies to care for their own soldiers. He had no idea just how much danger he was facing on his first full day in enemy territory.


That same day, one of Hitler?s shadow men, the Reichsleiter Martin Bormann, approved criminal combat methods under a German lynch law.


By doing so, Bormann gave his seal of approval to mob justice, instructing German civilians to kill any Allied soldiers they encountered.


The next morning, Antanovich came upon railroad tracks and decided to follow them straight toward Holland.


That could have been seen as a mistake, as well, because German soldiers were guarding the rail lines. He ducked for cover into the woods upon spotting a man in the distance.


That was when he stumbled upon a man and woman milking cows, a couple who helped him to reach safer quarters.


?I said I was an American and I was hungry.?


The couple gave him a sandwich; his only food in two days. They took him to to a house and introduced him to an English-speaking woman.


?She said: ?I know a man who knows a man who knows where to find the underground.??


The woman made a telephone call before escorting him by bicycle to a crossroads to meet another contact.


?She said she didn?t want to see him or him to see her.?


His survival kit also contained silk maps of Holland, France, Spain, and Belgium, as well as three cigarettes.


He had been advised to hold on to his belongings. But instead, he gave everything away to those who helped him along his way, except the maps of Holland and Belgium.


?Anything I had they asked for, I gave it to them,? he said. ?I had a full pack of Camels. They told us not to smoke American tobacco because it was sweeter smelling and (the enemy would) recognize it.?


He even shed his Army Air Force uniform for civilian clothes as a disguise after reaching the underground.


His journey eventually took him to the home of Otto and Elisabeth Montagne on the outskirts of Hengelo, Holland.


They were among many anti-Nazi couples in that area who secretly shielded Allied soldiers who became separated from their units.


Their visitors usually stayed in their home for three or four days until plans were made to return them to England, through France, Spain, and Portugal. Spain temporarily held such MIAs as illegal immigrants before sending them to Portugal and England, Antanovich was told.


That escape route, however, was closed after Allied forces stormed Normandy, beginning June 6, 1944, in what became the largest amphibious invasion in history.


Antanovich?s parents, Alex and Mary, received word on June 16, 1944, from the War Department that their son was missing in action.


His younger brother, John, was part of an Army Air Force B-17 flight crew serving in the United States.


During his time in Holland, Antanovich was hidden in 16 different houses; some for a few hours and others for a month or two.


He found himself sandwiched under trapdoors on occasions when German troops searched from house to house, looking for railroad workers to help them reopen supply routes.


The Montagnes shared their home with him and three other soldiers for seven months.


Mrs. Montagne provided them with clothing from a nearby textile factory, giving them identical dark blue shirts with vertical stripes to identify them to others involved in the antiwar movement.


The men even wore wooden shoes and distinguishing hairstyles and mustaches to appear as local residents.


Mrs. Montagne often walked with a cart great distances to gather enough food to feed her guests.


Food was being rationed, and each house was permitted to use electric lights for one hour a day. Two rabbits from the barn provided dinner for Christmas, a meal that also included cheese crackers and pudding.


Antanovich and his companions lived out their long days in boredom, either reading, holding conversations, or learning to speak Dutch.


They sometimes occupied their time by playing games of Battleship, using scraps of numbered paper as game pieces, or singing songs around a piano.


The Dutch liberation effort, meanwhile, began to intensify by March 1945.


Resistance fighters ambushed Nazi General Hans Ratter on March 6, 1945, and more than one hundred Dutchmen were killed in retribution two days later.


Antanovich spent that month hiding in a hut in the woods with an armed member of the Canadian Royal Air Force.


Hitler?s army was under attack from all fronts.


?You could hear the gunfire getting close,? Antanovich said.


By the end of the month, Allied forces were racing across collapsed German defenses. On April 1, 1945, they had German troops surrounded in the Ruhr basin, while British troops rolled into Hengelo that same day.


Antanovich was rescued by members of the Welsh Guard after walking arm-in-arm to freedom with a young Dutch woman.


He was taken to the Guard?s headquarters in Brussels before being sent to a U.S. military facility in Paris, France.


?I had no identification.?


He was later returned to England to be identified by members of his bombing group, only to find all of his possessions gone.


To his relief, he was told the other members of his air crew had survived German prison camps.


On April 24, 1945, his mother was told by the military that he was returned to active duty and being rotated back to the United States.


Following the war, Antanovich went home to rural Washington County and married the former Betty Porter. The couple had two sons, Alex and David, who died in childhood, and a daughter, Yvonne.


He worked as a coal miner in Beth-Energy Corporation?s Cokeburg Mine, from which he retired in 1985 after working in the coalfields for twenty-four years.


He said it was amazing to be part of such a great generation, one that witnessed serious hardships and major triumphs.


?The men of today will never compete with, compare with what we went through. We went through the Great Depression. We saw the TV come in. When I was a kid, farmers were working with horses ... the doctor would come in a horse and buggy.?


Antanovich also began attending church after returning home from the war.


One day while reading the Bible, he came upon a verse in Psalms that states: ?I sought the Lord, and he heard me, and delivered me from all my fears.?


He said those words offered him the best explanation for his surviving such a dangerous, incredible experience during the war.


(This story was written for a 2005 oral history project at Duquesne University, Pittsburgh.)

Source: http://scottbeveridge.blogspot.com/2011/11/gunners-survival-in-nazi-territory.html

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