Honoring Survivors Ceremony For Pows Marks Anniversary Of End Of World War Ii

George Vasil needed to fly 25 bombing missions during World War II before he could go home and see his newborn son. He never made it past No. 9 and ended up spending nearly two years in a German prison camp.

He was shot down in May 1943 after volunteering to navigate a mission to bomb a shipyard at Kiel, Germany.

Now 79, Vasil saluted the flag at an honor ceremony Monday in Spokane and remembered how he helped build a tunnel Hollywood later made famous in the movie “The Great Escape.”

To mark the 50th anniversary of the war’s end, the Spokane Veterans Administration honored American prisoners of World War II at a ceremony in the nursing home dining room. About 15 former POWs were there.

Vasil was a “snotty kid” from Boston when the Germans captured him, he said. With twinkling eyes, he told about the elaborate tunnel-building enterprise at Stalag Luft 3.

“The big problem was getting rid of the dirt,” he said. “We put some in the roofs, but it was so heavy it collapsed one of the shacks.”

His job as “pelican” involved carrying dirt concealed in pouches inside his pant legs. By pulling a string he could release the dirt into one of the prisoner gardens. On some days, he made 40 trips shuttling dirt from the tunnels.

While some prisoners eventually escaped through the tunnel, Vasil was transferred to another prison camp before he got the chance.

Gen. George Patton’s Third Army liberated Vasil’s prison camp in April 1945. A couple of months later, Vasil got his first look at his son, who by then was 2 years old.

More than 130,000 Americans were captured during the war. Of those, more than 14,000 died in captivity, said Col. John Strube, commander of the Fairchild Air Force Survival School, who spoke at the event.

“Your chances of survival depended on who your captors were,” Strube said. About 3 percent of those captured by the Germans died, while 35 percent captured by the Japanese died.

History’s largest U.S. military surrender occurred in April 1942 with the fall of Bataan and Corregidor in the Philippines.

Spokane resident Jack Donohoe, 73, was there.

Fifty-three years ago, Army Air Corps mechanic Donohoe turned over his watch and wallet to a Japanese soldier and began what became known as the Bataan Death March. He survived the nine-day, 75-mile forced march eating only a handful of rice and drinking muddy water he treated with iodine.

Ten thousand Americans and Filipinos died along the way, collapsing of exhaustion and dehydration, or shot or bayonetted as they bolted for water.

“As they say, it was a milliondollar experience, but I wouldn’t give a million dollars to go through it again,” he said.

For the next two years, he endured a series of filthy prison camps and grueling work details in the Philippines.

Donohoe escaped when the Shinyo Maru, a Japanese ship moving him and 750 other prisoners of war, was torpedoed by a U.S. submarine. He spent the night paddling north on a piece of wooden flotsam.

“I woke up in a native canoe. I could hardly lift my head, but I saw some brown legs. I said, ‘Kill me, but don’t turn me in.”’

Friendly Filipino guerrillas had rescued him. A few months later, he was home.

How did he survive when so many others were shot during the Bataan march or died of malnutrition and brutality in the camps?

“A lot of it was your faith, faith in God,” Donohoe said. “We always hoped we’d get saved by the American forces, but after a long time you start beginning to wonder. We heard a lot of rumors, but didn’t know what was true.

“A lot of it was just luck, how things happened to work out for you. I always felt I was going to do my darndest to survive.”