He Was Reported Dead, But John Carson Had To Get On With His Life

News of John W. Carson’s death triggered events that later, he was glad he wasn’t around for.

When his B-17 was blown in half over Athens, Greece, five days before Christmas 1943, the radio operator plunged 10,000 feet trapped inside the wreckage.

At one point, Carson was hanging upside down through the hatch, plywood splinters in his face, shrapnel in his flesh, before he pushed himself clear.

When he hit the ground, bloody and airsick from the swinging parachute and temporarily deafened by flak, German soldiers were waiting for him.

Half of his 10-man crew was dead. His mother was soon telegraphed that he was, too.

Hearing this, Carson’s twin brother, Gene, a tailgunner with two tours of duty behind him, immediately volunteered for more duty to avenge his brother’s death.

His young wife remarried.

Carson was shipped to prisoner of war camps in Poland and East Prussia, where he survived 16 months on wormy cabbage soup and had his appendix removed in a German military hospital.

In February 1945, panicked Germans pushed Carson and thousands of others onto the road. For 80 brutal days, the prisoners were marched between Allied fronts, battling starvation, diarrhea and lice. As the fighting got closer, the men feared they’d be killed by retreating Germans. They sharpened their eating utensils for a final stand.

On April 22, the prisoners were liberated by Gen. George Patton’s 104th Timberwolves. Carson made it to London.

Fifty years ago today, he was at a Red Cross club on Piccadilly Circus where, through help from Fred Astaire’s sister Adele, who was affiliated with the club, he came face to face with his twin brother.

Nothing in his life has come close to that moment. He cannot find words for what it meant.

The brothers, sons of a WWI soldier who died of complications from being gassed, both went on to become lieutenant colonels, John in the Air Force and Gene in the Army. They served in Korea and Vietnam.

John’s own son, Johnny, a Marine company commander, was killed in action just before Carson arrived to serve his own tour. At his funeral, the brothers approached the coffin together, and like that day in London, did not speak.

He never did get the girl. The teen bride he’d met at a roller rink in Chicago during his training met him upon his return and tearfully confessed she’d waited just 30 days before remarrying. Her mother told him it was for the best.

A rueful Carson remarried. Today, wife Wanda rides with him in the International Order of the Blue Knights, a law enforcement motorcycle club. At 71, he still works part time for the Spokane International Airport police.

Last week, his brother called to remind him of the anniversary. They chat about the war in Europe, but they are careful not to get emotional.

“Sometimes, something will trigger the mechanism and it will all come back,” Carson said. “It’s painful. I was just a scared high school kid when I went down. But you grow up awful quick.”