Sunday, May 27, 2001
Son to document war exploits
Grosvenor shot down, held
as POW
By Loretta Fulton
Reporter-News Staff Writer
The daring fighter pilot bailed out of his
P-47 seconds before it crashed in flames. He hid from the Nazis
in a potato bin and dodged his pursuers for seven months with
the aid of the Belgian underground. Eventually he was captured,
but escaped from a train transporting him to a concentration camp.
It’s not the plot for a new World War
II movie, although it’s close.
The real life adventures of Abilenian William
D. “Bill” Grosvenor, whose fighter plane crashed in
Belgium on Nov. 30, 1943, will provide the story line for a documentary
that Grosvenor’s son, David, and his associates with Rendez-Vous
Film in Austin are planning.
All the fanfare over events that occurred
58 years ago is a mystery to the humble, soft-spoken Grosvenor,
who was content to spend his time playing golf and tending to
his immaculate lawn alongside Doris, his wife of 56 years.
“I guess I would have completely ignored
it if it hadn’t been for David,” said Grosvenor (pronounced
GROVE-nor).
But David, an Austin graphics designer and
1970 graduate of Cooper High School, couldn’t ignore the
incredible tale after listening to an audiocassette his father
made. David and his brother, Abilenian Bill Grosvenor Jr., had
grown up hearing bits and pieces of their dad’s remarkable
war experiences, but had never put the whole story together.
After listening to the tape, David shared
it with Ramona Kelly, an Austin colleague and co-producer of the
documentary. Both were stunned.
“We decided right then and there we
really needed to make a documentary of this before it vanishes
into thin air,” David said.
The project, tentatively titled “Rendezvous
with Freedom: A True Story of Escape, Evasion and Remembrance,”
will tell Grosvenor’s personal story. But it also will focus
on the broader story of the Belgian underground and how ordinary
citizens risked their lives to aid Allied pilots.
Work is well under way. The University of
Texas’ Institute for American Military History financed a
research trip to Belgium in March and is serving as the umbrella
sponsor for the documentary.
Two more trips to Belgium will come in July
and October before editing begins on the documentary. The July
trip will be especially eventful.
The engine of Grosvenor’s P-47, imbedded
30 feet deep in a field, will be excavated with assistance from
the Belgian Aviation History Association. And a reception is planned
by the Belgians, who are still grateful for the sacrifices Americans
made to help them win their freedom.
At the center of attention will be Grosvenor,
now white-haired, but still “1st Lt. William D. Grosvenor”
to the admiring Belgians who helped him escape more than a half
century ago.
Urgency to the story
Capturing every minute on film will be David
Grosvenor and co-producers Kelly and Dea Eggleston. The producers
are aiming for a high-quality outlet for their finished product
such as the History Channel, Home Box Office or public television.
With the renewed popularity of World War
II movies such as “Saving Private Ryan” and “Pearl
Harbor,” the producers don’t think they will have any
trouble getting the documentary on the air.
They recently spent a few days interviewing
and filming Grosvenor at his Abilene home and are intent on preserving
his daring deeds for future generations.
“There’s an urgency to tell our
story,” said co-producer Kelly. “This generation is
leaving us at an alarming rate.”
Just the synopsis of Grosvenor’s experience
is enough for a story. But as the producers began delving into
it, each day brought something new.
“We started peeling the onion,”
Kelly said. “We just did not realize the layers of complexity.”
An intriguing angle involves another Abilenian,
Jack Terzian, who will be included in the documentary. Terzian,
who grew up in New York, retired while stationed at Dyess Air
Force Base in 1963 and remained in Abilene.
After landing a job with a life insurance
company, Terzian related his experiences as a P-47 fighter pilot,
being taken captive by the Nazis and escaping from a train en
route to a concentration camp.
A year later, his manager happened to be
talking to Grosvenor, who told a similar story, and he put the
two men in touch. As it turned out, Grosvenor and Terzian escaped
from the same train and even met briefly before escaping. The
two men didn’t see each other again until connecting 20 years
after the war in Abilene.
“It was strange, really,” Terzian
said. “It was unbelievable.”
Almost as remarkable are all the people
still alive and well in Belgium who helped Grosvenor escape after
he bailed out of his P-47 and landed on a farm owned by Louis
Stroobant near the community of Mariekerke, northwest of Brussels.
Orchestrating details of the July excavation
and reception is Belgian historian and author Walter Verstraeten.
Without ever meeting Grosvenor, Verstraeten pieced together information
about his crash and escape for a chapter in a 1999 book, Wings
Over Klein-Brabant.
One of the highlights of the July trip will
be a reunion between Grosvenor and 79-year-old Marcel Harnie,
a member of the Belgian Resistance who escorted Grosvenor from
Mariekerke to Brussels after Grosvenor bailed out of his plane.
Grosvenor was given a false identity and began a seven-month cloak-and-dagger
existence with the help of the Belgian underground.
Before parting ways in 1943, Grosvenor gave
Harnie his military ID bracelet because he didn’t want to
risk being captured with it. Harnie kept it all these years and
parted with it only when David Grosvenor showed up in March for
initial research and filming of the documentary.
Harnie put the bracelet on David’s
wrist and asked him to return it to his father. So far, though,
the bracelet remains on David’s arm.
“I haven’t taken it off except
to go through the metal detectors coming back,” David said.
The July excavation and reception is expected
to bring out even more people who witnessed an incredible sight
about noontime on Tuesday, Nov. 30, 1943.
‘You just react’
Grosvenor didn’t remember the exact
day of the week himself, but it is recorded in Verstraeten’s
book.
“I remember it was payday and I hadn’t
been paid yet,” Grosvenor joked.
But what was about to happen to 1st Lt.
William D. Grosvenor that cold November day was no laughing matter.
According to his and Verstraeten’s account, Grosvenor had
just returned from an escort mission covering a bombing raid aimed
at the Solingen industrial facilities in Germany.
Grosvenor’s P-47 Thunderbolt was part
of the 61st Fighter Squadron of the 56th Fighter Group of the
U.S. 8th Air Force based in England. According to Verstraeten’s
book, Grosvenor’s plane developed a vapor lock in the fuel
line, forcing him to get permission to try to make it back to
home base.
Riding his P-47 down to an altitude of 3,000
feet, Grosvenor managed to restart his engine and took a heading
for England. He eventually dropped to treetop level and suddenly
found himself flying directly over the German Deurne airfield.
According to Verstraeten’s book, Grosvenor
crossed into the Klein-Brabant region of Belgium, spotted a military
train and decided to spend his unused ammunition on it. Piecing
together interviews and documents from the time, Verstraeten gave
a vivid account of the incident:
“As the plane with its gun still ablaze
tore itself away from the target to take height again, it first
brushed the top branches off a pear tree to then hit a telegraph
pole ...”
Grosvenor said he remembered hitting the
steel telegraph pole and immediately jerking the control stick
into his stomach. With a destroyed propeller and damaged engine,
Grosvenor managed to get the plane up to 500 feet before it faltered.
After that, much of what he did came on instinct.
“When it stalled, I just jumped out,”
he recalled.
“When the time comes, you just react.
You really don’t have time to think about it.”
But Grosvenor remembers seeing his plane
crash into flames about 100 yards from where he landed. Immediately,
people swarmed from nearby villages to give him aid before the
Nazis had time to reach the scene.
He spotted a woman coming near the scene
on a bicycle. As their eyes met, she surreptitiously shook her
head “no,” indicating Grosvenor shouldn’t walk
into the closest village. She left the scene and he followed,
keeping her in his sights for about three miles. Eventually, he
ended up at a farmhouse and was hidden in a potato bin in a barn,
beneath a concrete covering and a layer of hay.
The crash had occurred about noontime and
Grosvenor stayed in the bin until dark. After emerging, he shed
his military clothing and was given civilian clothes and a raincoat.
A young man, Marcel Harnie, escorted him to a Catholic Church
in Brussels, where he stayed four days before hooking up with
the Belgian underground that would stash him in safe houses for
the next seven months.
For those ensuing months, Grosvenor lay
low in the homes of Belgians brave enough to risk their lives
by sheltering Allied pilots. Not speaking the native Flemish or
French, he didn’t have much to occupy his time.
“I’d find a book or something,”
he said, biding his time until he could be sneaked out of the
country.
But his time never came. Instead, Grosvenor
and 1st Lt. John W. Brown, who were sheltered in the same home,
were captured by the Gestapo on June 20, 1944, and held as war
criminals in the Sint-Gillis Prison.
Grosvenor was one of about 40 Allied pilots
and 1,500 political prisoners held for 75 days before being loaded
onto a train for an unknown destination, but believed to be a
concentration camp. Grosvenor’s last month at the prison
was spent in a dark cell, with only three small holes for light.
Fairy-tale princess
Life was grim and threatening inside the
prison, but it was about to get better for Grosvenor and the other
prisoners. Unknown to them, members of the Belgian Resistance
had been busy sabotaging the transport train, which would later
become known as the Schaarbeek Ghost Train.
“They did everything under the sun
to keep that train from getting out of the country,” Grosvenor
said.
After three days on the train, one of the
POWs managed to spring the lock on the sliding door and Grosvenor
and others escaped. They made their way into Brussels and spent
the night hiding in a bombed-out building near the rail yard.
The next morning they walked into the streets
and realized the Germans were retreating as the British army advanced
to liberate the city. The men were housed at the historic and
luxurious Metropole Hotel and finally got a hot shower and some
decent food.
Terzian, one of the prisoners who would
eventually end up in Abilene along with Grosvenor, remembered
the day well.
“We had a corned beef sandwich on white
bread with a bottle of beer,” Terzian recalled. “And
you never tasted anything so good.”
A month later, Grosvenor was back in the
United States for a visit with his mother and sister in Iowa —but
not his three brothers who were also serving their country. After
a month in Iowa, Grosvenor headed for Miami to a reassignment
center and then to Baton Rouge, La.
In November 1944, Grosvenor found himself
at the Tye Army Air Field near Abilene. He met a beautiful young
Abilene girl named Doris Bohannon, who was asked to represent
Abilene as Sun Bowl Princess for an upcoming football game in
El Paso.
A colonel at the air base had a suggestion.
A young pilot had just come back from overseas and the colonel
thought he would make the perfect escort, with the promise that
if Doris disagreed, he would line up all the pilots on the runway
and let her choose.
But Doris Bohannon didn’t need any
more young men to choose from. She and 1st Lt. William D. “Bill”
Grosvenor hit it off and married later in 1945. He landed a job
with Anderson-Clayton & Co. as a pilot from 1948-65 and then
worked for Abilene businessman Harwell Barber for 18 years before
retiring.
In a twist of coincidence, the musical composer
for the documentary is Stephen Barber of Austin, son of Harwell
and Carolyn Barber. Stephen Barber, who has known the Grosvenor
family all his life, is a veteran of film and documentary work
and has created commissioned works for chamber groups from the
New York Philharmonic, the London Symphony Orchestra, National
Geographic Explorer and PBS productions.
His gift to us
The dashing young World War II pilot and
his Sun Bowl princess wife lived happily ever after and didn’t
need any more fanfare. But it’s coming just the same, thanks
to their son taking time to listen to a tape of his dad’s
exploits.
“He’s just so focused on this
— it’s just amazing,” Doris said of her son.
No matter what happens with the documentary
project, even if it should get critical acclaim and perhaps expand
into a movie, Bill and Doris Grosvenor will remain the same. They
seldom travel, preferring to sit on their back porch watching
a mother robin drop worms into the yawning mouths of her babies.
Their well-tended back yard shows much care,
partly a product of Grosvenor’s yearning for the outdoors
ever since being held prisoner. He remembers peering out from
his cell at Sint-Gillis and watching women sweep leaves and trash
from the streets of Brussels. All the time, one thought occupied
his mind:
“Man, I’d give anything if I was
just out there sweeping the streets.’’
In July, Grosvenor will return to those
roads, not as a street sweeper but as a hero and subject of a
documentary. Grosvenor says the thanks goes to his son, but David
sees it differently.
“It’s a gift he’s giving
to us,” he said.
Contact staff writer Loretta Fulton at
676-6778 or fultonl@abinews.com
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©2001, Abilene Reporter-News / Texnews / E.W. Scripps.
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