When Ned Handy heard about the allied invasion of Normandy, 60 years ago this week, it was thanks to a wireless radio that a fellow prisoner had built without the guards catching on. The news produced backslaps and quiet laughter among the captured Americans as half-suppressed joy spread through their barracks.
This happened in the third month of Ned’s captivity in the notorious German prisoner-of-war camp called Stalag 17. A top-turret gunner and engineer on a B-24 bomber, he had been shot down on April 11, 1944 on a raid over northern Germany. Luftwaffe fighter planes knocked out three of the engines, forcing the pilot to limp along with only one rapidly failing engine.
Forced to bail out along with other crew members, Ned landed in a field and was soon captured by farmers and several soldiers. The farmers beat him with tool handles and pieces of wood and might have killed him had it not been for the women who yelled at them to desist. “I’ll remember always the yell of those women,” says Ned now.
Then he was transported, by forced march and by railroad, to Austria where the grim prison camp was located, not far from the Danube River and Vienna.
These harrowing adventures and many others are recounted in Ned’s just- published book, “The Flame Keepers: the True Story of an American Soldier’s Survival Inside Stalag 17.” I found the book fascinating to read and recommend it to everyone interested in World War II and stories of human courage in the face of mortal danger.
I admit having the advantage of friendship with Ned, as a result of frequent workplace contacts when we both worked in the Cambridge city government almost 30 years ago. Strangely enough, I never knew anything about Ned’s wartime experiences at that time and I feel deprived for not having discovered them till now.
My friend will be 82 years old next September, yet this is the first book he has written. For this project, he had the advantage of significant help from his wife, an excellent listener and editor, of whom he says “She has a terrific blue pencil.”
He also benefited much from his co-author, Kemp Battle, a former publisher who has an intense interest in military history. “Kemp’s input on how to tell a story was invaluable,” says Ned. Seeing the book through 12 drafts over a three year period was no easy task, the writers freely admit.
Ned recalls that life in camp was grueling, with food scarce and continual threats from the guards a menace. Until the latter months, Ned’s main activity each day was digging a tunnel under the fence toward the outside. Of course he did not work alone but was the crew chief of a team of other prisoners. Keeping their project secret from the guards required constant vigilance, with the risk of discovery carrying mortal danger.
In general, the treatment given the American prisoners was influenced by the requirements of the Geneva Convention. Ned and his fellow airmen also benefited from the organizing skills of the Americans who had been imprisoned before his group arrived. Acting democratically, they had chosen leaders for barracks, group, and compound, all of whom reported to a senior manager. Still, the prisoners had to suffer constant deprivation, brutal cold in winter, relentless pressure, and fear of an unknown fate.
About the effect of Stalag 17 on his fellow prisoners of war, Ned says: “If they went in iron, they came out steel.” That would seem to be the transformation in Ned himself. On entering the prison he was only 21 years old; on his release 13 months later, he himself had been transformed.
The first steps toward that release came in April of 1945 when the guards led the prisoners on a 120-mile hike away from Stalag 17 and the advancing Russian armies. Before linking up with American forces, the group took refuge in a forest and the guards gradually disappeared. One day Ned was able to get away for a long walk in the countryside.
Coming to a beautiful meadow, he sat down and described in a small blue notebook how the prison experience had transformed him interiorly. He did not know how he had survived, by contrast with all the American warriors who had not. “I resolved to try from then on to live, in their honor, a life that would serve others rather than me,” he wrote.
In his early 80s, Ned shows remarkable vigor, his health flourishing and his personal intensity apparently unflagging. Only the hearing in his left ear is diminished, this the result of a pistol whipping by a malevolent Stalag 17 guard.
Of his present life Ned says, “I never think of myself as a senior.” His good health allows him to pass as considerably younger, even to some doctors. He feels ready to take on further responsibility, the next chapter in a life marked, not only by heroism but by dedication and service to others.
Richard Griffin