A Story of Survival
The Overlook
By Tom Clavin
“The Overlook” appears every Thursday at tomclavin.substack.com. An overlook is a place from which one can see in several if not all directions, including where one has been and where one is going. If you enjoy the column, please "like" it and let me know what you think by commenting (check out previous ones while you're at it). Likes, comments, and shares help with author “discoverability” on Substack.com, and all support is appreciated. Don't forget to hit the ‘Subscribe’ button – it’s free!
I never intended to write as much as I have about World War II. Probably my initial interest was having grown up at a time when war movies were standard fare on television and most of them had been made in the 1940s and ‘50s and depicted World War II. With few exceptions, the main characters triumphed and evil was once again defeated. There were probably more war movies viewed in my home than in many others when I was a younger kid because my father had served in the Navy in both World War II and Korea. He never saw combat but he appeared to enjoy watching it.
My first published book was not about World War II but my first book with Bob Drury was. The central plot of Halsey’s Typhoon began with three paragraphs in Doug Stanton’s book about the sinking of the USS Indianapolis, In Harm’s Way. Those paragraphs described a typhoon striking the 3rd Fleet under the command of Admiral “Bull” Halsey in December 1944. Bob and I first researched and wrote the story as an article for Men’s Journal and then it was expanded from there into a book. And we moved on to other topics.
We returned to World War II nine years later, again in the Pacific Theater, with Lucky 666. This story was about the crew of a B-17 bomber who take on what seems like a suicide mission, and along the way they engage in the longest dogfight in recorded American aviation history. And then we again moved on.
In late 2015, I began a six-year journey, once again involving World War II. A man named Joe Moser had just died at age 94 and I happened upon his obituary in a Washington (state of) weekly newspaper. He had been an Army pilot in World War II, but what caught my eye was that after being captured by the Germans he was shipped off to Buchenwald. I had to find out more, and what I did became the book Lightning Down, which is to be published next week.
Here is what happened: On August 13, 1944, Joe Moser set off on his 44th combat mission over occupied France. Soon, he would join almost 170 other Allied airmen as prisoners in Buchenwald, one of the most notorious and deadly of Nazi concentration camps. Moser was just 22 years old, a farm boy from Washington State who fell in love with flying. During the war he realized his dream of piloting a P-38 Lightning, one of the most effective weapons the Army Air Corps had against the powerful German Luftwaffe. But on that hot August morning he had to bail out of his damaged, burning plane. Captured immediately, Moser’s journey into hell began.
He and 167 courageous comrades from England, Canada, New Zealand, and elsewhere endured the most horrific conditions during their imprisonment... until the day the orders were issued by Hitler himself to execute them. Only a most desperate plan would save them. That plan included the intervention of a high-ranking Luftwaffe pilot, of all people. The plan worked, but ultimately not everyone survived. Joe and the remaining flyers were put into another camp, which in late January was in the path of advancing Allied forces. In horrendous winter conditions, Joe and his fellow prisoners had to endure what would be called the “Dearth March” because over a thousand men died.
An excerpt from Lightning Down:
“One mile, two, the one after that, the frozen and exhausted men shuffled forward. Every so often one dropped and a guard would drag the prisoner to the side of the road, out of the way. Sometimes a gunshot would follow, sometimes a bullet was not necessary. The hint of the sun through the clouds was directly overhead, then it crawled through the cruel afternoon. Joe idly wondered which step would be his last, when he would finally find it impossible to put one foot in front of the other, when he would fall to his knees then pitch forward onto his face. And then a guard, perhaps with an ounce of sympathy, but probably only a heavy weariness, would haul him off to the side of the road.
“However, as though a miracle was occurring, later in the afternoon Joe began to feel better. It was like he had broken through to the other side of pain and exhaustion. He experienced ‘a growing warmth and with it a growing sense of well-being. Something deep inside me seemed to be saying that I was going to be OK, I was going home and it would feel so good.’
“That feeling expanded within him: ‘What started as a surprising sense of acceptance and peace slowly began turning to a kind of euphoria. The snow and cold and wind seemed to fill me with a kind of joy and anticipation. It was almost as if I was outside myself watching myself getting warmer, more peaceful and even joyful. It seemed the sky was lightening. It didn’t seem so hard now. I could go on like this forever. Forever and ever.’
“Joe was not aware that the euphoria was the sensation experienced by those about to die from the combination of hypothermia and exhaustion. After a few more unsteady steps, darkness flooded his mind, and he collapsed. A final thought was that his fear of being left to die on a lonely road in a country thousands of miles from home was about to be realized.”
What happens next? You can find out only by buying and reading Lightning Down when it hits bookstores next Tuesday.
Oh, and Bob Drury and I are working on yet another book set during World War II. More about that another time.
Tom Clavin is the bestselling author/co-author of 18 books, including Tombstone, Blood and Treasure (with Bob Drury), and the forthcoming Lightning Down: A World War II Story of Survival, to be published by St. Martin’s Press on November 2. To purchase a copy, please go to your local bookstore or to Bookshop.org, Amazon.com, or BN.com.