Wally Kinnan

Kinnan's aircraft was shot down over Eygalières, Vichy France on August 17, 1943. He sustained shrapnel injuries which were compounded when he bailed out too close to the ground and made hard impact. His injuries prevented him from attempting evasion and he was captured.

Kinnan's recount of his bail-out of his bomber aircraft was harrowing even in the telling. After taking fire that damaged the aircraft, alighting the #4 engine and wounding the other pilot; the crew immediately began bail-out procedures. Kinnan, the only pilot at the control yoke, maintained as much control of the aircraft as possible to ensure that his crew members were all safely out. Once they were out he put the aircraft into as stable a configuration that he could to maintain altitude and attitude. But the badly damaged aircraft, on fire, lost the right wing and continued to descend. In order to bail-out, Kinnan had to make his way to the nose hatch. However, the erratic flight of the damaged B-17 required him to crawl and pull himself along.

As Kinnan was crawling, his parachute caught on some part of the aircraft which left Wally in frantic state trying to unbind himself and his parachute from the rapidly descending aircraft. During this process he had unbuckled his parachute and was never able to put it back on properly. Finally able to free himself he launched himself from the airplane, up and out the normally facing downward hatch and pulled his parachute's ripcord.

Kinnan and M/Sgt Henry Petroski were the last two to exit, falling amidst the burning debris of their aircraft. Because he had not been able to properly restrap the parachute on, when it opened it twisted him up causing a severe back injury. This, plus the wounds he had sustained from the flak bursts while still in the aircraft made it impossible for him to evade capture once he was on the ground.

He was first taken to a Hospital in Arles. Kinnan strongly credits his German captors in France with great humanity and care of his injuries. However, after just only over a week in France they transferred him to another hospital that was part of Dulag Luft near Frankfurt, where his treatment was much more stern. Once processed he was transferred to Stalag Luft III near Sagan, now Żagań in Poland, in mid-September 1943. The reality of the situation in the Stalag system was even more dire and cruel, where life often hinged on having enough to eat.

Kinnan persuaded the German captors to find some decent musical instruments so they could put on some organized musical programs. Kinnan and a group of Who's Who's of music that were all interred in German Camps founded a band called the Sagan Serenaders. Kinnan and Pilot Officer Leonard Whiteley of the British Royal Air Force organized and led the group. The Serenaders received donated musical instruments from aid organizations and whatsoever the German captors could scrounge up. One instrument was an unusual trombone that Wally described as a plumber's nightmare. They 'sacrificed' this instrument so that other POW's could turn it into a still. The 1963 motion picture The Great Escape, which greatly depicts some of the Serenders and Kinnan's experiences, showed a choir singing while the escape started but in actuality, it was the Serenaders. The Serenaders contributed to the effort regularly by practicing their instruments to mask the sound of digging.

Towards the end of the war as the Red Army were nearing Stalag Luft III, the Germans forced marched 12,000 prisoners to Stalag VII-A in Bavaria. When the German guards marched the prisoners, including the band members, out of the camp, some assumed they were being marched into a field for execution. However, the forced march proceeded through a blizzard to Spremberg almost 200 miles away. Many of the POWs died during the trek. Food was scarce and Bunch credited Kinnan with saving his life by sharing a potato. After the arrival of General George S. Patton's Third Army, on April 29, 1945, Kinnan and his fellow POWs in Stalag VII-A were liberated. Kinnan would then spend his processing time at Camp Lucky Strike before being sent stateside. Official records have initial capture date as August 17, 1943 with official repatriation to the United States as of June 30, 1945.