American Valor Quarterly Issue 8 - Winter 2010/2011 | Page 10

Love, War, and the Long
Way Home

U.S. Air Force History Support Office

By Delbert Lambson
The mention “death march” or “Bataan” immediately brings to My mother saw six of her nine sons in the service, four of them
mind one of the great atrocities of the Second World War.
in harm’s way, but she never once felt sorry for herself. She took
a defense job, working away from home for the first time in her
The Bataan Death March, however, was not the only death march life, so that her sons could come home soon and safe. It was a
that occurred during WWII. In 1945, 6,000 American prisoners time of great sacrifice when everything was rationed, from soap
of war were forced to march 600 miles in 87 days during one of to sugar, tires to toilet paper.
the cruelest winters ever recorded in Germany. Disease—
tuberculosis, pneumonia, dysentery, diphtheria, typhus—ran When I was called into the service, a gun was put in my hands,
rampant. Soldiers resorted to eating raw rats, dogs, and cats and and I was taught how to use it. I learned how to kill people. The
drank from the same ditches
people that I was shooting at
they used as latrines.
were shooting back at me,
Combined with the freezing
trying to kill me, and they
temperatures, these conditions
almost succeeded. How did
ensured that a great many of
I feel about what I was doing?
these POW’s would never
I was a solider and soldiers are
reach their destination.
not supposed to cry, but I
cried every day, inside, where
Although overlooked and
no one could see. Still, I did
oftentimes forgotten, the
my duty.
march of American prisoners
from Stalag Luft IV across
My wife and I were expecting
Germany—the Black March
our first child when I left for
—saw some of the most
war. The hardest thing I ever
inhumane conditions imposed
did was to say good-bye,
on enemy prisoners during
knowing there was a chance I
World War II. In their effort
would never return. When I
to evade the approaching
saw the Statue of Liberty fade
Soviet Red Army, German guards drove their prisoners up to 20 out of sight in the New York harbor, I felt as though my world
miles a day through the harshest of weather conditions.
was coming to an end. It was a poignant time of deep reflection,
a time when grown men cried.
Delbert Lambson, a former ball turret gunner and prisoner-ofwar during WWII, lived to share his story from the fierce winter I was a ball turret gunner on a B-17, flying bombing missions
of 1945. In 1944, his B-17, “Betty Boop: The Pistol Packin’ over Germany. Our plane was armed with twelve 50-caliber
Mama” was shot down over Germany. After being taken machine guns, each capable of firing 750 rounds of ammunition
prisoner, Lambson spent three months in the hospital in Stalag per minute. The B-17 had a crew of ten: a pilot, a co-pilot, an
Luft IV, a German POW camp in Tychowo, Poland, before being engineer, bombardier, a navigator, two waist gunners, a tail gunner,
sent out on the notorious Black March.
and me, a ball turret gunner. But ours was not just a B-17, ours
was Betty Boop: The Pistol Packin’ Mama, our pride and joy.
A Mormon country boy from the Zuni Mountains of western
New Mexico, Delbert stayed true to his faith throughout the ordeal, My turret was suspended beneath the belly of the plane. Because
relying on his faith in God and the prayers of his family to make it was so small H