The Pittsburgh Press (August 3, 1943)
G.I. shoes and dog tags identify bomber survivor
Otherwise Ohio sergeant looks like native after passing through enemy lines in 15-day trek
By C. R. Cunningham, United Press staff writer
Mistretta, Sicily, Italy – (July 31, delayed)
The slender fellow was a blond, wore G.I. shoes and dog tags but the rest of him looked native Sicilian, including the green-checked shirt.
He told Capt. Paul Gale as the officer came out of his headquarters here:
Honest, captain. I’m an American. Here, see my dog tags. I’m in the Air Corps.
Capt. Gale took the fellow to a casualty clearing station. He identified himself as Sgt. Arthur P. Rohr, 21, of Lewisville, Ohio, and downed five plates of sauerkraut, a whole chicken and a bottle of wine.
Then he said:
Boy, I was lonely. For 15 days, I was lonely.
Only survivor
He had lived with Sicilians, slept on hillsides and moved through enemy lines for 15 days before he met the advancing Americans.
He is the only survivor of a bomber lost near Mt. Etna, and he doesn’t know how he managed to get out. The plane caught fire.
He said:
I ran to escape through the trap and pulled the release but it wouldn’t open. I jumped on the hatch, which you aren’t supposed to do because if you go out that way you might get caught in the slipstream. I guess that’s what happened to me.
Head aches
He must have struck his head on the fuselage because he remembered nothing more until he awoke with the sun high in the sky. He was on a mountain slope. His head ached, was cut and bloody. Near him was his tangled parachute. How it opened he doesn’t know.
He said:
I started out to find my ship, but the Italians beat me to it. I finally saw it. It had crashed all night, but a lot of Italian soldiers were around it and some more were digging a big hole a little distance away. I looked around and then decided to get the hell out of there.
Starts south
St. Rohr started south toward the British line. Unable to speak Italian, he tried a single word on a native he met. It was “aqua.” He got both food and water and that night, he slept on a hillside.
He said:
I tried to sleep but it was cold. I was lonely, boy, I was lonely and I thought about back home on the farm and my girl, Martha Owen, down at Hastings, West Virginia. You may not think there’s a God, but I’m telling you, I thought about Him plenty.
He stayed there for seven days and the Italian who first had fed him, continued to feed him. Hearing guns in the distance, he started off toward them. An Italian shepherd gave him the clothes he reached Mistretta in – “and the pants were so dirty they could stand by themselves.”
Meets deserters
He said:
I cruised around in the mountains and met two Italian deserters heading for the American lines. We made a three-day hike and those Italians like to have walked hell out of me. They were going too fast.
One day he ran into a family of Sicilians who helped him.
The father of the family heard about the Americans reaching Mistretta and brought Sgt. Rohr in on a mule.