Robert Harold Bare was born to my great granduncle Jesse William Bare, brother of my grandmother Lena Bare and Ethel Turbyfill, sister of my grandfather George Washington Turbyfill. Robert Harold Bare and his siblings are genetically full siblings to the children of George and Lena due to being double cousins.
Robert also has two cousins named Robert E. Bare that’s 5 years older than him, the son of Arthur Bare and another cousin Robert B Bare son of Ed Bare. In 1930 he lived with his parents Jessie and Ethel Bare, plus his grandfather Curtis Turbyfill and his brothers Wayne, Charles, and Winston. He grew up on Elk River Road.
Robert Harold Bare, service number 34233825 joined the air force and he was moved to Will Rogers Field in Oklahoma in July 1942 to prepare for departure overseas. In September, the crew flew to Grenier Field in New Hampshire. They were assigned to the Royal Air Force as American loaners. Robert and his crew flew to RAF Shipdham in October 1942.
Robert was in a B-24 Liberator and you can read more about the airplane here
http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~webermd1/family/Liberator-Info.html
In November 1942, Robert and his crew entered active duty bombing targets in France, Belgium, Germany, and Poland with the 514th Bombardment. In 1943, Robert and many others flew to Sicily to bomb the island in preparation for the incoming invasion, the same invasion Junior Hicks was a part of. Robert was then sent to bomb the beaches in Normandy for the incoming invasion. , then they went to do low level raids on the oil fields. (Fun fact- Junior Hicks and Robert Bare enlisted the same day at the same place.)
From February 1944 to August 1944, Robert was stationed in England and flew to various targets for low level bombings. Things like airfields, train tracks, suspected u-boat locations, bridges, oilfields, etc. This time frame is still classified, so I don’t have access to the details of specific targets on specific days. The confusing thing is their graves say they were Army and after some investigation, I discovered that the Air Force wasn’t a thing, they had the Army Air Corps. Thus they were buried being labeled as army.
Sergeant Robert Bare was the pilot, his copilot was Lt. John Johnson and the men manning the guns were 2nd Lt. Anthony Homyk and Raymond Jones , the gunners sat in the nose below the pilots the radioman/radar man Sgt Louis Elgert sat behind the pilots, and above the radar man sat the flight engineer Richard Hess, he manned the top turret, one man was curled up in a ball in the ball turret on the bottom, Sgt Raymond Nickerson, two men, Sgt Gerald Nygard, Sgt Orlando Neely, were in the tail manning the rear guns and finally, one man, Samuel Dudley was in the middle making sure the bombs were loading correctly
Robert didn’t let his crewmates step forward alone when the Germans asked the Jews to step forward. Robert isn’t a jew, but he showed bravery and solidarity by stepping forward too. It was also his duty as a pilot, being responsible for his crew. His group of 169 airmen were captured. They crashed in occupied France and they were disguised as civilians. For this reason, the Germans thought they were French spies. They crashed in August 1944. He was listed as missing air crew, along with John Johnson, Anthony Homyk, Raymond Jones, Louis Elgert, Richard Hess, Raymond Nickerson, Gerald Nygard, Orlando Neely, Samuel Dudley, Harold Romanoff, Seymour Yudkowitz, Benjamin Fountain, Benjamin Moore, Daniel Miracco, Robert Moody, Stanley Humienny, and Arthur Melius. Andrew Kingsley was killed in the crash, but he was also listed as missing in action until they found the other men. The other men listed not in the above crew was from another B-24. The specifications of this crash is still not declassified. It only lists who was listed as Missing in Action due to missing planes.
There was a few items that were declassified and here;s what I discovered. If you are sensitive, I would stop reading at this point.
Robert and his crew were forced to stand still in a line for 14 hours as the Gemans tried to determine if the others were Jews or spies. From April to August, they were held in the Gestapo prison at the Gestapo headquarters in France. When they couldn’t break these men into admitting they’re actually spies, the fact they spoke English, not French didn’t matter. French can speak English too and they assumed they were refusing to speak French. So they were sent to a concentration camp. When they were brought to Stalag Luft on August 20, 1944. The 169 airmen were from the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Jamaica. There are two movies based on this, but the movies added to what really happened, so they aren’t historically accurate. One movie is called the Wooden Horse and the other movie is called The Great Escape, made in 1963 featuring Steven McQueen and Charles Bronson.
October 1944, the Nazis split up the airmen and only one American pilot was left in Stalag Luft and the rest of the American airmen were brought to Buchenwald. There, the men were forced to undress and be fully washed and fully shaved head to toe, in full view of everyone.
They were freed on April 2, 1945 by the same unit my other granduncle was in, Junior Hicks. However, at this time, Junior was overseeing the supply chain. Junior coordinated the supply chain getting food to the surviving prisoners and figuring out how to bring the prisoners out and on to their respective homes. Junior was the kind of man to be good at logistics. I wonder if Junior and Robert knew they were related by marriage, his wife Frankie being Robert’s double cousin- his parents and Frankie’s parents married each other’s sibling. Robert and Frankie were genetically full siblings due to this. It’s not likely they physically saw each other, as Junior was in charge of overseeing the supply chain. They would’ve recognized each other, having enlisted the same time.
Buchenwald had 21,000 inmates, but only 4,000 were actually Jewish. When they heard the 6th bombing and coming closer and closer, the inmates were frightened because they had heard of Auschwitz where they did a mass killing to cover up their war crimes. The Germans tried to move them all, but due to the sheer number of 21,000 people, many were marched into the forests and told to run as they shot them in the back. Only a few that were marched into the forest escaped with their lives. 2,700 people were killed in the forests and the Germans did not have time to move the rest by the time the Americans broke through to the camp on April 2nd.
Robert was one of the prisoners the Germans experimented on. They had purposefully injected him and his crewmates with typhoid so when the Americans showed up, they were too weak to be lucid enough to realize the Germans were gone. They also tested acids on Robert. The men from the B-24 squadron were fearful. Robert was also raped repeatedly, along with many others. He was treated by an Army medic Anthony Acevedo, and that man kept a diary of his experiences. Anthony Acevedo was also raped. Yet that man still treated Robert and many other’s wounds. Robert Bare appears as Robert Bahr in his diary. The Army had all the survivors sign something swearing to not tell anyone about their experiences and those records weren’t declassified until 1985 and even then, the NAR quietly declassified the experiences of the POWs, so it was a few more years before the general public was aware our own American soldiers were in the same concentration camps as the Jewish.
Back to Robert… the prisoners did not realize the Americans were in charge now, 9,280 inmates hid until the Americans found them on April 9th. Between April 2nd and April 8th, they already transported 4,880 people out to safety in tanks.
Some hid in the latrines, some hid below the buildings, some hid under random planks of wood carefully arranged to disguise there was space underneath, and his buddy Melbourne was on the top bunk, stacked 3 high. Melbourne made a hole big enough in the roof to slip through, and a few hundred inmates followed him up to the roof, including Robert Bare. As the Americans in troop 6th searched for survivors, the inmates didn’t trust what they heard and they stayed hidden. The bunks weren’t even really beds. They were shelves. No blankets, no mattresses. Each shelf was 12x12, and they forced each shelf to have 16 people on it, the clearance between each shelf being 18 inches.
Their rations were as follows: Sundays, soy beans (the only protein for the whole week); Mondays, jam and black bread; Tuesdays one potato, Wednesdays, beet root liquid/soup (just beets boiled down in water); Thursdays Jam and black bread, Fridays, one potato, and Saturday, the beet root liquid concoction , so they all lost weight. Robert went in weighing 165 pounds, but when he was found, he weighed 97 pounds. That was still heavier than other soldiers. They were also forced to stay in the shelves at night, even if they had diarrhea due to the typhoid fever purposely given to them. If any of the 16 people on a particular shelf dared complain, the Germans would line up the 16 people from that bunk and shoot them in front of the other prisoners, so Robert and his 15 bunkmates kept their mouths shut.
The Americans left, thinking they had gotten all the survivors out. The germans returned and found the few hundred up on the roof and they captured them and forced them on a march to another camp called Flossenburg..
When the POWs stumbled, the Germans would be cruel to them all. Robert fell and a German soldier stomped on him hard enough to cause his uthera to burst all the way down to his prostate. Robert and his men were forced to march for a month. They were not allowed to lay down or they’d get stomped on again.
On June 2nd, Allied Forces from Australia found these men and rescued them by shooting the Nazis that were holding them captive. They took the shackles off and brought them to a hospital in France. There, Robert was treated. His medical records are declassified. Robert had a scalp wound with no nerves involved, sutured shut.This wound was from the butt of a rifle. Robert had anal laceteratons that needed to be treated. Robert had a wound through his shoulder from acids being poured on him which ate through his shoulder front to back. It was gaping open. Robert’s friction burns were treated from being dragged across the gravel. Robert’s urethra was reconnected to his prostate and repaired surgically. Robert also had a severe case of lice. His bunkmates had a kidney removed so they could experiment to see how the human can survive with one kidney. They were not under anesthesia when that happened to them. All the injuries were classified as “Injury Type 2: intentionally inflicted by Military Enemy in close quarters.” This is probably why his medical file was declassified, to use as evidence in the trial against the Germans that had tortured the American soldiers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buchenwald_Trial
When Robert was rescued, he had to be carefully fed. The Americans gave him thin barley soup with beef broth. Many more American soldiers died from being given too much food at first. With Robert, he was slowly given more and more. The first week, a cup of mostly beef broth with barley in it twice daily, told to go slow. A lot of people couldn’t resist the temptation to slurp it all down right away. The next week, it was half barley to the amount of beef broth twice daily. The 3rd week, they went up to 3 times daily feeding, two the barley soup and one small beef. At week 6, they were given eggs at breakfast with toast and on to resuming full feedings. For this reason, he was not part of the first groups to be transported back home. Plus he needed to recover from typhoid fever before being put on a ship or airplane.
Robert was discharged from the hospital on July 29,1944 and he went back home to his parents Jesse Bare and Ethel Turbyfill. Robert was formally honorably discharged on October 12, 1944.
Somehow, Robert wasn’t finished with serving. Robert re-enlisted on November 11, 1945, stayed stateside as part of the reserves, and was honorably discharged from the reserves on May 4, 1947.
Robert married Wilma Shook by a baptist minister named Glenn Gentry on February 6, 1946 and their first son came in November 1946, Donald Harold Bare then Robert “Bobby” Bare, Colleen Marie Bare, Gerald David Bare, Marleen Bare, Rick Bare, and Steve Bare. These children are a miracle given the severe injuries he got during his time of being a POW.
Robert lived at 365 Grandfather Road, Banner Elk, NC with his wife and children for over 25 years. He was buried in Jestes Cemetery after his death on March 30, 1995. I wonder if he told anyone about his POW experiences, after 1985 when he was allowed to. I have trouble wrapping my head around this.
I am aware of the concentration camps, but they were always in my mind a Jewish thing. For some reason, having a family member, a double nephew to Papaw George and Lena Bare made it more personal to me and it leaves me feeling more ill and horrified. It’s no longer a part of history I am detached from because I thought it didn’t affect anyone in my family. How wrong I was. I’m sick and angry about what he went through.
This was difficult for me to write and difficult for you to read. But this is a part of our family history. We can’t forget history, we owe them that.
No comments:
Post a Comment