THE WAR YEARS
50. David Peter O’Rear - POW.
David Peter O'Rear was born on 13 Oct 1920 at Seattle, Washington. Some Seattle, Washington newspaper clippings tell of his war experiences. The first:
SERGT. DAVID OREAR FREED IN GERMANY. Imprisoned for a year and a month, Staff Sergt. David P. Orear, 24 years old, has been liberated from Stalag B-17 in Germany, the Red Cross has notified his parents, Mr. and Mrs. M. T. Orear, 2217 11th Ave. N. Sergeant Orear, a tail gunner on the B-24 Lucky Strike, based in England, was downed over the Reich April 8, 1944. He had been overseas only two months. A graduate of Broadway High School, Orear attended the University of Washington before entering the Army Air Forces three years ago.
A second clipping has:
SGT. OREAR, HOME ON LEAVE, TELLS OF CAPTURE. S/Sgt. David P. Orear thought it was bad enough when his B-24 Liberator exploded over Brunswick on April 8, 1944. But he decided a few moments later that his bad luck had just begun, when his parachute got tangled in some high tension wires and he found himself dangling in mid-air, with a lot of angry Germans and civilians below. He described his experiences yesterday at the home of his parents, Mr. and Mrs. M. T. Orear, 2217 11th Ave. N., where he had just returned on a 60-day leave after spending a year is a German prison camp.
BULLETS FLEW. "The Germans shot at our engineer as he was coming down," he said, "but they were pretty decent to me -- they threw me a knife and I cut the lines and shinned down a pole. They shoved me around a bit, but they didn't attempt to beat me up." Orear said he was on his fifth combat mission when his plane was shot down by enemy fighters. "Our pilot was killed," he said, "and so were our navigator and both waist gunners. I was the ball turret gunner, but the ball turret was out of commission so I had come up into the waist of the ship and I was blown out." Orear said his prison camp, at Krems, Austria, was probably one of the best.
RED CROSS PARCELS CAME. "We got Red Cross parcels pretty regularly," he said. "The Germans gave us very little food mostly potatoes and rutabagas and such -- but I lost only about 10 pounds. We didn't have to do any work. "Our worst experience started on April 8 when they marched us about 300 kilometers to Braunau and kept us in the woods until May 3, when we were liberated by an American armored division. We didn't get much to eat during those weeks." He said one of his big surprises came when he found an old friend among his liberators -- "Bud" Eakins, son of E. A. Eakins, 7002 Brooklyn Ave., who had attended Summit School a couple of grades behind him. Sergeant Orear, 24, is a native of Seattle and was graduated from Broadway High School in 1940. He worked for the Boeing Aircraft Company before he joined the army in November 1942. His sister, Mrs. Harold Kruchten, is the wife of another staff sergeant in the army air forces.
Last Revised: 08/01/2002 13:12:00
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