POW-MIA Ceremony Reinforces Sense of Patient-Care Mission by Jayna Legg - Public Affairs Officer at Lovell Federal Health Care Center (Chicago) Air Force Veteran Ernest Shavitz’s wife, Evelyn, nudged him and reminded him to talk about the time he feared he would be shot by his Russian guards when he was a prisoner of war in 1945. “Yeah, I thought I was next,” said Shavitz, recounting the story of what happened to the benevolent Russian guard he bribed with cigarettes so he and his fellow prisoners could slip out and barter for bread, eggs and wine with the villagers. His commander caught us one night and he (the commander) pulled out his gun and shot the guard,” Shavitz said. “He shot his own guy.” Shavitz told the story about the guard during an interview after Lovell Federal Health Care Center’s (FHCC) recent POW/MIA Remembrance Ceremony, where he was the guest speaker. He spoke about his service in World War II and time as a POW in Odessa, Russia (today part of Ukraine). It was a repeat appearance for the 94-year-old, who spoke at the same ceremony in 2005. Lovell FHCC patients, staff and volunteers including members of the 9th Marine Corps District, gathered to honor former and current POWs, those missing (MIA) and killed in action (KIA) and their families. “Particularly for our staff, this ceremony helps us to really understand and appreciate our mission here at Lovell Federal Health Care Center,” said Michelle Blakely, acting Lovell FHCC director. Blakely said she will always remember attending her first POW/MIA ceremony more than two decades ago, when she was a young career employee in the Department of Veterans Affairs. “I realized my mission was so much bigger than I thought it was.” The sacrifices of POWs, servicemen and women still missing in action and their families, “are not forgotten,” Blakely said. “We are all indebted to them.” Blakely stressed the importance of Lovell FHCC’s mission to provide health care to former POWs as well as all Veterans, Navy recruits and students, other active duty military members and military families in Northeast Illinois and Southeast Wisconsin. Lovell FHCC is the nation’s first and only federal health care center, an integration of Department of Defense and VA medical services. Shavitz, of Skokie, IL, is an outpatient of Lovell FHCC. He was a bombardier on a B-24 Liberator in Europe during the war. He enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Force on Pearl Harbor Day in 1941, hoping to become a flier but instead became a bombardier. “I was immediately washed out,” he said of the intense pilot training in Marshfield, CA. “I didn’t want to give up on flying, though, so I asked ‘can I go to gunnery school?’ “ He was assigned to the 747th Bomb Squadron, 456th Bomb Group, 15th Air Force and ended up in Italy. In March, 1945 – the month Shavitz’s plane crash-landed – records show the 456th Bomb Group hit 16 targets. The group bombed airfields and rail yards in Germany with the intent of destroying German supply lines and slowing troop movements. “Our first two missions scared the Hell out of us,” Shavitz said. “I remember the sky was black with flak.” After that, missions weren’t quite as dramatic, he said – until his last one. On the 14th mission, Shavitz saw the oil pump get hit and the subsequent gush of oil. “It was the number three engine which controls all the hydraulics.” He tried to contact the pilot but the communication equipment wasn’t functioning, so he took himself off oxygen and made his way to the front of the plane to hit the “feathering switch.” (Feathering adjusts the propeller blades, a measure typically taken when the engine has suffered a serious problem and must be shut down.) “Had I been 5 seconds earlier, we wouldn’t have crashed,” he said. Now the crew had to prepare for a crash landing on a landing strip about 400 feet long. They landed in a Hungarian college town that had just been liberated by the Russians a few days before. They were taken into custody and put on a train to Russia. While on the train, “The train commandant let us know we were prisoners,” Shavitz said. When they arrived in Odessa, their accommodations were primitive. They slept on wooden racks and ate boiled squash three times a day. Luck would have it that before they were captured, they hid away some money. They used the secret stash to get provisions whenever the guards let them sneak out. At the beginning of May, 1945, his crew and other imprisoned airmen were liberated along with British POWs who had been held since they were captured in Dunkirk in 1940. “They sent a steamer to pick us up and the Americans then went to Naples, Italy,” Shavitz said. The ceremony included a reading of the “Remembrance Prayer.” The prayer explains the tradition of setting of an empty table to represent “all who have paid the supreme price for the freedoms we all share.” Lovell FHCC’s canteen has a permanent table set in honor of servicemen and women who haven’t returned. A Navy brass quintet from the Great Lakes Navy Band concluded the ceremony with the playing of taps. NOTE: VA Maine HCS conducted a POW/MIA Day Remembrance Observance at Togus VAMC on September 19 and has a permanent POW/MIA table set in the Togus Cafeteria.
Posted on: Wed, 01 Oct 2014 14:40:07 +0000
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