Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, July 5, 1994 TAG: 9407050120
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: By LEIGH ANNE LARANCE CORRESPONDENT
DATELINE: NEWPORT LENGTH: Long
The address - taken from the scrap of paper it had been hastily written on 50 years earlier - wasn't copied quite right. Moreover, neither the addressee nor his family had lived there in years.
But in late April the letter had been sent to Galax, and one of the perks of living in rural America is that people know who people are. The postmaster recognized the surname and sent it to the addressee's uncle.
The letter - three paragraphs on an unadorned 8 1/2 -by-11 sheet of typing paper - eventually found its way to Heath Nelson Liddle, 71, of Newport.
It brought back a flood of memories for the veteran who was a ball turret gunner on a B-17 bomber during World War II.
He remembered his second combat mission, which ended with an emergency landing on the Danish island of Bornholm. He remembered running with his fellow crewmen to escape German soldiers, surviving on the kindness of strangers and the chewing gum and chocolate bars that were their staples.
But the letter brought most vividly the memory of Ernst Petersen of the small town of Hasle, who risked his life by taking four Americans soldiers into his home, then escaping with them to Sweden. The note Liddle finally received in May was from Ernst's daughter, Elizabeth M. Petersen.
In a subsequent, more detailed letter, she wrote that her father died in 1980 and her mother died about a year and a half ago. She explained her reason for writing:
"Now we are selling their house in Hasle and perhaps that's the reason why memories are coming up." Until recently, the framed paper on which Liddle and other crewmen had scribbled their addresses hung on a wall in the Petersens' house.
"It was so exciting and nice when Dad told about his experience," she wrote. "And he often did. I remember it so well."
On May 24, 1944, when Liddle had been in the service a little more than a year, he was assigned to a crew whose mission was to bomb Berlin. Somewhere near the target, their plane was hit by anti-aircraft fire.
"All of a sudden the plane cocked up and smoke came from out of the No. 2 engine," Liddle said. "The pilot gave the order to bail out. Everyone went to the back with their parachutes ready."
They never jumped. The pilot told them to stand by, and the fire went out
"The plane started vibrating something terrible," Liddle said, growing animated. "The whole nose was gone. The engine froze up, but the propellers continued to spin."
They wanted to make it to Sweden because it was neutral territory, Liddle said.
But they lost oxygen, then descended, lost. "We were in desperate straits," Liddle said.
The pilot landed the craft in a wheat field, and the crew of 10 realized they were within sight of a German airfield.
"We all took off to the woods, and we saw a truck of soldiers coming," Liddle said. "We found a ravine, got as low as we could."
The Germans passed, and the crew, battered and tired but not seriously injured, spilt up into pairs and started walking.
They spent nights in the woods, trying to hide. Liddle and the pilot, John Whiteman, wandered from farmhouse to farmhouse, sometimes finding a sympathizer and a bite to eat, but never safe harbor.
"Early one morning we saw a guy coming toward us, speaking English as good as we are right now," Liddle says. "He told us he was going to help us and eventually took us to Mr. Petersen's house."
Elizabeth Petersen wrote that on May 28, 1944, her father, mother and their three children - Elizabeth and a fifth child weren't yet born - were visiting the countryside when a boy told her father about American soldiers who had been seen on the coast. "None of the local people would risk to give them cover, so my father and police officer Ebbe Jorgensen did bring you two ... on the bicycle to my father's house.
"My mother told me that you stayed in their bedroom and that she told the children not to go upstairs because she had varnished the staircase. And my sister Birthe who was 5 years old at that time told me she was so curious because she heard something that she although it was forbidden went upstairs."
When Birthe peeked through the keyhole, she saw two men. Suddenly, an eye stared through the keyhole back at her. "My mother told her it was an electrician and that it was OK."
Little did Birthe know she and the "electricians" would soon be fleeing the country together. Ernst Petersen had been warned that he was suspected of aiding the enemy and the Gestapo was on its way.
On June 1, Liddle and the three other crewmen put on uniforms Petersen had obtained for their escape. Disguised as Danish policemen, they, the Petersens and a few others mounted bicycles and pedaled off to a deserted wharf on the coast.
That night, 14 people boarded a fishing boat and escaped to Sweden. It was the last Liddle ever saw of the Petersens.
"Fifty years later we're hearing from them," Liddle said.
Liddle traveled back to the States, and was assigned to various training posts until the end of the war, along with the nine other crew members, all of whom survived. The November after his return, Liddle married his sweetheart, Billie Jean. He had intended to make the military his career, but after a while decided to settle in Blacksburg, where he worked as a machinist.
The Petersens stayed in Sweden. "My father had sailed other pilots too before he brought you over to Sweden, so [the Germans] were looking for him," Elizabeth Petersen wrote. After a year the family returned to Denmark, which was difficult for Ernst Petersen at first. But he went on to start a successful quarry business, Hasle Granit, which is still in operation.
"I get all teary-eyed just reading that letter," said Liddle's daughter, Barbara Peck of Blacksburg. It rekindled her curiosity about her father's service during World War II. "I knew Daddy'd been shot down, but people didn't talk about it," Peck said.
"She's asked me to tell her about it, more since this letter than she ever did," Liddle said. He said he had been under orders not to mention his experience so as not to put those who had aided him at risk.
"There were a lot of war stories around. Nobody seemed to be interested. Now with the 50th anniversary, I guess it's rekindled a lot of interest," he said. Including his own.
"It just floored me," Liddle said, starting at the letter. "Something out of the past that I'd forgotten."
For Peck, it's something out of the past that she's preserved. Since her father received the letter, Peck has begun a correspondence with Petersen's daughter and hopes that sometime the families can meet.
"I mean this man was so brave - to be sheltering the enemy?" Peck said. "He saved my daddy's life."
Memo: ***CORRECTION***