Old Colony in WWII: A Tale of Three Heroes From Taunton
by Eric B. Schultz
“The plane was flying across from our ship and dropped out of formation . . . the №2 engine was throwing oil . . . One chute was seen to emerge from the left waist window . . . We saw five additional chutes emerge . . . Then the plane peeled off to the right, and turned back towards Germany . . . We saw four more chutes emerge from the ship.” — Missing Air Crew Reports, May 11, 1944, describing the loss of B-24 aircraft 42–10024 over Rotterdam, Holland, with Nose Gunner S/Sgt. Studley L. Baker aboard, declassified 1973[1]
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On January 6, 1942, 20-year-old Taunton resident Studley Linton Baker enlisted as a Private in the US Army Air Corps.[2] Named for his grandmother’s family of Cape Cod sea captains and sailors, Studley had attended Taunton High and was employed as a waiter at the White Rabbit Restaurant in Wareham.
Nine months later, on October 27, 1942, his youngest brother, 18-year-old Lester Studley Baker, also enlisted in the Army Air Corps.[3] Two weeks after that, on November 14, 1942, Studley and Lester’s middle brother, 19-year-old Gordon Curtis Baker, enlisted in the US Navy.[4]
When the three brothers headed off to war in 1942, they left behind proud if apprehensive parents — their father, a Marine veteran of WWI — and a sister, Nancy, who would, with her parents, follow the war as a student at Cohannet School.
Gordon served bravely in the Pacific as a 2nd Class Petty Officer and Motor Machinist’s Mate aboard the U.S.S. Harold C. Thomas, a destroyer escort protecting convoys from Japanese submarines and fighter aircraft. At the war’s end, the Thomas returned to the United States with two battle stars.
Studley and Lester Baker’s war experience in Europe was different. Both were aerial gunners shot down some eight weeks apart, one over Holland and one over Germany. Each was severely injured, captured, tortured, and found himself struggling to survive in a German P.O.W. camp.
In August 1944, their fortunes changed unexpectedly. Located in Gross Tychow, in present-day Poland, Stalag Luft IV covered 60 acres and at its peak housed 7,500 American, 2,500 English, and 900 other Allied POWs in five separate camps. “One day, Dad was in the pen and looked across to another pen and saw his brother, my Uncle Studley,” Lester’s oldest son, Malcolm, recalled. It was the break of a lifetime.
The Road to Europe
Studley graduated as a gunner from the Buckingham Army Air Field at Fort Myers, Florida, and received overseas training at Blythe Field, California. On November 21, 1943, he arrived in England, ready for combat as an aerial gunner.
Trained as a waist gunner, Lester had arrived in England five days before. Neither brother knew of the other’s whereabouts until February 1944, when they met by chance in a store in England. Lester was enjoying a short leave. Studley was with several members of his crew, about to return to duty. After brief introductions, the two brothers said their goodbyes.
Shot Down on His Seventh Mission
On March 6, 1944, Studley’s B-24 bomber, attached to the 567th Bomb Squadron, departed Bethel, England, with a crew of 11, headed for Genshagen, Germany.[5] Studley was flying his seventh mission. “We were shot at plenty over Berlin, and between Amsterdam and Rotterdam, we were caught between crossfire and were shot down. I bailed out through a hole in the bottom of the ship,” Studley recalled. “I kept going up and down and finally hit the ground at Hoogegenen, Holland.”[6]
With a broken ankle and burns from the waist down, Studley was unable to move. The Dutch Werhtmacht, Nazi collaborators, took him to a political prison in Amsterdam, where he spent about two weeks in harsh conditions. “I was interrogated six times and was refused medical care, food, and sleep for about 12 days — in solitary confinement. After the sixth day,” he said, “I don’t remember much of what happened.” Finally, Studley was moved to a transitional camp at Frankfort, where he received “a little medical attention” and his first meal, “spuds and horsemeat.”
Still suffering from a broken leg that was never properly treated, he was packed in a box car with other Allied prisoners and sent to Stalag Luft VI near the town of Hydekrug (now Šilute in Lithuania), the northernmost POW camp within the German Reich. “I managed to get some medical treatment from the British doctors during the two and half months I was there,” he said, but conditions for the POWs were dreadful. “The Red Cross packages [which might contain biscuits, raisins, coffee, powdered milk, and canned beef or fish] kept us alive.”[7]
Shot Down on his 21st Mission
When Lester learned his brother was missing in action, he remembered, “There was nothing I could do but go on flying my missions.” Lester’s B-24 was nicknamed Luck & Stuff, part of the 446th Bomb Group of the 706th Bomb Squadron. Lester had already earned two oak leaf clusters (for 15 missions), the Air Medal, and a citation for exceptionally meritorious achievement.
“I went on until April 29, 1944,” Lester continued, “when I was shot down over Berlin in heavy flak. We had to drop out of formation and, in fifteen minutes were attacked by fighters. Our engine was on fire,” Lester added, “and two incendiary bombs were on fire in our gun bays.”
When Lester and Studley related their harrowing tales of injury and captivity to a reporter for the Taunton Daily Gazette shortly after returning to the States in 1945, they sat for the interview with their parents. In retrospect, it seems they tried to spare their family and readers the most excruciating moments of their ordeals.
“I was wounded on the plane before I bailed out at 18,000 feet,” Lester said. “When I hit the ground, I was knocked out, and when I came to, conscripted Frenchmen were bandaging my legs and my injured hand.”[8]
Malcolm filled in the details of his father’s capture. Shrapnel had torn off the tip of his dad’s thumb and punched a hole through his shin, he recalled. One of his father’s crew members bled to death as their B-24 descended. Malcolm remembered his father saying, contrary to the rules of war, German pilots shot at Allied flyers as they descended by parachute. Lester had to play dead. And, when his wounds were cut and dressed, authorities refused to use anesthesia, which was reserved for German soldiers.[9]
Studley’s Route to Stalag IV
On July 15, 1944, still hobbled by his injuries, Studley and his fellow POWs in Stalag Luft VI were marched out of the compound to Memel, Lithuania and placed, in his words, “on little tramp steamers on the Baltic,” where they were sent to Swinemunde. “There we were received by the Kriges Marines, or young German sailors. They took away our shoes, belts, and heavy clothing. We then were sent to Stalag Luft 4. They ran us up to the compound,” Studley recalled, “with bayonets and dogs. A good many were wounded.”
Among the POWs with Studley that day was Technical Sergeant Francis C. Paules, a bombardier and co-pilot shot down on his 37th mission in January 1944. Imprisoned for nearly six months in Stalag Luft VI, Paules was elected by his fellow POWs as camp leader at Stalag Luft VI and later at Stalag Luft IV.[10] His experiences, recorded in April 1945 at the headquarters of the First U.S. Army in Weimar, Germany, add details to Studley’s story proving that the young flyer undoubtedly wanted to spare his parents.
“All the Americans, 2,400 of them, evacuated Stalagluft 6 on July 18 [1944],” Paules said. “They were marched five miles to the station at Heydekrug and loaded onto boxcars, 40 men to a car, and sent to the port of Memel and loaded into a Swedish boat, the Mausrene.”
Conditions in the hold were suffocating. Men did not have room to lie down. “One man was allowed to get water for the 2,000 other men. One man at a time was allowed to come up on deck to relieve himself over the side. When it was impossible to crowd all the men into the hold, the order was given by the German officer either to get all the men in or hot water would be hosed down on the men already in there. We forced ourselves together, and all the men managed to crowd in.”[11]
When the POWs arrived at the railway station at Kief-Hyde, they were handcuffed two together and, with their luggage, forced to run the 2.5 miles to Stalag IV. “Those who could not keep up the pace or who fell were clubbed, bayonetted, and bitten by the dogs. Many of the men were suffering from recent combat wounds,” Paules said, “particularly flak wounds in the legs and could not possibly make the run.”
The POWs lost everything — their clothing, food, and personal articles. “No one was killed, but the men were jabbed with bayonets — one man had 60 small wounds.”[12] Studley recalled another soldier was blinded.
That brutal welcome of bayonets and dogs was his introduction to Stalag IV.
Lester’s Path to Stalag IV
Lester and six of his crew were put in a van and driven to an airfield, all the while being told they would be shot. “After a while, we were placed in solitary confinement in a guard house on the airfield. Later, we were taken to Frankfort and questioned. I went into a hospital in the suburbs of Frankfort and later to a hospital in the central part of Germany, which was run by the English under the supervision of the Germans. I received treatment for my injuries. I stayed at this hospital for three months before going to Stalag Luft IV.”
When Lester arrived at Stalag Luft IV, he met two of Studley’s crew and discovered this brother was in the next compound. Shortly after, Lester spotted his older brother. “Dad made a request of the commandant — who didn’t do anything for the Americans,” Malcolm said, “but for some reason, he let my dad and uncle live together.”
Stalag Luft IV was located at Gross Tychow in modern northwestern Poland. It opened to Americans on May 12, 1944, and, when finished, had a supposed capacity of 6,400 POWs. When the International Committee of the Red Cross visited the camp in October 1944, they found 7,089 Americans and 886 British divided into five compounds, “twice too many inmates.” In one camp, 1,900 men slept on the floor. Huts were miserably cold, while latrines were insufficient and not emptied.
“There is an urgent need for the distribution of great coats and warm clothing for the prisoner’s comfort in the cold season, which has just started, especially in view of the lack of heating.” The Red Cross report also noted that many German workers at the camp wore American clothing.[13]
Food at Stalag Luft IV was wretched and insufficient. One American POW summed up conditions by saying, “You woke up hungry, you went to bed hungry, you were hungry all day long.”[14]
The Death March
The arrival of Lester at Stalag IV would save his brother’s life. Studley’s broken ankle had never healed properly. “If it had not been for Lester,” Studley said in 1945, “I would not be here now.” The ordeal that Lester, Studley, and their fellow POWs were about to face was worse than anything they had seen in Stalag IV.
By January 1945, the Third Reich stood on the verge of collapse. The Baker brothers and their fellow POWs could hear the cannons of the Soviet army. Unwilling to have prisoners fall into the hands of Allied troops, the German SS organized “death marches,” forcing prisoners away from the front and further into Germany.
On February 6, 1945, Lester, Studley, and some 6,000 POWs from Stalag Luft IV set out on what would become known as the “Death March.”
The Bakers maintained their light, almost breezy descriptions as they related their ordeal to the press and their family in 1945. “Once, I traded a ring for two loaves of bread,” Lester said, “and we traded sweaters for other articles of clothing.” When they were caught stealing food, Lester added, “we were all searched and the food taken from us. But they did not find the wurst hidden inside my sleeve!”
However, the horrors they saw were unimaginable.
Organized into groups of 250 to 300, the POWs of Stalag Luft IV stepped into one of the coldest winters in European recorded history, with snow knee-deep and temperatures falling to -10F. Prisoners received less than 800 calories per day, and most marched 500 miles in 86 days. The average POW lost a third of his body weight.
The prisoners drank whatever water they could find, often contaminated, so dysentery was prevalent. Men marched with pneumonia, diphtheria, pellagra, typhus, trench foot, and tuberculosis. Blisters, abscesses, frostbite, and gangrene were endemic. “Our sanitation approached medieval standards,” one POW said, “and the inevitable result was disease, suffering and death.”[15]
“Some have compared Stalag Luft IV,” author George Morris writes, “to the Bataan Death March that followed the surrender of US Army forces in the Philippines in 1942.”[16] One of the American prisoners summed up the experience by saying, “I thought I’d died and went to hell.”[17]
Home at Last
“Uncle Studley had broken his leg,” Malcolm said. “If you couldn’t walk, the Germans shot you. So, my father carried his brother on his back halfway across Germany.” The incredible grit of both soldiers paid off. On April 21, 1945, the POWs crossed the River Elbe near Dahlenburg, and on May 2nd were liberated by the British near Lauenburg.
“When they got to London,” Malcolm said, “my father and uncle went to the dock and found a huge line of soldiers waiting to get onto the Queen Elizabeth. They just passed by the line and walked onto the ship. Nobody thought to stop them. When they landed in New York, of course, they didn’t have any paperwork. Nobody cared. They were home.”
On June 30, 1945, the Queen Elizabeth steamed into New York Harbor with 14,810 passengers, some 13,113 of whom were from units of the famous Eighth Army Air Force. The dock was alive with musicians, Red Cross workers handing out lemonade and donuts to the returning troops, and police trying to control anxious family members.
Colonel William R. Barnett, the ship’s transport commander and veteran of 74 Atlantic crossings since 1942, said, “They were the best bunch we have had, this last one . . . They are too happy about coming home to get into trouble, and all they did was carve a million or so initials and dates on the ship’s promenade rail.”[18]
The soldiers were taken to nearby military camps and then sent to reception centers near their homes for processing, physicals, and to help many add back pounds lost during the war so their families might recognize them. Studley and Lester were processed at Fort Devens in Ayer, Massachusetts.
In all, Studley flew seven missions and was awarded the Air Medal, a Purple Heart, a bronze battle star, and a Unit Citation for his first mission at Gotha on February 24, 1944, when his 392nd bomber unit helped to destroy this critical German arms center.[19] He survived torture, burned and broken limbs, and 422 days as a POW, including the death march.
Lester flew 21 missions and was awarded the Air Medal with three oak clusters, the Purple Heart, and two bronze stars. Like his brother, he survived severe injuries, 368 days in captivity, and the death march — the one in which he helped to carry his brother to freedom.
On the day he and Studley arrived in Taunton, Lester turned 21.
Postscript
Studley Baker worked as a die cutter for Reed and Barton Silversmiths in Taunton before moving to South Dennis in 1953, where he owned and operated S.L. Baker Nursery until his retirement in 1994. He died in 1998.
Gordon Baker, having fought the war at sea, returned home safely and retired as a supervisor at Raytheon in 1985. He died in 2007.
After the war, Lester also went to work in the Reed and Barton die shop. “While he worked at his bench,” Malcolm said, “he had to look at a brick wall all day long. It reminded him of being a prisoner of war, so he left to do carpentry.”
As a self-employed contractor, Lester built and sold houses. In about 1954, he and his wife were constructing a new home on Pleasant Street in Raynham. At the time, Malcolm was six years old, had just been told the story of Treasure Island, and was fascinated with buried treasure. The closest thing he knew to jewels were his father’s World War II medals. He decided he should bury them.
One day, when his parents were working upstairs, Malcolm buried the medals in the unfinished, dirt basement of the home. Soon after, workers poured the basement’s concrete floor. By the time Malcolm told his father about his buried treasure, it was unrecoverable beneath a concrete slab.
“My dad didn’t get too upset then,” Malcolm told me. “But years later, he told my wife, Cheryl, that he’d like to get those medals back. Of course, it was impossible to dig up the basement of a home in Raynham, so Cheryl contacted our State congressman, and he was able to get my father replacement medals.”
Lester died in 2003, like his brothers, a hero.
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My thanks to Malcolm Baker for sharing his father’s story with me, and to Malcolm and his brothers for reviewing this final draft. To read about another Old Colony hero of WWII, T/Sgt. Bob Doherty, see William Hanna’s two-part story, “T/Sgt. Bob Doherty and Mischief Maker II: A Tale of Endurance.” Chapter 12 of Dr. Hanna’s book, The History of Taunton, Massachusetts, has other WWII tales of local heroes, as does the new Military Room of the Old Colony History Museum.
[1]“US, Missing Air Crews Reports (MACRs), WWII,” 194201947, National Archives, Publication M1380, 1994, page 5, Fold3, Web April 7, 2024, https://www.fold3.com/image/28621424/42-100424-page-5-us-missing-air-crew-reports-macrs-wwii-1942-1947?terms=war,baker,world,studley,ii.
[2] Record for Studley L. Baker, “U.S., World War II Army Enlistment Records, 1938–1946,” National Archives at College Park; College Park, Maryland, USA; Electronic Army Serial Number Merged File, 1938–1946; NAID: 1263923; Record Group Title: Records of the National Archives and Records Administration, 1789-ca. 2007; Record Group: 64; Box Number: 00601; Reel: 53.
[3] Record for Lester S. Baker, “U.S., World War II Army Enlistment Records, 1938–1946,” National Archives at College Park; College Park, Maryland, USA; Electronic Army Serial Number Merged File, 1938–1946; NAID: 1263923; Record Group Title: Records of the National Archives and Records Administration, 1789-ca. 2007; Record Group: 64; Box Number: 00701; Reel: 63.
[4] “Muster Roll of the Crew of the U.S.S. Harold C. Thomas (DE-11), October 1, 1945, Fold3, Web April 9, 2024, https://www.fold3.com/image/303647446?rec=274159615.
[5] Studley L. Baker, “American Air Museum in Britain,” Web April 7, 2024, https://www.mightyeighth.org/?x=0&y=0&s=Studley+Baker. This was two days after Bob Doherty’s Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress was shot out of the sky over Belgium.
[6] “Baker Brothers Meet As Prisoners of Germany in Stala Luft 4,” John F. Parker World War II Notebooks, Old Colony Historical Society, October 1978, after June 30, 1945.
[7] Kim Guise, “A POW Thanksgiving 1944 in Stalag Luft 4,” The National World War II Museum, November 27, 2019, Web April 8, 2024, https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/pow-thanksgiving-1944-stalag-luft-iv.
[8] “Baker Brothers Meet As Prisoners of Germany in Stalag Luft 4,” John F. Parker World War II Notebooks, Old Colony Historical Society, October 1978, after June 30, 1945.
[9] Eric B. Schultz call with Malcolm Baker, June 26, 2023.
[10] “World War Aviator To Speak Before Campbell Red Cross,” The Cincinnati Enquirer, Friday, October 10, 1947. After the war, Paules became a Field Director for the American Red Cross.
[11] “Testimony of Francis S. Paules, Tech Sgt., 10601393, USA Air Force, home address 600 York Ave., Lansdale, Pa.,” April 29, 1945, Web, April 8, 2024, chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://stalagluft4.org/pdf/FPaules1.pdf.
[12] “Testimony of Francis S. Paules, Tech Sgt., 10601393, USA Air Force, home address 600 York Ave., Lansdale, Pa.,” April 29, 1945, Web, April 8, 2024, chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://stalagluft4.org/pdf/FPaules1.pdf.
[13] “American Prisoners of War in Germany,” Prepared by Military Intelligence Service War Department, July 15, 1944, compiled by Greg Hatton, Stalag Luft 4 (Air Corps NCO’s), Web April 8, 2024, https://web.archive.org/web/20170628010826/http://stalagluft4.org/luft%204%20reports.html.
[14] Kim Guise, “A POW Thanksgiving 1944 in Stalag Luft 4,” The National World War II Museum, November 27, 2019, Web April 8, 2024, https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/pow-thanksgiving-1944-stalag-luft-iv.
[15] Gary Turbak, “Death March Across Germany,” VFW Magazine, April 1, 1999, Web April 14, 2024, https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Death+march+across+Germany%3A+in+honor+of+National+POW+Day-April+9--VFW...-a097389350.
[16] George Morris, “The Long, Awful March From Stalag IV,” WWII: The Big One, April 22, 2016, Web April 14, 2024, https://ww2thebigone.com/2016/04/22/the-long-awful-march-from-stalag-luft-iv/.
[17] George Morris, “The Long, Awful March From Stalag IV,” WWII: The Big One, April 22, 2016, Web April 14, 2024, https://ww2thebigone.com/2016/04/22/the-long-awful-march-from-stalag-luft-iv/.
[18] George Horne, “Superliner Here With 13,113 GI’S,” The New York Times, June 30, 1945, 1, 5.
[19] “Target — Gotha — 24 February 1944 — Mission #41,” 392nd Bomb Group, Web April 15, 2024, https://www.b24.net/MM022444.htm.
