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“It’s the most difficult period of your life”
November 7th
Pendleton Woods remembers that he was in his dormitory at the University of Arkansas when somebody rushed down the hall and said that Pearl Harbor had been bombed. “We didn’t know what Pearl Harbor was,” he recalled, “and then we began listening to the radio, and that’s when it really hit us.”
Within hours the United States was entering World War II and by 1942 Woods had signed up for the Army Reserve. He remained stateside for about two years, but wound up in Germany, on the Belgian front, by October, 1944. Woods was there just in time for the Battle of the Bulge, but he missed most of the fighting.
On December 10, 1944, while on patrol behind German lines, Woods and seven others were cut off and surrounded by a German unit. Their squad leader was killed, another person was wounded, and the group of Americans was captured. So began Pen Woods’ 5-month ordeal as a prisoner of war.
The captives did what they could to stay warm, sharing one blanket to keep their feet warm, and huddling together in a boxcar on the way to a German prison camp. Woods spent 8 days on the boxcar, where he “celebrated” his 21st birthday. He spent Christmas of 1944 inside the walls of a German prison camp before being transported to a labor camp, where conditions were somewhat better.
Woods remembers that a soldier who had served time in a Pennsylvania penitentiary, Red Martin, taught him how to steal. “Red Martin and I had honest faces,” said Woods, “and when we’d steal stuff we’d blouse our trousers into our combat boots and put food there. The armpit is also good. You’d be surprised at how much food you can put under your armpit and get away with it.”
Martin gave Woods a nickname, “Steal ‘Em Blind Woods.” According to Woods, the name was a real compliment. “Don’t laugh,” he told me, “because that would be like Babe Ruth or Joe Louis calling you slugger, or in academic circles, it would be like an honorary degree. The nickname I got I got from a professional.”
(above) Corporal Pendleton Woods during World War II.
Woods finally escaped on Hitler’s birthday, April 20th, during Russian artillery fire that had the Germans pre-occupied. After five days, Woods and the others linked up with American soldiers near the Elbe River. Ironically, Woods’ prison bunkmate was Clarence Deal, who lives in Jones, Oklahoma. “Every day on April 20th, for some 60-odd years now,” said Woods, “I will call my prison bunkmate, or he will call me, wishing each other “Happy Hitler’s Birthday,” because that’s the day we got away from that prison camp.”
Woods believes that Germany’s biggest problem in the war was attacking Russia, because it forced the Nazis into a multi-front war. The Germans and Russians hated each other, he recalls, and Russian prisoners were treated ten times worse than Americans were treated in the prisoner-of-war camps.
Woods doesn’t watch many movies, but he has watched the famous prisoner-of-war movie, Stalag 17. “I thought it was phony,” Woods told me. “In Stalag 17 they made the Germans look stupid, but they weren’t stupid, they were smart. Stalag 17 was not real at all. If they do it real it doesn’t make much of a movie. It’s the most difficult period of your life.”
After the war, Woods returned to the University of Arkansas and got his degree in journalism. He became Public Information Officer for the 45th Infantry Division and served in that capacity during the Korean War. He achieved the rank of Colonel in the National Guard and worked for many years as Public Relations Specialist for OG&E. Woods was chosen the nation’s outstanding ex-POW of 2005.
Until next time, Dick Pryor
(above) Pen Woods with OETA’s Dick Pryor.
(Pen Woods was profiled on the Oklahoma News Report on November 7, 2007. To see the story, click on “Videos” on this website and go to “OETA’s Dick Pryor interviews Oklahoma WWII veterans.”)
By late 1944, the end was nearing for the Nazi army. The best Luftwaffe pilots were mostly gone; men and equipment were diminishing as Hitler and the Axis fought on the eastern and western fronts. The Battle of the Bulge, in the winter of 1944-45, was the turning point in Europe.
During those final months, Stanley F.H. Newman was a fighter pilot, patrolling the skies over western Europe. By the time he finished his sophomore year at the University of Illniois, the Army Air Corps dropped its requirement of two years of college, so Newman signed up in November, 1942. After two years of intensive training, he was off to Europe.
Newman flew the P-51 Mustang, doing reconnaisance, visual intelligence, flying support for bombers like the P-47’s and leading them to their targets. Newman flew 57 missions in Europe, sometimes two in one day, piloting a plane he said was truly “a wild horse.” Newman said, “you had to treat it with respect.”
Newman’s plane was equipped with a camera, yet the pilot could not see very well. “The P-51 had these long noses,” Newman said, “and in landing or taking off, when you taxied, it was hard to see out. In the air, you couldn’t see under anything. You did have that blind spot directly underneath the wing and, of course, behind you. That’s why we always flew in pairs…each to protect the others.”
Newman and other pilots were prohibited by the rules of engagement from shooting on German planes except in self-defense. So, the American saying was, “to go out and get attacked,” he said. “We wanted to get attacked, so we could shoot back.”
On the final day of the war in Europe, Newman forced down two German planes and fired on another one, forcing it into a crash landing. His actions achieved great notoriety, including front page treatment in the Chicago newspapers. He was grateful for the press coverage, because that is how his parents learned he was still alive. It was not until many years later that Newman learned that two more German planes were shot down around sundown that same day.
Newman’s flying career was far from over. He received his degree in Aeronautical Engineering from the University of Illinois, but returned to the skies as a fighter pilot during the Korean War. He flew more than 100 missions. Newman also flew cargo missions into Southeast Asia during the war in Vietnam. Stanley Newman worked for NASA and rose to Major General in the Oklahoma Air National Guard. He was inducted into the Oklahoma Aviation and Space Hall of Fame in 2003.
Newman admits the war had a generally positive impact on him. “I grew up a lot,” he told me. “I went in as a 19-year old student and came out as a 22-year old. After the war I knew exactly what I wanted to do. The G.I. Bill enabled us to build our first home. I was always patriotic, from cub scouts on up, but the war made you even more appreciative of what we have in this country. I’ve gotten to see my grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and that’s more than my friends got to do,” he said.
(above) Major General Stanley F.H. Newman looks over his scrapbook from World War II.
Until next time, Dick Pryor
(Stanley F.H. Newman was profiled on the Oklahoma News Report on October 1, 2007. To see the story, click on “Videos” on this website and go to “OETA’S Dick Pryor interviews Oklahoma WWII veterans.)
“We wanted to see how the devil lived”
September 28th
Emmett Steeds entered the National Guard in 1936, served for a year, and got out. He was working for a hardware store and remembers he was eating lunch when he heard that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt had declared war.
I recently visited with Steeds at the 45th Infantry Division Museum in Oklahoma City. He told me, “We had no choice. They jumped on us without provacation, so when they bombed Pearl Harbor there was no question about going into war.”
Steeds’ unit was still in Abilene, Texas, so he went home, told his wife, packed up his things and got on the bus to Fort Barkley, Texas to rejoin his outfit. “Within a few days,” he said, “practically everybody that had gotten out had come back to the unit.”
So began World War II for U.S. Army Platoon Sergeant Emmett Steeds. Steeds spent more than a year in training before sailing out of New York, across the North Atlantic, to North Africa, which was already under American control. After landing at Oran, Steeds and the others in the 45th Division, 179th Infantry headed to Sicily, then Italy, where they landed at Salerno. He received his commission as a 2nd Lieutenant from General George S. Patton for his service in the Italian campaign.
The 45th marched across western Europe and Steeds reached the Dachau concentration camp within hours after it had been liberated. He remembers the dead he found there, bodies stacked in boxcars, and finding a lot of people barely alive. It was an experience that haunted him for months.
The 45th continued on to Munich, to become part of the occupation force. The regiment’s headquarters was set up in a rather unlikely place: an apartment where Adolph Hitler had lived. Steeds remembers it was a big house in Munich, and some of the officers from the U.S. Headquarters of the 179th stayed in the building. A famous picture at the 45th Infantry Division Museum shows another Oklahoma soldier from the 45th, Sgt. Arthur E. Peters, reclining on Hitler’s bed, reading a copy of Mein Kampf. The picture made it onto the cover of the May 14, 1945 edition of Life magazine, with the caption, “Get your feet off my bed.”
Steeds stayed in the military after World War II and served in Korea, where he rose to the rank of Captain. The Blair, Oklahoma native worked for the postal service in Oklahoma City for 30 years. He’s long since retired, but at the age of 90, still volunteers at the 45th Infantry Division Museum on weekends.
You can see two of his prized possessions at the museum: a Nazi medallion and personal stationery of Adolph Hitler that Steeds “liberated” from the Fuehrer’s Munich Apartment.
If you have a chance to visit the museum, I encourage you to go - but plan to spend some time. There is a lot to take in, and you might get to visit with Emmett Steeds. If you see him, tell him, “Thanks.”
Until next time, Dick Pryor
(Emmett Steeds was profiled on the Oklahoma News Report on September 29, 2007. To see the story, click on the “Videos” link on this website and go to “OETA’S Dick Pryor interviews Oklahoma WWII veterans.”)
Tulsans Pack Circle Cinema for “The War” Preview Screening
September 19th
A standing room crowd watched the first hour-long preview of Ken Burns’ important, new documentary, “The War,” Tuesday at the Circle Cinema Theatre in Tulsa. Several veterans attended the pre-screening event and they seemed to appreciate the approach used by Burns to tell the story of the “greatest generation” at home and in the theaters of war. The film presents the horrors and heartbreak of war in the riveting and personal style that has made Burns America’s most prominent producer of historical documentaries.
Following the screening, OETA’s Dick Pryor moderated a panel discussion with WWII veteran Kenneth Renberg, a German who trained American troops and fought with the 45th Infantry Division; Dr. Brad Agnew, Professor of History at Northeastern State University and an expert on military history; and Eva Unterman, a survivor of the holocaust who spent most of the war in Nazi concentration camps. OETA’s Lori Holliday showed the dynamic, new Oklahoma World War II Stories website (including this blog) and encouraged everyone attending to participate in the story collection project using the website’s “Share a Story” module. To-date, more than 700 people have shared a story - an overwhelming response!
Special thanks to Clark Wiens and Amberla Tepe of the Circle Cinema Theatre for hosting such a great event to begin the march toward “The War.” Ken Burns’ 15-hour epic, “The War,” debuts Sunday night at 7:00 on OETA.
(above) Several veterans attended the screening of “The War” at the Circle Cinema in Tulsa. (below) War memorabilia decorated the Circle Cinema. 
(above) Holocaust survivor Eva Unterman of Tulsa, one of the panel members at the Circle Cinema screening, with Moderator Dick Pryor.