'It was a real strange feeling,' says former prisoner of World War II

South Bend man's life completes circle with return to World War II crash site.


JIM MEENAN
Tribune Staff Writer

SOUTH BEND -- A lifetime later, Thair Best returned. Returned to the spot where he had been given up for dead some 61 1/2 years ago.

Returned with one of his three sons, Bruce, to see where his life was given a second chance.

"It was a real strange feeling," Thair Best, 84, said as he sat around a table with his wife, Helen, in their South Bend home, looking at pictures from the trip this month.

On Jan. 22, 1945, Thair Best was flying about 50 feet above the ground, following a curve in the road toward a bridge area he was to photograph to see if Allied Forces bombs had been successful.

He didn't get there.

Enemy shots got his wing. As it burned, his cockpit began to fill with smoke. But he was able to get the plane back up to 2,000 feet.

"Finally I got to a thin layer of clouds where they couldn't shoot at me anymore," he recalled. "The smoke kept getting so thick in the cockpit, I couldn't breathe anymore.

"So I pulled the trip in the canopy and it just blows off. It created such a suction it took off my helmet, my headset and my throat mike."

That meant no radio contact.

"When I looked back ... here was a P-47 flying. I don't know where he came from nor who he was, and he stayed there with me until I couldn't see the compass anymore. And I said, 'Hey, I got to get out. It's a big bird, time to go.'"

He turned the plane over and pushed off, having already unhooked his seatbelt.

"And the guy (in the P-47) went on, and he never saw a parachute, and that's why he reported I died in my airplane because there was no parachute he could see."

In a matter of moments, in his parachute, Lt. Thair Best broke from the clouds.

"That's when I was close enough to see the German soldiers standing on the ground," he said. "I knew I was in big trouble."

No shots were fired as he landed, only to see his plane explode on the ground in the distance.

"Your machine kaput," the German soldier told him.

"I will never forget those words," Thair said, laughing just a bit. "What really scared me was when he pulled the bayonet from his gun."

But much to Thair's surprise, the soldier cut the cords from his parachute and gave him the big hunk of silk from it to wrap around himself in the cold weather.

He had survived.

But another survival battle would soon take place.

During the next 99 days in a German Prisoner of War camp, the entire group of prisoners was moved as the Allied Forces advanced.

An 87-mile march without food and little water saw Thair run to a field and eat raw sugar beets that nearly did him in. But a buddy got medicine from a German doctor in a town, and he persevered.

He was still hanging on when Gen. George Patton marched his 3rd Army troops into camp. Brandishing his revolver, Patton ordered cooking to commence immediately.

Thair Best was about 100 pounds of his normal 155-pound self at age 23 on that day.

Before leaving along with 10,000 others in the camp to hospitals in France, he was able to relay word to his squadron that he was alive.

Days later, his parents, who had already had a memorial service for him in February, learned about his survival in Pomeroy, Iowa.

"I am alive and well and hope to see you soon," was the message Thair sent them. Carefully, Thair Best grabbed a handful of rusty remains of the P-38 Lightning reconnaissance plane he had escaped from 61 years ago.

"I felt lucky to get a second chance at life," Thair said. But the fairly open and upbeat man struggled to say much more on that subject.

His son, Bruce, who took Thair there, understood why.

"First of all, my intellect tells me I would not have been around nor my kids, or my upcoming grandson," Bruce Best said in a telephone interview. "That was pretty freaky, actually."

Thair Best says he just moved forward after the war.

His son understood.

His father was just a young man at the time, who had enlisted after Pearl Harbor, Bruce said. He had only eight months of flight training, and was on his 45th mission.

"I think it was just surreal to him," Bruce said, noting he was just 23. "I would not have truly understood what I was in.

"How scared they were all at the time. Half the pilots in his squadron were killed. In a matter of eight months he was caught up in the whole thing. I don't know if he knew what to think." Thair's life has included not only three sons, six grandchildren and his wife of 61 years, Helen, who waited for him while he was at war, but also a trip to the jungles of the Amazon and a Kenyan photo safari.

He continued to fly for many years after his time in the service.

But taking a plane trip to Luxembourg once again brought him a pleasant surprise.

A TV crew, newspaper reporters, a gift from the mayor of the tiny town near where his plane crashed were all part of his five-day stay.

"I just couldn't believe how well they treated us," Thair said, recommending any retired military personnel make the visit. "If you want to really feel like what they have done to liberate European countries ... Luxembourg will make you feel proud you did serve in the military.

"I was treated like royalty, and not because it was me, but because I was part of the American Military Force that helped liberate Luxembourg. They just so appreciate it."

Watching it all was special for Bruce, too.

"I was glad to be there with him," he said. "I saw what a real hero he was and how much appreciative the people of Luxembourg were to my father and all the American soldiers that went into Luxembourg and kicked out the Germans after they had been occupied for four years with terrible atrocities.

"I never realized how bad it was and how much they were appreciated."

The trip also included a visit to the Luxembourg American Cemetery and Memorial, where more than 5,000 Americans are buried. Also, a stop at the site of the Battle of the Bulge, where he and his Army Air Corps 31st Photo Reconnaissance Squadron also assisted.

The Bests got a picture of Thair at Patton's grave site near his troops.

It, too, is among his new memories.

But the man whose sense of humor appears as sharp as his memory still remembers that fateful trip of 1945, when he was the photographer.

"I never got the pictures developed," he said.

Staff writer Jim Meenan:
jmeenan@sbtinfo.com
(574) 235-6342