Mazer Harry

The case of Lieutenant Ferguson's men
Harry Mazer, right side gunner of the bomber, a member of the 602nd Bombardment Squadron, 398th Bombardment Group, 8th Air Army

As early as April 1942, the Allies had been trying to destroy by bombing the largest armaments factory working for Hitler and his war machine in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia - the Skoda factory in Pilsen. The vast majority of the attacks, not only in 1942 but also in the following two years, were completely unsuccessful. The crushing blow came at the very end of the war. To this day, the meaning of this US Air Force raid is disputed. Why did it occur at a time when the 'GIs', as the American soldiers were nicknamed, were already fighting for Cheb, 120 km away? The scarecrow was undoubtedly the possible existence of the legendary "Alpine Fortress" and, most importantly, the fact that the Skoda plant was producing weapons, especially guns and tanks, without being prevented from doing so until the end of the war.

After February 1948, the liquidation of the armaments factory became a topic that was intended, at the very least, to denigrate the role of American troops in the liberation of the Czech West. Only after November 1989 was it possible to shed new light on these events. No doubt this was also helped by the visit of direct participants in events that had a reputation that extended beyond the borders of the region. Among them was Harry Mazer, a bomber pilot who was a victim of the city's air defences. The 602nd Bombardment Squadron of the 398th Bombardment Group alone lost two machines in the "Mighty Eighth" attack on Pilsen on April 25, 1945. In addition to Lieutenant Allen Ferguson's "Flying Fortress," the "Sixty-Second," which was tasked with bombing Pilsen's Bory Airport, lost the aircraft of 1st Pilot Paul Coville.
After a Flak hit to the left wing, Ferguson's aircraft dropped out of formation by turning left and began to descend. Shortly thereafter, the bomber went into a dive and disappeared into the clouds with distinctive smoke trails coming from engines 2 and 3. The radio message broadcast from the bomber's deck and picked up by nearby aircraft was unintelligible. Later reports of the loss of the machine suggested that the pilot had been hit.
Nearly fifty years later, a member of Ferguson's crew, right side gunner Sergeant Harry Mazer, recalled the dramatic circumstances of the 8th Air Force's last action, "It was the twenty-sixth flight for our crew, in which I served less than a year. The co-pilot of our regular crew, John Smith, wasn't with us then because he had been shot down over Germany two weeks earlier while filling in for another crew. He stayed in the Air Force after the war and retired with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. Harry Grey, our leading gunner, did not fly with us as he was in hospital at the time with an injury sustained on a previous flight. We did not know that the raid on Pilsen would be the last action of the 8th Air Army.
We had "only" an eleven-hour flight ahead of us. We didn't even know that the Allied command had warned the Czech population by radio. Certainly it helped to reduce the number of casualties, but at the same time it allowed the Germans to prepare for us.
Due to poor visibility, we did not find the target during the first raid, and so we were forced to repeat the raid. That's when our plane was hit by German anti-aircraft artillery. Part of the right wing broke off and our burning, smoke-enshrouded bomber began to fall uncontrollably to the ground. I managed to jump out and land happily on my parachute. Sergeant William O'Maley, the lower turret gunner, and Sergeant Michael Brennan, the radio operator, jumped out after me. After landing, O'Maley and I were detained in the area of the village of Lititz by members of the Luftwaffe, while Brennan was arrested by Wehrmacht soldiers."
During the last phase of the flight, Ferguson's bomber circled once more between Litice, Lhota u Dobřan and Radobyčice and then, apparently attempting an emergency landing, crashed in a field only a few dozen metres from the south-western edge of Lhota u Dobřan. A fire apparently broke out on board the bomber immediately afterwards, destroying its front and central part. Only the rear part of the fuselage with the massive rudder and parts of the wings remained together. Recent sources suggest that the remaining five airmen of Ferguson's crew were victims of the crash and subsequent explosion of the machine. Michael Brennan, who managed to jump out of the bomber before the crash, was apprehended and apparently shot by a militiaman or Wehrmacht soldier.
O'Maley and Mazer were lucky. After parachuting to the ground, they were arrested and escorted on foot through Lititz and the surrounding woods to the burning Bor airfield. They then spent the next thirteen days in the company of two airmen from another bombing group, whose "flying fortress" was also shot down, and one P-51 pilot, on a retreat across the Sudetenland and the Czech-Austrian border, closely guarded by German patrols. The end of the war saw them in a Wehrmacht camp in the area between Linz and Salzburg, Austria.
Apparently, shortly after the liberation in May 1945, a legend was born in Litice near Pilsen about the killing of twelve American airmen, found, according to contemporary reports, in “undignified graves near the village, where the murderers of the Americans held ritual dances”. However, the oft-presented claim that there were twelve American airmen in the plane, according to a statement from the American headquarters in Pilsen, was inaccurate, as Ferguson's crew on the fateful day numbered only eight, two of whom were proven to have survived. Further complicating the search for the fate of Allen's crew was a handwritten list of dead Allied soldiers, inserted into the Lithuanian municipal chronicle shortly after the war. In addition to the names of five of A. H. Ferguson's dead men, it lists six unknown soldiers (presumably Australians) and, last, the name of Lieutenant Harold Cramer, 2nd B-17G bomber pilot of 447 formation. Bomber Group, shot down on 19 April 1945 during the raid on Pirna.
The monument, which for many decades bore the inscription, “In memory of the twelve American airmen killed by the Germans in Lititz in 1945”, was unveiled in Lititz near Pilsen in July 1946. When Harry Mazer visited Lititz in 1994, he told those present, "I thank the citizens of Lititz and the Czech people for this memorial. Thank you for keeping the memory of our garrison alive. Six young lives were lost here on that fateful day. I know it was a mere drop in the ocean against the backdrop of the bloodiest war in human history. But it scarred us and our families for life."
Former members of the 398th Bombardment Group have visited Lititz several more times in the last 15 years. On one visit, they even added a plaque to the original Lititz memorial with the names of the members of Allen Ferguson's crew. They are returning to honor the memory of six young men who heeded the call of their country, crossed the ocean, and from England, which turned into one giant airfield during the war, attacked numerous locations throughout Western Europe.
The raid on Pilsen on 25 April 1945 marked a turning point in the lives of many of the men from the ‘Mighty Eighth’. At last the war was over and they could return home. The experience of fighting Hitler's Germany was so intense for many of them that they decided to share it with others. The fateful April air raid, for example, is the subject of a chapter in the book Hell from Heaven by Leonard Streitfeld, a bombardier in the 398th Bomb Group, which has been translated into English as Hell from Heaven. Harry Mazer also shared his memories of the fateful raid in the pages of his novel “Fateful Mission”. Allen Ostrom, long-time president of the 398th Bomb Group Veterans Association and author of the book “398th Bomb Group Remembrances”, has also visited the Czech Republic and Pilsen several times. However, these books are not just simple narratives of war veterans. They are embedded in them, above all, a sense of justice and a fight against oppression and injustice.