most interesting partner you ever drew in a bass tournament...

this is my first post and I'll try to make it an interesting one...have posted on BFHP for years and last couple years on BBC(when I wasn't being banned or in Al's doghouse)...I'm retired both from work and almost retired from tourny fishing.. I started fishing tournys when they first begun back in early 70's so I've got some experiences I'll share with you from time to time....

Most interesting two days in a bass boat I've ever spent...
I drew a World War 11 Luftwaffe pilot named Hans Wohlbier in a club vs.
club tournament back in late 70's....have always been interested in
World War 11 and this was most interesting two days I've ever spent in a
bass boat...it's been over 30 years ago but I'll try to recall as much
as I can of those two days and share it with you.....


I lived in Greenville,Ms. and we were fishing against my brothers club
out of Houston,Texas and we met for a two day tourny on Toledo
Bend....when my brother saw that i was drawn out with Hans ...........he
told me to get him talking about his experiences during the war.....Hans
at the time was an executive with a big steel company in Houston....Hans
was a real laid back guy,not a real serious fisherman but a very
intelligent and educated person..He ended up in this country because he
was a German war groom.....he married a female American war
correspondent and emigrated to this country........He was a Stuka (dive
bomber)pilot and served the entire war on the Russian front.....he was
shot down either 13 or 16 times (can't remember which)and captured twice
by the Russians and escaped both times......that is amazing and he was a
very,very lucky man in that most German pilots and soldiers who were
captured by the Russians were never heard from again....


It was not uncommon to be shot down a number of times during a long war
especially flying a low level attack bomber and you did everything you
could to make sure when you had to land or bail out,you did it within
your own lines...Hans related that crossing back across your own lines
was very dangerous because all soldiers have tendency to shoot at
anything that moves in front of their lines and they are hidden so you
don't always know exactly where the lines are.....obviously if you start
yelling or hollering to be recognized too soon,the Russians would shoot
you,wait too late and your own men would shoot you......
the first time they got shot down behind Russian lines,a squad of
Russians captured them and were just starting to escort them to a
stockade when they were hit with a rocket attack,Hans said the Russians
were just as terrified of those things as they were and they ran in one
direction and Hans and his gunner ran back toward German lines and
managed to cross without getting shot.....


the second time they were shot down behind enemy lines,they were taken
to a stockade and were being interrogated by a soldier who spoke fluent
German.....Hans said when i gave him my name,rank and home town...he
asked me if i knew so and so....Hans said yes,I went to school with
him....the Russian commented "that's my cousin" and volunteered that he
was German Jewish and his family had emigrated to Russia to escape
persecution in Germany....he confided to Hans that the persecution was
just as bad in Russia as it was in Germany and they regretted
emigrating.....as they finished the interview,the Russian whispered to
Hans...."I'm going to leave your cell unlocked tonite....if you get
caught-I don't know you and there is nothing further i can do to help
you.....Hans said late that night,he and his gunner slipped out of the
stockade and were traveling through some woods when they came across a
couple of horses.....Hans said his gunner was an old farm boy and knew
about horses so he picked out the fat one and gave Hans the other which
was skinny and had a backbone that stuck up a foot....Hans said riding
that horse with that skinny backbone hurt more than anything else he
encountered in the war......he said they rode their horses up to small
Russian occupied village located right in front of the German
lines....they waited until daylight was barely breaking and in his
words...galloped their horses through the village just like a cowboy
movie,taking the Russians by surprise and managed to get back across the
lines without getting shot by either side...


in the last few days of the war,his commander told them his orders were
to surrender his command to the Russians who were advancing and only a
few miles away,,,,,,the pilots all knew they did not want to be captured
by the Russians but the closest American forces were a couple hundred
miles away...the commander then made it clear that he was leaving the
base for a couple of hours which was his way of indicating to them that
this was their opportunity to get in their planes and get to the nearest
American held airstrip...Hans said he went to his plane and somebody had
stolen the stick out of it as a souvenir....he went to another plane and
the battery was dead....he ended up cutting a stick out of
wood,sharpening the end of it enough to jam it down in the hole and
managed to take off....the sky was full of American planes and he had
fly at treetop level to keep from getting shot down....on the way,.he
had to fly through some mountains and he said he came over this mountain
and right on back side of the slope there were some power lines,he jerks
the stick to hop over them and the stick breaks off in his hand.....he
said to this day,he doesn't know how he cleared the lines but the
mountain fell steeply away from him and he was somehow able to get the
broken part out of the hole and the stick jammed back in the hole before
crashing and made it to the American base without getting shot down...


during the time I fished with Hans,there was some question being raised
by the media whether the holocaust really happened...I asked Hans what
he thought and his explanation was....it probably did but the average
German didn't know about it and didn't really concern themselves with
what happened to the Jewish people....he went on to explain there was a
lot of anti Jewish sentiment in Germany stemming from the depression
years which were much worse in Germany than America.....the Jewish
people during the depression controlled much of Germany...the
banks,media,most of the retail including food stores...in short they had
the money and were using it to foreclose on many peoples farms and homes
many of which had been family homes for hundreds of years...there were
even some instances of refusing food to people who were starving so that
fueled the anti Jewish sentiment...


Hans told me that the war took a terrible toll of young men in
Germany...Out of 87 boys in his school class...two came back...him and
one other guy and the other guy was a paraplegic.....


When i asked about Hitler,he told me Hitler was a dynamic speaker,able
to captivate people with his speeches...Hans mentioned his father was a
great believer in him even though his father was headmaster of the
school and a highly educated man.....he reiterated how bad it was in
Germany during the depression and said Hitler led them out of that into
a period of great prosperity and made Germany a world power...he just
did some incredibly stupid and wrong things......

postscript....I posted this on BFHP several years ago and got the nicest reply from Hans daughter....she had googled her dads name and my story popped up...her dad was still alive and living with her in colorado and she said he really enjoyed reading about himself.....

t

 

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