Ken Furst
Age: 85
Born: Aug. 1, 1924
Hometown: Algona, Iowa
Residence: Palm Desert
Military branch: U.S. Army Air Corps; 8th Air Force; 487th Bomb Group, 749th Squadron
Years served: 1943-1946
Rank: First lieutenant
Family: Wife Maggi (deceased); one child, Judy Furst
About this series
Staff writer Denise Goolsby will profile desert veterans from World War II through the end of 2010 — the 65th anniversary of the end of the war. Contact her at (760) 778-4587 or via e-mail at denise.goolsby@thedesertsun.com
Coming tomorrow
U.S. Navy veteran Jacques Abels of La Quinta.
LEARN MORE: Read about other Coachella Valley residents who served in World War II at www.mydesert.com/WWII
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U.S. Army Air Corps B-17 navigator Ken Furst evaded capture for 15 days after being shot down over Cologne, Germany, on Jan. 28, 1945.
Staggering for days through deep snow in the freezing forest eventually led to frostbite, gangrene — and the amputation of all of Furst's toes.
“We had just dropped our bomb load on Cologne and were turning away from the target when a burst of flak hit our number three engine,” Furst said. “It started to smoke and flames were visible.”
The pilot put the bomber into a dive to try to extinguish the fire, but the rudder controls had been damaged and all he could do was descend in large circles, Furst said.
“It was undercast and the ground was not visible at all,” he said. “We lost altitude until it got to the point where we had to bail out.”
Furst accidentally popped open his parachute while he was still inside the plane.
There was a spare parachute in the radio room and Furst got on the intercom and asked the crew to pass the chute forward to him.
“Which they did, thank the Lord,” he said.
Furst followed the bombardier out of the plane, but once he jumped, he never saw any of his crewmates again.
Furst landed in deep snow below the top of a hill. He noticed some Germans walking along the ridge above.
It was dusk, and he waited until dark to make his move.
“I know I wanted to walk west,” he said. “I walked most of the night. The woods were really thick with tall trees and also a lot of smaller fir trees just like we had for Christmas. I got under the branches of a tree and slept until morning.”
Furst continued on for the next several days, avoiding all signs of life and buildings, zigzagging across the foreign soil.
While walking along a railroad track on a dark night, Furst fell into a small foxhole.
“A (German) guard heard me and asked something,” Furst said. “I said, ‘Ja, ja' and crawled out. As I got near, I pulled my .45 and shot him from about three feet. This brought more Germans. I laid down in the darkness. There was no light, so they did not see me. They took the dead man away and I retraced my way, climbed a hillside along the tracks and got away.
“All I had was snow to eat and drink, so after four or five days, I was getting weaker,” he said.
Dysentery and severely frostbitten feet were draining what was left of his strength.
One day, he came upon a farmhouse that looked bombed-out and deserted.
“I went upstairs, looked out and saw a dead horse in the ground behind the house. There was nothing in the house but a bit of furniture. I heard talking and tried to hide behind a bed. They heard me and came up with guns drawn, and I gave up. I was so weak, I really didn't care what happened.”
No one spoke English, but the officer in charge recognized his silver bar that signified his rank as first lieutenant.
A few hours later, a horse-drawn cart came by and Furst was loaded onto it. The cart stopped at a building where a German officer spoke a little English.
“He looked at my dog tags and said that I was a German, and asked why I was bombing Germany,” Furst said. “I told him I was just doing as I was ordered. He poured me a shot of schnapps and gave me a small sausage, which he said was taken from an American captured post. This was the only food I had for 15 days.”
Furst was eventually taken by cart to a monastery high on a hill that had been converted into a prison hospital.
The person in charge allowed Furst to take a “very welcome” shower, and he was given a pair of prison pants and a shirt and was put into a bed of just very thin straw.
“I was so weak I must have slept nearly all the time,” he said. “We got a small cup of barley soup once a day with a small piece of black bread. On Sunday, they put a small piece of meat in it, about the size of a half-dollar.”
“A German medic came by every three to four days,” he said. “My feet had gotten really bad and they would put on some (sulfa) powder and paper bandages. Gangrene had taken all of my toes and after a couple of weeks, the tissue had demarcated and they cut the ends of most of the toes off with just small scissors.”
Early in April, the patients were put in cattle cars and taken to Waldbröl, about 20 miles away.
“While there, a German doctor gave me an anesthetic and removed what was left of my toes and wrapped them in real bandages,” he said.
In mid-April, the hospitalized prisoners were liberated by the Americans.
Furst, who weighed 85 pounds when he returned to the U.S., spent nearly a year at Birmingham General Hospital in Van Nuys before being released in March 1946.
