Captured!—Prisoners of War!

Two of our New Knoxville community residents who answered the call of our country in World War II were captured and became prisoners of war in Germany. Pfc. Zelotes C. Eschmeyer (1917-2004) and 2nd Lieutenant Homer R. Kuck (1921-1989) were captured under very different circumstances and were treated differently because one was an enlisted man and the other an officer. We have interviews with each of them by Rev. Edwin A. Katterhenry writing under the pen name of Andrew Kay, which were published in the St. Marys Evening Leader in 1950. We also have a joint interview with them that was published in the Evening Leader in 1986. Besides these interviews we also have images of some original documents and government reports pertaining to their capture, imprisonment and liberation from the POW camps in Germany.

MISSING AIR CREW REPORTS (MACR)

Some complete missing air crew reports can be found on the internet. MACR number 05998 is a complete 94 page report on the plane and crew of which Homer Kuck was the co-pilot. The document was declassified in 1982, and it contains eyewitness accounts by occupants of other bombers, diagrams of the flying formations, listing of all guns lost with manufacturers names and serial numbers, etc. An interesting fact is that ten of the thirteen machine guns carried the name of Frigidaire. This report is easily accessible on the web by doing a search on “MACR 05998”. MACR 05996 is the report of the crew marked “Halter” that was ahead of Homer Kuck’s plane in the formation. Seven of the ten of that crew didn’t survive. The Hadjes (name of Homer’s pilot) crew all remained in the plane, and none were injured in the emergency landing. Below is the diagram for the lead formation of that mission. These two planes designated “Halter” and “Hadjes”, both marked with ** are the ones that were destroyed on this mission.

Below is an image of the casualty questionnaire report that Homer Kuck completed after he returned to the US. This is just one of the 94 pages of the Missing Air Crew Report.

Following are just a few items from Zelotes’s scrapbook, from Missing in Action to Discharge.