Man with a Past

Aviation Cadet Erwin D. Wissenback is 23 years old, shy and serious. He looks like hundreds of other cadets learning the combat flyer's trade at Miami Beach. But Cadet Wissenback is different. He has already had an unusual military career. He holds the Air Medal and the Purple Heart, and when Germany is knocked out (but not before) he will be able to tell one of the strangest stories of World War II.

On Oct. 9, 1942, over occupied Europe, Sergeant Gunner Wissenback's Flying, Fortress went into a flat spin. Pilot and copilot had been killed. Wissenback just managed to bail out at 1,000 feet, with only the chest-straps of his parachute hooked up.

The normal ending of the story would have been capture and internment, but Wissenback was different. Hastily he folded his chute and hid it in a thick clump of weeds. Then he hid himself. What happened after that cannot be told in detail.

But the fact, verified by Army authorities, is that Wissenback (who speaks no language but English) proceeded to wander for the next five months in Nazi-occupied territory. He was never picked up or seriously molested, and eventually he made his way back to England.

During his involuntary Wanderjahr Wissenback crossed frontiers half a dozen times, rode next to German officers in trains. Once he had his picture taken with a cheerful group of Italian soldiers -- he has the snapshot to prove it. Food was a problem at times, and Wissenback lived on raw fish and turnips for several days, but he was in fair shape and only a few pounds under weight when he reached his base again.

How did he do it? The Army would admit only the obvious -- that he somehow got a change of clothing and faked identification papers. When traveling he played deaf-mute or pretended to be asleep to fend off the curious. The rest of Cadet Wissenback's story will have to wait: other U.S. flyers may be wandering in Europe today, using the same methods.

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