Awarded Honorable Mention in the Nonfiction Article of the 92nd Annual Writer’s Digest Writing Competition
“Someone should make a movie about Vernon Jensen’s war experiences!” declared Denise Frost after she honored the 99-year-old World War II veteran with a citation on behalf of the Sarah Caswell Angell chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. She had spent weeks researching not only the former B-17 radio operator and his escape from enemy territory, but also the crew members who were shot down with him over Yugoslavia on March 18, 1944.
And she’s right. Jensen’s wartime experiences were extraordinary. For months, the former radio operator for a B-17, along with a growing number of Allied officers and escaped POWs, dodged Nazi patrols across Yugoslovia and Croatia, led by local partisans in a daring rescue. In 1993, after he and the son of his former pilot retraced his wartime route in eastern Europe, the retired University of Michigan admissions officer wrote a gripping memoir of his perilous war experiences. “We went there to thank the people who had helped us so generously, always at the risk of losing their own lives,” his memoir explains.
On a warm October night in 2022, the veteran drove himself to the home of Erin Regina and Clayton Smith, where he shares dinner with their family twice a week. Settling onto the porch swing, he discussed his wartime experiences—“though I’ve forgotten some things!”
In December 1942, Jensen enlisted in the Army Air Corps—“I sure didn’t want to get drafted into the Army!”—and the teenager was immediately sent for training as a gunner and radio operator. He was assigned to the 463rd Bomb Group, which left for Trinidad on Valentine’s Day 1944. They flew to Brazil and Morocco before arriving in Tunisia, only to find the airfield was under construction. So they flew on to Italy and joined the 429th Squadron.
Nine days after Jensen’s 21st birthday, he climbed into Sad Sack, a B-17 on its 81st mission and his first. Their target: aircraft and train factories in Weiner Neustadt, near Vienna. Later that day, Jensen wrote in his daily log, “Heavy flak and fighters. A real baptism by fire.” But the Sad Sack returned safely.
The following day, the target was a Nazi airfield near Udine, Italy, with plans to feint the Luftwaffe, force them down to their base to refuel, and then destroy the planes. But at 1000 hours, a German fighter pilot hit the Sad Sack’s fuselage and set the plane on fire. “Bail out!” the captain ordered as he released its bombs.
“I dropped my flak suit, disconnected my heated intercom connection, oxygen mask and seat belt, put on my helmet, fastened my chest pack parachute to the harness, and opened the door to the bomb bay. Then I looked down to the bluish-looking earth beneath.”
In 50-below weather, Jensen barreled out of the bomb bay, forgetting his .45 revolver and walking boots—“I would miss them greatly in the next few weeks,” he wrote in his memoir.
As he and seven other crewmembers were parachuting to the ground, they watched the Sad Sack crash into a field. Then three Messerschmidt 104s flashed by. “There was no way they could miss us,” Jensen recalls. “As a Christian, I prayed God would comfort my parents, my family, and my fiance’.” But to his astonishment, the closest German pilot flew close enough to saluted him and continued past. (Decades later, Bruce Magnuson, son of Jensen’s pilot, tracked down that pilot, Johannes Steinhoff, a German ace who later became chief military officer for NATO.)
Deer scurried away as Jensen landed in deep snow beside the Javorniki Mountains, outside the village of Martinjak, Slovenia. He could see a Nazi truck nearby and soldiers fanning out to collect the Allied airmen. Somehow, he managed to cut his harness, gather his parachute, and hide. “There is no one to help me but God and my own resources,” his memoir reports.
While wading through deep snow, he saw a head peer around a tree and assumed it was a Nazi. Before he could respond, he recognized his copilot, Theodore Lauterbach. “Having found each other was a big morale booster.” Immediately, they dove beneath snow-covered bushes as a German patrol passed not more than a yard away. Once they discovered a dugout with a log roof, Lauterbach pulled a cloth escape map from his pocket and they studied possible routes, while German patrols searched for them. “It got very cold. We took turns sleeping and exercising to stay warm.”
After walking during daylight hours and hiding in caves at night, the starving airmen finally decided to approach a farmhouse for help. They waited until a small boy hurried indoors, and when the farmer appeared alone, they took their chance. Hands raised over their heads, they stood and shouted, “Amerikanski! Americanski!”
“To our surprise—and great relief—the farmer grinned, welcomed us, and led us to an inn where the keeper spoke a little English,” Jensen says. Within minutes, word spread about the Americanskis. Yugoslavs crowded inside the inn, bringing flowers, stew, bread, wine, and two eggs. “I will never forget the generosity of those wonderful people,” Jensen repeats often. “They had so little, and yet they were willing to give us what they had and protect us from the Nazis, who were patrolling everywhere. If they had been caught, they would have been hanged.”
The innkeeper passed the word to local Partizani, who interrogated the two Americans for hours (“to make sure we weren’t spies”). The Americans were then introduced to a captured English-speaking German fighter pilot. Jensen and the seventeen-year-old talked into the night—but the next morning he was told the pilot had been executed. “Vern always chokes up when he tells that story,” Jensen’s hostess whispers.
A partisan officer arrived by motorcycle to show them the machine guns, radio equipment, and ammunition his men had scavenged from the Sad Sack. He also gave them plans and drawings of a railroad bridge at Litija, asking that they pass the information on after their rescue, urging that it be bombed. “We took the plans, knowing that if we were captured with them, we would be considered spies,” Jensen says.
Through deep snows, up and down mountain peaks, across frozen lakes, the partisans led the Americans and a growing number of fugitives. “We had to completely trust those who were helping us,” Jenson says. Often peasants hid them at night in their homes and gave them their food. “They were doing everything they could to combat the Nazis and aid the Allies, which meant sacrifices. They were exceptionally brave.”
Within days, the partisans reunited Jensen and Lauterbach with their pilot and three other crewmembers, who told them their gunner had died in the plane and the Germans had captured their remaining two crewmen.
As the partisans led the way on a grueling and highly dangerous journey, the number of Allied fugitives swelled to include several British airmen who had been prisoners of war in Italy, two Indian Sikhs, an Australian pilot, two South African soldiers, a British Special Operations officer, and an American OSS (Office of Secret Services) officer. “The partisans were awarded $1,000 in supplies and ammunition for every downed airman they rescued and returned to safety,” Jensen explains. “I was told that the Germans paid a bounty of $13 for each Allied airman captured and turned over to them.”
During the following weeks, the ragged group of fugitives had a “long and wandering journey,” seldom on roads, accompanied by armed resistance fighters in the more dangerous terrain. Jensen describes firefights and skirmishes, near misses from German patrols, villages Nazi had torched, people massacred, Luftwaffe attacks, the murder of a German informant, nearly unbearable hardships, and the dramatic sacrifices local civilians made to protect them. Often the group doubled back when informants reported nearby German activity. “I owe a big debt of gratitude to some brave heroes.”
Eventually the group numbered forty Allies and twenty Partizani. Nearly daily encounters with Germans were harrowing. One American airman was killed and another was critically injured in different skirmishes. The injured man had to be left behind. “We tried to figure out a way to carry him, but in the deep snow, it couldn’t be done. We left him with sympathetic Croatians.” Along the way, Jensen also encountered several international celebrities: the future Marshal Tito, Winston Churchill’s son Randolph and brother Jack, both of them British officers providing the resistance with armaments and tactical help.
Eventually the group neared the Muslim town of Bosanski Petrovac, the partisans’ intended destination—but the Germans knew the fugitives were heading that way. The Luftwaffe bombed the area daily as the Allied servicemen hid and waited for rescue. After four anxious days and nights, five planes flying at a prearranged time without lights landed on a meadow lit by fires. The fugitives hurried onto the planes, which took off the moment its cargo of military materiel was unloaded. The Allies grateful escapees left behind anything their rescuers could use: shoes, boots, jackets, money. “When we lifted off on the night of May 2, 1944…we departed with our lives and freedom, but we left our hearts and love with those brave people,” Jensen’s memoir reveals.
As soon as he returned to Italy, he gave the Partizani’s bridge plans to the intelligence officer who debriefed him. The bridge was successfully bombed the following day.
Jensen estimates that he walked at least 500 miles and lost at least fifty pounds. On his return, he was classified as an “Evadee” because he had crossed enemy territory without capture. That meant he couldn’t fly over Nazi territory again. Uncle Sam had other plans for him.
Jensen returned to the U.S. on Mother’s Day, 1944, and immediately called home. “My mother said it was the best telephone call she ever received,” he recalls, beaming at the memory. Ten days later, the veteran married his sweetheart. After three weeks hospitalized at a military rest camp, Jensen was released for a short honeymoon. Then Bonnie returned to Wheaton College, and Vernon was sent to a convalescent hospital. When he regained some of the weight and strength he lost, he received orders to attend an advanced radio operator school, where he was reassigned to the Army Transport Command.
For six months, Jensen flew between Pacific combat zones on C-54 transport planes, delivering materiel and evacuating the wounded. Several times, his plane flew to outlying Japanese islands to rescue American POWs, even before Victory in Japan Day.
“Finally, someone in the military added up the points Vern had earned during the war and realized he was well over the number required for a discharge,” Clayton Smith explains. “Vern was one of the first airmen sent home once the Japanese surrendered.”
Following his discharge in November, 1945, Jensen immediately enrolled at Wheaton, where he earned a degree in history and education and then a master’s degree in educational administration. “That G.I. Bill helped me,” he says. For decades, he supervised athletes’ admissions to the University of Michigan. “You can thank me for admitting Tom Brady,” he says proudly.
His return trip to Slovenia and Croatia in 1993 gave Jensen the chance to thank the surviving Partizani who saved him and to marvel at the journey he survived. “They were willing to share what they had with us, at great risk to themselves and their families,” he says. His former rescuers and the son of his pilot joined him in a memorial service held at the Sad Sack crash site.
A deeply committed Christian, Jensen is found every Sunday at First Baptist services, and, until Covid, he washed dishes for all the weekly meals the church serves to the homeless. “I’ve lived a long time,” he says with a grin. “I guess I am very proud of what I did during the war—but afterwards, too.”
