During World War II, Daniel Culler spent months in a Swiss prison for violent and mentally ill criminals, where he was raped, beaten and thrown into a ditch filled with vermin and feces.
Culler, now 72, managed to escape to England through the French underground in 1944. Two years later, an Army intelligence officer forbade him from discussing his treatment in prison.He complied, keeping his nightmares and flashbacks bottled up inside for decades, not even confiding the details of his ordeal to his wife.
But in 1990, Culler sought counseling through the Veterans Administration and wrote a book about his time in the prison, "Black Hole of Wauwilermoos." The book caught the military's attention and prompted a review of his files.
Last year, he received a personal apology from the president of Switzerland.
On Tuesday, the Air Force recognized Culler's heroism and patriotism with two long-overdue awards - the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Prisoner of War Medal.
"It's because of people like you that we've got freedom," said Lt. Gen. James F. Record, 12th Air Force commander at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base.
Culler said the awards ceremony "wipes out about 80 percent of the things that happened to me."
Culler, the youngest of 10 children born to a Quaker farm family in Syracuse, Ind., enlisted in the Army in 1942 at 17.
A technical sergeant, flight engineer and top turret gunner, he was flying his 25th and final scheduled mission when his B-24 bomber was hit by enemy fire over the German-Swiss border on March 18, 1944.
After an artillery shell set an engine on fire, Culler crawled into a narrow bomb bay to remove nearby fuel. A short time later, Swiss pilots flying German planes forced his plane to make an emergency landing in Switzerland.
Culler was held at a Swiss prison before being sent to Wau-wiler-moos, the prison where the torture took place. For three months, his only freedom from the attacks of other prisoners was in a rat-infested solitary confinement cell.
He ended up with tuberculosis, broken teeth, a collapsed lung, systemic infection and ruptured eardrums. He was moved to a hospital in Lucern only after a British military officer interceded on his behalf.
After seven months as a prisoner, Culler escaped to France and was warned not to discuss his imprisonment. The intelligence officer said talking about the prison could jeopardize talks to settle a so-called mistaken American bombing of Swiss factories making German war equipment.
"I'll never understand how any human being can treat other human beings this way, but the older I get I realize that this happens," Culler said.
After the war, Culler settled in Grand Rapids, Mich., got married and had a long career in the trucking industry. In 1990, he retired and moved to Green Valley, south of Tucson, with his wife, Betty.
Over the years, he never discussed his imprisonment with his wife.