John Thomas Hartman waves to the other regulars as he makes his appointed rounds in Fashion Place mall on a recent morning. He is a familiar sight here, wearing his red Ute cap and pushing a cart that holds a tank of oxygen with tubes running to his nose.
His 86 years have taken their toll. He's wearing glasses and hearing aids. There are scabs on his right ear and the tip of his nose where a doctor lopped off another colony of skin cancer.
It takes him 90 minutes just to complete his two-and-a-half laps around the mall, but what does he care? He's got nothing but time on his hands. A recliner and a nap await him at home.
He looks like the others of the slower, grayer crowd who do their walking here in the climate-controlled mall, but there is more than meets the eye. It's a journalism axiom that everyone has a story, and Hartman has one and then some.
What the other walkers in the mall don't know is that he is one of a dying breed — a World War II veteran and a former prisoner of war. Based on a reader's tip, I went looking for Hartman and found him on his morning patrol, wearing a long-sleeved flannel shirt and jeans. As he walked, he talked, and his story unfolded as he looked back 66 years.
He manned the topside gun turret of a B-24 bomber based in Italy. His 22nd bombing mission was his last. After dropping bombs over Bucharest, the pilot turned the bomber homeward and slid to the outside of the formation. Separated from the safety of the other flyers, the plane was attacked by a German Focke-Wulf 190. The assault left a gaping hole in the side of the plane. The wing burst into flame, and gasoline was leaking into the fuselage and down into the bomb bay. All 10 crew members bailed out at 20,000 feet. All survived.
"It was all over that fast," Hartman said. "We were all in a hurry to get out before it exploded. Fortunately, fire doesn't burn too well at 20,000 feet. Five minutes after our feet touched the ground, we were guests of the Romanian government."
They were taken to a prison camp in Bucharest. It was 1944.
He has no tales of abuse or starvation or wretched conditions. Hartman and the other POWs suffered little. They ate what the guards ate. Camp life consisted of long hours of boredom, followed by a few minutes of sheer terror. The camp was located just a few blocks from a railroad yard, which was a favorite target of bombers.
"We were bombed by our own boys," recalls Hartman. "At night the British would bomb, and we had some really close calls. They finally let us dig trenches for cover."
As prison camp stories go, this was more "Hogan's Heroes" than "The Great Escape." For their amusement, they were given decks of cards and a few books. They liked to joke with their hosts. They nicknamed one of the guards "Snuffy Smith" because of his likeness to the cartoon character.
"We would take his gun from him," Hartman said. "It was just for fun. We knew we couldn't get out of there. We were on the second floor of a two-story building surrounded by guards."
They also passed the time by whistling at the girls as they passed on the street below the prison windows. "The guards didn't like that," Hartman said. "They'd shoot at us."
The 400 prisoners were taken to another building for meals. A fat commandant stood near the door and counted them as they passed. Hartman and his friends liked to stop in the doorway because it caused the commandant to forget his count. "He'd herd us all back through the door and start his counting again," Hartman said. "He got pretty upset by that."
After five months in captivity, Hartman and the other prisoners were freed by the Russians and returned to Italy after they were stripped naked on the tarmac and hosed off to kill off the lice.
He came home, married, raised children, worked as an engineer and retired. Nowadays he reads, photographs wildlife, walks his laps six mornings a week and remembers the war for those who ask while they can.
It has been reported that World War II vets are dying at a rate of 900 per day (it has been reported as high as 1,200, but with the declining numbers, the rate has dropped). There were some 16 million soldiers at the end of the war; there are fewer than 2 million still alive. Talk to them while you still can. As Hartman says, "A part of history is disappearing."
Doug Robinson's column runs on Tuesdays. Please send e-mail to drob@desnews.com.