The Kassel Mission Chronicles podcast

This Sunday marks the 76th anniversary of a spectacular air battle, the Sept. 27, 1944 Kassel Mission. It also marks the official launch of a new podcast, The Kassel Mission Chronicles, hosted by myself and Linda Alice Dewey. There are actually two episodes posted, the first being a sort of "test pilot" episode in which we tested our phone connection. But that was so much fun we decided to keep it as an episode.

In the official first episode, Linda and I called Doug Collar to talk about some letters Doug had found that were written to his dad from the wives of members of pilot Jim Schaen's crew. That's George Collar in the photo. He was not a regular member of the Schaen crew but was filling in for the bombardier, who failed to return on time from a three-day pass to London. The Schaen crew was very close-knit with several husbands and wives who had socialized together since training. Doug also had a letter from the mother of Martin Geiszler Jr.

Collar bailed out and was captured. The following morning he and two other POWs from the mission were given a detail -- to accompany a haywagon into the fields where bombers had crashed and pick up the remains of men killed in the battle. In the mess hall the morning of the mission, Collar had found himself staring at a flier from another squadron, he didn't know who he was, but there was just something about him that drew his attention.

 After he and the two other men recovered several bodies and parts of bodies, they came across another plane that had crashed. In the co-pilot's seat was a torso from the midsection down. The top half of the body was sheared off and was nowhere to be seen. Then, about a hundred yards from the wreck he saw the upper half of the body butted up against a tree. When he turned it around, it was the flier he had been staring at in the mess hall that morning. He took close notice of the name on the dogtag: Martin Geiszler Jr.

One day after he returned, Collar got a long distance phone call from Bell, California. The caller said he and his wife had been at a Red Cross meeting and met a Lieutenant McMahon, who'd been in Stalag Luft I. The caller said he asked Lieutenant McMahon if he knew anyone who'd been on the Kassel Mission because his son was on it and was missing in action. McMahon said one of the men in his room was on the mission and gave him Collar's name. The man told George his son was Martin Geiszler Junior and asked if he had any knowledge of what happened to him.

"What did you tell him, Dad?" Doug Collar said he asked his father when he told him about finding Geiszler decades after the war. Spoiler alert: He told the father that his son was dead. Did he go into detail? You'll have to listen to the episode to find out.

There are numerous elements that made this a special conversation. Toward the end, Doug asks Linda if her father, who was a pilot on the mission, went to the Glenn Miller concert in a hangar at the air base on Sept. 1, 1944. Linda said her father flew a long mission that day, had a headache from the fumes and missed the concert. "Did your dad go?" she asks Doug. His father flew several missions in a row and was so tired he slept all day. Imagine a few decades later being too tired to go to a free concert of, say, the Beatles!

I hope you'll check out The Kassel Mission Chronicles podcast!