Captain Warren Anderson was Bombardier on B-26 Serial #42-107588 hit by Flak on the 14 January 1945 mission to bomb the bridge at Steinebrück, Saint-Vith, Belgium. In the Missing Air Crew Report - MACR 11926, Captain Anderson mentions he was immediately captured after landing, about 5-10 miles SW of Saint-Vith. He was taken to a HQ building where he met his armorer/gunner S/Sgt Louis Prejean, both being joined later by Sgt Virgil Smith of their crew. The Germans started walking them East, into Germany, away from the front. At about 22:00 that same day, they managed to escape from their guards and walked West toward the Allied lines. On 17 January, the 3 men reached a point about 1½ mile from the US lines and rested in a foxhole, being tired and not having eaten for 2 days.

At about 04:30 on the morning of the 17th, either the Americans or the Germans began shelling the area they were in and Anderson was hit by a shell fragment in the right thigh. Sgts Prejean and Smith helped him to a nearby farmhouse (“in the vicinity of Bovigny or Houffalize”) and left him with the Belgian family there. Both sergents planned to try to make it through the lines. Captain Anderson was captured on 19 January, taken to a hospital in Germany and mentions he never heard about the fate of Prejean and Smith.

Captain Anderson is not listed at NARA’s WW II POW database, so he might have been liberated at the hospital by US forces, or just left there by retreating Germans (?)