Marshall Crouch was Observer/Navigator on B-24 #42-7484 “Sally Ann”, shot down over Belgium on return from the Frankfurt mission on 29 January 1944 (11th man on #42-7484 as Observer on the 29 January 1944 mission). Evaded (EVD)-Prisoner of War (POW). After landing in parachute, he was helped by Belgian citizens and members of the Résistance (Comet evasion network) and sheltered in many places in Belgium, then guided from Brussels to Paris. He traveled all across France towards Spain and was arrested around 15 May in France, at the foot of the Pyrénées mountains, attempting to cross into Spain. Detained in the Fresnes Prison near Paris, he was transferred on 20 August 1944 to the SS-controlled concentration camp at Buchenwald. On order of MarshaIl Göring, head of the Luftwaffe, he and 167 other Allied airmen were liberated from that camp on 19 October 1944 and transferred to the Luftwaffe-controlled Stalag Luft 3 in Sagan/Zagan (in occupied Poland). Force-marched from there, he arrived at Stalag 7A in Moosburg, Germany, where he was liberated by US troops on 29 April 1945.



For much more details, notably about his evasion and the people who helped him, see his page at http://www.evasioncomete.be/fcrouchmc.html