Born in Arkansas in 1922, Bill McGinley joined the USAAF in 1941 aged 19, after graduating from High School. For the first eighteen months of service, his role is unclear; he admits to having failed most of the selection tests that his buddies passed. He was still at Jefferson Barracks, Missouri when - because of a dire shortage of pilots - he went before a further board and this time was accepted because, he says, the judge approved his hobby of building aeroplane models...However, he failed the initial flying training and was then sent briefly to Columbus, Missouri where he drove a gasoline truck which he one day 'backed up and knocked the nose off an aeroplane'. McKinley fully expected a court martial but got away with it. His next venture was to gunnery school where he passed as a gunner, going on to Boise, Idaho where the B-24 crews of ten men formed up and where one of his instructors was James Stewart, the famous film actor. Three months later, the crew, after being equipped in Topeka, Kansas, entrained for Brooklyn to embark for England on what had been a cattle boat. Their final destination was Wendling in Norfolk and the 392nd BG, where Bill was a Tail Gunner in the 579th Squadron.

The crew’s first mission was to Bremen when the Group lost four aircraft and 43 men. McGinley was on his ninth mission as rear gunner on the January 29th 1944 raid to Frankfurt, Germany. Despite having been hit by Flak, they completed the bomb run, but soon lost formation on the return trip, and their Fortress was attacked by fighters over Belgium. The Bombardier and Navigator were killed by gunfire, McGinley somehow managed to bail out - after first releasing the ball turret gunner - and fortunately landed in a field near Waterloo.

He stowed the parachute in a hay wagon and could see a farmer who signaled him to lie down. From his hiding place he watched German troops looking for him, followed by three civilians who asked him where he had hidden his parachute – its silk being a valuable source of raw material!

The farmer fed and sheltered him for one night before handing him over to an aristocratic woman who sheltered him and other downed airmen for three nights and where they were given civilian clothing by members of the Résistance. They were hidden for about a month in various places South of Brussels. At the beginning of March, McGinley and other evaders, including some from his crew, were put on a train to Brussels where they stayed for the next five months, passed from one hiding place to another, having several 'near misses' with the occupying Germans and local German sympathisers known as Rexists. McGinley estimates that there were about fifty of them on the run being handed on from one safe house to another, organised by Mrs Anne Brusselmans, an amazingly brave woman responsible for saving many men from capture.

Bill and the other evaders were sheltered in Brussels until September 1944. In the last days, they had the immense satisfaction of sitting at some cafe and watching the German army in retreat, out of formation and out of petrol, mules and horses pulling the officers' cars eastward. After the Germans had vacated the city, Mrs Brusselmans gave them a banquet at the Metropole Hotel in the center of Brussels where Bill discovered another of his crew who had managed to jump from their B-24. The following day, General Patton sent his 'ten-wheeler trucks' and they were transported to Paris. On 9 September, they were on a plane to England but only after McGinley.

Flown home to Little Rock shortly after for two weeks' leave, he was greeted by a crowd of fifty or sixty people. As there had been a mix-up with information from Résistance sources (Bill says he had been screened by the Belgian Résistance who suspected him of being a German agent), he had been officially declared dead and his family thus advised was given his insurance money… which later had to be paid back… ‘When I came back home I would meet people and they would say, “Well, you got killed – how come you are back here?”’

Following home leave, he was sent to Nashvile for R&R where he 'danced thirty nights in a row', then on to Atlantic City - where he sprained his ankle playing basketball - and so was sent for further convalescence at a Lake Placid winter resort, and finally to California where he got married to Bonnie Blackwell.

After discharge Bill McGinley became an insurance salesman and a keen golfer. He had come from a very religious family; in the service he learnt 'all the vices' smoking, drinking, gambling but always felt that God was with him during his multiple escapes and adventures. His tales of life under the protection of the Résistance make interesting reading and for many years after the war he and his fellow escapees have entertained the men and women who helped them at great personal risk. Bill passed away in October 2015 and his beloved Bonnie rejoined him in May 2019. They both rest at the McPherson Cemetery in Sardis, Arkansas. Evaded (EVD).



For more details about Bill’s evasion, and especially the people who helped him and other evaders on his crew, see his page at http://www.evasioncomete.be/fmcginlwc.html