I'm Ken Harbaugh, host of Warriors in Their Own Words.

In partnership with the Honor Project, we've brought this podcast back at a time when our nation needs these stories more than ever.

Warriors in Their Own, is our attempt

to present an unvarnished, unsanitized truth of what we have asked of those who defend this

nation. Thank you for listening, and by doing so honoring those who have served.

Today, we'll hear from Lieutenant Colonel Milt Shilinski.

Shilinski served in Europe in World War II as part of the 385th bomb group.

On June 20th, 1944, Shilinski's B-17 bomber was hit and crashed near Brunswick, Germany.

He was captured and was held as a POW for the remainder of the war.

My name is Melt Shalinski. I arrived in England and was assigned to the 385th bomb squadron when I was 23 years old.

We weren't assigned a permanent ship when I was a crew member. However, I was shot down on a mission and the name of the ship was Mr. Smith.

Mr. Smith flew many, many missions, and there were a couple of crews that went all the way through with Mr. Smith flew many, many missions and there were a couple of crews that went all the way through with Mr. Smith.

And I flew it once and lost it, flew on it once.

I was shot down over Brunswick, Germany, our target being one of the suburbs of Brunswick.

The preparation for being a P.O.W. was really not that great. They used to give us talks on what you should do and what you shouldn't do if you were captured.

Everybody carried a packet which contained maps and money and material which might help you

escape. But it worked fine in France and the Belgium,

Holland, where you had underground people to help you,

but if you went down in Germany,

your chances of getting out of Germany were practically nil

as far as escaping is concerned.

When we got, when our plane picked up this flag and was disabled, we flew possibly for about

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