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Lyle Taylor in 1942
By Rob Alway, Editor-in-Chief
More than 82 years after Staff Sgt. Lyle A. Taylor parachuted from a burning B-24 Liberator over Yugoslavia, members of his family will gather Saturday in Mt. Pleasant as the Mason County World War II veteran is posthumously honored for his service and sacrifice.
Taylor, who grew up in the Ruby Creek area and later spent much of his life in Scottville before retiring back in Ruby Creek, will be one of five former prisoners of war honored during the fourth annual POW/MIA Plaques of Honor Ceremony Saturday, Sept. 19, at the Michigan Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Island Park.
Lyle Taylor
Members of Taylor’s family attending the ceremony will include his son, Elliott Taylor, and his wife, Deanna; their son, Mark Taylor; Taylor’s daughter, Ginny Beadle; and her son, Roger Beadle.
The ceremony begins at 1:30 p.m. Motorcycle staging begins at noon at Holeshot Harley-Davidson, 4741 E. Pickard St., Mt. Pleasant. The event is sponsored by Rolling Thunder Michigan Chapter 4.
For Taylor’s family, the recognition comes more than two decades after his death and more than eight decades after a Sunday afternoon in March 1944 when the 23-year-old airman found himself falling toward occupied Yugoslavia with his clothes and parachute burning.
Taylor survived. He would spend the next year recovering from severe burns and other injuries and living behind barbed wire as a prisoner of Nazi Germany.
Prisoner of war photograph
His story was preserved in remarkable detail because Taylor eventually wrote it himself.
In a 19-page memoir titled “My Memories of the United States Army Air Corp,” Taylor traced his journey from rural Mason County to war, captivity and eventually back home. He signed the account in 1995.
“I am proud to have fought for my country,” Taylor wrote at its conclusion.
Lyle Augustine Taylor was born Jan. 14, 1921, in South Bend, Ind., to Grove and Estella Taylor. He grew up in the Ruby Creek area and graduated from Walkerville High School in 1938.
Lyle Taylor
Taylor registered for the draft in January 1942, shortly after his 21st birthday. He reported to Ludington June 12, 1942, and traveled with other area men to Traverse City for physical examinations. He was sworn into military service June 13.
After basic training at Jefferson Barracks near St. Louis, Taylor was sent to Lincoln, Neb., for airplane mechanic school. He later trained in Detroit on Packard-built Rolls-Royce V-12 aircraft engines and was assigned to Westover Field in Massachusetts.
Taylor had initially expected to serve as an aircraft mechanic. The war had other plans.
With the Army Air Forces needing aerial gunners for the rapidly expanding bomber force, Taylor was sent to gunnery school at Tyndall Field in Florida.
His training progressed from rifles and shotguns to firing machine guns at moving targets from trucks and aircraft. He eventually qualified as an aerial gunner and was promoted to staff sergeant.
Taylor was assigned to a 10-man B-24 Liberator crew. He served as the aircraft’s right waist gunner and second mechanic.
The Consolidated B-24 was one of the primary American heavy bombers of World War II. Taylor’s position placed him at a window in the side of the aircraft with a .50-caliber machine gun.
Following training in Arizona and South Carolina, Taylor and other members of the 454th Bomb Group headed overseas in late 1943. Their route took them through Puerto Rico, Brazil and across the Atlantic to Africa before they reached Italy.
Taylor served with the 737th Bomb Squadron, 454th Bomb Group, 15th Air Force, operating from Cerignola in southeastern Italy.
His first combat mission was Feb. 8, 1944.
The missions took the B-24 crews across the Adriatic and into enemy-held Europe, often flying at altitudes of 20,000 feet or more. Taylor remembered temperatures around 50 degrees below zero, oxygen masks freezing from the moisture of a man’s breath and missions lasting eight to 10 hours.
By March, Taylor had flown seven combat missions.
His eighth came March 19, 1944.
Taylor was not even flying with his regular crew that morning. According to his memoir, he was assigned to a crew commanded by a Lt. Edwards.
The mission’s primary target was Steyr, Austria, where aircraft components and ball bearings were manufactured. Poor weather forced the American formations to break up and attack secondary targets. Taylor’s group headed toward the Graz airfield in Austria.
By the time the bombers completed their run, their fighter escorts had turned back toward Italy for fuel.
German fighters attacked.
Taylor recalled that his B-24 had already lost an engine to anti-aircraft fire when approximately 40 enemy fighters came at the formation.
“We had about 1/2 hour steady battle,” he wrote.
Taylor fired from the right waist position as fighters repeatedly attacked. He recalled setting one enemy aircraft on fire as it passed beneath the bomber.
Inside the Liberator, conditions rapidly deteriorated.
The tail gunner was struck and mortally wounded. Taylor went back to help him and connected the injured gunner to oxygen.
When Taylor returned toward his own position, the inside of the bomb bay was burning.
He lost consciousness from lack of oxygen.
When he regained consciousness, the B-24 was still flying on automatic pilot, but Taylor believed he was the only crew member still moving inside the aircraft.
His clothing and parachute were burning.
After struggling to attach the parachute pack to his harness, Taylor crawled to an escape hatch in the floor and went out head first.
He estimated the aircraft was at 23,500 feet.
Taylor pulled the parachute’s release.
The force of its opening injured his back and, he believed, fractured two vertebrae.
His ordeal was far from over.
“My chute was burning all the way down and my outside clothing was completely burned off,” he wrote.
His oxygen mask had protected his lungs, but his face and the area around his eyes were badly burned. A German fighter passed near him several times as he descended.
Taylor eventually came down in trees near a small village near Nova Mesa in what was then Yugoslavia.
The burning parachute snagged in the branches about 20 feet above the ground. Taylor unbuckled and slid down the tree.
He tried to flee but made it only about 100 feet before the pain in his back stopped him.
A group of children soon found him.
Villagers took Taylor into a house. One man spoke English. They gave him food, treated some of his burns and attempted to hide him from the Germans, moving him by donkey cart into the mountains.
Taylor never forgot what the villagers attempted to do for him.
But too many people had seen the American airman. German troops arrived, took Taylor into custody and eventually transported him to a hospital in Zagreb.
His injuries were serious.
Taylor later wrote that he ran a 104-degree fever for three days and was unconscious for much of that time. His eyes remained covered for about three weeks while the burned skin around them healed.
He remembered a nun, Sister Pavalinka, feeding him and helping care for him.
“I wish I could thank these different people that helped me but I suppose this will never happen,” Taylor later wrote.
After about a month in the hospital, Taylor was transported under guard through Austria and Germany to an interrogation center near Frankfurt.
From there, he joined other captured American and British airmen aboard railroad boxcars bound east for Stalag XVII-B, a German prisoner of war camp near Krems, Austria.
Taylor arrived in early May 1944.
His German prisoner number was 105531.
Taylor recalled thousands of prisoners at the camp, including thousands of American airmen. He lived in Barracks 29A, near the compound where Russian POWs were held.
Food was scarce.
Taylor described German rations that could consist of a thin slice of dark bread, hot water, several small potatoes and turnip soup. American Red Cross parcels became critical to the prisoners. They contained items such as powdered milk, canned meat, coffee, chocolate, crackers, raisins and cigarettes.
The cigarettes became a form of camp currency.
Prisoners improvised with whatever materials they could obtain, turning food cans into cooking utensils and cups and dismantling boards for firewood. They played baseball when equipment arrived through relief organizations and listened secretly to war news over radios assembled with parts traded from other prisoners.
In an Aug. 28, 1944, letter home, Taylor tried to maintain a sense of normalcy as he asked his family about Ruby Creek, relatives, the garden and neighbors.
“I’ll hear from home someday soon (I hope),” he wrote.
The letter passed through German and U.S. military censors.
By the spring of 1945, the sound of the war was coming closer.
As Soviet forces approached Vienna, Taylor and hundreds of other prisoners were ordered from Stalag XVII-B and marched west across Austria.
For two to three weeks they walked during the day and slept wherever they stopped — sometimes in woods, barns or farmyards. Food consisted largely of watery soup and bread shared among groups of prisoners.
Taylor recalled meeting Jewish prisoners being moved in the opposite direction. Some were so weak they could barely walk.
The march eventually reached the area near Braunau, Austria.
On May 3, 1945, an American jeep appeared.
The German guards surrendered the prisoners to American troops.
Taylor later wrote that the cheering was unlike anything he had ever heard.
He eventually reached France and boarded the Liberty ship Marine Dragon on June 2 for the voyage back to the United States.
The ship entered Boston Harbor June 11, 1945.
A few days later, Taylor returned to Ruby Creek.
His mother told him it seemed as though he had been gone a long time. Taylor calculated it had been a little more than two years since his last furlough home.
After additional recuperation and processing, Taylor received his discharge Sept. 25, 1945.
He had served three years, three months and 13 days, including about 18 months overseas. His military decorations included the Purple Heart, Air Medal, Good Conduct Ribbon and European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Ribbon with four Bronze Battle Stars.
Taylor returned to Mason County and built a life far removed from the bomber formations and prison compounds of Europe.
He and his first wife divorced and he later married Ella Mae Mast in 1952. The couple operated the Ruby Creek Store and built the Ruby Creek Tavern before Taylor later worked for the Mason County Road Commission.
He lived in Scottville during much of his working life and retired from the road commission in 1983 after 22 years of service. Following retirement, he relocated to his approximately 200 acres in Logan Township near Ruby Creek.
Beadle said her father became known throughout the area for pursuits that had little to do with his wartime experiences but he was also a proud veteran.
He played with the Country Playboys, playing banjo and fiddle, and was active with Custer Gold Bar Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 5096, where he served as a past commander and participated in the honor guard.
He also became closely associated with horseshoes.
Taylor was an accomplished horseshoe player and for many years organized the horseshoe tournament during the Scottville Harvest Festival.
He served his community in other ways as well, including as a member of the Logan Township Board of Trustees.
Taylor died June 4, 2003, at his Ruby Creek home. He was 82.
Saturday’s ceremony will add another chapter to the preservation of his story.
In addition to Taylor, the Plaques of Honor ceremony will recognize William Walter of Grand Haven, a Civil War prisoner of war; Donald McClure of Traverse City, a World War II Army airman; Kenneth Cunningham of Clare, a World War II Army airman; and Robert Fletcher of Ypsilanti, an Army veteran and Korean War POW.
The ceremony is part of an ongoing effort to honor Michigan’s prisoners of war and those missing in action. Plans for a permanent Michigan POW/MIA Memorial at Island Park are also expected to be presented during the event.
For Taylor’s children and grandchildren, however, Saturday’s ceremony will remember a man whose wartime experiences represented only one part of a long life in Mason County — a road commission employee, musician, VFW member, horseshoe player, township official, husband, father and grandfather.
Taylor closed his memoir without dwelling on what had happened to him.
He simply recorded his service, his time overseas and his captivity.
Then he wrote one final sentence:
“I am proud to have fought for my country.”
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