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VETERAN: Peter E. Merisotis
INTERVIEW DATE: December 12, 2011
JAMES KENNEDY: My name is James Kennedy. I'll be
conducting this interview. I'm here with Peter
Merisotis, and we're going to conduct an interview
about his time in service. Today is the 12th day of
December, 2011.
And your birth date for the
record, sir.
PETER MERISOTIS: November 3, 1922.
KENNEDY: And where were you born?
MERISOTIS: Manchester, New Hampshire.
KENNEDY: Would you please state the war that you
participated in and your branch of service.
MERISOTIS: Yes. World War II in the U.S. Air Force
on a B-24 Liberator bomber out of England.
KENNEDY: Okay. And your rank, sir.
MERISOTIS: I was a tech sergeant five stripes.
KENNEDY: Were you drafted, or did you enlist?
MERISOTIS: I -- I think I was drafted, but I was
going to enlist at the same time. And my two
brothers, same time they went in the Navy, I went in
the Air Force.
KENNEDY: Okay.
MERISOTIS: I left Pratt and Whitney at that time.
KENNEDY: Where were you living?
MERISOTIS: Let's see, at that time, I was living in
Derry, New Hampshire. It's near Manchester.
KENNEDY: Why did you join the arm -- Air Force?
MERISOTIS: Air Force, well, there was so many things
about my feelings of the war that was terrible, of
course. I didn't like it, but I went in for my
country, and I love my country. This is it. My
inheritance is from Greece, but I served here. This
is the way I felt, and I'm glad I went in.
KENNEDY: Why did you choose the branch of service
that you joined?
MERISOTIS: Well, what happened, see, when I -- when
they sent us to Miami Beach for -- they sent us to
Miami Beach to -- for our basic training, and while we
were there, we were picked -- I was a musician, by the
way, and being a musician, my way of listening to
things and working with the -- with the, you know,
different things, they put me in the Air Force, and I
agreed to take it. And it was a tough life. I didn't
make that many missions, but it was a little bit
tough.
KENNEDY: Can you recall for me your first days in
service?
MERISOTIS: Oh, God. Well, my -- well, my -- I guess
it wouldn't be in here. Let's see. It wouldn't be
with the VA, huh?
KENNEDY: No. I'm just asking for the first days
that you were in the service, your first recollections
of boot camp.
MERISOTIS: That was in Miami Beach, and it was
terrible.
KENNEDY: Okay.
MERISOTIS: You know, it was rough there. We had --
training was for six -- six -- six or eight weeks, I
think it was.
KENNEDY: Okay.
MERISOTIS: And . . .
KENNEDY: Well, that's okay, you don't need to look
for anything.
So your boot camp was six weeks long?
MERISOTIS: Six or seven weeks, yeah.
KENNEDY: Okay.
MERISOTIS: It was tough because we lived in these
places, but we only slept about five hours a night,
which was a little bit tough, and up early in the
morning and at four o'clock and to bed about
seven o'clock.
KENNEDY: Okay.
MERISOTIS: It was a little bit rough.
KENNEDY: Do you remember your instructors in boot
camp?
MERISOTIS: No. They were a little bit tough. Being
new in the service, you know, they were pretty rough
with us. I don't remember exactly their names, but we
did some good training there, very good.
KENNEDY: How did you get through it? Did you have
any tricks for getting through your basic training?
MERISOTIS: Any problems, you mean?
KENNEDY: No. Tricks. What did you do to get
through it even -- even though it was hard?
MERISOTIS: Oh, yeah. We went out on the -- on a big
field and walked a lot, drilled a lot, and I remember
there was some problems there, and they were very
strict with us.
KENNEDY: Okay.
MERISOTIS: And the people that gave up their
?province? in Miami Beach, the government paid them so
we could have basic training. Thousands of Air Force
people went through there, Miami Beach.
KENNEDY: Okay. Now, you served in World War II.
MERISOTIS: Yes.
KENNEDY: Where exactly did you go?
MERISOTIS: You mean in the States?
KENNEDY: Well, you can start in the States and
then move to the European --
MERISOTIS: I was in -- let's see, I was in Texas for
a little -- gunnery school for a little bit, only a
few weeks. Then I went to Sioux Falls, South Dakota,
and I passed I think it was 28 words a minute. I
stayed there about, let's see, about five months until
I knew the code very well, because in the B-24, you
have to know your code very well to send messages, not
during the -- not during the raid, you know, or
anything like that. I didn't make many missions. But
it was -- we flew to South America, and we flew our
plane up to England. We were stationed in England for
a few months, and then got shot down.
KENNEDY: All right. Do you remember arriving in
England? What was it like?
MERISOTIS: They were very nice to us. The British
were very good. They treated us, like, wonderful.
Wonderful treatment. They were very good to us, the
British, and they were our allies, you know.
KENNEDY: And what -- what was your job assignment
with the B-24s? What were they called?
MERISOTIS: B-24 Liberator bombers.
KENNEDY: Liberator bomber. What was your
assignment on that aircraft?
MERISOTIS: I was a top turret gunner and a radio
operator, sending messages to anywhere in the world,
you know, that we wanted to send them to. We sent
them to -- from here, we sent them all over the
country. And we started going up towards Africa, I
think the Germans had already left there and -- at
that time, and we had -- it was quite an experience.
We were moving up to England and made a few missions,
get shot down.
KENNEDY: Okay. So you definitely did see some
combat?
MERISOTIS: Yeah. Well, we made a few runs over --
you know, Germans still had France. And the major
combat that I got shot down was in Friedrichshafen in
Germany. And we had just dropped our bombs, and we
got hit underneath the -- it was where the bombs were.
We had dropped them already, and then we lost the
wings at the 38 -- I think it was 38,000 feet. We
lost our two engines, and we had to drop down to 8,000
feet. So when the pilot gave us an option whether we
wanted to bail out and we would be captured right
away, and we were about probably 50 miles from the
Swiss border, or he said we can try to make it into
Switzerland. Now, the guy next to us got blown up.
The plane went down. I don't know what happened
there. It was pretty rough.
So we were interned in
Switzerland for a year. It wasn't -- well, they were
pro German at that time. We didn't -- the food was a
lot of dairy stuff, and we never had eggs or meats,
you know.
KENNEDY: Okay. Do you remember what shot you
down? Was it a fighter pilot, or was it a flak from
antiaircraft kind?
MERISOTIS: It was flak.
KENNEDY: Okay.
MERISOTIS: Flak.
KENNEDY: Now, you had mentioned that another
aircraft was shot down. Were there any casualties in
your unit?
MERISOTIS: We never had anything -- out of 28
bombers that we had from our bomb group in England, we
lost that day -- I think it was 14 bombers that went
down. A couple went into Switzerland. Some of them
never made it. They got blown up. It was a -- it was
a terrible mission. It remains always, you know, with
you.
KENNEDY: Right.
MERISOTIS: Yeah.
KENNEDY: The guns that you used in the aircraft,
what kind of guns were they?
MERISOTIS: Let's see now.
KENNEDY: Were they 50 caliber?
MERISOTIS: 50 caliber.
KENNEDY: Okay.
MERISOTIS: Yeah, 50 caliber. And the one up where
the top turret, where I usually -- where I was, I got
shot at a few times, but nothing ever hit me. It's
scary, though, very scary. I was 20 years old. My
pilot was only 20 years old. He's still living.
KENNEDY: Well --
MERISOTIS: Wonderful man.
KENNEDY: Now, you said you were interned in
Switzerland as a POW?
MERISOTIS: Yeah. Technically, we were POWs, but I
never got POW benefits. But my pilot and co-pilot and
all the officers, they got POW benefits.
And they tried to escape quite
a few times and were caught by the Germans in France
because France was not liberated yet. So they tried
three times to escape, and they made it out. Three of
my pilots escaped from the -- from the camp where they
were at.
Now, how I got to the officers'
camp, it was because I was a musician, and they wanted
to get -- like, in Germany, they had several people
there that were with big bands and, you know. The Red
Cross they did pretty good.
So I went to -- from where I
was at that time, they -- my -- one of my officers
asked me to go to Geneva because he was making
instruments, musical instruments for the POWs in
Germany. Up until this day, we don't know what
happened. We didn't know if they got them. We hope
they got them. But no communications with the
Germans. It was all done with the Red Cross, you
know, so.
Was there anything else now?
KENNEDY: How long -- how long were you interned?
MERISOTIS: One year.
KENNEDY: One year to the day?
MERISOTIS: Yeah. And then every so often, we would
have a plane come in with a couple of dead soldiers,
you know, airmen, and they would -- the Swiss didn't
bury them; so they asked us to bury them. So we had a
place in Switzerland where the Red Cross permitted us
to use that as a burial ground, and we dug -- we dug
our own holes, you know, at this place, and we buried
whoever came and that was gone, that was dead. And
that was the saddest part of my internment. Very sad
to get these guys coming in dead and burying them,
burying them, burying them at that piece of land
that -- we paid for that land through the Red Cross.
KENNEDY: Okay. When and how were you freed from
internment?
MERISOTIS: We were exchanged for German internees,
but the ratio was, let's say, 50 -- maybe about 40
Germans to two or three Americans.
KENNEDY: Do you remember the date?
MERISOTIS: I got it in the book there somewhere. I
was there for a year. Yeah. I got the date, I think
it was '40 -- I know they sent us to -- they sent us
to France when France was liberated, and we were
exchanged for German internees or POWs.
But our pilot, my pilot, and
the officers up until the day, they got POW benefits,
but I never got them. I don't know. I was an
enlisted man, which is all right, and they never
agreed to give us any POW benefits, but the government
treated us very well.
KENNEDY: Do you think that was because you were in
Switzerland?
MERISOTIS: No. We were all in Switzerland, my whole
crew.
KENNEDY: Okay.
MERISOTIS: Yeah. Well, what happened with me, see,
I was in the enlisted man's camp, and we had a couple
of musicians that enlisted men, and myself was a
musical person, played instruments, go to a place up
in Davos it was, where the officers were. So they
treated us a little bit better there, you know, and it
was -- the food wasn't that good, but we survived.
KENNEDY: Okay.
MERISOTIS: And we had a Swiss captain there that
was -- I think he was married to an American woman.
Very nice man.
Except we did some things that
the Swiss didn't like, and they did some things that
we didn't like. Because while we were in Switzerland,
we bombed -- our American aircraft bombed Switzerland
twice, and I've got books here to prove it, but very
few people know about that. Switzerland was bombed by
the Americans two times, two times.
KENNEDY: Okay.
MERISOTIS: And it was quite a story, yeah, yeah.
But when the war was over when we were winning the
war, the Swiss came on our side.
KENNEDY: Right. When you --
MERISOTIS: Politics.
KENNEDY: When you were shot down -- you alluded to
it earlier -- did you actually bail out of the
aircraft, or did you crash-land?
MERISOTIS: We crash-landed, and as soon as we got
across the border, the Swiss fighters picked us up,
and my pilot says, don't shoot at them because they're
Swiss planes, with the cross, you know. And so the
pilot said -- oh, their pilot said, come with us,
follow us, and we'll show you where to land. So we
landed in a -- we landed in a runway, but it was -- it
was a little bit, you know, rough.
KENNEDY: Okay.
MERISOTIS: Snow on the ground on the runway, a lot
of snow. That's what saved our life.
KENNEDY: Were you injured at all?
MERISOTIS: Huh?
KENNEDY: Were you injured at all?
MERISOTIS: No. Just shaken up.
KENNEDY: Okay.
MERISOTIS: Yeah. But a lot of us -- the food wasn't
good. It was -- a lot of the guys got sick there.
We had problems. And because there were so many
people in Switzerland -- like a lot of our Jewish
friends got there before Hitler, you know, did his
terrible thing. So it was terrible the way they
treated the Jews. It was sad, very sad.
KENNEDY: How did you stay in touch with your
family during that time?
MERISOTIS: Well, my -- my family?
KENNEDY: Yes.
MERISOTIS: Well, they were notified that I was
interned there, but it was quite a while that I was
missing in action. And my two brothers that were in
the Navy on the small ship, a battleship, I guess,
they were -- they were bringing arms and stuff to the
big battleships. So they were in danger at all times.
So they were missing in action, and the government
here wouldn't give them the information. They didn't
give information about me until a couple of months,
two or three months after I got to Switzerland, and
that was it. That was a little bit rough.
KENNEDY: Now, the Red Cross usually takes care of
POWs. Did you have all the supplies you needed to
weather the winters?
MERISOTIS: Pretty much, pretty much. And if we
needed, you know, they allowed us so many hours in
Switzerland, like four hours to go outside and walk
around the place and stuff. They were not like the
German POW camps, you know, but it was a little bit
rough.
KENNEDY: So you didn't experience some stress?
MERISOTIS: Oh, yeah, yeah, quite a bit, yeah.
KENNEDY: While you were on the aircraft, did you
carry anything for good luck?
MERISOTIS: A cross.
KENNEDY: Okay.
MERISOTIS: Yeah. With Christ as my savior.
KENNEDY: You said you were a musician. Did you do
anything else as far as entertainment?
MERISOTIS: Yeah. We organized -- the Swiss allowed
us to organize a little, and we played in the old
hotel there where we're down at the first floor and --
KENNEDY: Played what?
MERISOTIS: Well, the different instruments. We had
one guy that was with -- what was his name -- Gene
Krupa in his band, you know.
KENNEDY: Okay. Other than music, were you allowed
to do anything else for entertainment?
MERISOTIS: No. Well, we were asked to go, you know,
out somewhere, but we weren't asked -- but we asked
them if we could go somewhere, and they said no.
But the Swiss captain that took
care of us, he was a little bit lenient, not the best.
But, see, right across the street where we were, there
was a German ligation there, and we went one night,
and we took the swastika down in the middle of the
night. That's a long story. We had to give it back.
They almost put us in jail, another jail.
There's two kinds of jails in
Switzerland. Yeah. If you tried to escape, they put
you in a very -- a dungeon place, you know. That was
a little bit uncomfortable, but.
KENNEDY: How many attempts to escape did you make?
MERISOTIS: I never made any attempt because we were
watched too closely. But I don't know -- my pilot and
some of the officers, I don't know how they got out.
They were sent to another camp, too, after, you know,
we saw them. Because they split us all up all over
the country. We were up in Davos, which is a
beautiful place, but we couldn't enjoy it because it
was a little bit -- well, we missed home, you know.
KENNEDY: Sure.
MERISOTIS: It was difficult.
KENNEDY: Now, when you were exchanged for German
prisoners, were you allowed to return to service?
MERISOTIS: Oh, yeah. Well, well, France was
liberated, and then they brought us -- they flew us up
to England. And, yeah, yeah, and then we came back to
the States, and I was still in the Air Force, and I
was -- they sent me down here to Bradley Field, and
taken getting these guys from the south and -- and
discharging them. They were in tough shape, diseases
and stuff.
KENNEDY: Okay. Other than the entertainment that
you provided with musicians, with other musicians --
MERISOTIS: We had a little -- a little road band,
you know.
KENNEDY: Right.
MERISOTIS: The Germans had the same thing.
KENNEDY: Other than that, did the USO ever bring
anybody in?
MERISOTIS: No.
KENNEDY: No. You never saw any USO shows while
you were in the service?
MERISOTIS: No. Not in Switzerland, no.
KENNEDY: In England, maybe?
MERISOTIS: No. We couldn't go anywhere. Huh?
KENNEDY: In England, maybe? Did you see any USO
shows?
MERISOTIS: No.
KENNEDY: No. Do you recall any particularly
humorous events?
MERISOTIS: Any what?
KENNEDY: Humorous events, funny events.
MERISOTIS: Money events?
KENNEDY: Funny. Humorous.
MERISOTIS: I don't think so.
KENNEDY: I don't assume, but it's one of the
questions, just in case.
MERISOTIS: No. It was a different type of life,
then. The Swiss were pro German until we started
winning the war.
KENNEDY: Right.
MERISOTIS: And then they warmed up to us. They
weren't mean or anything, but they were just against
the Americans.
KENNEDY: Other than stealing the swastika flag,
did you ever pull any pranks?
MERISOTIS: No. I think that was the only thing we
did --
KENNEDY: Okay.
MERISOTIS: -- the bad thing that we did, but it was
quite an experience, let me tell you.
KENNEDY: What did you think of the other officers
that you served with?
MERISOTIS: We had -- we had one captain I was with
in the officers' camp. There was about eight or nine
men that were not officers because they were
musicians, and they brought them up from the camp to
this place where I -- that we went.
But they had the -- there was a
couple officers there that didn't like us being there,
and they tried to pull their rank, and the Swiss
said -- they said the right thing -- that you have no
authority here, none whatsoever; you're not in the
States, and you cannot give any orders here. So the
officers couldn't do anything.
We were interned and
technically POWs, but they didn't -- they didn't
accept all the men as POWs. Some of them they did.
KENNEDY: Okay. Do you recall the day your service
ended?
MERISOTIS: I think it was March 18th, 1944. I
think it was -- I think it was in the month of March.
KENNEDY: Where were you then?
MERISOTIS: Bradley Field.
KENNEDY: Bradley Field, where is that?
MERISOTIS: It's up here in Connecticut, and it's up
in Irewood(ph) where the aircraft comes in and out.
Yeah, Bradley Field. It's an aircraft place, very
nice and -- but we discharged quite a few of the men
out of there. Some of them we sent them to special
hospitals because they had venereal diseases, you
know. It was good duty. It wasn't bad.
KENNEDY: What did you do in the days and the weeks
after your separation?
MERISOTIS: Well . . .
KENNEDY: Did you work or go back to school?
MERISOTIS: No. But I got my diploma, though, and,
see, I left third week of a -- I was in the third year
of high school, and I wanted to go in the Air Force
badly. And what happened was they had -- oh, they
gave me -- I got a diploma finishing high school. In
the service, I got it, yeah.
KENNEDY: After the service, did you go back to
school, or did you get a job?
MERISOTIS: No, no. I went -- I went to -- after the
service, yeah, my brother and I opened up a little
luncheonette which was nice. I got married, my first
wife which didn't work out.
And for six years in Hartford
here, they were putting a highway through after at six
years, and we had to leave there. So I went out as a
salesman and did a lot of sales work, and I was
successful at it.
And after my first wife and I
divorced, I married a lady from the old country, from
Greece. Was a very nice woman, and we had four boys.
KENNEDY: Okay.
MERISOTIS: Which was nice.
KENNEDY: You had mentioned that you still keep in
touch with the pilot of your aircraft?
MERISOTIS: Yeah. He's in Florida.
KENNEDY: Okay.
MERISOTIS: I haven't talked to him for about three
or four months, but he calls me all the time. He's
not in good shape. He's getting old like me. We got
the same month birthday, yeah, November. Very nice
man.
KENNEDY: After your service, did you join any
veterans organizations?
MERISOTIS: Yes. I was in the -- let's see, I joined
the VFW, Veterans of Foreign Wars, and I joined the --
let's see, there was another one then that was in
Manchester, when I lived in Manchester here. I joined
the legion, American Legion, yeah.
KENNEDY: Okay.
MERISOTIS: That was nice.
KENNEDY: All right. We're almost done.
So you said you were in sales
after the war. Was that your only career?
MERISOTIS: What's that?
KENNEDY: You were in sales after the war. Was
that your only career?
MERISOTIS: Yeah, yeah. I was -- well, I was working
as a -- we went to different cities, and we -- what we
did was we sold beautiful photographs of the children
in a different -- big, big outfits, like, you know,
the big stores, and we did pretty well. I worked for
them. They were very nice.
KENNEDY: Okay.
MERISOTIS: And we got out of that. My wife had a
good job with the police department.
We did -- we had our boys. We
put them all through college, and we thank the good
Lord that we had that kind of a life, you know.
KENNEDY: Did your military experience influence
your thinking about war or about the military in
general?
MERISOTIS: Well, I didn't like being at war with
people like Hitler, you know, and I felt that the poor
people that got killed -- for example, when my
father-in-law told me stories about how the Germans
were invading the island where my wife came from and
that he was shooting them with their rifles, they were
16-year-old boys that were bailing out and capturing
the towns and cities, and Hitler gave out the order
that 350 people will die firing squad. That was bad,
yeah, but he did it in a lot of places. He was -- he
was terrible, you know. He was a madman.
So but I had a good family. We
educated them. And my kids, I'm very proud of my
kids. Matter of fact, I'm going to a birthday party
tonight, my grandson.
KENNEDY: Good for you. Do you have any reunions
with people you served with?
MERISOTIS: I did. We did when my wife was alive,
yeah. We went, oh, for about ten years, yeah, we had
a reunion in different parts of the country. That was
wonderful. It was very nice. A lot of the old-timers
are gone.
KENNEDY: How do you think your service and
experiences affected your life?
MERISOTIS: Well, it taught me -- I'm a religious
man. It taught me that we should try not to be in
these wars, because we lose so many people, young
kids, 18, 20 years old, and it's very sad no matter
how much they love their country. I think that we got
to do something so we don't lose those young kids.
But I guess a war -- I don't
know if they're going to keep going on or not. It's
put me in a little bit of a mental stage that I almost
had a breakdown, and I felt that the kids today are
dying. It's different than when we were kids, you
know, but -- well, we have a lot of good kids here. I
would say it's a situation where I wouldn't want to
live anywhere else.
KENNEDY: Amen to that.
MERISOTIS: Yeah.
KENNEDY: Would you like to add anything else
before we end?
MERISOTIS: No. But I want to thank you for allowing
me to interview, allow me the interview.
KENNEDY: Well, thank you.
MERISOTIS: It's my pleasure.
KENNEDY: Thank you for your service.
MERISOTIS: My pleasure. I didn't do -- you know, I
don't think I did enough, but whatever I did, I'm
thankful to the Lord for giving me the chance to live.
And that's the way we brought up our kids.
KENNEDY: Okay. We're done.
MERISOTIS: Thank you.
KENNEDY: Thank you.