Colin Covington wrote on 2006-05-17 11:25:35.0
Comments: I was recently on holiday in Orlando Florida and I noticed an article in the Orlando sentinel Friday Feb 10 2006. Living in the UK and having some interest in WW2 8th Airforce it felt that you may like this information Frank Grey was war hero, elusive pow. Associated press Jacksonville beach - Frank Grey, who was held in STalag 17 by the Germans in WWII and was known as the Grey Ghost for his ability to avoid detection and escape, has died, his family said. Grey, 90, died Sunday of heart failure. He served 20 years in the Air Force and was a veteran of WWII and the Korean Wa. He was quite an amazing man said his grandson, Tim Grey of Naples. Grey was a tail gunner on a B17 on the 92nd Bomb Group of the 8th Air Force in England when his plane was shot down. He received the Distinguished Flying Cross, a Purple Heart and the POW Medal. He later served on a B29 crew, surviving 57 bombing missions over North Korea. His exploits at Stalag 17 were detailed in a 2004 book, The Flame Keepers by Ned Handy and Kemp Battle. According to the book, Grey immediately hid among 4,000 POWs when he arrived at infamous Stalag 17. After a three day search by German guards and the Gestapo, they were unable to find Grey and became convinced that he escaped. In a 2004 report in the Florida Times Union, Grey said that nobody outside his family knew of his incredible history at Stalag 17, the POW camp in Austria made famous by the 1953 Oscar winning movie Stalg 17, and peripherally, the 1965 televions comedy Hogans Heroes. For six decades Grey kept it to himself, he told the paper. "Ive told nobody else but my relatives. I felt that I still had a price on my head." Grey's N17, nicknamed the Kansas City Killer, was shot down Aug 12, 1943, over Gelsenkirchen on its 12th mission over Germany. Grey bailed out with a parachute when the engines and intercom were blown out. "The Nazis were waiting for me," Grey told the Times Union. A German police officer loaded Grey onto a mototocycle and took him to a jail. The SS, the German military's security service, took Grey to its headquarters and then to Stalag 7-A, about 85 miles north of Berlin, where he spent 98 days in a hole in the ground. During the next year, Grey escaped seven times. His elusiveness and sabotage became a great source of humiliation for the Nazis. After one escape, the Times-Union reported, Grey sabotaged a German freight train headed to the Russiona front. He got on a flatbed car carrying anti-aircraft guns, disabled the equipment and threw it out in the fields. Edward McKenzie, another former Stalg 17 prisoner who lives in Littleton, N.H., said Grey was supposed to be at Stalag 17 overnight and then go to Vienna to stand trial on civil charges. Grey resurfaced and made his way into an adjoining Russian POW compound, from which he escaped and made his way back to England, according to the book. He became known as the"Grey Ghost". Grey, a longtime resident of Jacksonville Beach, was born in Welch, W.Va., on October 1, 1915. He is survived by his wife and three children. Funeral services are today at First Christian Church of the Beaches, with burial to follow at Riverside Memorial Park.
Keywords: Frank Grey was war,Hero,elusive POW
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