It was during this time that his father was involved in a mine accident, lost one hand and could no longer work in the mines. Sometime prior to this, his sister had moved to Brooklyn to get a job. His father moved to Brooklyn to find work but Frank stayed in Mahonoy city to finish high school.

In 1942 Frank graduated from high school, moved to Harrisburg and took a job at Olmstead Field where he learned to repair airplanes - real airplanes. In 1943 he tried to enlist in the Army Air Corps as a flying cadet. He did fine in all the tests until they checked his eyesight and he learned that he was color blind. He decided to stay at Olmstead until he was drafted in October. As was the practice of the commander at Olmstead, Frank was given a letter instructing the draft board to assign him to the air corps. He was sent to gunnery school at Miami where, for the first time in his life he went inside an airplane. Here he had another interesting experience. He went through a physical examination where he told the technician that he had been rated color blind. The technician assured him that he would have no trouble and then traced the numbers with his finger and Frank named them - correctly. They were also instructed in how to make parachute jumps in case they were in a plane that got hit. Frank asked the instructor if they would be making a practice jump and was told that "there was no need to practice something that had to be done perfect the first time they did it." There followed assignments to Panama City, Florida for arial gunnery school and then to Pueblo, Colorado for flight crew training.

Next stop was Topeka, Kansas in August, 1944 where the crew was assigned to a B24 and they were headed overseas and into combat as replacements for casualties or crews that had completed their tour of duty with the 15th Air Force. After stops in Manchester, New Hampshire and Gander, Newfoundland they headed for Santa Marie in the Portuguese Azores. Then it was on to Morocco and then on to Tunisia where they went through their first real trouble. As they were landing, Frank was looking out the window watching the wheels touch the runway when he saw a wheel collapse and the plane crashed and was demolished. No one was hurt but they had to wait at the airport until the WAAFS brought them a new plane. This gave Frank and the rest of the crew a few days to tour the city. His most vivid memory here was to find urinals standing along the street and men walking up to use them with a woman on their arm. When their new B24 was delivered they took of for Gioia, Italy and , for the first time, came under fire - friendly fire. By this time the Germans had been driven from much of the territory they had conquered and while crossing the Mediterranean the crew spotted a convoy. The radioman fired a colored flare to identify the plane but fired the wrong color (this changed every hour) and the convoy gunners opened fire. The radioman fired the correct color and the pilot turned away from the convoy. They were not hit.

By this time in the war the primary target of the bombers were oil refineries and rail targets. On October 4th Frank’s crew was assigned to the Fifteenth Air Force, 304th Wing, 455th Bomb Group, the 740th Squadron and their primary job was to assist the Fifth Army fighting its way up the Italian Boot. On October 4, 12 days past Frank’s 20th birthday, they made their first raid on the Avisio Aquaduct in Northern Italy followed by strikes on an airdrome in Gyor, Hungary; a railroad bridge in Latisana, Italy; shipping docks in Trieste; and railroad yards in Bologna.

Then the fun began.

On October 14, 1944 they were assigned to participate in a raid on an oil refinery in Odertal, Italy. They were awakened at 5 AM, fed breakfast, and briefed on their mission. Some of the other crews had made raids into the area the previous day. They groaned loudest when they were informed of the target and Frank’s anxiety was ratcheted up by their reaction. Somewhere along the line Frank’s BombGroup had become known as "The Vulgar Vultures."

At this point in the war bomber crews were not assigned to one plane. To provide the minimum number of planes needed for a specific mission the groups planes were pooled. Battle damage was repaired between flights and an available plane was assigned to a crew for the day. The plane their group was assigned for this raid had been damaged the previous day and repaired overnight.

The raid on Odertal called for a "maximum effort". This meant the bomb group was made up of four squadrons. The lead squadron was made up of three planes flying slightly above and forward of the two squadrons on their left and right. The fourth squadron was slightly behind and below the other three. The most dangerous spot in the group was the tenth plane that followed the others known as "Tail End Charlie". For this mission Frank was the tail gunner on Tail End Charlie. The estimated time for this mission was eight hours.

Despite the tension, the steady drone of the engines and lack of physical activity had the tendency to cause drowsiness. Minutes dragged into hours and the flight began to seem endless. Then the pilot announced that they were ten minutes from the start of the bomb run. Meanwhile the number one engine had begun to run hot and the number three engine had begun to throw oil and flack began to appear around them. Then, without any hint of trouble, the supercharger on number two engine failed.

At the start of the bomb run they flew into clouds. A bomb run required a straight unchanging flight without maneuvers. The bombardiers dropped their bombs when the lead plane dropped theirs and all immediately turned for home. When they broke out of the clouds on this mission they saw that they had dropped a considerable distance behind the rest of the Group. Despite moving the throttles to "take off settings" they dropped further behind the others, began to limp home and began to lose altitude. It became obvious they could not return to their base. They decided to head for the island of Vis off the coast of Yugoslavia. The pilot, engineer, and navigator soon decided that they did not have sufficient fuel to make it.

It was decided to bail out over a partisan area and it was also decided that since Frank was the youngest (three weeks past his 20th birthday) he should be the first to jump. They had been told that the opening of the chute would cause a tremendous jerk. He pulled the rip cord but felt nothing. Looked up and saw that the chute had not opened. Frank says, "I amazed myself at my speedy and panic free reasoning and began to analyze the cause of the failure. Grasping the rip cord with both hands I gave a mighty tug. WHAM! What a comforting jerk."

He fell into a crater and as he started to climb out saw some women and children on one side and a group of men with rifles on the other. He took out his evasion document issued with his picture and writing in a number of languages covered with stars and stripes designed to help deal with the local population. He extended his hand to the leader and said, "Amerikanski". The leader shook his hand, took a swig from a bottle and offered him a drink. He gulped it down and thought "it tasted like lava. If he hadn’t drunk from the same bottle I would have thought they poisoned me." The man was from Bosnia-Herzegovina and spoke English reasonably well. They rushed him into a farmer’s barn where he met Craig King, a waist gunner from his plane. They were stripped of their uniforms, put in a carriage, and taken several miles to an Inn, the partisan command headquarters in the nearest town. Frank and his buddy were surprised to find that the partisans wore captured German uniforms. They were put up for the night.

As dawn broke they decided to look around outside where everyone who passed gave a hand salute. They were approached by a an elderly man with a white handle-bar moustache who said "Good morning, sir." Turns out he had been a lead miner in Pueblo, Colorado until the depression hit and he had returned home. Another thing they noticed was that all the roadsides were littered with junked German vehicles. Later they were moved to Sanski Most and joined 45 other airmen including their entire crew. A few days later a British C47 arrived and took out 20 airmen. Frank had to wait for the next flight.

This gave them time to investigate Sanski Most. The town had a farmer’s market in the square and every night the Yugoslavian equivalent of the USO put on a show. Mostly Serbian Folk Dances and American ball room dances were played. They soon learned that the girls loved to dance the ballroom tunes. During one dance his partner began to sing "Moonlight and Shadows and You In My Arms" which she learned from watching a Dorothy Lamour movie. She could not speak any other English.

Two weeks later they were rescued by another C47 this time with P51 escorts. They were taken to the Army hospital at Bari where their clothes were taken and burned to get rid of the lice. The men showered, toweled dry and then stood nude while they were covered with DDT and told to sleep in it. Next morning they showered, were issued new uniforms and trucked to their base. They were made a Lead Bomber and led several more raids including one where the plane was almost blown apart on a mission over Vienna.

March 12, 1945 was the last big one for Frank and his crew. They were leading a raid on the Florisdorf Refinery at Vienna. It was becoming obvious that the war was heading toward an end. On this day the 455th Bomb Group was sending 42 Liberator Bombers to wipe out the refinery where Intelligence had estimated that there would be more than 300 anti-aircraft guns. It was Frank’s 25th mission. Just as they were finishing the bomb run they heard a loud shrill whine. Apparently a shell fragment had hit the propeller control on one of the engines causing the engine to run away. The pilot turned command of the raid over to the deputy lead. They were losing altitude swiftly as the co-pilot and engineer tried to get the propeller shut down. The crew was ordered to jettison everything that could be loosened including guns, oxygen tanks and gear. Their efforts succeeded. They were no longer losing altitude and were flying at 8,000 feet as they headed thru clouds for Pecs, Hungary behind the Russian lines. As they came out of the clouds they began looking for an airport. It was only years later that they learned that they had stumbled into the fight where the Russians were driving back the Germans. Their plane was coming from behind the German lines and both sides assumed they were enemy and opened fire including German fighter planes. They were taking many hits and the pilot ordered everyone to bail out. Frank was the last out as he dove headfirst out of the escape hatch.

He jerked the rip cord and felt the chute open. Now he felt bullets whizzing by him and started to pull the shroud lines to make himself swing back and forth and become a more difficult target. He landed in field of barbed wire with a trench 20 yards away. A bareheaded face appeared above the parapet and a hand went up signaling him to come his way. The face disappeared and Frank decided that since he had not shot at him, this was the way to go. He jumped into the trench and immediately saw the outstretched hand of the man who had signaled him saying "pistol". He was escorted from the front lines by a sixteen year old who said "If you can survive two months you will be a free man." A few minutes later they reached an underground bunker where he was turned over to an officer. He learned later that all of the crew was either killed, wounded or badly hurt in the jump. Two were picked up by the Russians and at least one was taken in by the partisans. That night Frank was led down a dirt road to a small town where he was taken to the town square and into a building where a Wehrmact officer told him to undress and hand over his uniform.

Now began, thru an interpreter, an attempt to get information from him. He stuck with the instructions that had been given him to divulge nothing but name, rank, and serial number. After a while he was given back his uniform and told him to dress. Then he was led across a street to a brick wall and assumed that he was about to be executed. He was led down the street to an unfurnished house where he found five of his crewmates. They remained here for four days - eating four crackers a day - and were then led to Slovanski Brod and Stalag 161 and herded on a Forty and Eight railroad car.

Now they headed deeper into Germany and came under air strikes. Three times the SS tried to execute them in retaliation but were stopped by the Wehrmacht guards. As time went by it became obvious that the prime object of most of the German soldiers was to survive long enough to be captured by the Americans. They were never told what their destination was as they zigzagged out of Yugoslavia, thru Southern Austria and into Bavaria. It took five days to travel from Slovanski Brod to a siding just north of Zagreb, a distance of just 100 miles.

Everyone knew the war was almost over. Their train met a group of Cossacks who had deserted the Russian army and surrendered to the Germans. A member of their group named Kowalski from Bridgeport, Connecticut spoke Polish and learned from the Cossacks that the Allies had two arms driving thru Germany and asked the Americans to accompany them and give them protection until they met the Americans. They offered to kill the guards. The Americans decided that they were in more danger from the Cossacks and the SS and decided to stay with the German guards, who offered them the use of their guns if they wanted them. During this time they lived on boiled potatoes - three or four a day - and went to the toilet next to the tracks. During one of these stops the guards informed them that President Roosevelt had died.

Finally they reached Stalag VIIA that held nationals from all of the countries opposed to the Reich. One group had been liberated from a camp by Americans but were recaptured. George Patton’s son-in-law was a captive in the camp which was about 60 miles behind the German lines. When Patton heard where they were he assembled an armored task force and sent it to liberate the camp. They succeeded but ran out of gas and all, including the force, were recaptured. But rations improved, Red Cross packages were delivered and the prisoners used their ingenuity to make stoves and cook.

On Sunday, April 29, 1945, P51s flew over and went thru acrobatics. The men cheered but realized they were being warned that an attack was coming. Gunfire, small arms and cannons erupted around the camp and this went on for about an hour and a half followed by a minute or two of silence. Frank looked out a window to the main gate and saw the guards with their hands raised above their heads and watched as a Sherman tank charged into the locked gate, destroying it. They learned that their liberators were the 14th Armored Division and the 109th Infantry Division, part of Patton’s Army. They proceeded to the flagpole, lowered the swastika and raised the Stars and Stripes. Frank says, "Reliving this event in memory even today can choke me up and bring tears to my eyes." Twenty Seven Thousand men were freed that day, the largest single liberation of allied captives in WWII. Patton arrived wearing his pearl handled revolvers. He addressed the men from the hood of his jeep then told them he would have to leave to continue the pursuit of the Germans. He could not offer any rations as they were needed for the pursuit. They learned the next day that Hitler had committed suicide. On May 8th they were loaded onto trucks and hauled to Camp Lucky Strike, the camp for rescued prisoners. They were issued new uniforms, showered, shaved and were given a brief physical. Two days later his group flew to Southampton, England and boarded a Victory ship for the trip home.

Frank joined his family in Brooklyn where, through a friend, he met Dorothy. They became quite serious but waited until he had finished his degree in chemical engineering at Pratt Institute in 1951. They married the following year and have since adopted three children. He had jobs with Durkee Famous Food, Glidden Paints and Pfizer in Lancaster, where he worked for 31 years until his retirement. In the course of visiting the area they stumbled across Cornwall Manor where they now live.

This writeup is a shortened version of the document Frank prepared for a presentation at a reunion and if you are interested in a really fascinating and detailed account of Franks experience you should ask for a copy of his account. He can be contacted at: Francis J. Lashinsky 8015 Gatehouse Lane P.O.Box 125 Cornwall, Pa. 17016-0125 Phone: 717-228-0792

Written by Richard "Dick" Evans.

You can send comments or questions to pa_veterans@comcast.net .