While they had been substitutes on other missions, this was their first mission together after arriving in England and it would turn out to be their last. Coffin Corner Boys by Carole Engle Avriett features the stories of the 10-man crew of a downed B-17 bomb in occupied France and how they survived not only through her own research but through interviews and first-person accounts by the flyers themselves.

The newly arrived crew piloted by a 20-year-old George W. Starks left for their first mission, occupying the coffin corner—so named for being the most vulnerable to fighter attack—position in the flying formation due to being the least experienced in the squadron. They were shot down and those able to parachute to safety landed in occupied France three months before D-Day, their options were to get to Switzerland or Spain before being taken as prisoners of war. As it happened all three options happened to the crew as George Starks on his own and a few others as a group were able to get to Switzerland with help, a few were able to get to Spain with help, and the rest were eventually captured by the Germans and taken to POW camps in Germany. While Avriett is the main author, Starks is the primary contributor through interviews he had given and written accounts so much so that this could have been “The George Starks Story” but as one learns when reading this book that would not have been the George Starks way when it came to his crew. All the flyers’ stories are absorbing from two crewmembers’ harrowing last moments before making it to Spain to the crewmembers who survived in POW camps or later the death match to no where in the last months of the war.

Coffin Corner Boys tells the stories of survival by a crew of a downed B-17 bomber over occupied France that keeps the reader interested in a book that is less than 250 pages long. Carole Engle Avriett using research, interviews, and written recollections from all the crewmembers—especially by George W. Starks—brings page-turning read from those interested real-life military stories. ( )

This is an excellent true survival story. Ten men bailed out of a burning airplane over Nazi occupied France in March 1944. Separated from each other, they tried to make it back home despite being surrounded by enemy troops and natural hardships.

The meaning of the title - "Coffin Corner Boys" - is that their assigned position in the layered, box-like formation of their bomber unit, in one particular lower corner of the formation, was where the odds were highest of being shot down. Apparently, the newest bomber crew was assigned this slot. The one complaint I have is that it is never explained why this corner was different from, say, the opposite corner. Why did the planes in the other corners not have the same rate of being shot down?

On the side of the downed airmen was the fact that the French civilians hated the Germans for occupying their country. Some of the French police were willing to turn over members of the American bomber crew to the Germans, which is what happened to a few of them. Unfortunately, the enlisted men were sent to one of the worst POW camps while officers went to a somewhat better POW camp. (It turned out that the officers' camp was the very one portrayed in the movie "The Great Escape," which true event had just taken place before our man in this story gets there.)


Because most of the French would not turn them in, most of the crew were able to escape. It was true that some civilians were afraid to help downed Americans. George Starks, the bomber pilot whose experience is the main focus of the book, never blamed people for being too scared to help him. The Germans would kill anybody who helped the Allies and often torture them before killing them.

Nevertheless, George found that an awful lot of the French were willing to help. They gave him civilian clothes to wear, food - often when they did not have enough to feed themselves - and a place to spend the night, even if it was in a barn. Often they gave him a real bed.

What really impressed George, though, was when he met Maurice Beverel. When other people guided George and also - unbeknownst to him - his fellow evadees through train stations, they made the American airmen keep their distance by walking many paces behind their guides. Maurice kept George beside him as they wandered through crowds of German soldiers at the train station. George asked if Maurice didn't want him to keep his distance. "Is that what the other guides made you do?" asked Maurice. "They were afraid," he concluded almost scornfully. Maurice was not afraid of much. George later found out that Maurice traveled all over eastern France, including Normandy, and then slipped over the Swiss border and reported German troop movements to U.S. intelligence officers. Then he slipped back into France where he acted as a guide to many downed Allied servicemen as well as many civilians who were trying to escape the Germans.

This being a true story, as told to the competent author Carole Avriett, the reader might have to live with some unanswered questions that a novelist probably would have resolved. For example, we can only guess at why one of the members of the crew did not participate in the project of telling their memories to Mrs. Avriett. It seems that nine of the ten crew members had trained together whereas the co-pilot had been a last-minute replacement. He must never have felt close to the other men, so he never shared his experiences with them and is glaringly left out of this book despite George having reached out to him. For whatever reason, he left himself out.

Two members of the crew were helped by an American named Joe who was code-named Frisco. Frisco had lived in France for many years. The Germans had killed his French wife and child. He fought for revenge and was a little crazy. As he helped two of the crewmen over the border, Frisco covered them by getting into a gun battle with pursuing German troops while his charges ran and tumbled over the finish line. Was Frisco killed, or captured and then killed, or did he escape to fight another day? We don't know.

Two crew members went over the Pyrenees mountains into Spain, but most of the successful escapees went to Switzerland. There they were forced to stay because of an official agreement between the Swiss and Germans that American servicemen who made it to Switzerland would not be allowed to go back to fighting Germany. (In the old days, at least, POWs were often actually set free on a promise that they would retire from the war and not go back to fighting.) In a remarkable turn of events, George and some other American servicemen got tired of being on vacation in Switzerland and tried to get back in the war by recrossing the border into France; however, the U.S. Army wouldn't let them go back to flying and sent them home instead.

Some of the book, at the beginning and the end, tells how George went back to France several times beginning in 1969 and visited the people who had helped him, especially Maurice who became a close friend. Inevitably, every time George went back, some of his wartime helpers had died. Finally, even Maurice died, killed in a car accident. As of 2015, however, George was still alive and determined to go back even if no one he remembered was there anymore. There was also a reunion at one point of the remaining members of the crew who met at George's home in Florida.

The stories of most of the other crewmen are not given short shrift. Irv Baum's experience stands out. He and Ted Badder were captured and sent to the same POW camp. Irv came originally from the same county in New York where my partner grew up. (My partner even recognized when I read to her from this book that the author made a typo: the town given as "Middleton, New York" should be "Middletown" instead.) Irv was Jewish, and he was lucky that he wasn't treated a lot worse than he was by the Germans. At one point, a prison camp registrar, who obviously suspected that Irv was Jewish, insisted that Irv not leave blank the space on his form for religious affiliation. At that moment, something happened to distract the registrar and he turned around. At the same time, the guard standing next to Irv took the pencil from his hand and wrote "Protestant" for him. Irv and the guard looked at each other, but never exchanged a word. Evidently never saw each other again.

That is just a taste of what this book is like. Each crew member had a somewhat or even very different experience. What is remarkable is that every one of the ten made it home in one piece, physically if not necessarily psychologically. ( )

A brief but interesting account about a B-17 crew shot down on their first flight. All parachuted to safety but things change drastically when they landed. Some were captured, others took months to escape, often with the help of courageous French men, women, and children. ( )