The Unseen Hand: The experience of a WWII POW and the Death March of 1945

In 1942, Bealer married his high school sweetheart, Nell. The next year, at the age of 21, with WWII raging, he enlisted in the Army Air Corps. He served as a Radio Gunner aboard a B-17 Flying Fortress. He was assigned to the 8th Air Corps, the 100th Bomber Group (ominously nicknamed "The Bloody Hundredth").

On August 5, 1944, his crew's luck ran out, as they were struck by flak and had to bail out over Magdeburg, Germany, where he was captured and remained a POW for the duration of the War.

This is a memoir of his harrowing experience.

Bealer was born in Prince George County, VA, in 1922. He married Clara Garnell Moore in 1942. In 1943, he enlisted in the Army Air Corps. As a Technical Sergeant, he served as a Radio Operator on a B-17 until he was shot down over Germany. He became a POW for the remainder of the War. In civilian life, he worked for the US Postal Service until 1976. After retirement, Bealer and Nell moved to Belews Creek, NC, where he enjoyed painting, gardening, and playing guitar/banjo until he passed in 2002.

S. T. Atchison, PhD (1971-) is a poet and prose writer. Winner of the Gwendolyn Brooks Award for Poetry (1992), and the Truman Capote Writing Scholarship (1999). He holds a PhD in American Literature from UNC-Greensboro. His work has appeared in Errant Parent, Endless Simmer, The Journal of Postcolonial Writing, and The Politics of Post-911 Music (an anthology). His poetry collection titled Misanthropy and Henry the Cat: prose & poems 1997-2004 is due Fall 2020.