Code Burgundy; The Long Escape

341. [1] pages. Illustrations. Inscription by the author on the title page reads 1/19/15 To: Andrea Ahearne "Cherish Your Freedom" John Katsaros. The author was a waist gunner in a B-17 that was shot down over France in WW2. The book chronicles his capture by the Gestapo, rescue by the French underground, re-arrest, re-rescue and eventual escape through Spain. John Katsaros was born on July 6, 1923 and entered the United States of America for the first time at the age of 12 in 1894. He joined the U.S. Army Air Corps on Dec. 7, 1942, and volunteered to fly combat on a B-17 Flying Fortress as an aerial engineer, gunner, and photographer, for the famous 8th Air Force, stationed in England. During his training, he managed to get his hands on B-17 controls. John flew 7 missions as waist gunner before his last one in which his bomber was shot down by Luftwaffe fighters. During his first mission, he damaged a FW190 and he was commended for heroic action. His last mission was on March 20, 1944. "Twice captured by the Gestapo and twice escaped with the assistance of the brave Free French Resistance who hid him over three months while nursing him back to health, and assisted him in his travels from north of France, south to climb the Pyrenees Mountains to Spain and freedom, only to be locked up by the Spanish Constabulary. Katsaros became also a vital link exposing enemy secrets as he moved within the vast network of cells within the Resistance. Newly declassified government documents reveal his espionage among them: Hitler’s top-secret weapons, including the Me 262 Jet Fighter, the V-2 bomb and the Ho 229 He uncovered the European-wide holocaust of Jews, Catholics, and Gypsies; sites of German stalags (POW camps), names of German commanders, transport of POWs and their number; anti-aircraft machine-guns stationed along key railway routes. He was also engaged in a sabotage mission to destroy a captured P-51 in France. On his three-month, 3,000-mile escape through enemy lines, he gathered extensive, strategic military information for the USAAF Intelligence and Britain’s Special Operations Executive (SOE). The escape route Katsaros followed was mapped out by the British SOE working with the French Resistance. They code-named him 'Burgundy', and smuggled him in various disguises from the north of France near Reims to the south, across the Pyrenees into Spain, then Gibraltar and England. He flew home on President Roosevelt’s personal plane. John Katsaros became the president of The international Air Forces Escape and Evasion Society (AFEES) which includes living WWII airmen and helpers who saved them. …