MARIETTA - Bill Couch Sr., 89, of Marietta, served as an officer in the Army Air Corps during War World II beginning in 1942 and retired from service in 1953. A tall and mild-mannered man, Couch was awarded the Air Medal and said he largely managed to survive the war without serious injury until one day in 1943.

Couch was in the 349th Squadron of the 100th Bomb Group in the Eighth Air Force. He became a prisoner of war in August 1943 in Germany, after his B-17 aircraft sustained damage in an air attack on his crew's seventh and final bombing mission. The plane crash-landed into the Mediterranean Sea, Couch recalled, and he and his fellow crewmembers were taken to a German POW camp.

Couch grew up in Senoia in Coweta County and became an aviation cadet shortly after Pearl Harbor. By 1943, he and his crew had successfully completed several bombing missions over Germany and occupied France. But on the morning of Aug. 17, 1943, they received a grim 3:30 a.m. briefing in England that they were needed to fly deep into German territory to take out an aircraft manufacturing plant in Regensburg, close to the Czech Republic border.

"The plan was to leave from a base in England, bomb the target and then return to a base in North Africa," recalled Couch, who was the crew's bombardier.

His job "entailed aiming and dropping the bombs on the target, which meant I had to keep up with the altitude and air speed of the airplane so that the bombs could be dropped properly," Couch said. He said about 60 percent of bombs dropped on missions ended up in either forests, residential areas or fields.

However, on that mission, his crew's B-17 - nicknamed the "Oh Nausea" - successfully hit its targets as did the 15 other U.S. planes that had flown together in tight formation to increase the impact of their bombs. But they were met by numerous German fighter plans.

Couch remembered seeing other aircrafts going down in flames and men parachuting while on fire.

It was a frightening experience for the 23-year-old aviator. His young crew's B-17 had sustained extensive damage, particularly to its engine, but decided to continue to North Africa. The plane didn't make it and ultimately did a ditch, or crash, landing with wheels up into the Mediterranean.

"Again our luck held out and there was not a scratch to the crew. The ditch landing went smoothly and the airplane stayed afloat for two hours," Couch recalled. As result of the hard landing, Couch has lived with a curvature of the spine ever since.

Before their SOS calls for help from their raft were answered, the crew was picked up the next morning by a German amphibious aircraft. It was good news, under the circumstances.

"People on both sides played rough," Couch said. "They were not supposed to shoot at people on the water, in rafts or swimming around in the water under the rules of war in effect at that time. But, a lot of people did."

Couch recalled that a German crew member said to him in English, "For you, the war is over." "I remember that plain as day," he said 66 years later in his dining room.

Couch spent the next 20 months as a POW. The first 17 months were in a camp surrounded by barbed-wire fences and guard towers, called Stalag Luft 3, near Sagan. As a second lieutenant officer, Couch said he didn't have to work. Most days were spent talking, walking, reading or napping and then eating rations before they eventually deteriorated. He lost 20 pounds.

"We were imprisoned, but we were treated humanely," he said.

Back home in Coweta, Couch's parents no doubt worried about their eldest son. They had received a letter dated Nov. 24, 1943, from Col. Howard Bresee, assistant director of the Prisoners of War Division in Washington, D.C., informing them that a shortwave broadcast intercepted by the government revealed that he had been captured.

On Sept. 5, 1944, while still imprisoned, Couch wrote back home to them in one of about 12 letters he sent as a POW.

It read, "Dear Folks: Still O.K. and doing fine in prison. Hope you all are O.K. too."

"Let me know what Cecil (brother) is doing and Aunt Linnie and everybody too. Tell Herschel (brother) to study hard and be a good boy. Perhaps it will soon be over and I can be home to see you again. Don't think it will last much longer. Happy birthday to daddy, sorry, I can't send any present."

The last three months of Couch's imprisonment was spent in another German POW camp called Stalag 7A, near Moosburg in Bavaria.

Couch recalled that he and the other 2,000 American and British POWs were forced to march in January 1945 for nearly two days in three-inch-deep snow en route to Stalag 7A in what was referred to as the 'Frozen March.'

"It was the biggest snowstorm in decades," Couch said. Many got frostbite, he remembered. He said the men were then packed into cattle cars that were infested with fleas and lice, for the rest of the three day journey by train.

Couch described conditions at Stalag 7A as "very, very filthy." He said it made the first POW camp look like a country club.

However, on April 29, 1945, Couch and the rest of the POWs were rescued by famed Army Gen. George S. Patton's Third Army, after a brief fight in which he said about 15 American and roughly 70 German soldiers died.

"It was a thrill of a lifetime to see those G.I.s," Couch said.

He remained in the military after the war until 1953, when he was discharged as a captain. Couch went to Georgia State University on the G.I. Bill, and earned a marketing degree in 1963. He worked for Southern Railroad as a diesel electrician from 1953 until retiring in 1984. He married and has two children and six grandchildren.

In 1995, he married his second wife, Joan Schrampfer, who coincidently was previously married to a B-17 pilot who died years ago.

Schrampfer, 83, said her husband was reluctant to talk about his war experience until about 15 years ago. Not long after they met she remembered him telling her, "I'll answer any question, but get them out of me in bit and pieces because it's painful."

It wasn't until they were at a restaurant with their grandchildren one day that "he just opened up with those kids" and shared his experiences. Couch later wrote some of his accounts down on paper. His family has urged him to write a book, but Couch said he doubts that will ever happen.

Veterans Day, said Couch, is a "time when we can reflect on the sacrifices of those who have gone before us to ensure the freedoms we have today."