HTML>T/Sgt Anthony A. Giammettie

T/Sgt Giammettie Testimony




Declassified per Executive Order 12356, Section 3.3, 735027, By NND, Date 1973




CONFIDENTIAL

T/Sgt Anthony A. Giammettie
(serial # omitted)
25 August 1945

MEMORANDUM FOR THE OFFICER IN CHARGE:

      1. On 25 August 1945, the undersigned interrogated T/Sgt Anthony A. Giammettie, (serial # omitted), who was an Internee, at Adelboden, Switzerland, relative to imprisonment under improper conditions.

      2. I was shot down on June 13, 1944 over Munich-Innsbruck by a combination of flak and fighters. I was attached to the 484th Bomb Group of the Fifteenth Air Force. Part of my crew bailed out over the target and the rest of us stayed with the plane. We landed in Switzerland at Dubendorf Swiss Military Airport. Dubendorf is right near Zurich. The Swiss captured us and brought us to their headquarters for interrogation right in the town of Dubendorf. They searched us and went through everything we had and took what they thought they had to look at. They gave us back most of the stuff. Then they took us upstairs in some rooms and kept us there for two (2) days. They called me down for interrogation again and then they finally released us and put us on a train and sent us to a quarantine camp, Chaumont – New Chatel.

      3. When I first came to Dubendorf, I hurt my knee and when we got there the Swiss doctor asked us if anyone needed any medical treatment, but we all said no because we didn’t know what facilities they had. When I got to Chaumont, I decided to go to a medical doctor and he just looked at me and patted my knee and painted part of it. He told me I had water on the knee and something else wrong with me. He didn’t have any bandages in his office so he claimed, and I had to go to a drug store and get some and then had to wrap it myself. He told me to come back the next day, but I didn’t.

      4. I talked to several of the fellows that were at Wauwilermoos and they said they just got boiled potatoes with the skins still on and soup and a fourth loaf of black bread a day. That was their ration. Some of the fellows were: T/Sgt Salvatore DeLuca, S/Sgt Carl McDonald (he was only nineteen (19) years old), my bombardier, 2nd Lt. John H. Cosner and another fellow Harry Bellmere. Bellmere and DeLuca were kept in solitary confinement for ten (10) or fifteen (15) days for trying to escape. The fellows at Wauwilermoos used to write us and ask us for food and clothing. They hardly ever got anything to eat. They looked just like skeletons when they got out of there. Most of these stories have been turned in before.

      5. I escaped and got to allied territory December 5th, 1944. I was interrogated at an Intelligence Hq. at Aneccy, France. Captain Wordman interrogated me there. When I got back to Italy at Bari, I was interrogated again by a 1st Lt. At the 15th A.F. headquarters. This Lieutenant’s name started with a “K”, but I can’t remember it now. He was from Washington, D.C.

      6. Our American Commander at Adelboden was Captain Roberts and he was with the 55th Wing, 464th or 465th Bomb Group, 15th Air Force. He told us not to try to escape. He also reprimanded S/Sgt Paul Sprenger who is now at Langley Field, Virginia, for suggesting that he was going to try to escape.

CERTIFICATE


I, Robert A. Crone, Captain, A. C., (serial # omitted), certify that T/Sgt Anthony A. Giammettie, (serial # omitted), personally appeared before me on 25 August 1945 and testified concerning War Crimes; and that the foregoing is an accurate transcription of the information given by him.

Place: Truax Field, Madison, Wis.      ROBERT A. CRONE, Captain, A.C. (serial # omitted)
Date: 25 Aug. 1945

Forwarded to Theater Judge Advocate
ETO MAY 20 1946

CONFIDENTIAL

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