Veteran: crew honored by French town
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    Lesko was part of a 10-man crew flying bombing missions out of Ipswitch, northeast of London. Most missions over Germany, flown in 18 plane formations, lasted six to eight hours. Each crew member was trained for any function on the bomber. Lesko, at age 20, was co-pilot on "Ginger" the day of the crash.
    "Our target was the Farber chemical works in Germany," he said. " We had hit the site before, and we knew it was a tough target."
     The crew dropped its bombs, and before the bomb bay doors closed, Lesko spotted fire from 88-mm guns.
    " I saw a burst 300 yards in front, then one 150 yards away," he said. " I knew we were right in line for the next one."
    He was right. One of the four engines was knocked out, and the crew bailed out when the plane dropped to 10,000 feet.
          
    The plane crashed in Schoeneck, a town of several thousand people just across the French border. After surviving machine gun fire on the way down, the crew landed in hostile territory. Lesko and the other two survivors, Norman Phillips and Albert Lang, landed close to each other.
   " Our parachutes were hung up in trees." he said. "We cut ourselves down and buried our firearms, because we knew we would be shot if we were caught with them. The fellow who caught me was 16 years old. I was sent to a civilian jail for five days."
   Other crew members were not as fortunate.
    " The others landed three or four miles away," he said.     "Five or six of them were captured by SS agents, marched into the forest and shot in the back of the head. One landed in a river and drowned, then was shot anyway."
    As a lieutenant, Lesko was sent to an officers' POW camp near the Baltic Sea. Even tough he believed the war was winding down, he never stopped coming up with schemes to escape. He ran one idea past the "escape officer," a veteran prisoner who gave advice on the feasibility of escape plans.
    "I had a great plan to skate the Baltic to freedom," he said. "I was raised on skates in Ohio. When the Red Cross sent some skates, I hid them under my mattress. I was going to use them to cut the barbed wire fence, walk a mile to the sea and skate the 60 miles to Sweden. The escape officer liked the plan. but then told me that the Baltic doesn't freeze over in the winter."
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