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Squadron Commander Major Gale ‘Buck’ Cleven, best friends with John Egan, liked ice cream and English war movies, was more likely to be found in his bed asleep than in the pub with his comrades and was loyal to a girl back home named Marge.
He was also one of the ‘House of Lords of flying men’, a decorated war hero who helped ‘give the 100th its personality’.
Born on December 27, 1918, shortly after the conclusion of World War I, Gale Cleven worked his way through the University of Wyoming as a roughneck on a drilling crew, beginning his military career at Randolph Field, Texas, in March 1940 where he signed in as a Flying Cadet, and where he also picked up the nickname ‘Bucky’ from John Egan.
By July 1942 he was a Captain in command of 350th Bomb Squadron at Boise Idaho and a year later he took his men overseas to join the 100th Bomb Group at Thorpe Abbotts in East Anglia, England where he met up again with Egan, also with the 100th and in command of the 418th.
Cleven’s first mission was to Bremen on June 25, 1943. His eleventh, for which he was awarded a Distinguished Service Cross, was on August 17, when co-piloting a B-17 on a raid on aircraft factories at Regensburg in south-east Germany. His was lead plane in the lowest and final group in the bomber stream, the so-called Coffin Corner, and they were hit by enemy fighters in force as soon as they crossed the Channel. The 350th got the worst of the attack.
Cleven’s lead plane, piloted by Norman Scott, had taken a number of hits before they reached the target with one man dead, another seriously injured and the hydraulics and electrical systems damaged. Another 20mm shell ripped the nose of the plane and wounded the bombardier and there were further hits to the rudder and an engine.
The pilot signalled a bail-out and there was every evidence to justify abandoning ship, but Cleven countermanded the order, and took over the controls. His words were heard over the intercom and had a magical effect on the crew. They stuck to their guns, and the B-17 kept on, eventually landing in Africa.
Major Gale ‘Buck’ Cleven returned to America and married his sweetheart Marge.
The story of Cleven on the Regensburg raid ‘electrified the base’, but Cleven didn’t travel to London to pick up his DSC. ‘Medal, hell, I needed an aspirin,’ he said.
On the morning of October 8, 1943, Cleven took off for a raid on Bremen in north-west Germany and didn’t return. Before they reached the target three Luftwaffe fighters ‘at 10.00 clock high, out of the sun’ tore into his Fortress. Control cables were severed, and part of the left wing blown off as shells ripped through the nose. The crew threw out all gear to lighten the load as Cleven tried to make it to the Dutch border, but they were forced down by further attacks and the order was given to bail out.
According to Cleven’s own account he landed right at the front door of a farmhouse lying on his back with a pitchfork on his chest. ‘In my pitiful high school German, I tried to convince him I was a good guy. He wasn’t buying it.’
With his pilot who had landed nearby he was then taken to a Luftwaffe station somewhere to the west of Osnabruck, where more members of the crew eventually gathered.
On October 23, 1943, Cleven arrived at Stalag Luft III Sagan, which would later become famous for The Great Escape.
Not long after he was joined by his buddy John Egan – the other ‘Bucky’ – who had been shot down two days after Cleven on a raid on Munster and famously greeted him with the words, ‘What the Hell took you so long?’
Following D-Day, with the Allies moving in from the West and the Russians from the East, there was an inevitability about the outcome.
During the winter of 1944/45, the senior German officers prepared to evacuate the camp, which eventually came suddenly on January 27 at 7pm. They were marched out in freezing conditions.
Cleven recalled one night when they took shelter in a building previously used by Polish and Russian slave labour, the straw mattresses were ‘so infested by bugs they could have moved by themselves’. In the general chaos of that march, with some guards trigger-happy and others deserting, Cleven escaped with two other POWs, his best friend Egan, who had been appointed head of security and had to stay, providing cover.
But it was the manure on the ground as they crawled away that saved them. ‘It was Chanel No 5,’ said Cleven. ‘It took the sentry dogs off our scent. We took off through muddy fields and kept moving west. We travelled by night and figured that we’d soon run into our boys.’
When they saw an American reconnaissance plane overhead they knew it was safe to walk by daylight. ‘I was so skinny,’ Cleven recalled, ‘that if I stood just right, I didn’t have a shadow.’
He was back at Thorpe Abbots twelve days later, and when war ended he went back home to America – and married Marge.
John Egan was best man.
