One Screaming Eagle: From a Farm Boy to the German Pow Camps and Home Again

By Rhonda Hanson

The book is the extraordinary story of a country boy who was sent to fight in WWII in the 101st Airborne division. He fought in Normandy and survived against overwhelming odds before heading into Holland in a glider which crashed when the tow plane was shot down. He was captured by the Germans and imprisoned as a POW until the Russians liberated the camp where he was being held. It tells of the challenges Earnest faced and the subsequent obstacles he overcame returning to civilian life in post-war America.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Oct 7, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483509914

Book preview

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Chapter 1-The Early Days

Earnest Dale Hanson, a surviving WWII POW, was born on September 20, 1920 to Charlie and Hattie Hanson on a homestead near the little town of Kim in Southeastern Colorado. "Grandfather Henry Hanson made the 1889 Oklahoma Land Rush in a wagon, didn’t get a piece of land in the first run, but was successful on the second. My mother’s family, the Connellys, also homesteaded at the same time in Indian Territory (Oklahoma). It was there that my folks met and were married, receiving a cow for their wedding present.

Shortly thereafter, the Hanson and Connelly families decided to join a wagon train and move to Kim, Colorado, where there was also land to be homesteaded.

My parents, Charlie and Hattie Hanson, making their way home with their wedding present – a cow loaded into their wagon.

My parents in their horse drawn buggy. Elmer Hanson is standing beside them.

My folks travelled in a wagon with a jetty since the jetty portion could be used as a temporary dwelling. The jetty (which was the part of the wagon with the bowed canvas top) fit inside a wagon bed and could be removed when the destination was reached. One of the duties of the women was to collect buffalo chips (dung) so that they would have a source of fuel for cooking the meals. When the wind blew, my mom would put extra heavy pepper into her seasoning so that no one would know the difference between buffalo chip ashes and pepper. Everyone knew what was going on, but it made them feel better to tell themselves that it was only pepper. The trip was made in the summertime, so the lack of wood along the journey wasn’t a factor in fire building for warmth. Dry Buffalo chips were easily collected and didn’t weigh much.

The two families settled (about two miles south of Kim) along the Mesa De Mayo, which formed a horseshoe, giving them a little more moisture from the formation of the land. Each head of household chose his 160 acres (both of my parents filed for 160 acres, so we had 320 acres for our farm) and settled in to make it home. My dad took the jetty out of the wagon and put it on the ground where he and my mother lived during their first year in Colorado. Winters are harsh in Southeastern Colorado. It was a hard time for them dealing with the snow and below zero cold with nothing between them and the weather but wood and canvas. They couldn’t build a fire in the jetty to keep warm so most of their living had to be done outdoors. Without wells, water for livestock and the family had to be hauled in the wagon from Kim, 2.5 miles away. Because of the cold winter, water left overnight often froze and became useless for livestock. Life was difficult for them that first winter.

In the spring, the families started going into the canyons, cutting wood and stone to start building homes. There was sandstone in the canyons that could be broken into building blocks for a house. Dirt was mixed with water to make mud, and then the stones were set in the mud to stop the wind from blowing through. The first home was constructed this way with a dirt floor, no ceiling and a metal roof, but it was a mansion compared to living in the jetty. At the same time the homesteaders were building houses, ground had to be plowed, planted, harvested and threshed.

Picture from 1922 of my sister Doris at 6 months old and me at 2.

My parents’ first child, a son, was stillborn. A second son was born within the year, and then in 1920, I was born, another son. A diphtheria epidemic raged through Kim and my older brother died of it in 1923. In 1925 a diphtheria vaccination was available; I was vaccinated with hope that I wouldn’t contract the disease and die, too. The vaccinations hadn’t been tested very well yet and I had a severe reaction to it, causing me to be mentally slow until somewhere around the age of twelve.

There were three homesteads that made up the 640 acres on our square mile, my parents’ 320 acres, my Uncle Ralph Koonz’ 160 acres, and my