During the week of April 17, 1944, Mrs. Stanley Cutforth of Applegate received a letter from her son, Sgt. Donald Cameron, from a prisoner of war camp somewhere in Germany. Sgt. Cameron was a gunner, one of 10- crew members, on a B-17 ‘flying fortress’ that was shot down during a bombing mission over Germany in late November of 1943. He was one of only two who survived by jumping from the plane with a parachute. This was his first mission.
In the highly censored letter, published in the April 21, 1944, Colfax Record, Sgt. Cameron wrote:
“Dear Mammy,
“Well finally procured a prison number, which is nothing to be proud of, I guess, but it does enable me to write to you, for which I am very grateful…I don’t know if the boys in my barracks in England will send home my personal belongings or not, but if they do I hope you will write and tell me what all came.
“P.S. Please send all the candy you can, plus a couple of toothbrushes.”
On June 19, 1945, Sgt. Cameron stepped off a bus in Applegate and returned home for the first time since he left for the war in the fall of 1943.
He spent nearly 19 months in the prisoner of war camp in Germany. Soon after his return, Cameron was hired by PG&E, a company he stayed with until his retirement in 1981. The 1953 film “Stalag 17,” which starred William Holden, was based on a story by one of Donald Cameron’s fellow prisoners. Cameron was cast, along with 13 other former prisoners of war, as an extra in the film.
Donald Cameron died in 2001 and is buried in the Colfax Cemetery.
Photo: Sgt. Donald Cameron in the September 10, 1943, issue of The Colfax Record
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