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Last Name: ` HEEKIN	First Name Middle Initial: FRANCIS		Nick Name: ' FRANK '
Street: 2924 GODA AVE	City & State: CINCINNATI, OH		E-Mail:
Zip: 45211	Phone:		Spouse: ELEANOR L DIED 11-30-98
Conflict: WW II	Service Branch: Army Air Corp		Unit: 8TH AF
Theater: ETO	Where Captured: BERLIN		Date Captured: 06/21/44
Camps Held In: LUFT IV			How Long Interned: 300 days
liberated / repatriated: liberated	Date Liberated: 04/17/45		Age at Capture: 25
Medals Received: PRISONER OF WAR MEDAL, GOOD CONDUCT MEDAL
Military Job: SGT		Company: G. M. CORP.
Occupation after War: SALES

Military Bio:

Mr. Heekin was drafted in June 1941, and was sent to Ft. Still Okla. He was stationed there and trained for eighteen months. He later joined the Air Corps in March 1943. The Air Corps washed out all of cadets and sent Frank to Air Mechanics School, Gunnery School, and from there he was attached to a crew.

He was sent overseas in June 1944 and Frank’s crew joined with the 457 IBG of the 8th Air Force, Frank was shot down on his first mission to Berlin. The crew bailed out thirty miles west of Berlin, and was picked up right away and was taken to a local village jail. Four of the nine men crew were killed. Mr. Heekin was taken from the jail with three other prisoners and taken to a cemetery and ordered to dig a grave. They put the four men in those graves. One was our radioman.

From there Frank was taken to the Interrogation Center at Frankfort. They were there about a week before they were sent by boxcar to Stalag Luft IV. It was located ten miles south of the Baltic Sea in the Pomerania State Of Germany. Frank was there until February 6, 1945. From their Mr. Heekin group left and was put on the Black Death March. It lasted eighty-six days. It was six hundred miles in the dead of winter. Dysenteria was a way of life. Frank escaped from the march in late March with three other men. They were loose about nineteen days. They walked at night and slept in the daytime avoiding several German patrols, and living off the land. They found an English Army on April 17. Two men were sick and were taken to hospitals in Belgium. Frank wound up in a hospital in England, and got back to the states in June 1945.

In 1947 he married Eleanor and were married for fifty-one years before she passed away on November 30th, 1998 they had four children together. Three of their children are still alive.


Frank Enjoying Life After The Military	Sgt. Frank Heekin