Roy Allen

Roy Allen (1918 - 1991) was born in the north Philadelphia neighborhood of Olney. He was a bomber pilot during World War II. On June 14, 1944, pilot Roy Allen and the crew of his B-17 Flying Fortress embarked on a mission over Nazi-occupied France. Hit by flak, Roy was forced to parachute into France. Trapped behind enemy lines, he was rescued by Colette Florin, a 21-year-old schoolteacher and member of the French Resistance. He stayed with Colette for a few weeks until he was able to be moved into Paris. Once he arrived in Paris a man told him that he was taking him to another agent who would then sneak him into Spain and then on to England. The agent that was taking him to his supposed "British Agent", who went by Captain Jaques, turned out to betray him and turned him over to the Gestapo. He was the taken to Avenue Foch which at the time was the Gestapo headquarters for all of France. At Avenue Foch he was tortured and labeled a terrorist and denied the rights as a prisoner of war. He and other airmen were then taken to Fresnes Prison located in the town of Fresnes, Val-de-Marne, 7 miles south of Paris. As the front neared Them, the Germans decided to ship Roy Allen and all of the other 168 Allied airmen to Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany. They left Fresnes in cattle cars of a train, the cattle cars were designed to hold up to 40 men but the Germans stuffed 80 men in the cars and they were all forced to stand for the duration of the trip. In Buchenwald Roy Allen was treated terribly, by the time he left he weighed a mere 110 lb. almost 80 lb lighter than when he left for his mission back on June 14th. While there he suffered from dysentary, Pneumonia and various other illnesses presented by the poor environment. After months stuck in Buchenwald (Which is a clear violation of the Third Geneva Convention) an officer from the Luftwaffe came and took the airmen from Buchenwald to Stalag Luft III in Poland. After being in the P.O.W. camp for some time, the Allies were advancing on the area of Stalag Luft III from nearly all sides and all of the prisoners were ordered into a forced March. This death march is commonly referred to as The March. This Began 27 January 1945 through April 1945.

External links

Penn History Professor Thomas Childers wrote a novel focusing around Roy Allen titled, "In the Shadows of War: Three Lives United By French Resistance" (the second novel in a trilogy written about World War II):
*http://www.dailypennsylvanian.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2003/03/07/3e6864d01d9cb

Historical Drama that includes Roy Allen's Story:
*http://www.amazon.imdb.com/title/tt0443640/usercomments
*http://store.aetv.com/html/product/index.jhtml?id=74141

Book

*cite book
title= In the Shadows of War: An American Pilot's Odyssey Through Occupied France and the Camps of Nazi Germany |author= Thomas Chiders
year= 2003
publisher= Henry Holt & Company
id= ISBN 0-8050-5753-6

Movie

*Shot From the Sky (2004) 96 min.