By Mark Argento

On Feb. 7, 1945, Harold “Bud” Pressel was perched over a pair of .50-caliber guns in a Plexiglas turret mounted on the tail of a B-24 Liberator over Floridsdorf, Germany. 

The heavy bomber – nicknamed “The Flying Coffin” by those who flew it – had just dropped four tons of bombs on a refinery, the pilot dodging heavy flak as he set a course to return to the base in Italy. 

His evasive maneuvers were for naught. A piece of flak ripped through the bomber’s left wing between its two massive prop engines, piercing a fuel tank. 

The plane was going down, dropping from 26,000 feet to 14,000 feet in a matter of seconds.  

The pilot tried to set a course for the Russian lines, but it was too late. The crew had to bail. 

Pressel bailed from the plane, landing hard in a cornfield. The free fall caused his eardrums to rupture, an injury that would later require surgery. 

He and the rest of the crew – save the pilots, who ditched the plane on the ice atop a frozen lake and were rescued by Russian troops – were captured by the Germans and sent to a POW camp, where Pressel was housed until Gen. George Patton liberated the camp during his push toward Berlin. 

The ruptured eardrum qualified Pressel for the Purple Heart. But he wasn’t concerned about it then. He was more concerned about getting home, which he did. 

Pentago denied request

About a decade ago, he believed he should try to get his Purple Heart, just for the sake of it. But the Department of Defense declined his request. 

It took a chance meeting with a man who worked for naval intelligence, whose avocation was painting and illustrating, to revive the quest. 

Pressel told Sample his story and Sample did the painting, selling limited edition prints and giving the original to Pressel. (The painting hangs in Pressel’s Springettsbury Township home.) 

The two men remained friends and stayed in touch. Once, Sample recalls, he called Pressel and heard wind over the phone. He mentioned it and asked Pressel, who was about 80 at the time, where he was. Pressel told him he was up on his roof cleaning his gutters. Sample told him he shouldn’t be doing that. (At that time, Pressel was going to the gym every morning. Now, as he approaches his 101^st birthday, he goes just a few times a week and works out with a personal trainer.) 

Last summer, Pressel mentioned that he had tried to get his Purple Heart but was turned down. Sample believed his friend deserved the award and told him, “Let me take a look.” 

It was more difficult than he thought it would be. 

Records destroyed in fire

The Department of Defense rejected Pressel’s initial request for lack of documentation, Sample said. He would have to navigate the military bureaucracy, something he was familiar with from his days of serving in the Pentagon.  

He enlisted the help of a friend of a friend, retired Air Force Lt. Col. Dave Olafson. Olafson is a history buff and had worked in military intelligence and knew his way around. Sample also enlisted the help of Dick Olson, whose late father served in the same bomb group as Pressel and who was awarded a posthumous Purple Heart thanks to his son’s efforts. 

The three men contacted congressional offices and received no replies, except one, from Pressel’s Congressman, U.S. Rep. Scott Perry, a central Pennsylvania Republican. One of Perry’s staffers, Donna Austin, “put us on the right track.”

Still, Sample said, it was a struggle. Documentation of Pressel’s service had been destroyed in a fire at a St. Louis warehouse in 1971 and the three men would have to recreate them. 

They researched historical archives, finding, among other things, German documents that listed Pressel at a POW at one of the Nazi’s camps. The German records, though, did not describe Pressel’s injury, or describe any treatment, if any, he received.  

“It’s not like the Germans kept copious notes about a prisoner’s health,” Sample said. 

Sample even offered to have Pressel take a polygraph test. 

The Defense Department didn’t seem to budge, he said. 

Then one day...

He thought his efforts had failed. “We just needed somebody to connect the dots,” he said. “I thought, it’s not going to happen.” 

One morning, he took his dog for a walk, and when he returned home he had an email. It was Austin, telling him that Pressel had been awarded his Purple Heart. 

He called Pressel immediately. “He couldn’t believe it,” Sample said. “He absolutely couldn’t believe it.” Pressel told Sample, “I don’t know how you did it.” 

Sample told him he didn’t do it alone, that “it took a lot of people to get this through.” 

So, on Wednesday, Jan. 29, Pressel and his family will go to the Dallastown American Legion Hall and there, Major Gen. David Lyons, commander of the 15^th Air Force, the unit Pressel served with, will award him his medal. 

Pressel was grateful.  

“I’ll be glad to get it,” he said. “I’ll be glad to accept it.”