In General Yeager’s own words: “After 1. being shot down on March 5, 1944 and hiding out, sometimes in plain sight, from the Nazis, Gestapo, Germans, and French Milice (German controlled French police, sometimes much worse than the Gestapo), 2. escaping over the Pyrenees carrying a wounded airman, and 3. spending a few weeks at the spa in Spain, watching all the girls in skimpy bathing outfits, getting a tan, putting on weight, eating bananas, healing: the American consul in Spain put a few of us escapees on a train for Madrid, then one to Gibraltar.
“I arrived in Gibraltar May 15, 1944 and was interrogated there. They indicated that I got to go home after I got to England. The reason was, if they put me back on combat and I was shot down again but this time captured, the Germans might be able to torture information out of me about the French Underground that had saved me.
“But I didn’t want to go home. So, I started planning how to stay on combat and where. “
Owned by the British for over two centuries, during World War II, Gibraltar served a vital role in both the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Theater, controlling virtually all naval traffic into and out of the Mediterranean Sea from the Atlantic Ocean.
Inside the Rock of Gibraltar itself, miles of tunnels were excavated from the from the limestone. Masses of rock were blasted out to build an “underground city”.[4] In huge man-made caverns, barracks, offices, and a fully equipped hospital were constructed, complete with an operation theater and X-ray equipment.
The civilians of Gibraltar had been evacuated leaving it solely a military outpost and from which Operation Torch, the allied invasion of French North Africa in November 1942, commanded by General Dwight D. Eisenhower, was coordinated. the North Africa campaign had been
“I wondered how long I would be detained in Gibraltar and when would I get to England. This sitting out the war and not fighting was difficult and frankly, boring. On the flip side, if I went home, I’d get to see Glennis. But, as merely a flight officer, what could I offer her? Just a cabin in a holler.”
c. GCYI