A veteran who will be honored as one of six Elder Statesmen of the U.S. was part of an ISU event honoring prisoners of war last week.

The Tri-service retreat honoring prisoners or war and those missing in action featured Hartley “Hap” Westbrook, who spoke on Friday evening.

On Oct. 21, Westbrook will be honored as an Elder Statesmen in Washington, D.C. He will also participate in the World Living POW Reunion in October.

Speaking to an audience in Gilman Hall, Westbrook detailed his own account of being a prisoner of war:

In September of 1942, Westbrook took a train from Will Rogers Field in Oklahoma City to New York, where he went aboard the Queen Mary as a part of a group transport to England. After a threat of an attack by a submarine, the ship was escorted into dock.

It was in Westbrook’s 17th mission that his B-24 bomber was shot down.

“I can still hear the shots and smell the smoke of the plane burning,” Westbrook said. “There were two dead in the back of the plane that had to be abandoned.”

Bail out orders were given and Westbrook jumped out of his plane at 23,000 feet into temperatures below zero.

“It seems like forever at 23,000 feet. It was cold and I couldn’t see,” Westbrook said.

He landed in the water and his sheepskin boots acted as anchors, Westbrook said. While trying to swim, Westbrook was shot in the arm.

He remained in the water for three hours.

“After a while, your body blackens, you freeze and become unconscious – eventually you float,” Westbrook said.

A fishing boat picked him up and placed him in the engine room of the boat to warm him up.

He realized his captors didn’t speak English and tried to offer escape money for his release. Instead, Westbrook was turned over to the Germans.

Westbrook said he spent his first night as a POW in a barn. He then went from Copenhagen to Berlin and then to Poland. The first camp was for British and American prisoners. Eventually he went to an American camp.

“There was bread stacked on a wagon and those were our rations,” Westbrook said. He said he even ate soup that had maggots in it.

When he arrived home, he weighed 118 pounds.

Westbrook’s speech was not all grim. More than once he made his audience chuckle with stories of “games and pranks” he and his fellow prisoners would play on the German guards, or “goons,” as he called them.

The “games” played by Americans, some of whom were also baseball players, consisted of seeing who could knock the guards’ lights out with rocks they collected earlier in the day.

Westbrook also talked of digging escape tunnels to fool the Germans. Other plots included to hiding dirt in torn-off sleeves, asking for seeds so they could plant gardens, and setting up faux boxing events to distract the guards.

Westbrook also asked for and took a job repairing shoes because “it was something to do.”

By the end of the war the prisoners had built a two-way radio for communication.

Westbrook said the Germans were nice to the prisoners who followed the rules of the Geneva Convention.

Westbrook said he believed they were spared because the Germans thought the prisoners were good for bartering.

Eventually, Westbrook said, he was rescued and went on to start his own flight service in Ames. He has recently published and released an autobiography, “An Iowa Pilot Named Hap.”

“I look forward to this every year,” said Lance Dorenkamp, senior in meteorology.

“It’s motivating and a privilege. It helps give us perspective.”

Fellow cadet Lauren Seruya, sophomore in pre-business, said the speeches are nice to hear.

“A lot of times people forget, especially with World War II veterans, and it’s nice to have a ceremony to remember the importance of what they did,” Seruya said.