World War II Pilot Returns to Hero’s Welcome in Italy
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A marching band, a speech by the mayor and poems from villagers greeted La Mirada resident Bud Kingsbury when he showed up in the tiny Italian town of Ascea the other day.
It was a far different situation than the one he experienced 53 years ago, when he washed ashore there after his World War II bomber was shot down by German fighter planes while headed for a raid over Italy.
Kingsbury, now 75 and a retired plumbing contractor, was rescued Aug. 20, 1943, by three young sisters who found him lying semiconscious in the surf. Villagers carried him to a hospital before Italian officials took him prisoner.
His three rescuers--Mariuccia Giudice, now 74, Wanda Giudice, 72, and Ivana Giudice, 65--invited Kingsbury back last month for the reunion.
“It was very emotional. It was like I helped liberate the country, not come to bomb it,” Kingsbury recalled this week after returning home with his wife of 55 years, Kay. “The whole town had known about the rescue.”
It took Kingsbury 32 hours to swim 21 miles after the B-17 Flying Fortress he was piloting was shot down over the Mediterranean. The bomber’s other nine crewmen died.
Kingsbury spent 22 months in a German prisoner of war camp until the war’s end.
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