PA specialist wins DOD award for POW articles

  • Published
  • By Maj. David Kurle
  • 442nd Fighter Wing public affairs
WHITEMAN AIR FORCE BASE, Mo. --  An Air Force reservist from the 442nd Fighter Wing here continues to garner awards for articles he wrote about prisoners of war from World War II.

Tech. Sgt. Leo Brown won the Department of Defense's Thomas Jefferson Award for the four-part series April 15.

Earlier in 2007, Sergeant Brown was named the Air Force's and Air Force Reserve Command's top journalist for 2007, as well as earning awards for his feature stories about the experiences of Airmen shot down and held captive in Nazi Germany.

"It really is very overwhelming and very humbling," Sergeant Brown said. "I think a lot of the credit has to go to those World War II veterans because they gave me all their stories and I just recorded them and put them down on paper."

The series was his own initiative and stemmed from his participation in a POW reunion in Kansas City. He interviewed several veterans who had been held captive at Stalag Luft III, a German prison camp. He also visited the sites of POW camps while serving a two-week assignment in Germany.

"I was in a very privileged position being let in on these veterans' incredible stories," Sergeant Brown said. "I took a video camera to their reunion and got eight to ten hours of their recollections."

Sergeant Brown then transcribed the tapes and wrote the articles around the veterans' stories.

"I realized there were so many fascinating experiences that this was worthy of a series," he said. "The men, a vast majority of them, were willing to share the details of their captivity. I'd ask most of them one or two questions and they were off and running."

Sergeant Brown started interviewing former prisoners of war in 2005 at their reunion in Tuscon, Ariz., after meeting them at another reunion in New Orleans in 2003.

"I was impressed the most by how unassuming they are," he said. "They draw no attention to themselves or what they went through.

"Yet, once I started interviewing them, it was like sitting through a James Bond convention - given their combat and survival experiences," he said.

"We don't really know what people have gone through in their lives and it's easy to take people for granted," Sergeant Brown said. "This experience has been a reminder to me not to take people for granted, especially people from the World War II generation."

The series appeared in the 442nd Fighter Wing's monthly magazine, The Mohawk, and is still on the wing's public Web site.

The last Thomas Jefferson Award for the wing's public affairs shop came in 2002 for a series of articles about the unit's history.

Sergeant Brown teaches Christian Morality and New Testament courses at St. Thomas Aquinas High School in Overland Park, Kan., in his civilian job and has been an Air Force Reservist since 2001 following an active-duty tour from 1989 to 1992.

His World War II Prisoner of War series can be found on-line at this Website.