Staff Sergeant Conrad Desire St. Laurent / US Army Air Force

(Author’s Note: Loretta Murray, daughter of Staff Sergeant Conrad St. Laurent, was my primary contact for this profile. At the outset, she advised that much of her father’s service documentation, medals, and so forth were lost when her home burned down a few years prior, and that she would share with me what she could remember from the stories he told. However, she was able to find a 20-page document, which was a transcript of an audio-taped interview with St. Laurent that a family member, Joshua Jarr,y conducted around 2002. Hereinafter, this material will be referred to as the “Jarry Interview. Or if it is not specifically mentioned, a direct quote from St. Laurent is from that transcript.)

Conrad St. Laurent Early Days
“My father was quite a guy. I swear he had nine lives – like cat. He needed all nine for some of the situations he got himself into…” said Loretta Murray, daughter of Staff Sergeant Conrad St. Laurent, to start the interview for this profile. “It started when he was a kid. He fell through a hole in the ice on a frozen lake. He wasn’t able to come up through the hole in which he fell, but was able to swim under the ice to another hole where he came up. Another time, he was trying to fix an electric light in the basement of the family home. He broke the cardinal rule of turning off the electrical breakers and not standing in water before making electrical repairs. He got electrocuted, which left one arm black and burned… but fortunately, for me, it didn’t kill him.”

Loretta Murray noted that she had quite a collection of material about her father and his military service, including the awards he had won. Sadly, most of it was lost in a fire just a few years ago. Fortunately, she has a good memory of some of the stories her father shared from his Army days.

Conrad Desire St. Laurent was born in Nashua in 1921. Daughter Murray explains, “At one time, our family had five generations living in Nashua. My grandparents are honored at Le Parc de La Renaissance on Water St. in Nashua on the plaque under the statue, which stands there to honor the French families of Nashua.”

St Laurent spent most of his life in Nashua and attended Nashua High School for three years He then moved to St. Johnsbury, Vermont, with his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Albert St. Laurent. He completed high school there in 1938. After high school he was a truck driver in the yards for the Canadian Pacific Railway. During this time, he met Doris Davis. He entered the Army in 1942, and the couple were married on November 28, 1942. The couple had four children: Loretta, born in 1943, Tommy, born in 1945, Raymond, born in 1946, and Jim, born in 1947.

You’re In The Army Now
St. Laurent joined the Army Air Force on September 30, 1942. He was first stationed in Miami Beach, then transferred to Tyndall Field in Florida. He then went on to further training in Denver, Colorado, Fort Knox, Kentucky, Colorado Springs, Colorado, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Tampa, Florida, and Avon Park, Florida. In the Jarry Interview, St. Laurent states, “We were at Tyndall Field in Florida for three months. That’s where I received my Sergeant’s rating as an aerial gunner.” More specifically, St. Laurent would be a waist gunner in a B-17 Flying Fortress. From Avon Park, he shipped out to England to be part of the European Theater of Operations.

Welcome to England
Asked where he was stationed in England, St. Laurent replied, “I don’t recall exactly, but I know we were south of London. What I do remember there were houses on both sides of the runway. We used to take off and land in between houses.”

St. Laurent did, however, remember that he was part of the 447th bomb group, which was part of the US Eighth Air Force, which was stationed at Rattlesden Airfield, an RAF field. Further research shows that he was part of the 710th Squadron. The 447th was returned to the US, rather than advanced to the Pacific Theater of Operations at the end of the war in Europe. The group was deactivated in November 1945.

The B-17 that St. Laurent flew in was named Lady Lorraine 2, tail number 42-39865. The crew consisted of the following:

Lt. W.E. Owens – Pilot – Sumter, NC
Lt. W.M. Heim – Copilot – Buffalo, NY
Lt. Julius Matin – Navigator – Brooklyn, NY
Lt. John McKinney – bombardier – West Virginia
S/Sgt Jack T. Seeger – Engineer – Sumpter, NC
Sgt. H.E. Holland – position? – Oak City, OK
Sgt. Ed Sieuiarecki – Asst Engineer – Detroit, MI
Sgt. Larry Potter – Tail Gunner – Louisville, KY
S/Sgt. Johnny Browko – Radio – No. Little Rock, AR
S/Sgt. Conrad St. Laurent – Waist Gunner – Nashua, NH

From the time St. Laurent arrived at his duty base until his first real bombing run, three weeks elapsed. In that time, the Lady Lorraine 2 made two practice runs. Then, on May 9, 1944, it was time for the crew to “go to work.”

A Morning of Terror
On May 9, 1944, St. Laurent was flying his first combat mission over Reims, France. This was the 31st mission for the Lady Lorraine 2. Among their previous missions were five over Berlin. In a text written years later, St. Laurent noted that this was supposed to be a “milk run” …an easy assignment with little problem. From the Jarry Interview, St. Laurent continues, “We were flying over Laon, France, to bomb factories and an airbase there when we were hit by flak. See, when we got near that target, the ship was wobbly and the captain turned around to make another pass and when we were going around the second time, that’s when they got us.” At 9:35 a.m. the Lady Lorraine started taking heavy flak.

Daughter Murray explains, “His plane was hit twice, first in the nose and then about the middle of the plane, just missing him. It was obvious that the plane was going down.” From the Jarry Interview, St. Laurent continues, “We were hit in the nose first and later was hit (amidships) and she split apart. I was in the rear section when the plane split in two. That’s how I got out; I wouldn’t have made it if that didn’t happen. A guy drew these pictures (see hand drawings images) from across the way in another B-17. He witnessed the whole thing and drew it on paper.” (Author’s Note: The artist was Chuck Asadoorian, a fellow flier who met St. Laurent in the POW camp)

From the Jarry Interview, St. Laurent continues, “From the time we were hit (in the nose) I was struggling to get out of the (aft-section) because the plane was going down. And then when the plane decimated, and the wind took the two (front and center) sections, and I was in the tail section.”

St. Laurent thought at that point he had been knocked out and didn’t know how long he had been unconscious. However, if he had been knocked unconscious, it could not have been for too long because when he came to, he was still in the tail and still falling. St. Laurent continues, “I finally made it out. I was pulling on my chut,e and it finally went out. And of course, when it opened, it jacked me out. Took me right out of my boots. I left my boots right there in the plane.”

In a later text, St. Laurent wrote that he and two other men bailed out at about 5,000 feet. According to official records, only St. Laurent and John Browko, the Radio Operator, survived the crash of the Lady Lorraine 2 that day. (Author’s Note: Of the 12,731 B-17s built, about 4,735 were lost during WWII. Today, only about 45 survive in complete form.)

Daughter Murray continues, “The next thing he remembered was waking up while floating through the air. He felt encouraged knowing he was over France as he spoke French (his nickname was Frenchy), and he had French money on him. He landed in the middle of a field, but when he got up and looked around, there were Germans everywhere. He was immediately taken prisoner.”

Conrad St, Laurent – Prisoner of War
From the Jarry Interview, St. Laurent talks about being captured, “I was greeted by a whole bunch of Germans with their guns drawn and everything. But actually, I believe that they were French patriots. They were captured by the Germans at the beginning of the war and forced to become German soldiers, and they’re the ones who took me over. (Author’s Note: By this point in the war, the Germans had lost so many soldiers that they were conscripting men and even boys from the countries that they captured and forced them to fight for Germany. It was not uncommon for a small group of conscripts to be placed in charge of one lower-level German officer and forced at gunpoint to fight the Allies.)

When asked if he was injured in his parachute jump, St. Laurent replied, “Yes, I injured my whole right side. For the whole time, it was dragging a little behind me.”

Asked about the radio man, St. Laurent said, “He was picked up after me. He was brought to the same place I was. He is still living today, too, I think.”

St. Laurent’s handwritten text from a letter he wrote later continues, “We were immediately taken to a German camp on the outskirts of town. We were held for a couple of hours, then taken by car to German headquarters in Laon for questioning. All articles were taken from me. From Laon, I was taken to Reims by bus and put in jail. The food was not too bad. Held May 9th until May 13th and then picked up by German guards for transportation to Germany.”

From this point, St Laurent notes that he and three other men, “…proceeded to a gulag by train. No shoes all this time. Dressed in a heated suit on which a package of fluorodine (toothpaste) had been broken.”

St, Laurent remembers going through Frankfurt. He wrote, “No food for 4 ½ days and solitary for the rest of the time. Moved out on the night of the 21st and sent to the overnight camp across the way. Left next day for (undecipherable) and the Red Crest Camp. Arrived at the camp on the 24th. Received shoes and initial capture kit. Also given a chance to shower and shave. Food is the best since capture and morale boosted 100% to all concerned.”

(Author’s Note: A capture kit was given to American airmen to help them survive until they could be released. Among the items in the kit were chocolate and medical supplies.)

Before arriving at what might be considered their “home camp” at Stalag Luft 4, St. Laurent and many other prisoners were moved several times. Sometimes by train, and sometimes they marched.

Stalag Luft 4
The Nazis operated about 1,000 POW camps including some run by the German Luftwaffe specifically for Allied flyers. Stalag Luft 4 was located in Gross Tychow, Pomerania. This location is now known as Tychow, Poland. During WWII, this camp held primarily American airmen, but also included prisoners from other Allied countries and nations.

When the prisoners reached Stalag Luft 4, St. Laurent was astonished. “The camp was brand-spanking new,” he said. “They had just been built, and we were in section A of the camp, and that’s where we were kept. There were four different Lagers, ABC and D. A and B were the only ones ready when I got there.” (Author’s Note: “Lager” in German means storehouse or warehouse. In this case, it was the POW’s barracks.)

Daughter Murray explains, “He said the Germans were almost nice to the captured men. They were not abusive, at least not in this camp. The biggest problem was, there was little to no food.”

St Laurent continues, “I was treated very respectably. There was no beating or pushing around or anything unless you got wise. No food, though. They didn’t feed you. You just had to eat what you could. I was in charge of a lot of the daily living stuff there. I was getting upset because some of the guys were getting rid of their food and cigarettes for paper because they liked to draw almost more than they liked to eat. So I told these guys to come to me if they needed anything because I got in pretty good with the guards at the camp there. I could get them almost anything. I had one guy draw pictures of my wife and me.”

In the Jarry Interview, St. Laurent was asked if there was a hierarchical structure to the prisoners beyond military rank. In other words, did certain prisoners have a special connection with the Germans? St. Laurent replied, “Yeah… but you never knew who it was. You had the things you would need and tell someone, and sooner or later, you would get what you needed. When I was there, I was in charge of the rations coming from the Red Cross. I would hand out most of the things there.”

In the waning months of the war, the Germans had very little of anything. Their Luftwaffe had been decimated, they were low on fuel, ammunition and personnel. They had even turned to conscripting men and even boys from the countries they conquered to fight for the Third Reich.

Daughter Murray continues, “Whatever fresh food was available was consumed by the Germans. However, they allowed my father and other prisoners to gather up all the potato peels out of the garbage cans from which they made potato soup.”

The Red Cross packages sent to the camp contained food, among other things. Many of the prisoners smoked, and the desire for nicotine was so strong that some traded their food for cigarettes. “My father was a ‘take charge’ kind of guy,” said daughter Loretta Murray, “… and he took charge of distributing the Red Cross packages. He knew the men needed food more than nicotine. Somehow, he managed to scrounge enough cigarettes for those men so they could both smoke and eat.”

The Death March – Winter 1945
In the course of the Jarry Interview, St. Laurent mentioned that all the POWs had to march out of Stalag Luft 4, marching for a great distance. Oddly enough, he didn’t say any more about it, or that line of thought was not pursued by the interviewer.

According to an account written about this march years later by another captured airman, Staff Sergeant Robert Honeycutt USAAF: “We were told that we had to evacuate the camp and we had three days to get ready. They did not tell us why, but we knew. The advancing Russian army was about to overrun us. The Germans did not want 10,000 airmen set free to fly again. They told us we were only going to go three miles to the train station. We thought we would be taken to another POW camp by train. Boy, did we get fooled.”

On the morning of February 6, 1945, about 2,500 POWs were marched out of Stalag Luft 4 into the freezing cold morning, their feet shuffling through 14 inches of snow for what would be an 86-day trek of misery. According to the account, periodically, groups of prisoners would be separated from the main group and marched down a different road. It was calculated that some groups might have marched as “little” as 250 miles, while those prisoners marching for the entire time might have marched as far as 800 miles.

And if it wasn’t bad enough to be marching out in the cold, on their way out of the camp, they passed a warehouse full of Red Cross care packages that had never been handed out to the prisoners. Whereas each prisoner was to receive one package per month, the Germans forced a single package to be shared amongst six men. In this case, each man was given a box, but it weighed about 30 pounds, making them clumsy for a marching man to carry, especially in their weakened state. So, the men started opening the boxes, taking out what they wanted and placing the items in their pockets. Then the Germans made them run rather than march, urged along at the point of a bayonet. To maintain their faster pace, the men started dumping their Red Cross food and other items out of their pockets. Many of the German guards retrieved the food items to consume themselves.

To add to their injury, the marching POWs were twice strafed by fighter planes, once by the Americans, and once by the British. It is unknown how many prisoners were killed. It can only be assumed that the pilots thought the marching prisoners were Germans.

Not long after St. Laurent was captured, on June 6, 1944, the Allies landed on the Normandy beaches – D-Day – marking the beginning of the end of the war in Europe. As 1944 turned into 1945, with the Allies moving on Germany from the west and the Russians moving in from the east, and the Germans running out of just about every resource it takes to fight a war, everyone could see where things were going. Many in the German army, even many high-ranking officers, knew the end was near. POWs were able to catch bits and pieces of information from newly-captured Allied airmen. They knew it too.

Liberation
It is quite possible that St. Laurent was among those POWs who were separated from the main column to march in a different direction. In fact, he may have been marched right back to Stalag Luft 4.  What makes this assumption plausible is the diversion of liberation stories.

According to the Honeycutt account, on the evening of May 7, 1945, the still-marching POWs were inside Germany and bedded down in a barn by the side of the road. The next morning… was May 8, 1945, the acknowledged date of the German surrender. The men had no idea what was about to happen, but they did notice some of the guards were missing. Later in the morning, they heard the rumble of heavy equipment approaching… tanks! It was a convoy of British tanks coming down the road. The British soldiers on the tanks started throwing candy bars, food, and cigarettes to the POWs. “We had been liberated!”

In the Jarry Interview, St. Laurent talked about his liberation, “It was the British who liberated the camp, and I remember there was no lack of them. If you were a German and you spoke out at them or fought back in any way, they would shoot you right there on the spot.”

Whereas the marching POWs were liberated on May 8, St. Laurent notes that he was liberated at the camp three days earlier, on May 5, 1945. What the two accounts have in common is the liberation by the British.

St. Laurent said it took about a month between the time the British arrived at the camp until he was able to leave Europe. He continues, “We went from being liberated by the British right to Camp Lucky Strike in France. That was close to one of the shipping points. We were there for thirty days, and after that, we were loaded and shipped overseas.

(Author’s Note: Camp Lucky Strike was one of the so-called “cigarette camps” – staging areas around France designed to hold and consolidate recently liberated POWs (Recovered American Military Personnel or RAMP) before shipping them to their home destinations. Situated near the port of Le Havre, Camp Lucky Strike (RAMP Camp No. 1) was a massive tent city that could accommodate up to 58,000 troops.)

After a very long year in captivity, St. Laurent was finally free. At the time, he only weighed 90 pounds. Ironically, the German surrender instrument was signed three days later, May 8, 1945, in Reims, France – the same place from which he was captured. On October 4, 1945, Staff Sergeant Conrad St. Laurent was given an honorable discharge, along with a Purple Heart, a good conduct medal, and the Air Medal, among others.

Daughter Murray related an ironic story told by her father about prisoners being freed: “After being starved for so long in the POW camp, many of the men just wanted a big juicy steak and dug in as soon as they found one. Unfortunately, after having little or no food for so long, their bodies couldn’t process a heavy meal like that. For some, their first meal after captivity was their last.”

Welcome Home
St. Laurent explained his life back in the US. “I came home and started to work on the railroad in St. Johnsbury, VT. I later moved to Keene, NH. And then later on, I moved to Nashua, NH. The celebration after the war was tremendous. You see, there was no other celebration like that after any of the other wars later on in history. There were celebrations everywhere you went after the Pacific and European wars.”

Daughter Murray explained further, “After the war, my father went to school for accounting… but it just didn’t appeal to him. Then he tried selling insurance. His father and brother were both insurance brokers and were very successful at it. But it was not his “cup of tea.”

He next went into the gas station business, operating a filling station on the northeast corner of West Hollis and Pine St. in Nashua. It was known as O’Keefe’s, named for his business partner, John O’Keefe. That held his interest for several years. (The building still exists but has not pumped gas for many years.)

Finally, at 45 years old, he became a clerk at the US Post Office in Nashua, from which he later retired. Upon retirement, he moved to Florida, where he became a chaplain at his local VFW post. He moved back to Nashua in 2002.

Asked about any awards or medals he won, St. Laurent replied, “Yes, I have a bunch of them – a Purple Heart, a Good Conduct Medal, Victory Medal, but I don’t know where they are now.”

Daughter Murray remembered, “He always liked to say he was in the Air Force. He was proud of his service. He was also proud of his three sons, Thomas, Raymond, and James. Two joined the Navy and one joined the Air Force right after graduating from Nahua High School.””

(Author’s Note: The United States Army Air Force was founded on June 20, 1941, evolving from earlier aviation units associated with the Army Signal Corps. It remained part of the US Army throughout WWII. The United States Air Force, as it is known today, was founded on September 18, 1947.)

Daughter Murray adds the final words. “My Dad had a burial at St. Louis Cemetery in Nashua and was buried with his parents and other family members. He did have the VFW present, and they presented the flag to my mother and also had the gun salute (although not a 21). It was a wonderful acknowledgement of his service to his Nation,n and he would have been proud of that moment.”

(Author’s Note: A USAAF aviator named Chuck Asadoorian was flying on another bomber in formation with the Lady Lorraine 2 on the morning of May 9, 1944. He saw St. Laurent’s plane go down. Later, he met up with St. Laurent in Stalag Luft 4 and made a drawing of the Lady Lorraine 2 as she broke up under enemy fire. He also drew the picture of St. Laurent and drew a picture of his wife from a photograph.)

US Service Personnel Profiles
By Gary Ledoux May 9, 2025