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Video by Andrew Breese

Third Time Down

Airman Magazine

March 8, 2017 | 55:49

Chief Master Sergeant (Ret.) Doug Morrell is an Air Force veteran with a military career spanning over 30 years. He served in World War II as a combat cameraman and flew 32 combat missions before being shot down over the “Iron Gates” of Romania. He evaded the enemy by walking across Yugoslavia and Albania for 27 days and bribing an Albanian fisherman for a ride to Italy. Back in action, he was flying his fifth raid over the Ploesti, Romania, oil fields when he was shot down again. “Oh, no! Here we go again,” Morrell said. “I was really thinking about having to walk back again.” He parachuted to the ground. This time, the Germans were waiting. He spent four-and-a-half months as a Prisoner of War in Bucharest before the advancing Russian army freed him and other captured troops. In 1969, two months before his 50th birthday and in the thick of his third war, Vietnam, Morrell was documenting a sensor drop over the Ho Chi Minh trail when he was shot down again. Nine hours later, with the help of 34 aircraft, he was picked up by an HH-3 Jolly Green Giant. Chief Morrell retired from the Air Force in 1973.

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