World War II all but emptied the Caldwell family home and lumber mill in Maiden during the 1940s.

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1 Catawba County's band of brothers Ragan Robinson Posted: Monday, October 19, 2009 Shots hit both wings of the B 24 bomber. Fire erupted. The left wing flew up and over the fuselage. The plane began a maddening spiral toward the ground. Levi "Frank" Caldwell ejected from the tail end. With a parachute billowing behind him, he was so close to the earth he could see people running and hear the bullets aimed at him. It was his 44th bombing mission. He was 19 years old. World War II all but emptied the Caldwell family home and lumber mill in Maiden during the 1940s. Seven of the nine sons followed its lethal call across the country and over oceans. Bruce "Kermit" Caldwell went to Alaska and the Aleutian Islands. Warren Caldwell, to England. James and Frank Caldwell were both destined to starve and suffer through months in German POW camps. Charles Caldwell sailed to the Pacific and the island of Okinawa. Joe boarded a Navy ship carrying tanks through the Pacific. He was 15. He swore to a fabricated birthday. Dwight went Jamaica to study airplane engines and came back to the states, where the tragedy already befallen his family caught up to him. Another two Caldwell sons, Fred and Herbert, would serve in Korea less than a decade later. All but one came home with stories, with pains, with loss in his heart. One never came home at all. Bruce "Kermit" Caldwell was the first to go. When the Hickory Daily Record ran photos of the seven Caldwell sons at war in the 1940s, he had already been home for a 20 day leave. A U.S. Navy sailor, he spent 17 months in Alaska and on the Aleutian Islands. His brothers remember him saying after he came back from the islands, his asthma never bothered him again. They wish they knew more of their eldest brother's story. "But he's passed away now and can't tell us," said Dwight Caldwell.

2 Frank Caldwell, Budapest, Hungary He landed on top of a three story building and skidded into a tree below. The next thing he remembers is a shiny black boot on his chest. German officers hanged one of his fellow soldiers from a lamppost. Civilians took hold of the bomber's navigator and stabbed him in the head with a pitchfork. Germans marched the crash survivors through the streets for hours. Men and women spat on the Americans and kicked and slapped them. Frank's first name, Levi, was stamped on his dog tags. In interrogation, they wanted to know if he was "Yuden." Jewish. They didn't believe him when he answered, "No." A giant man backed Frank against the wall, punched him in the stomach, picked up the boy by his hair and knocked out two of his front teeth with a massive fist. When they threw Frank into a cell with his co pilot, the co pilot asked, "Who are you?" The Germans next took Frank from his cell and backed him against a post, tying his hands behind him. "Mr. Caldwell," asked a translator, "Do you have any last words." He didn't. The firing squad was facing him, six men on foot and six on one knee. The Germans pulled a hood over Frank's head. James Caldwell, Germany He was always thin. When they were little, the other boys called him Duck. So James was the obvious choice for digger in the POW camp where he was held in Germany. One man would hold James' ankles and lower him into the latrine, he told his brothers. They dug tunnels for escape, scratching and clawing at the soil, hoping to find a way under the fence to freedom. The soldiers carried out the dirt in their pockets, letting it sift through and fall down their pant legs, unnoticed by guards as the prisoners walked the grounds of the camp. Jack managed to dig his way out of the prison, his brothers said. But he didn't know where he was. He didn't know where to go. He was captured and sent to another POW camp. Frank Caldwell, northern Germany The shots from the firing squad never came. Frank was taken instead to a German POW camp. He and his brother were prisoners at the same time. Both hoped tunnels would buy them passage from the misery. In Frank's camp, the soldiers built a low, hollow, triangle shaped shelter. They told the guards it was for exercise and demonstrated, setting one man to jumping back and forth over the thing. Meanwhile, hidden inside, another man would be digging. The soldiers stole buckets for dirt and hid them inside. Then they, too, resorted to carrying out pockets full of the German soil. They filched boards from their barracks and used them to hold up the tunnel walls.

3 Frank remembers the day they were finished, how the escape was planned. It was the same day a German police dog, on patrol with a guard, walked across the scantily covered tunnel entrance. The dog fell straight into the hole. The escape plan was gone. Warren Caldwell, England He was flying missions out of England with the Eighth Air Force when word came of his brothers, James and Frank. Their planes had been shot down. Warren couldn't fly anymore, Uncle Sam's orders. Charles Caldwell, Okinawa In a letter to his mother, dated four months before his death, Charles wrote, "Try not to worry too much about me for I am OK." A machine gunner, he was one of the first men out of the boat on the Japanese island of Okinawa, his brothers said. That was May 31, A Japanese sniper set the boy in his sites. The medics got Charles back to a ship after the bullet hit him in the head. He died at 12:35 p.m. June 12, He was 19. Dwight Caldwell, stateside Dwight was with a squadron headed for England when his commanding officer got word two Caldwell brothers were shot down and another brother, Charles, was dead. Dwight would have to come out of the firing line. He didn't want to hear it. "I told him he had no authority to pull me," Dwight said. "He almost put me in the brig." Joe Caldwell, Pacific Ocean His older brothers left one at a time. Joe was 15 years old, but he felt duty weighing heavy on his shoulders. He knew a piano teacher who was a notary public. He falsified his birthday on the paperwork and had her put her seal on the document. Joe's parents weren't happy. His father, a World War I veteran, threatened to stop him. But Joe just told his dad he'd do the same thing all over again. In the end, Joe said, he was "Shanghaied on a landing tank vehicle." The ship went solo through the Panama Canal and to San Diego. They took on supplies in Hawaii and went on to the Philippines. They couldn't turn on lights because of the danger of submarines. When they got rid of trash, it had to be at night so no other ship could follow the trail. "We never knew when we were going to get shot out of the water," Joe said. He got on the ship in January or February of He got off in When the war was over, he finished high school before going back into the Navy for three more years.

4 The Korean War came around soon enough, but Joe opted out. "I said, I can dodge words better than I can bullets and went to college," he said. Herbert Caldwell, North Pole Herbert lived at home when the telegrams came to say Frank and James were shot down and when the letter came to say Charles was dead. When the war was over, he heard the stories about Frank going down, the Hungarians who got after him with pitchforks. Years later, when he got the familiar call, he did not go happily to Korea. "I wasn't fool enough to join," he said. "They drafted me." Herbert was an engineer. He helped build hospitals and other structures at and around the North Pole, in case the Russians came that way to attack, Herbert said. There was nothing but ice and snow. His hands froze. The pain in his fingers still wakes him up some nights. It's the same with Frank. Frank Caldwell, Germany After seven months in the prison camp, Frank heard on contraband radios, snuck in by Red Cross parcel, the Allies and the Russians were closing in. The Germans took their prisoners and abandoned camp. For 87 days, they marched from field to field and barn to barn, ice freezing in their wet socks. They walked 700 miles in all, Frank said. Prisoners got a cup of water in the mornings, maybe a slice of bread with a little lard for lunch. At the end of the day, they might get a couple potatoes or a soup of cabbage, beets and soybeans. The Germans didn't give it to them unless worms had gotten into the soybeans. The worms were the best part. "If you got rid of those, you didn't have much meat," Frank said. Somewhere on the march, they passed a concentration camp. Frank heard the rat a tat tat of gunfire. He saw a wagonload of dead bodies pass, heads hanging over the side and bumping on the wheel spokes. Hitler committed suicide in April. On May 2, the Germans marched Frank and other prisoners into a barn. The next morning, British tanks surrounded them. It was still five days before the liberated American soldiers could get to a first aid station. "The Brits just pointed and said, 'Walk that way, bloke,'" Frank said. He spent six weeks recovering in a French hospital. He weighed 80 pounds when he got there, exactly half of what he'd weighed when his plane went down over Hungary. There was a familiar face in the hospital: His brother, also freed from the POW camp.

5 Frank walked in and said, "Hello, James." James asked, "Who are you?"