William Clinton Geil

William “Bill” Geil passed away March 27, 2024, at age 99 in Phoenix, Arizona, after a short stay at the Arizona State Veteran’s Home. He was born in Anaconda, Montana at the family residence in 1925. His parents, Clinton Wenger Geil and Mary Bayliss Geil, had one of the original Chrysler agencies in the country.

Bill’s father Clint came from a long line of Mennonites who had emigrated to Bucks County, Pennsylvania and to the area around Harrisonburg, Virginia, from Alsace and Switzerland before the American Revolution. Bill’s mother was a registered nurse who had emigrated from Nailstone, England to Iowa.

When Bill was about five years old his father took him for a ride in an open cockpit biplane that was barnstorming nearby. This had an enormous effect on him, and started his lifelong love for flying.

In August 1943 he joined the United States Army Air Corps. After training he was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant and assigned to the 8th Army Air Force’s 95th Bomb Group in Horham, England as a B-17 navigator. Horham is near the English Channel between Norwich and Ipswich.

Bill’s first bombing mission was to the marshalling yard at Oranienburg north of Berlin on March 15,1945. Bill later related that when the B-17 crews were being briefed early that morning after breakfast and learned that their mission was to the Berlin area, several of the more experienced crew members groaned and went outside to throw up. Despite the dangers, the mission was successful and Bill and his crew returned safely to their 8th Air Force base in England.

Two days later on his second mission, on March 17, 1945, to the oil fields and refinery at Ruhland near Berlin, his B-17 lost three of its four engines, went into a spin, recovered, and went down near Leipzig.

On St. Patrick’s Day, at age 20, Bill parachuted out in a snowstorm over Nazi Germany and found himself a prisoner of war.

While Bill and the other crewmember POWs were being transported to Weimar, Germany under the custody of a Luftwaffe Sergeant for their interrogation, the train stopped en route. While they were waiting at the terminal, a train came into the station fresh from the Soviet front, and several Nazi SS soldiers under the command of a SS Colonel, with the infamous lightning bolts on their black uniform lapels, got off the train and approached the group of POWs.

Bill later recounted that the one eyed, one armed SS Colonel was impeccably dressed in a freshly pressed black uniform, with one sleeve folded up and pinned to his chest and a black eye patch. Bill said that the Nazi SS Colonel looked like he had stepped right out of a Hollywood movie.

After approaching the Allied prisoners, the SS Colonel turned to his SS troops, pointed to the Allied POWs, and directed them to execute the prisoners on the spot. At that point the Luftwaffe Sergeant in charge of the Allied POWs stepped forward, shoved his loaded burp gun into the SS Colonel’s chest, pulled the action back, and told the SS Colonel he would kill him if the POWs being transported for interrogation under his custody were shot.

If it were not for the bravery of this unknown Luftwaffe Sergeant who stood up to the SS troops and defended the Allied POWs, Bill and the other prisoners of war would certainly have been killed. As it was, the SS Colonel and his troops withdrew to the train after the conductor, who likely saw what was happening, pulled the train whistle several times, thus giving the SS Colonel and his troops an excuse to re-board the train and depart.

The brave Luftwaffe Sergeant eventually successfully delivered the Allied prisoners alive for interrogation to Weimar, Germany.

After being interrogated at Weimar, Bill was moved to a prison camp at Nuremberg. From there he was moved along with other prisoners to Stalag VII-A at Moosburg outside Munich. This prison camp was liberated on April 29, 1945, by General Patton’s armored troops. Bill recounted how ecstatic the Allied prisoners were when General Patton’s tanks smashed through the front gates of the prison camp. At that point the German prison guards threw down their weapons and surrendered to Patton’s troops.

After being moved to Camp Lucky Strike, at Le Harve on the coast of France, Bill attended a luncheon in a mess tent with General Eisenhower. Bill’s copilot, John Gunvordahl, described the luncheon encounter saying “Soon after landing [at Camp Lucky Strike], we were sent to a mess tent for lunch. I was at the end of the line. I felt someone tap me on the shoulder, and I turned around, expecting to see one of the fellows who had flown in with me. Instead, I found myself looking into the face and eyes of General Eisenhower! He had made a special trip from his headquarters to see how the ex-POWs were being cared for. I was dumbstruck!”

From Le Harve, Lt. Geil then transited the Atlantic by ship to the United States, and made his way to Montana. Waiting for him there was his fiance and high school sweetheart, Frances Coverdale, his parents Clint and Mary, and his little brother Phil and little sister Marian.

Lt. Geil and his sweetheart Frances Coverdale were married in the Methodist Episcopal Church of Anaconda on July 5, 1945. They were married almost 72 years before Fran’s death at 91. They had three children, Mary Gwendolyn “Wendy” Geil, John Clinton Geil, and William Miles Geil. All of them ended up as part of a tight knit USAF military family, moving all over the United States, and spending almost four years overseas in Turkey and Germany.

Bill was a Command Pilot, and flew many planes, including the B-47, the first American strategic nuclear jet bomber, which he once flew on a low-level pass, winding down the valley from Georgetown Lake just above Warm Springs Creek before buzzing Anaconda. Bill’s sister Marian recalled being tipped off in advance of this event. The windows of the store she was in at the time shook and there was a loud roaring noise. She remarked to the storekeeper “I think that was my big brother!”

Bill later did two Vietnam tours, after training in F-l00s at Luke AFB in Phoenix, where his wife and kids waited for him to return. The second tour was in Guam commanding a large B-52 squadron during the bombing of North Vietnam. That bombing campaign resulted in forcing the resumption of the Paris Peace Talks and the ending of the United States involvement in the Vietnam War.

Bill was a wonderful father, husband and family man. He was modest, quiet, handsome and brilliant. He retired from the USAF as a full Colonel, after commanding the detachment at the Boeing Wichita Plant, serving as the USAF Liaison to Boeing. During his lifetime he earned two undergraduate college degrees and an MBA.

Col. Geil was preceded in death by his wife Frances Eulalie Geil, daughter Mary Gwendolyn “Wendy” Geil, his parents Clinton Wenger Geil and Mary Bayliss Geil, and his brother Philip Geil of Anaconda, Montana. He is survived by his sister Marian Geil of Anaconda, Montana, and his sons, John and Bill, and their wives, Laura Buchanan Geil and Judith Allyn Geil, of Lake Oswego, Oregon, and Boulder, Utah, respectively; his grandchildren: Clark Geil of Ashland, Oregon, and Victoria Geil Schlesinger and her husband Brand Schlesinger of Lake Oswego, Oregon; his great granddaughter Jade Geil, of Dunsmuir, California; and his cousin Nan Bovingdon and her husband Richard Ostheimer of Missoula, Montana.