Guide to the Sherwin L. Barton World War II Papers, 1942-1996 (bulk 1943-1946)

Accession number: 2005-0144H

University Libraries
The Pennsylvania State University
Special Collections Library
Historical Collections and Labor Archives

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©2006 Pennsylvania State University. All rights reserved.

Descriptive Summary

Administrative Information

Arrangement

The papers are arranged in one series and within the series by format: loose papers, bound volumes, photographs, and artifacts.

Biographical Note

Sherwin Lemmon Barton was born on 7 December 1918, in Parowan, Utah. Raised in California, he left high school in 1937, one semester short of graduation, and then worked as a laborer. Barton was inducted into the U. S. Army on 6 August 1940, and initially stationed in Hawaii. In February 1943 Barton completed pilot school, and was promoted to second lieutenant in the Army Air Corps, and on 20 May 1943, he was honorably discharged from the Army and transferred to active service in the Air Corps, at which time he was married, with one daughter. From mid-January 1944 Barton was based in England in the Eighth Army Air Force, 100th Group. He flew four combat missions before being shot down while piloting a B-17 over Germany on 6 March 1944. Barton was briefly a prisoner of war at Dulag Luft in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, before being transferred to North Camp I of Stalag Luft I in Barth, Germany. The camp was captured by the Russian army in May 1945 and Barton remained there until the following month, when the U.S. Army arrived. Discharged on 1 December 1945, he later served in the Army Reserves and worked in California and New Mexico as a building designer and contractor. Barton had two more daughters from his first marriage; he remarried in 1971. In 1989 Barton moved to Oregon. He died in Coos Bay, Oregon, on 7 April 1995.

Scope and Content

The Sherwin L. Barton World War II Papers, 1942-1996, features handwritten remembrances and illustrations of Barton's capture and incarceration in Germany, 1944-1945, held variously in a diary book supplied to prisoners by the American Y.M.C.A, and on loose sheets of illustrations and other documents. Barton inserted prison camp newsletters and other relevant documents into the diary. Additional illustrations by Barton appear in Behind Barbed Wire (1946), a book written by a fellow prisoner, Lieutenant Morris J. Roy. The collection also includes two panorama photographs of his flight training squadrons in California in 1942, a wood and metal collage that he made while at Stalag Luft I, sketches of Barton drawn by fellow prisoners, and diverse military artifacts: badges, medals, bars, pins, wings, and a medallion.

Bibiography

A substantial online collection of digitized prisoner of war documents, narratives, drawings, poetry, identification papers, and prison newsletters is available at "Stalag Luft I Online" (http://merkki.com/). This collection is useful for context and comparison to items in the Barton papers.

Index Terms

These materials are indexed under the following headings in the catalog of the Pennsylvania State University. Researchers wishing to find related materials should search the catalog under these index terms.

Container List