At the morning skates Friday at the Pepsi Center, I had a nice chat with Capitals radio play-by-play broadcaster John Walton, with whom I became acquainted in a roundabout way.
John’s grandfather, Lt. Col. Thomas E. Jeffers, was a bombardier on a B-24 crew during World War II. After his plane was shot down in June 1944, Jeffers spent nearly a year as a prisoner of war in, first, the Americans’ South Compound at the infamous Stalag Luft III — the “Great Escape” camp — near Sagan, Germany; and then, after a forced march of the prisoners as the Russians advanced from the east, in Stalag VII-A near Munich.