The last time Wilson F. Leon and Homer E. Jones appeared together in a Pittsburgh newspaper, German soldiers were parading them down a Greek street as Nazi propagandists derided them as "terror fliers."

That was 64 years ago, after they had bailed out of their stricken B-24 on a disastrous bombing run over Salonika in September 1944.

A yellowed picture from The Pittsburgh Press shows them side-by-side in their khakis, marching next to a German officer armed with a Luger.

This Memorial Day weekend, these two flyboys are back in a Pittsburgh paper again, this time celebrating their first reunion.

Mr. Leon, 88, a former Pittsburgher who once lived next to Art Rooney on the North Side, and Mr. Jones, 86, of Lubbock, Texas, met Friday at Mr. Leon's home near Jacksonville, Fla.

"I can tell you, a few tears were shed by me," said Mr. Jones. "He looks pretty good."

Mr. Leon, who left Pittsburgh in 1984, said it was "wonderful" to see his old friend, even if they did disagree a bit on a some details from the war years.

Mr. Leon said to go with his version of events.

"I outrank him," he joked.

The men hugged and pointed to old photographs from their days as airmen.

"They're going over the pictures and each is telling their own stories," said Mr. Leon's daughter, Ardyth Redfern of Jacksonville. "It's kind of fun to watch."

The reunion came about after Mr. Jones' son, Rick, had been researching his father's World War II history on the Internet and came across a photo of his crew on a Fifteenth Air Force Web site.

Mr. Leon and Mr. Jones are next to each other, just as they are in the later photo following their capture in Greece.

Over the years, Homer Jones had sought out other former crew mates and did find a few, but none with whom he had been friends. He and Mr. Leon, however, had developed a bond during their B-24 training in Tucson, Ariz., in 1944. Mr. Leon was the top turret gunner and Mr. Jones the waist gunner.

"We became close," said Mr. Jones. "I was just a little country boy and I didn't know too much. He was two years older and he kind of took care of me."

Mr. Leon was at home two weeks ago when Rick Jones called him out of the blue.

"Are you Wilson Leon?" he asked. "Were you a prisoner of war?" Realizing he had the right guy, Rick Jones nearly fell off his chair.

When the senior Mr. Jones learned his buddy was on the phone, he cried. The two hadn't seen nor heard from each other since the end of the war in 1945.

"We talked," said Mr. Leon of that first phone conversation, "and it was, 'Do you remember when...?' 'Yeah, I remember when...' 'And do you remember when...?' 'Yeah, I remember...' "

Mr. Jones, who made the trip to Jacksonville with Rick, his daughter Dorinda and his wife, Jo Laverne, said the two planned to spend the weekend together and catch up on lost time.

"We're just going to get reacquainted," he said. "I want to tell him what my life has been like for the last 64 years and I want to hear what his life has been like for the last 64 years. Mainly we'll talk about our families [and not the war]. We all know what happened back then."

The two men are survivors of a mission to bomb German troop trains in occupied Greece on Sept. 24, 1944. Seven B-24s took off from their base in Italy on what was supposed to be a "milk run" -- an easy assignment after 11 terrifying runs over Poland, Austria, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Greece and Germany.

It didn't work out that way.

After the planes dropped their bombs, anti-aircraft guns blasted the B-24s from the sky. As Mr. Leon's plane flew through the debris of the plane ahead of it, one of its wings tore off.

"The top turret is a clear plastic bubble," said Mr. Leon. "So I saw the whole thing."

The crew bailed. Mr. Leon and Mr. Jones, along with Edward Czakoczi, the ball turret gunner from Homestead, and six of their crew mates were captured, along with two men from the plane that had exploded in front of them.

Their pilot, James Cameron of Detroit, landed farther away from everyone else and eluded the Germans. Several months later, he made it into Salonika and found a newspaper picture of his crew. He sent it to the U.S. War Department, which sent it to the men's families back home as proof that they were no longer missing in action.

A German photographer had captured the scene as German officers paraded the prisoners through the streets.

Under the photo, later reprinted in the Press in early 1945, the caption said in German: "The people of the town watched the prisoners partly with curiosity and partly with cold disdain. Hurtful curses were heard. The prisoners themselves took no notice of the barbaric devastation that their attack on a peaceful Greek town had caused."

But Mr. Leon said that was the work of propagandists. In truth, the Greeks were cheering the Americans as heroes.

When he was home on furlough in 1945 with Mr. Czakoczi, the Press quoted Mr. Leon saying, "We didn't know what was up. They wanted to show us off as barbarians who had bombed their city and thought they could get the Greeks along the street to spit on us, hurl stones at us and call us names. But all of the Greeks were friendly and shouted, 'Hi, Yanks,' and 'How're you doing, kids.' "

The crew was carted off to be interrogated in Salonika, where Mr. Leon made a mistake.

"They asked how many men we had," he said. "Like a damn fool, I said, 'You tell me how many guys you have and I'll tell you how many we have.'"

The Germans didn't hurt him, but he was plenty scared.

"If I would say no, I would be lying to you," he said.

But there was a touch of humanity among the captors. One spit-and-polish German officer, out of earshot of the others, walked up to within inches of his face and said quietly in perfect English: "We should give Hitler a gun and Roosevelt a gun and then let [them] shoot each other so we can all go home."

The Germans planned to fly the crew to Germany. But American planes had bombed their planes on the runway, so they loaded the men into train cars.

One night, Greek partisans blew up the engine, Mr. Leon said, and the Germans began marching the men on foot. The captors didn't treat them badly, but for weeks the crew ate little but moldy bread and slept on the cold ground.

They worried about their fate in Budapest or Germany, their rumored destinations. But they never made it to either country.

One night in Yugoslavia, as the Germans were stoking a campfire, the men heard cries of, "Americans run!"

The Chetniks of Yugoslav guerilla leader Gen. Draza Mihailovich ambushed the party, killed all 30 German guards and took the Americans into the hills. The Chetniks gave them canned salmon, a rare treat. "We ate it, bones and all," said Mr. Leon.

While living with the Chetniks, they met a Bulgarian officer who convinced them to walk to Bulgaria.

They arrived in Sofia in November, and from there flew back to Italy on Dec. 24, 1944. It had been exactly three months since their plane went down.

For them, the war was over. They shipped home from Naples and arrived in Boston, where they parted at Fort Miles Standish. "We went our separate ways after that," said Mr. Leon.

A lifetime has since passed. Mr. Leon, who was born in West Virginia and lived on the North Side, managed a moving company in Pittsburgh for many years before leaving the city, first for Hilton Head, S.C., and then Florida. He had three children, one of whom, Judith Leon, 55, still lives in Oakmont. A son, Robert, died in 1997.

Mr. Jones spent a career teaching agriculture at a country high school in Texas while ministering at local churches and raising five children.

His family was set to leave early this morning for a long, happy drive back to Lubbock.