Attractive cover with a variety of significant postal markings. 6.5 cents postage for airmail service. Upper left has Missing in Action March 31, 1944 mark signed by Capt. Ingram.  Military Return to Sender mark is in center.  Reverse has U.S. Army Control Center cancel plus APO 587 handstamp along with a torn 1943 Christmas Seal. No contents. George Knight Pond, of Malone, New York, 95, died May 28, 2013.  Mr. Pond graduated from Franklin Academy in 1936 and attended Brown University in Providence, R.I., where he was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity. In 1940, he became a flying cadet in the U.S. Army Air Corps. After graduation he served as second lieutenant in the Army Air Corps. On March 8, 1944, after flying 17 combat missions with his B-17 named the Bad Penney, Lieutenant Pond's replacement B-17, named the Iron Ass, was shot down by German fighter planes (Focke Wolf 190s) as the lead plane of a force of 300 B-17's while on a raid over Berlin. Captured, he spent over a year as a prisoner of war at Stalag Luft 1, the Barth-on-the-Baltic prison camp in Germany. Here he would serve as godfather to 6 fellow prisoners. Freed in April of 1945, First Lieutenant Pond was awarded several prestigious medals of honor including the Air Medal with Two Oak Leaf Combat Clusters, the POW Medal, and the American Campaign Medal with Bronze Star, but perhaps the most important honor was his selection to man the controls of the plane that flew the prisoners of war, now freed from the prison camp, out of Germany and back to England. Upon his return, Pond served as the president of Pond Electric and Battery Service Inc., a firm originally founded by his father. He was also the proprietor of Pond Hearing Aids until he retired in 2005.