Was Evansville resident Thurman Carnal in Hitler's house? Looks like it.

EVANSVILLE — Thurman Carnal got plenty of press before his death at 107 last month. The longtime Evansville resident and World War II veteran said he hit the beaches of Normandy just after D-Day, after all.

Carnal lived to an astonishing age, having retired from "the truck and mine supply and Lockwood Truck Stop" — his obituary's words — a full 40 years ago.

Carnal also left a behind a tantalizing mystery in the form of faded black and white photographs he, or someone, may have taken inside Adolf Hitler's bunker. Or one of the Nazi dictator's other hideouts.

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That's what Evansville resident Hal Bloss thinks, anyway. Bloss, who said Carnal was his wife’s uncle, sent the Courier & Press five such photos he said Carnal had from World War II. One, taken by someone else, shows a young, smiling Carnal in his Army uniform.

How did Carnal, a TEC5 in the U.S. Army 24th Evac Unit in Europe, end up in Hitler's bunker? That's where the story gets fuzzy.

"He was just in World War II, and that’s where they were at the time," Bloss said. "And Hitler was still living. At the time he was in Austria. And I guess the Americans had overrun where his bunker was."

The Courier & Press asked Bloss what Carnal himself had said about the matter.

“He just explained what the pictures were. That’s all we knew about," Bloss said.

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As is so often the case, the Internet can help.

The photos Bloss provided appear to match other photographs taken inside Hitler's Eagle's Nest retreat high atop Kehlstein Mountain in the Bavarian Alps near Berchtesgaden — not in the Führerbunker, the sprawling concrete underground complex where the Nazi dictator spent his last days.

American soldiers are known to have entered Hitler’s chalet — The Eagle’s Nest — in May 1945, a few weeks after Hitler committed suicide in the bunker in Berlin.

Hal Bloss recommended the Courier & Press ask Carnal's son, Darrell Carnal, about the photos of Hitler's bunker. Or his chalet in the Bavarian Alps. Whatever it was.

It was a long time ago, Darrell Carnal said, and he doesn't remember his dad being precise about exactly where he was. But the younger Carnal, a St. Louis resident who grew up in Evansville, is pretty sure his father was at The Eagle's Nest.

"Absolutely," he said. "(Thurman Carnal) said he went into one of them. Now whether it was this one (The Eagle's Nest) or not, I don't know. It was around the Swiss Alps somewhere."

Carnal has a photograph of an Army P-47 Thunderbolt flying above what looks like a retreat in the Bavarian Alps, and captioned, "A P-47 Thunderbolt of the U.S. Army 12th Air Force flies low over the crumpled ruins of what once was Hitler's retreat at Berchtesgaden, Germany on May 26, 1945. Small and large bomb craters dot the grounds around the wreckage."

Darrell Carnal doesn't remember who gave him the photo. It may have been among the photographs in one of his father's photo albums. But he takes it as more circumstantial evidence that his dad was indeed at Hitler's Eagle's Nest.

It would have been but one chapter in Thurman Carnal's amazing story.

Born in Dixon, Kentucky in 1916, Carnal lived on a farm for the first years of his life, working odd jobs. He married his wife Agnes in 1941, and they moved to Evansville around the same time, Darrell said in July. Agnes Cobb Carnal, Thurman Carnal's wife of 67 years, died in 2008.

Carnal was drafted for WWII the next year, 1942, and was assigned to the 24th Evacuation Hospital. He said during his lifetime that he sailed to Europe on the Queen Mary. He said his group left Cheddar, England, and hit Normandy Beach a few days after D-Day. Carnal told people he drove a truck off an LST as part of the invasion.

Whatever Thurman Carnal may have done at Hitler's retreat in the Bavarian Alps, if indeed he was there, remains a mystery whose answer he took to his grave. The details are fuzzy — and they always will be now that Carnal is gone.

But of one thing Darrell Carnal is certain.

"He'll always be a hero to me," he said.

This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: Was Evansville resident Thurman Carnal in Hitler's house? Looks like it.