Tales from the old-timer

POW DAYS

Last week’s story told of my capture on Nov. 10, 1944 in the Huertgen Forest. A German soldier was given the job of bringing us three prisoners to the Battalion Headquarters. As he marched us along we passed rows of dead Germans.

We went on from there to a pillbox where a high ranking officer was barking over a telephone at some length. When he hung up, he walked over to me and lifted my pants leg to reveal that I was not wearing long winter underwear, which was significant information for him to relay to Col. Otto Skorzeny, the brilliant designer of Hitler’s planned Ardennes Offensive, which was dubbed the “Battle of the Bulge.”

About three weeks later about 15 of us American POWs were upstairs in a large room above a factory, and through a window we saw lots of activity, with Germans ripping around in American Jeeps, as they had great initial success.

We were taken by rail to Kriegsgefangenenstalag XII-A (Prisoner of War Camp) which was soon coping with thousands of American prisoners. The guys were burning bed boards in the stoves to keep warm, and the Germans threatened to take out the bunks if it continued, and it did continue and they took out the bunks.

Hundreds of us went by train to Stalag 4-B at Milburg, Germany, a huge camp with thousands of prisoners of all nationalities including Russians.

Russians behind a fence barrier tricked one of the guys by holding up what looked like a loaf of bread, but when an American tossed over his pack of cigarets (cigarettes were money in prison camps) the loaf of bread turned out to be two side-slabs with no interior bread, a real piece of cunning on their part.

We spent Christmas at 4-B because we were quarantined as one man turned up with typhoid fever. The International Red Cross furnished us with a record player and we had Bing Crosby singing “Silent Night” on a windup phonograph. We were always hungry, dirty, bearded and cold. We had no soap, no razors.

Later we were shipped by rail to a camp at Hohenstein on the River Elbe, and on the way there we acquired body lice from some “Russkies” who were with us. Since the lice lived in the seams of our clothing and we had no change of clothes, we spent Sundays, when not working with our picks and shovels, pinching the lice between our fingernails to kill them. The body lice “came out” at night to dine on our blood as we slept.

Our food was not adequate for men working with picks and shovels six days a week in the cold, and by March and April we were skeletal and one or two of the men died each week.

When it started to warm up in April and we heard the booming of Russian artillery getting nearer and nearer each night we knew the end was close.

We were herded westward all day toward the American 3rd Army and our guards left us the first night, hoping to be captured by the Americans as they had great fear of the Russians.

We were in with a confused column of German army units, civilians with their belongings on carts and wagons, and prisoners of war. There is a sort of cult that believes the Russians took custody of large numbers of American POWs and they are still being held in Russia, North Korea, and even in Cuba.

The Russians that finally liberated us greeted us in friendly fashion and helped us to get up a RR engine and cars to take us west to where the American 1st Army was. We were all registered with the International Red Cross via Switzerland and had written home to our families. If hundreds had failed to show up there would have been many questions asked.

We were given new uniforms when we reached the Americans and showered and squirted with insect repellent to wipe out the lice, and were fed rich milkshakes and food, and soon were aboard ship headed for New York, and its great Statue of Liberty!

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