The beautiful fall day our regiment of the 106th left New York City on the Queen Elizabeth we little guessed the fate of our outfit. It was October 17th and the early morning sun gleamed dully on the Statue of Liberty as we sailed past her. I looked back from the porthole of the tiny cabin and wondered how long it would be before I’d look on her peaceful features again.
We spent an exciting six days ‘board the Elizabeth. It was my first voyage and the boat was an experience in itself. The Elizabeth is one of the largest afloat, and decorated lavishly with Birdseye maple. Our cabins were crowded, there being eighteen fellows in mine alone – a room designed to accommodate a couple – cabin A99. The food was tolerable, but much complaining was done because we were fed only twice a day. The English coffee was tasteless and strange to us, but we stomached it with a grimace. We slept on canvas ship’s bunks. All the time not devoted to lining up for chow, eating, or washing was free time. This time was used for card games and crap shooting all the way across. Weather was ideal and the sea was smooth as molten glass the entire voyage. A few of us developed sea sickness, but I’m inclined to believe that it was mostly mental. Movies were shown in the evenings on the promenade deck. Church was held daily and many other activities were present to keep us busy.
I enjoyed the voyage and hated to see it end. We docked at Greenock, Scotland, on Sunday, October 22nd, but did not disembark until Tuesday morning. Red Cross coffee and donuts greeted us at the station where we boarded an English train to carry us to our new camp. Then followed an eighteen-hour train ride to Sandywell Park, located about five miles east of Cheltenham. Sandy consisted of a group of curved semi-circular steel huts with one or two larger ones used for mess halls and recreation buildings. Mud abounded and we joked that we were being conditioned for the front lines. It was no joke. We were there for just that purpose.
Immediately after I had been assigned to a hut and fed, I found myself detailed to keep fires in two boiler stoves in a wash room. This detail kept me busy twelve hours a day for the first two weeks of my stay at Sandy. It gave me plenty of time to wash my clothes, read Pocketbooks, and write letters home. Mail from home was slow in coming, and I had only seven letters from Laura all the time I was in England. I did get two fruit cakes from relatives–fruit cakes intended for Christmas, but delivered and eaten much earlier.
Food at Sandy was plentiful and our cooks outdid themselves preparing it. I ate at least four meals a day by virtue of my fireman’s job which kept me up until midnight. Thanksgiving’s Day was a day of excellent eating for the GIs at Sandy. That noon my mess kit was piled high with turkey and all the "trimmings." It was not as good a meal as I had had at Vanderbilt University while in the ASTP (Army Specialized Training Program) the previous year, but it tasted quite wonderful.
Sandywell Park offered very few amusements for its residents, but nearby Cheltenham had movies, dances, pubs, and Red Cross hospitality. English girls were plentiful and friendly, especially the WAAF’s (Women’s Auxiliary Air Force) and WRNS’ (Women’s Royal Naval Service). Many mugs of cider and beer were consumed by thirsty GI’s in English pubs, and fish and chips were eaten instead of pork chops and French fries.
In England PX items were rationed. Once a week we lined up at the PX building and presented our cards to be checked for our weekly allowance of luxuries. Candy, cigarettes, gum, fruit juice, cookies, and toilet articles were purchased by our strange English money.
Our month at Sandywell passed quickly. All too soon we found ourselves lined up at midnight and boarding a train for South Hampton. This was no "dry run." Our guns were loaded with live ammunition, and our packs were rolled for combat. My company went over the channel on an old Dutch tub, the Mecklenberg. We departed for the Continent on December 1st at 2 a.m. and docked about a day later in Le Havre.
One of the first things I realized as I gazed on French soil was how close the war was getting. The harbor at Le Havre was a shambles. Wrecked concrete pillboxes dotted the shore line, and great buildings were hollow and gutted by fires and shells. Definitely, the war was close; all too, too close!
December 2nd was cool and rainy in Le Havre. We started off about four p.m., marching east out of Le Havre, with very heavy packs. As night came the cold and dampness began to make us miserable. Besides that, the broad concrete highway we trod along lay uphill almost all the way. We had gone seven miles when we were herded into an open windswept field on top of a hill. There we huddled around crackling, sputtering fires and munched on D bars. About midnight GI four-and-a-half ton trucks arrived and we climbed on them. A fifty mile ride through wind, rain, and darkness found us in another field, equally cold, and even muddier than the previous one. It was still dark when we arrived at this rendezvous point. We did our best to pitch dry tents. Straw was obtained from a nearby farm and we bedded down for the day–Sunday.
I awoke at four p.m., warm in my sleeping bag, and dry. Rain had ceased to fall and the sun was just setting. A few feet in front of my tent some of the boys had built a fire, and several of them were eating toasted K-rations and bitching about the situation. Being hungry, I quickly polished off one of my ration boxes. Then I washed with water from a nearby pump. Then back into the sleeping bag for another twelve hours!
We spent five days in our tents there in France, about twelve miles north of Rouen. We ate good food but it was not too plentiful. K and C-rations were available most of the time, and we heated them over our open fires. Our spare time, of which there was plenty, was spent playing football. At first our playing field was muddy, but the sun soon dried it out. Some of the time was spent procuring wood for the fires. This we got from an orchard of dead apple trees in a neighboring farm yard. The only training of a military nature we had in France was a series of about four short double-time hikes.
December seventh our vehicles rolled in and we loaded up early that morning. Snow fell gently. We began our two day trip by convoy through Rouen, Amiens, La Roche, Marche, and finally to Saint-Vith. The ride (I rode in the back of a jeep) was very tiring. We fastened shelter-halves on the sides to cut down on the cold wind, and wrapped ourselves securely in blankets and overcoats. Every four hours the convoy stopped for a rest period. We ate K and C-rations. One thing that amazed me was our lack of blackout precautions. In England all lights were dimmed. In France we rode with lamps blazing. While in France, I used my knowledge of the language to good advantage to secure cider and cognac. The people there were very friendly, and they told us interesting tales of the German occupation, and of the more recent American victories.
In France I attempted to get in touch with Pete Rees (whom I had not seen since we left camp Miles Standish), but I had no success. My old friend, Johnny Barrett, showed up unexpectedly one day, sporting a brand new set of sergeant’s stripes. He had just made the grade of communication sergeant in I Company of the 424th. Johnny was the same; Continental Europe hadn’t changed his cheerful outlook or tousled hair. My visit with him was entirely too brief.
We arrived near Saint-Vith on December 9th in early evening. Our bivouac area was a small spruce-filled section of the famous Black Forest. We were located about fifteen miles from the border of Luxemburg and about thirty miles from the front lines. Roads leading through the forest were filled with supply trucks moving to and from the lines. Occasionally a somber, swift vehicle with a huge Red Cross on its side would whiz by.
We remained there near Saint-Vith one day and two nights. Snow had fallen all the while, but as we loaded our vehicles to move out it quit. We rolled up to the front in broad daylight on December 11th. The section of the Siegfried Line we took over from the 2nd Division was located well inside Germany, slightly to the northeast of Luxemburg. December 11th was a clear Monday and the front lines were quiet.
My platoon relieved the corresponding platoon of the 2nd and we settled down to what the boys assured us would be a "quiet enjoyable life." Positions for guns and nice dry sleeping quarters had already been prepared. Our chief hardship was guard, which we stood three hours per man each night (the only contact we had with the Jerries had been occasional patrols on recon missions).
After the first few days of initial nervousness, we got so that the distant rumble of big guns and the rattle of a persistent burp-gun didn’t bother us. Our guard duty was lightened by hot chocolate prepared from D bars and canned milk made on our squad stove. The weather was nice, and the snow we had found when we arrived soon disappeared. We fired our mortars sparingly, and then only at targets well defined.
On the 16th of December the Jerries opened up on our positions with an unexpected barrage of 88’s and 81’s. A shell exploded within 25 feet of the hole I was sleeping in, but I didn’t awaken. Our latrine took a direct hit, but we had no casualties. Several of us were just a little shaky after we had a look at the trees and ground hit by the shells.
The next day the order came to prepare to leave our positions and "retire to better prepared defenses." We quickly destroyed everything we couldn’t move by hand, shouldered our mortars and set off across the field early in the day. We marched all day. Luck was with us; a dense fog covered the ground and hampered the pursuing Jerries. That evening we ran into a tank trap and most of the 1st platoon of my company was wiped out by machine guns. Hastily we were reorganized and attempted to circle the danger point. On the morning of the 19th the bulk of the 423rd was trapped in a valley and forced by enemy artillery fire to surrender. Some of us headed for the woods and escaped temporarily. I traveled through dense undergrowth until I happened upon some Yanks defending the 422nd motor pool, some AA boys, and a few recon men. There I stayed in a fox hole for two days, eating very little food. By patrolling we discovered Jerries on all sides.
On the morning of the 21st at nine o’clock the Colonel in charge was forced by superior enemy forces into surrendering his troops. We marched out of the woods weaponless. There were about a thousand of us who marched out onto the road to Schonberg. The weather was clear and cold. Snow lined the ditches, but the roads were free. At Schonberg we encountered many German vehicles of the highly mobile Panzer type. Apparently the 106th had encountered superior numbers of experienced enemy soldiers.
All the 21st we marched. At about seven that evening we arrived at Prüm. We slept on bare floors that night in an old school building which had lost its windows during a bombing raid. Most of us had no blankets; a few even had no coats. We huddled together and tried to sleep. All we’d had to eat since morning was a D-bar.
Next morning found us up early and (with no food) marching toward a town where, the guards told us, we would find a train to take us to our Stalag (prisoner-of-war camp). We marched until about 8:30 p.m., making about 15 miles, when we reached Gerolstein, a small German town with a freight yard. There we received our first food from the German Reich: 1/3 of a loaf of hard brown sour-tasting bread, a small portion of limburger cheese, and a cup of warm artificial coffee. It was the first time I had tasted Jerry coffee or bread; I liked neither. The coffee had a flat, woody flavor and gave very little stimulation.
We spent a day and a half in a box car at Gerolstein, waiting for a Zug (locomotive) to come to get us. Life in a small, crowded box car is difficult and unsanitary. Seventy of us huddled together, trying to keep warm. The floor of the car was covered with horse manure, which stank and nauseated us. While there, some English planes came over and dropped bombs in another part of the freight yard. The cold crept in and chilled us; even those of us who had coats or blankets. My feet suffered the worst; they were severely frozen after the first night I spent in German hands.
An engine finally connected and dragged us 10 kilometers down the line about 2 a.m. of the second morning we spent in the car. We awoke on the morning of the 24th tired, cold and hungry in a switch yard flanked by flat now covered fields. The day (what we could see of it through the tiny barred windows of the box car) dawned beautifully; the sun starting early to melt the snow and ice.
About noon, two P-51’s strafed the box cars we were in, killing nine and wounding forty. We broke out of the cars and lined up in an open field forming the letters USPW. Other fighters passed over that afternoon and dipped their wings in recognition. We counted more than five hundred B-17’s passing over. Several targets were near; we felt the ground shake often as the bombs hit their objectives. Christmas Eve: no food, and strafed by our own planes!
Christmas morning we started our 75 mile march to Coblenz, on the Rhine. There, we were told, we would find either a Stalag or a train to take us to one. We marched 30 miles Christmas day. At 10 p.m. we entered a small town where we spent the remainder of the night in a cold barn. It took us three days to march to Coblenz. Once there, we didn’t stop. We marched 18 miles further, arriving at another small town. We spent a day and a night in a cold warehouse.
At this warehouse we received the best food we’d had from Jerry: more sour bread, a small piece of marg, another cup of coffee, and 1/25 of an English Red Cross parcel. My share of the parcel was a cracker and two raw strips of bacon. It tasted mighty good!
Finally we again found ourselves in another box car. At midnight of the 30th we pulled out and rode for 18 hours. At the end of this jolty, filthy ride we found ourselves at Stalag 4-B near Muhlenberg. The lights on the fence were the first lights I’d seen blazing into the open night in Germany. Despite the fence, we were all glad to see the prison camp. One of the fellows had jokingly referred to our terrible march (during which we had walked at least 120 miles) as our "flight to bondage." And that it was!
At 4-B, at exactly 12 midnight, December 31st, I stepped under a scalding shower and grinned through two weeks growth of beard at a fellow prisoner. "Happy New Year, Bob; pass the soap."
We showered, received a tetanus shot, had our clothes de-loused, and were registered. On New Years Day I found myself in a large building called Lager 58B, with 35 other Americans and 200 British. The British were old residents of the camp. Some had been there four years…
Well, it’s all over with now–everything. The war in Europe, Hitler, the nightmare that was Germany–and my life as a prisoner of war: all finished. It is easy for me, sitting on an army cot somewhere in France, to look back and laugh. It’s easy to sit here and write about my four months in German hands; easy, now that I’m eating all my belly will hold of good army chow; easy, now that I can read authentic news in the daily "Stars and Stripes" or listen to it on a radio in the next tent. Yes, it’s easy. Life in America is easy and fellows like myself don’t regret the time we were forced to waste in Germany for just that reason. We know we have something to go back to; something worth living, and, if necessary, dying for.
It’s all over. My memories of the past few months are vivid, though I’m trying to forget. Some things are hard to erase…
The ancient train rattled to a jerky stop. Be blew on our hands to warm them, got unsteadily to our feet, and, like dumb cattle, waited for the Jerry guards to come and open the door of our box car.
"Where do you suppose we are?" asked Rockwell of Ohio in a dull tone. He didn’t really care–just wanted to break the silence.
"Somewhere in Germany," Smith of Texas laughed, then broke off suddenly–remembering that it was no joke.
"The Limey’s said we’d go to 4-G," offered little Benigno of the Bronx.
"Where’s 4-G?" someone I couldn’t see in the back inquired.
"Somewhere around Oschatz," Hill answered.
The door opened, we climbed down into snow.
"Even the weather’s against us," I muttered.
A tall ugly Jerry with a glass eye appeared and yelled something which sounded like: "Eindriten an drei Kolonne," which I later learned meant to line up in a column of 3’s. After some confusion and milling around in the snow, we obeyed.
"March," yelled the one-eyed guard, and we were off. Three kilometers and one hour later found us nearly exhausted before the iron gate of our new home: Lager 118. We were hungry, and shivering. The large white stone beer-hall looked friendly and warm to us. The gate opened suddenly and the thin-lipped cruel face of our new under-officer appeared. He beckoned. We entered.
The back room of the beer hall was large and crowded. About fifty smooth-shaven well fed Russians were preparing for a hasty exit. Boiled potatoes and millet thick with meat was given us in wash basins and buckets. We ate and overate. Russians fled. About eight Jerry guards came in. Qualman, our interpreter, yelled for silence.
"He says," Qualman nodded at the under officer, "that you men will be treated well. Work and you’ll be fed. You had better get to bed now. You go to work at five in the morning."
Rockwell looked at me and grimaced. "They sure don’t waste much time, do they?"
We slept that night on straw mattresses. The next morning we were covered with lice.
5 a.m., January 17th came all too soon. We pulled on our shoes and lined up at the kitchen window for our hot morning meal–a cup of warm Jerry coffee. A small chunk of brown bread was given us with the precaution: "That’s all you’ll have until tonight, so you’d better save it till noon."
"Los, los," yelled a short fat guard, who seemed to be second-in-command. We hurried outside, and lined up in the crisp morning air. The sky was black.
"No stars," commented the man next to me, cheerfully. "Probably snow today." It did.
It took us five hours of walking, riding a trolley, and riding a train to get us to Groβkorbetha, the scene of our first day’s labor for the Third Reich. We were very thankful to see a group of working English. As soon as possible we went to them for advice.
"Pretend to work," they told us. "Lean on your picks and forks and goof off as much as possible. Don’t antagonize the Jerry guards too much. They will shoot sometimes. But, worse than shooting, they might cut down on your grub. God knows, you get little enough as it is."
With that warning, we began our first day of Arbeit (work). Some yank pilots with very accurate and destructive 500 pound bombs had wrecked many rails in the yard at Groβkorbetha. Our job was to fill the craters with gravel, lay the ties, and tamp them so they rested solidly. Then we laid the rails.
We were cold–many had no overcoats, and few had gloves. We were allowed no fires, and no rest periods. But, quite to our surprise, at noon our uniformed foreman directed us to pile up our tools and take time off for lunch. Then our guard–the one-eyed fellow we called "Slim"–led us into a sheltered recess under the station.
He disappeared and soon returned with a large can of soup–fairly good rice porridge with small chunks of horse meat in it. Each of us (there were 90 of us altogether) got about a pint of this hot soup. It helped us greatly to improve our morale.
For five days we worked there, repairing the damage done by our bombers. Sunday came and went; we worked. When we asked the guards about a day off, they shrugged. They replied: "Your comrades bombed our railroads; you will have to fix them." At the end of the fifth day, the German railroad official told us we wouldn’t have to come there to work again. "Das gut," he informed us.
The next day we worked at our "regular" places. We were divided into three working groups. I was the leader of group two. Group one, known as Eine Gruppe, worked in the huge Leipzig-Waren freight yard, located only two miles from our Lager. We walked to and from work. We began at seven, had forty-five minutes off at 8:30, an hour off at noon, and quit at 4. These hours pleased us very much.
At Waren we were introduced to a middle-aged Pole, who would be our foreman. His name was Alex Erbe. With him were about 10 other Polish fellows, all forced laborers, who worked with us. The tall, quiet one was Carl; the stocky one with the friendly smile was Ulich. These two, Carl and Ulich (brothers), proved to be true friends. Later they gave us food and helped us to bear more easily some of the rough treatment.
Our work at Waren was easy, so far as actual physical labor was concerned. The hard part about it was that we had to be out in all kinds of weather–and January had plenty of severe cold to torment us with. Our job was to repair rails, oil switches, move ties and clean up rubbish. During heavy snows we would sweep snow from switches to keep them from clogging.
At the Lager our food improved slowly. At first we had watery turnip soup in the evening. Then the turnips were substituted by sauerkraut, carrots, kohlrabies, or potatoes. On Sundays (we didn’t have to work after that first weekend) we even got meat in our soup! About two weeks after we began working we were given an increase in bread, about four tablespoons full of sugar a week, a little jam, and a very small amount of blood sausage. Boiled potatoes (about 8 per day) were part of our regular ration. We were paid a Mark a day (about 10¢) for our labor, and could spend our earnings on German beer. The beer was non-alcoholic, and resembled root beer. We had quite a lot of it.
Of the eight guards at our Lager we soon found the good ones. Slim was all right, but his temper ran away with him sometimes and he occasionally hit one of the boys with his rifle. Fat-Stuff, we despised. He reminded us of a little, filthy pig–and he looked like one, too. He tried to act big, tried to show off his great German uniform. Willie was the best of them all. He was very quiet–and always willing to try to help a POW when he could. The rest of the guards were just average. They neither helped us, nor were particularly bad to us. For the most part, I guess they were not such a bad bunch of Jerries–but who likes Jerries? The under officer turned out to be alright. He did his best to get us rations, Red Cross parcels and clothes.
Each evening at 7 o’clock we endured an ordeal the Germans called La Belle. To us it was just plain roll call. We were lined up in two’s on the platform that ran around the room on three sides, and counted. This wouldn’t have bothered us much, if the guard had done it quickly. But the whole affair was usually drawn out into at least a half-hour proceeding. All the while we had to stand in place without fidgeting. Occasionally a boy would move, then the under officer would walk around looking for untidy dress, uncombed hair, or dirty skin. The annoying part was, they didn’t give us time to keep clean and neat, but they expected it, nevertheless. Several lectures were given us by the under officer (via interpreter) on sanitation–but when lice were discovered, they did little to get rid of them.
We ate our meals–or what the Jerries called meals–on tables arranged on the platform. Ten men were seated at each of the nine tables, and each table group elected a "Table Leader" whose duty it was to see that the men at his table received a proper share of what little food there was. I became Table Leader of table four; and later Group Leader of working-group two. Although my duties as leader were few, they were important, as the very lives of the men depended upon the inadequate food we were given. Early in our stay at Lager 118 we encountered stealing; stealing of one buddy from another. And the theft was usually of food. Toward the end of our stay there, the stealing became so bad that it was necessary to sleep with any food, if one desired to keep it overnight. Boiled potatoes and Jerry bread had a bad habit of disappearing–frequently. I lost quite a few bread "rations" that way myself. A bread ration was a hard chunk, 330 grams of bread, about four inches square. Each man received one bread ration a day, and about eight small boiled potatoes, half of which were usually rotten or frozen. During the week we had one issue of jam, some pale margarine, and about 200 grams of horse meat. Those items, together with Jerry coffee and our watery evening soup, comprised our food. In addition to these things, we frequently managed to raid box cars and secure carrots, cabbage, potatoes, and even meat.
I had always been under the impression that Germany led the field in medicine. Maybe so, but I saw no evidence of it while a prisoner there. If any of us became ill, it was a long hard procedure to receive medical attention. The necessary steps went something like this: on either Tuesday or Friday evenings at roll call the sick man informed the group leader he desired to go on sick call the next day. Fat-stuff would then make a preliminary (and by no means authoritative) examination. If he approved, the sick man rode the trolley about 12 miles the next day to a dispensary serving all POW’s in the Leipzig area. There a British medical Captain makes a more thorough examination and usually ends up by telling the sick individual that he has no medicine to give him.
"Sure, they’ll let you write home–about once a month," a Brit told us. "But that’s no sign it’ll ever be delivered." Hopefully, we filled out our cards and sent them off. I’m still wondering if they’ll ever be delivered*.
Weekends–the ones on which we didn’t work–were almost more trying than the week days. Sunday morning we were allowed to sleep past our usual rising time of 5 a.m.–for an extra hour and a half. Then we were "roused" out and a hectic day began. "Quick, draw your Kaffee." We’d hardly swallowed the tasteless, scalding stuff before: "Quickly, beds outside!" We lugged our straw-filled burlap bags out into the tiny back yard which was fenced in by barbed wire.
Then the "sauber machen" or cleanup. For brooms we used twigs tied together. We had no mops, or dust cloths. At best, we never hoped to clean the place. But we worked until noon trying to. About noon we drug our beds back inside. Sometimes, if the guards felt good, we had the balance of the day to ourselves. If they didn’t, we had another inspection at 3 p.m., of clothes, or hands, or bunks. If we were free, we could play cards or Monopoly (the English had given us a game of it) or read one of the few books we had. We weren’t allowed to sleep during the day, even though it was Sunday. In the evening, after roll call, we had about half an hour of church services, conducted by a youth named Timmons. Timmons had just finished his preliminary ministerial training before his draft number came up.
"Achtung! Achtung! Leipzig!" a girl’s insistent voice sounded through the room. We recognized the voice; also the warning it brought. It was the local announcement via radio that Allied bombers were approaching. Outside, an air raid siren began to blare–first warning; the Jerries called it the "four-alarm." One of the guards entered and switched out the lights. I could never understand the necessity for this, because thick blackout curtains covered the windows securely.
"Well, maybe this time, they’ll hit Leipzig yards," someone remarked in the darkness.
"Yeah, then we’ll work all through the weekend," another voice commented.
"Oh, well," someone sighed, "Might as well work as run around here all day, with those damned Jerries yelling at you."
Most of us agreed silently. Outside, in the distance, we heard the second, and final, alarm screaming. Four of our guards, helmeted, ran into the room.
"Alarm! Los, Los!" we knew what that meant–out into the air raid shelter. We grabbed our coats and headed for the rear door. Our shelters were a joke–shallow, ineffective trenches–but in conformance, I had no doubt, with Geneva Convention rules. The night was lit with flares, dropped from the planes. Overhead we could hear the roar of powerful American motors.
"Looks close, tonight," Bob Stoll commented to me as we watched the slowly settling flares. I nodded. None of the fellows seemed frightened at the possibility of sudden death. Rather, they seemed interested to know where and how much damage was to be rained upon helpless Germany.
Then, to the south several miles distant, came startling flashes, shortly followed by rumbling reports–sounds which resembled summer thunder. For half an hour we stood in our cold, uncomfortable shelter, while the planes released their messages of destruction. Then the sky once more became dark as the flares and searchlights disappeared, and soon the all-clear sounded. We were herded back inside, and ordered to bed.
"Looks like a bombing job for us tomorrow," McClain remarked as he climbed over me into his bunk.
"Yeah, and I hope they blew hell out of what they were aiming at," Phillips, in the bunk below, commented.
I smiled to myself. The American Air Force, I knew from experience, did not often miss their target.
I have often remarked that, had the circumstances been less trying, I might have had a very interesting stay in Germany. For the four months I spent there marked the conclusion of the German bid for world supremacy. It brought to an unhappy (for the Nazis) conclusion their long and painful attempt to enforce their barbaric ways on the rest of the world.
For many Germans, defeat meant utter loss–loss of home, loss of prestige, and even loss of life. But the majority of the average citizens had, as early as January, just after their Bulge collapsed, become resigned to the fact that defeat was inevitable. It was just a matter of time. Polish, French, and other forced laborers began making plans for returning to their homes. Talk on the street became more liberal, and the citizen was no longer as gullible to propaganda as he used to be. Many people asked us about how the war was going–we told them the truth. Everyone believed us but the Jerry soldiers we talked to. They just laughed, and made remarks about the invincible Wehrmacht.
"The German army will never surrender!" an English-speaking captain told me. "They will fight until the last man is dead." His prediction was later disproved.
By association, we soon learned sufficient German to be able to understand what the people said. Most of them talked with us freely, and they seemed puzzled to think that the U.S. should fight Germany at all.
"We don’t bomb your cities," they said. Or: "We didn’t fight on American soil. Why should you fight here?"
We didn’t bother explaining.
The German army was only one of the many military groups in the country. Almost every individual, men and women alike, wore a uniform of some sort. The outfit with the most gold braid was likely to belong to a high ranking official, whose duties might range from that of messenger boy to mayor of a city. Even children, barely old enough to walk, were uniformed.
The only music I ever heard in Leipzig came from a military band, and the only singing was done by some Luftwaffe boys, while marching down a street. Even the song–"Lili Marlene"–which Polish boys hummed while working–was a war song originated by the Jerries.
German cars were few. About half of the ones we saw were Fords. Others were made in America also, such as Packard, Buick, and Chevrolet. Trucks were largely Fords, also. They were powered by fuel which gave off vile fumes. Some of the vehicles were coke-burners. Almost every German owned a bicycle. On this he rode to and from work, carrying the inevitable black satchel with its loaf of bread and chunk of marg–his noon meal. Motorcycles were also used for transportation, but were seen less than the bicycles.
Passenger trains were packed to the doors, and often even more. People would cling to the bars outside and hang to the connections between cars. Most of the good railroad equipment had long since been destroyed by bombs; a great percentage of the cars were from France, Belgium or other occupied countries. They were old, and uncomfortable to travel in.
The one luxury which the Germans clung to until the last was their beer. It was non-alcoholic, but its taste resembled beer I’d had at home. Us POW’s managed to procure quite a bit of the stuff, largely because we lived in a tavern. One variety, called black beer, was hard to distinguish from our root beer.
One bright spot of our POW life was brought about by the receipt of Red Cross parcels. We’d seen them at Stalag 4-B and had eaten a sample of their contents. Months passed at Lager 118; still no parcels came. Finally, in the middle of March, we came in from work one day to find a heap of boxes stacked by the door.
"Boys!" we breathed, "Food from home!"
They were sure a morale builder. And we needed the foodstuff to keep us going. Here is a list of what a typical food parcel contains: 3 cans of meat, a can of peaches, chewing gum, dehydrated noodle soup, bouillon cubes, pre-mixed cereal, crackers, a chocolate bar, and some cheese. All parcels also had a pint-can of powdered milk, and half-pound of sugar. The quantity of each item was small, but we appreciated everything.
There were not enough parcels to go around, so we just had one every two weeks, instead of the intended one a week. But they helped–immensely!
We didn’t know exactly when our armies crossed the Rhine. But shortly afterward guarded news items filtered through to us. Carl, one of the Polish boys, usually got information somehow.
"Americans in Frankfurt," he told us one day. Then, the next: "Americans in Coblenz." Definitely the Yanks were coming! Our spirits picked up. Our liberation which we had sweated out better than three months was coming at last! But our hardships were not over–not by a long shot.
The day before Easter our bombers wrecked the yards at Halle, a rail center 25 kilometers west of Leipzig. For twelve days we worked there, riding back and forth each day by train. While there, raids occurred each day, usually involving fighter planes. We narrowly escaped being bombed twice, and were nearly strafed several times. Luck, or I should say God, was with us.
On our tenth day at Halle, we fancied that we heard artillery fire in the distance. On the eleventh it was verified by German reports. Definitely, the Yanks were coming! The night of the twelfth day at Halle we returned to the Lager to learn that we would work in the Waren yards at Leipzig the next day. And that day–the day after we had quit her–Halle fell into American hands! It was Thursday, April 12th, 1945.
Life is Tough in the ETO will continue soon with Part II.