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Soldier, Known Locally, Writes Of Joy Over Being Liberated“I won’t say I cried real tears but my eyes sure got watery in a burry when I saw those Yanks,” writes Staff Sergeant Henry C. Nathan to a local friend. The Sergeant was among 277 U. S doughboys recently liberated from one of Germany’s worst stalaga or prison camps.A late issue of the Stars and Stripes carries the story of the liberation and Sergeant Nathan, who Ssjdentally is German-born, gives h graphic account of conditions inside the camp.Nathan, who trained at a nearby camp and is well known locally, tells his story in a letter to Mrs. Hazel E. Neibert, 352 South Cleveland avenue.The 393rd Regiment liberated us and I don’t believe there was a dry eye in the whole camp, he wrote, and explained that he had been languishing in the camp since captured in the Belgium bulge on December 19.The PWS had been living at a subhuman level for months, penned up in cramped, filthy Quarterswhile being underfed and brutalized. And for those who witnessed it the rescue was poignant andheart-tearing.The way to liberty, wrote Nathan, was paved when U. S. planes stalled a prison train with about 1,500 prisoners aboard. The Nazis left 277 men on the box cars, Nathan among them, abandoned because they were unable to walk while the others marched away with the retreating Germans.Three haggard, dirty, hollow eyed men stumbled across the field and met a 393rd patrol. The rescue soon followed.Nathan said all of them had been overworked and underfed in the prison camp. At one camp, it was reported, those too weak or si:k to go out to work were denied food.Nathan was born in Frankfurt, Germany, coming to New * York City three years ago. He entered the service in New York and was sent to a nearby camp for training. He left here September 5, 1944,' for overseas and was captured December 19. •
Newspaper Details
The Daily Mail
Hagerstown, Maryland, US
Thu, Apr 26, 1945
Page 8
Full Page
Clipped by
Anonymous
USA 08 Aug 2018
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