A Medic's War

A MEDICS WAR
A MEDICS WAR
One Mans True Odyssey of
Hardship, Friendship, and Survival
in the Second World War
By Tyler Fisher
from the combat and captivity narratives of his grandfather,
Hugh Jess Fisher
Aventine Press
February 2005, Tyler Fisher
First Edition
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Published by Aventine Press
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www.aventinepress.com
ISBN: 1-59330-252-5
Printed in the United States of America
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
It seems that when youre young, in your formative years, when
youre raising your own family, youre trying to forget,
maybe, the experiences of war,
but as you get older, it comes back to you not that it was ever
out of my mind, but it comes back so clear to me. Thats why I
can relate things that happened in 1944; its almost as clear as
when it happened. Some details maybe didnt impress me for
some reason or something, or maybe just routine, but
most are pretty active in my mind.
Hugh J. Fisher
December 31, 2000
AUTHORS NOTE
In the early autumn of 2000, I began to record my grandfathers
account of his experience as a World War II medical corpsman
and prisoner of war. Our rst session with a hand-held cassette
recorder yielded nine hours of tape over several days. Although
I had heard fragments of his epic narrative throughout my
childhood, this recording was his rst attempt to relate the
experience in full from beginning to end, from draft notice to
homecoming. Then began the long process of verifying names
and locations, conrming events, and ordering chronology. My
grandfather responded to my initial transcriptions with two more
hours of tape, supplying memories that had escaped him in the
rst telling. We repeated this process several times. Eventually, I
amassed sufcient information for a full re-telling of his ordeal in
the form of readable chapters interspersed with his wartime letters
and jottings. Lydia Newell of Eastern Washington University
provided scholarly advice and invaluable proofreading.
Currently, an estimated 1,100 American veterans of the
Second World War die each day. With their deaths, we are
losing countless personal histories, gems of insight from one of
our nations greatest eras, stories of extraordinary courage and
sacrice from ordinary men and women. With this book, I hope
to preserve a small piece of this vanishing history.
Tyler Fisher
December 9, 2004
The summer and autumn of 1944 saw the death throes of Adolf
Hitlers Third Reich. In the months following June 6, D-Day, the
Allied forces successfully broke through German defenses at the
beaches of Normandy and swept across Western Europe until,
by September, the United States had positioned troops along
Germanys impenetrable Siegfried Line.
At the same time, the Soviet Army was recapturing territory
from Germany in the east and beginning an advance on Berlin.
The Allies seemed set to strengthen inexorably their stranglehold
on Germany, but Hitler had no thoughts of surrender. We may
be going down, he raged at his Luftwafffe staff ofcer Nicolaus
von Below, but we will take the rest of the world down with
us.
The desperate fhrer decided to launch a surprise counter-
offensive against the Allied troops massed at his gates. If the
Germans could drive through to Antwerp and the sea, they could
effectively split the major western Allies, with the British in the
north cut off from the Americans further south. Ultimate Nazi
victory in Europe might yet be achieved.
On December 16, 1944, the Germans began Operation
Wacht am Rhein (Watch on the Rhine) or Herbstnebel (Autumn
Mist). They attacked the thinly spread American line in the
Ardennes region of eastern Belgium and northern Luxembourg.
The United States 106
th
Division, which had arrived to relieve
the 2
nd
Division in early December, bore the force of the initial
attack. Although taken by surprise, their determined stand
bought precious time for the Allied forces. After a month of erce
ghting, instead of reaching Antwerp, Hitlers armies succeeded
only in creating a temporary bulge in the Allied line.
For the U.S. forces, the Battle of the Bulge, as it came to
be called, was the largest land battle of the Second World War.
Over one million men fought, and enormous casualties resulted
on both sides, but the Allies withstood Hitlers reckless attempt
to change the course of the war in his favor. By the end of
January 1945, the ghting had consumed most of Germanys air
and ground forces. It seemed that the inevitable, nal defeat of
the Reich would come in a matter of months.
Yet by one count, Germany remained superior to the Allied
nations. In the middle of 1944, Germany held over 9 million
prisoners, both civilian and military. To this number were added
23,554 Americans captured in the Battle of the Bulge; and, with
the sting of that defeat still hurting his pride, Hitler was in no
mood to give up his prisoners easily. As the American and
Western European forces pressed forward and the Soviet Army
made ravaging advances from the east, the Germans moved
their millions of prisoners from stalag to stalag, camp to camp,
dodging the Allied incursions.
This is one Americans story of the initial days of the Ardennes
conict and of his harrowing months that followed in the German
prison camps.
Chapter 1. Medic!1
Chapter 2. The Seventeenth of December17
Chapter 3. Dreams among the Dying23
Chapter 4. Yuletide March33
Chapter 5. M. Stammlager IV-B49
Chapter 6. M. Stammlager VIII-A57
Chapter 7. M. Stammlager XI-B71
Chapter 8. Liberation83
Epilogue. On the Homefront95
Chronology105
A MEDICS WAR 1
CHAPTER ONE
Medic!
A
buzz bomb pointed up from the snow in the ravine, its
dark metal tail frosted with several days snow. A dud, I
thought. Probably been stuck there nose-down in the earth for
a while.
I paused to catch my breath and take stock of my surroundings.
The snowy ravine curved to the right and disappeared into a
thick wood. C Battery must be in the direction of that wood,
the farthest to the right of our encampment and the closest to the
German positions.
I waded through the snow at a safe distance from the buzz
bomb, hoping that this would be the closest I would ever come
to one of those shrieking angels of death. Here in the ravine,
the snowdrifts and pine woods mufed the sound of the artillery
thunder in the distance. The rumblings that had awakened me
before dawn now seemed far away, as though they belonged to a
different time and space far from this snowswept hush.
~~ * ~~
At 5:30 that morning, December 16, 1944, the thunder had
erupted. I awoke and lay for a moment in my bunk, listening to
2 Tyler Fisher A MEDICS WAR 3
the unfamiliar sound. It was not unusual for us to hear our own
guns setting up their aiming points. There would be a shot, then
silence for a moment, then a blast from another gun, like a delayed
echo. But this new sound was different: a low, resounding,
roaring boom, a deep and distant thunder. Somethings wrong
out there, I thought.
I tapped on the bottom of my buddys bunk to wake him up.
Hanson, you hear that?
Yeah. Yeah, I hear it. Hanson rolled over noisily in the
loose straw of his bunk.
Well, I said, thats not our guns.
Oh, I dont know. Go back to sleep, Fisher.
But I couldnt go back to sleep. Something seemed to tell
me to get up and get ready. I put on my uniform, full eld pack,
medics kit everything except my duffel bag with extra clothes
and personal items and slipped from the bunkroom into the
adjacent room of the German farmhouse that served as our
medical aid station. There we had set up our rst aid supplies
and had formed beds by straddling the big cases of medical
equipment with stretchers, ready to receive any wounded. We
made use of two rooms on the ground oor of the farmhouse,
while the German owner and his wife, who was pregnant at the
time, stayed in the remainder. An old Coleman lantern gave a
warm light to the aid room, its gentle roar mocking the rumblings
outside.
As I waited in the aid room, I thought of my wife and recalled
the lines I had scribbled to her in letters a couple days earlier.
Dec. 10, 1944
8:30 p.m.
Germany
My Darling Elsie and Johnny Boy!
Hi, my Honey, its me again, or maybe I should say, at last!
I imagine that the heading on this letter is quite a surprise to you.
Well, dont let it worry you, Darling. Its a surprise to me in
more ways than one. Ive covered a lot of country in a short time,
Darling. Ive had a peek at England, France, Belgium, and
now Germany. Thats going places, dont you think? Right now,
Honey, if I didnt know I was in Germany, I would think I was
out north of Engadine. We have about 4 inches of fresh snow, which
really makes me feel at home. You can look across the fields and
see the X-mas trees (spruce) all covered with snow and it really
makes a pretty picture. Reminds me of our days in the little cabin
at Gilchrist.
Well, my own little Sweetheart, Ill close for tonight, sorry that
I missed writing for so many days, but those things cant be helped
sometimes. From now on, Ill try to get a letter out every day. Now
dont worry about me, Honey. Ill get along O.K. Im feeling fine
and getting to be a better soldier every day.
How is my Johnny boy getting along, big sum of two years now,
good little boy, isnt he?
Goodnight, Darling. I love you.
Hi, Daddys boy!
Millions of kisses.
Your loving
Hugh
Dec. 13, 1944
6:00 p.m.
Germany
My Darling Elsie and Johnny,
Hello again, Sweetheart! Just got through eating chow and
thought I had better write a few lines. Its been a real nice day here
today, really warm out. Ive been working all day trying to rig up
a stove for our room, got one made out of a GI can, but the darn
thing smokes too much. Will have to make a few alterations again
tomorrow.
Ive seen some nice geese and turkeys walking around here today,
maybe will be able to manage a turkey dinner for Christmas.
It looks like its going to be a cold night here, also a little noisy.
But I havent had any trouble sleeping yet.
I love you, my Darling.
Hi, Johnny!
Millions of kisses.
Your loving
Hugh

A lieutenant burst through the door of the aid station, wrenching
me out of my reverie. Gotta get hold of your headquarters, he
bellowed. I just got attacked by Germans past your aid station.
Ambushed just east of the aid station.
We couldnt believe what we were hearing. Ambush? Whats
going on out there?
By now, the other men were clambering out of the triple-
decker bunks to get ready, and the day was dawning gray beyond
the tarpapered windows of the farmhouse. Word came over the
telephone that there was a wounded man at C Battery, and C
Battery couldnt locate their aid man for medical help.
Ill go, I said. I was already dressed and ready, and I felt
it was my duty to go, though I didnt know exactly where C
Battery was positioned. The batteries, manning the big 105mm
howitzers, would be arranged in order of A, B, and C. C Battery
should be located at the northeast end of the artillery battalion.
That much I knew.
I also knew enough not to walk on the road to get there. From
the farmhouse, I set out through six-inch-deep snow, cross-
country in the direction C Battery must be.
The terrain was almost entirely unfamiliar to me. I had
examined a map of the area tacked to the wall of our room in
the farmhouse. It was a crude map, little more than a newspaper
clipping, and it was the only map I had ever seen of our location.
The rough drawing outlined two or three main areas: the frontline
near the towns of Schnberg and St. Vith, the Our River, and the
city of Prm to the northeast of our location. With no details of
roads or trails, the map didnt tell us much. Prm, as a railroad
center and German communications hub, was to be our objective
when we would launch an offensive advance in the spring. Until
then, we were on the defensive, sitting and waiting through the
harshest winter Europe had seen in fty years.
During those days in the farmhouse aid station, we waited for
word from the commanders. The battery commander and the
battalion commanders had an ofcers meeting every evening.
Our medical ofcer, Lieutenant Michael Connely, attended
these sessions. Each night when he returned to the farmhouse,
we peppered him with questions:
Well, whats the deal, Lieutenant? Whats going on?
Nothing for now. Were just going to stay here and get
accustomed to the situation the weather and the climate and
the setup, as if this were a training area. Then well be part of
the offensive when we move in the spring.
Whats in store for us? Whatre the plans?
I cant tell you much, the lieutenant answered, but were
just going to stay put until the weather breaks and we start the
spring offensive.
If the weather had been somewhat better and I had been
somewhat surer of myself, I would have gone out scouting
around during our days of waiting. Generally, we did not leave
the aid station in the farmhouse except for short walks to the
mess hall for meals, and the one time I did step off the trail
near the mess hut, I had tumbled into an old foxhole half full of
water. Soaked through, I had to dry my clothes overnight by our
makeshift stove in the farmhouse. Now as I hurried through the
snow in search of C Battery, I wished that I had ventured out to
see where the batteries were and had learned the lay of the land
nearby.
The wet cold seeped through my combat boots. Our unit had
not received any overshoes or winter footgear, and our rough
leather boots with leather straps and double buckle were neither
waterproof nor insulated.
From up ahead, an American sentry hailed me from his
machine gun outpost. I had reached B Battery. This sentrys
gray hair was a familiar sight in our battalion, though I didnt
know his real name. He was probably in his mid-thirties, much
older than the rest of us, and the other soldiers just called him
Pop because of his gray hair.
What do you know about C Batterys location? I asked.
All I know is theyd be off in that direction. Pop swung
his arm toward the wooded area in the direction I had supposed
they would be.
They have a wounded man over there, I said. Ill probably
be back through here, taking the wounded man back to the aid
station.
I left the outpost, trying to pick the best course where I would
have the clearest vision. I approached another outpost, another
sentry. Here, too, I found a familiar face. The sentry was from
Newberry, Michigan, near my hometown of Gilchrist. He used
to go to some of the same dances as my wife and I.
Its a surprise to see you here, I called.
Yeah.
No time for talk now. Ive got to get to C Battery.
Well, he said, I aint sure where they are exactly, but Im
an outpost for the 592
nd
.
I hadnt realized that the 592
nd
eld artillery battalion, which
was also a part of our artillery group but had bigger guns, was
positioned so close to us. Evidently, my mental map of the area
was more distorted than I had thought. Im going to follow this
ravine, I told him, and head into that woods over there, where
I assume they are, in that area. I may be coming back this way,
so dont shoot at us coming back out of there.
Oh no, no. Ill watch, he said. Ill watch for you.
I pushed on into the ravine where the buzz bomb, the V-1
rocket, jutted from the snow. As I crossed a clearing and entered
the forest at the far end of the hollow, a bombardment shattered
the stillness. Bells screamed, and small-arms re pelted the
area. To my left, a group of GIs came running out of the pines.
I recognized a couple of them.
Godwins been hit! Medic! Godwins been hit! they
yelled.
Where is he?
Hes back, back in the woods!
And they were gone.
I could only follow their tracks where they had come running
out of the woods. The evergreens here were thick with snow. A
recent barrage of enemy mortar re had ripped through the area.
Some shells had exploded in the treetops and littered the snow
with a spray of debris. Tree bursts we called them.
A noise, a faint voice, came from my right in the dense trees:
Fisher, help me! I turned and saw Private Godwin staggering
toward me, badly wounded.
It was my rst experience under such conditions and my rst
time treating a severely wounded man. The artillery re halted
for a moment, but then began again with renewed fury. The
forest was a storm of ying branches and shrapnel.
I pulled Godwin down into a kind of cradle knoll for
protection. The soldier was wearing his overcoat with a jacket,
a wool sweater, and his underwear beneath that. The straps from
his packs still clung to his shoulders, and he clutched at his M1
carbine rie. A trickle of blood ran from the corner of his mouth,
and he writhed in pain.
I lay Godwin down on his back. As a medic, I carried sy-
ringes and capsules of morphine in my pack. I removed the cap
from a needle to inject a quarter inch of morphine. As I had
been trained, I shot the morphine into the fat of the stomach at
the waistline to stop his pain and quiet him down. Then I took
my medical scissors and cut his packsack off. With no time to
unbutton all his clothes, I just cut away the clothes with the scis-
sors to get to the wound.
Blood was still streaming from a gaping hole in the left side of
Godwins chest. I sprinkled sulfanilamide powder in the wound
until the opening was covered with the white, antibacterial
powder. The wound required one of the largest compresses I
had, a four-by-six inch compress. I pushed this into the hole
along with several smaller compresses to stanch the bleeding.
Then I struggled to secure the compresses in the wound with
tape.
The shrapnel, the mortar or artillery shell fragment that had
pierced Godwins chest, had exited through his back. I rolled
him over onto his stomach to access this wound. A hole twice
as large as the rst yawned near his shoulder blade. I followed
the same procedure, cut away more clothing, stuffed the wound
with compresses, and tried to wrap a bandage from front to back
in order to hold the compresses in place.
By now, Godwin was unconscious from the morphine and
loss of blood. With the wounds dressed, his bleeding slowed. A
little blood still seeped from beneath the bandages, but the blood
was no longer gushing out with such force, so I knew that no
main arteries had been hit.
I have to get him out of here, I thought, but there was no one
to help. The other GIs who had been with Godwin at the time
of the bombardment had ed from the forest. I would have to
carry him out alone. Taking him by one arm, with my arm under
one of his legs, and still with my full eld pack on, I carried him.
He weighed at least 150 pounds to my 170, but he was short and
stocky. I was able to walk with him.
I knew we would have to re-cross the rst little clearing where
the soldiers had come running out of the pines. I also knew that
Germans were in the woods now. At the far end of the clearing, I
could see at least two or three German helmets among the snow
and trees.
My own steel helmet bore the Red Cross symbol on its front,
back, and sides a circle of white with a red cross painted upon it.
Like all the other medics, I had painted it myself just days earlier.
One guy had refused to paint his. Im not putting anything like
that on my helmet. Its nothing more than a good target! But
as we neared the front lines and heard artillery rumbling on the
horizon, he scurried around to nd some paint and a brush to get
his helmet painted.
Gotta depend on that red cross now, I thought, and I struck out
across the clearing. The German soldiers respected the symbol
on my helmet and armband and held their re.
The weather was worsening and my strength could not hold
out much longer. I carried Godwin into an area of dense woods to
a little hut that C Battery had erected. Inside, out of the weather,
Godwin started to come around again. He moaned in pain, so
I gave him another shot of morphine. Other wounded men had
gathered in the hut, but they were all what we called walking
wounded. They had esh wounds in their arms or legs but no
broken bones; they could still walk.
I would need help getting Godwin to a medical aid station. He
would have to be carried out on a litter, and there was nothing in
the hut that could be used as a litter. Fortunately, the telephone
lines from the hut to the aid station were still intact. I telephoned
the aid station and begged them to send somebody with a litter
as quickly as possible.
I have one man who needs to be carried out, plus some other
walking wounded. Whoever comes can follow my tracks to the
hut.
None other than my buddy Harland Hanson arrived in answer
to my call. We loaded Godwin onto the folding litter that Hanson
had brought and started out with our little group of wounded,
back through the ravine and past the old buzz bomb that lay in
the snow.
I had sighted the sentry post for the 592nd, when bullets sud-
denly began whistling around us. Zing! Zzzing! like maddened
hornets.
I snatched off my helmet and waved it over my head. The
shooting ceased. When I reached the sentry, I cursed. What are
you doing shooting at us? But it wasnt the same man I knew
from Newberry. They had changed sentries while I was gone,
and two new soldiers now manned the post.
We rested there for a minute or two and then headed on again,
following my tracks back to the gray-haired sentry, the one they
called Pop.
We rested again and talked with Pop. He didnt know any
more than we did about what was going on.
Sounds like all hells breaking loose. Wherere you
headed?
Weve got to get this guy to the aid station as soon as
possible.
We set off again.
We hadnt gone a hundred yards when Karooom! a shell
burst behind us, its whistle and explosion sounding simultane-
ously. It must have been an 88 shell, a direct hit on the old mans
post. There was no use in going back to help him because there
was nothing left. A smoldering crater now marked where the
machine gun outpost had stood. We could only continue on to
the aid station.
When we reached the aid station, we found that it too had been
shelled. The roof was blown in, and our supplies lay splattered
and splintered around the room. Staff Sergeant Gordon and our
medical lieutenant, Lieutenant Connely, were nowhere to be
found.
A place shelled once can easily be shelled again. I grew
frantic. What am I going to do with this man? He needs a
plasma transfusion to counteract the shock, and we have no
plasma. Ive got to take him further back for care.
The only place nearby that had not been hit by artillery re
and still promised some shelter and warmth was our mess hall.
The mess hall, set up about two hundred yards away from the
farmhouse, consisted of a two-and-a-half ton, two-by-six wheel
army truck with a canvas cover and a trailer for food supplies.
When arranging our camp, we had backed the truck into position
and strung another large sheet of canvas over poles so that about
fteen soldiers could sit inside for meals. Ours was nearly
identical to the mess hall that the division we were replacing had
used and, like it, was all covered with pine boughs that left only
a few patches of the trucks hood visible.
We pulled aside the series of hanging blankets and boughs
that camouaged the mess hall entrance and eased Godwin in
on the litter. Inside were heating units and a raised platform,
something like a little stage higher than ground level, on which
we would normally set our mess kits for meals. We left Godwin
on the litter and simply laid him on top of the platform. I covered
him with blankets and continuously took his pulse. Some time
during that afternoon, I gave him another shot of morphine.
The early dusk of a German winter fell quickly, and our
medical ofcers still had not arrived. I could do no more for
Godwin. There was no way to take him back beyond the ghting
for proper care.
After dark, Lieutenant Connely and Sergeant Gordon nally
returned. They had driven to the town of St. Vith to the west to
pick up fresh supplies, but by now, there was not much they could
do for Godwin either. He had lost too much blood. Godwin died
later that evening.
Outside, the chaos was increasing, and still nobody seemed
to know what was going on. Our leadership was in disarray,
and communication was almost nonexistent. Near midnight, an
ofcer arrived in a jeep with word that a reserve group, the 2
nd

Battalion of the 423rd Infantry, was coming in to assist with an
artillery withdrawal and to replace us. We were pulling out. The
ofcers asked Hanson and me to help load a weapons carrier
with some of the important documents and paperwork from
headquarters.
Headquarters was another farm building that served as a base
for the division ofcers. Hanson and I began loading the weapons
carrier parked at the side of the road in front of headquarters.
The night was black and thick with low clouds.
By now, the advancing Germans had moved in closer to our
position with their machine guns. Their Schmeisser machine
pistols sprayed bullets with a signature snarl in the darkness.
They were ring right down the road, not aiming at any particular
target but effectively covering the road so that anything on it
would be hit. With every third or fourth round of ring, they
would launch a tracer bullet. Bullets from the machine guns
sounded like bing bing bing-bing-bing, while after them came
tracer bullets, like ares racing off through the dark: light and
noise and darkness, a terrifying rhythm in a predictable pattern.
After several rounds of shooting, we had mastered the rhythm
precisely, timing our runs to the weapons carrier to t between
rounds. As soon as the road was clear, wed run out and toss a
load of documents into the truck and sprint back. Then tat tat
tat-tat-tat the bullets would pelt the road again. When we had
loaded most of the stuff into the truck, it sped away.
It was now the middle of the night. Exhaustion was beginning
to catch up with me, but adrenaline still pushed me on.
Fisher, I want you to go to C Battery again, Lieutenant
Connely said.
I hesitated. C Battery was hard enough to locate by day. It
would be nearly impossible for me at night. What kind of
wound have we got, Lieutenant?
I dont know. Report says theyve got a wounded man who
needs rst aid.
Well, I hesitated, it would be foolish for me to try to
get there in the dark I know how difcult it is to get there in
daylight. But if you insist, Ill go.
I had my hand on the door when the wounded man from C
Battery staggered in. A bullet had grazed his arm, but the gash
was not deep and he seemed to feel little pain. We doctored the
wound with sulfa powder and bandaged it up. The mans name was
Fike, another soldier I knew from Michigans Upper Peninsula.
He was from Sault Ste. Marie, northeast of my hometown. As
I wrapped the bandage over his wound, I shuddered to think of
what could have happened if I had gone stumbling out in the
dark to C Battery again in search of a wounded man able to walk
himself to rst aid. It was one of many instances in which I felt
divine protection.
~~ * ~~
The 423rd Infantry arrived under the command of a boisterous
colonel to support the withdrawal of our artillery. Now that
Ive got my boys here, the colonel bragged, those Krautsll
know that theyve got more than artillery folks to contend with
come daylight.
The soldiers in the artillery battalions, of course, were not
equipped to ght man-to-man. They carried carbines limited in
their range and effectiveness. And not everyone had a carbine.
The ofcers had pistols, 45s.
The colonels infantry began digging into their new position.
They had mortars and mini-machine guns, the weapons needed
for ghting on the ground, soldier against soldier. We did not
know where the Germans were moving or how hard they were
attacking, but we decided to try to get back to the town of
Schnberg behind the Belgian border with whatever equipment
we could transport.
A lieutenant pulled up in a jeep. He was heading to St. Vith,
he told us, a city even further back than Schnberg, and he
needed to take men with him to act as route markers. He needed
soldiers who would stand like military police at intersections in
order to direct any convoys to the right road leading away from
the frontlines. The lieutenant chose Hanson and me and one
other man for this job. The three of us piled into his jeep.
The lieutenant dropped me off just beyond Radscheid, a little
two-building German town at the entrance to Engineer Cutoff.
Though considered a town, Radscheid was little more than a few
houses and outbuildings among the jumbled hills, with barns
attached to the farmhouses. The army engineers had constructed
Engineer Cutoff here earlier in the fall when the 2
nd
Division had
moved up into the Siegfried Line. The Cutoff provided a shortcut
on the route to and from the Line, allowing our military convoys
to avoid a sharp intersection to the south known as Purple Heart
Corner, a favorite target for German artillery barrages.
The route across the cutoff was a corduroy road like those
I knew so well from my boyhood in the woods of Michigan.
Early in the autumn before the heavy snows, the loggers of the
North American timberlands would lay down long poles side by
side on top of a road they had cleared through a bog or low area.
The poles would freeze in place in the winter and form a solid
surface for the horses pulling loads of timber. Sometimes, the
loggers bound the poles together with ropes or wire; sometimes,
they drove stakes into the ground to hold 25 to 30 poles in place.
The army engineers built similar roads for hauling equipment
and vehicles through the rough, snowy country of the Ardennes
region on the Belgian border.
The lieutenant dropped Hanson off at a little bridge that
spanned a deep ravine so that he could warn our trucks about the
narrow crossing. The third man stood at an intersection along the
road between Schnberg and the town of Bleialf, ready to point
the convoy to the right, just below the position of our Service
Battery. I was to stand at the entrance to Engineer Cutoff and
direct the trucks toward it when the convoy carrying equipment
and supplies from our 589
th
eld artillery battalion evacuated.
Standing out there alone in the night in the barren hills beyond
Radscheid gave me an eerie feeling. There was continuous
close ring, and a constant rumble of artillery echoed from the
southwest. The Germans shone powerful searchlights skyward.
Low clouds reected the light, illuminating the woods and hills
like bright moonlight. Even with the help of this unearthly light,
I could make out very few details of my intersection, though I
could see the black scar of a ditch along the road.
Suddenly, I could tell that the close ring was coming closer
to my position. Too close. I threw myself into the ditch. The
weight of my body broke the thin layer of ice on the ditchwater,
and I felt the water seeping in around my waistline. My feet
were soaked. I lay there face down, keeping my mouth out
of the water, while a barrage of artillery re, shells and white
phosphorous, covered the intersection. The barrage seemed to
continue forever, though it probably lasted only ten minutes.
When it ended, I got up and checked myself. Though wet and
cold, I was all right.
A MEDICS WAR 17
CHAPTER TWO
The Seventeenth of December
S
oon after I had crawled out of the ditch, I heard a vehicle
approaching from the direction of Purple Heart Corner. A
six-by-six American army truck appeared and rolled to a stop at
my intersection. An ofcer jumped out and approached me in
the dark. Like all vehicles, the truck used no headlights. Only
the slits of its cats-eye lights gave off a faint glow. The ofcer
must have noticed the red crosses on my helmet. Ive got a
bunch of wounded men in the back of the truck, and Ive got to
get to rst aid.
Youll have to go to Schnberg or to the medical collecting
station at Andler, I answered. There you can get aid.
He asked why I was directing trafc here.
Weve got some trucks coming up from our position, and
were going into a new position. Thats all I could tell him.
Thats all I knew.
He didnt say much, but climbed back in the truck. They
turned and drove up Engineer Cutoff as I had instructed them.
There had been something furtive in his mannerisms, and when
I later heard about detachments of English-speaking German
soldiers who had disguised themselves as American GIs and
used captured American vehicles to inltrate our positions, I
wondered if this mysterious ofcer had been one of them. I was
relieved that I had been unable to tell him anything more.
About half an hour later, the trucks I had been waiting for
arrived. It must have been near 3:00 in the morning, though
time meant little during that long night. I directed the rst truck
through, then the second, and the rest followed, one behind the
other. I jumped onto the last vehicle, and we headed over the
corduroy road.
We crossed the little bridge where Hanson was posted, passed
through our Service Batterys position, and rumbled on toward
Schnberg. Hanson and I had no idea what the plans were at
this point, though we assumed we would move to a new position
in order to support the 422
nd
Infantry, the same force we had
been supporting earlier but with whom we had lost contact
immediately when the German counter-offensive began.
To reach the new emplacement, the trucks carrying the guns
turned onto a narrow road through the woods. I was soaking
wet and cold, so when the trucks stopped, I made my way with
Hanson and four or ve of the other men to a little house near
the road.
Two elderly women met us within the house. They couldnt
speak English but made us understand through gestures that they
wanted to give us something to eat. It was a warm, comfortable
house, though not very big. I wasnt as hungry as I was wet.
While the two kind women were bringing food for the soldiers,
I took my boots and socks off and tried to dry them near the
hearth. Whats going to happen now? I wondered. Whats going
to happen now?
I leaned toward the window to look beyond my own reection
in the glass. By the gray light of dawn I could see our weapons
carrier parked outside. I couldnt hear our guns ring outside,
so I knew there was no further artillery re, but the noise of
confused activity continued in the woods. I pinched my socks
hanging near the hearth. Warm but still wet through.
Get out! Get out! Germans coming down the road! someone
shouted at the window.
I pulled on my boots without taking time to lace them up.
Snatching up my aid kit and all, I ran outside where GI trucks
were tearing by. Someone leaped into our weapons carrier
parked outside the house and started it up. I barely caught the
tailgate and crawled in as it pulled away. A few GIs, including
Hanson and me, crouched in the back of the truck.
We were hurtling toward St. Vith by way of Schnberg. I
recalled the steep hills on the road down to Schnberg, having
driven there just two days earlier. We rounded the rst two or
three sharp, hairpin curves on these hills, and then I dont know
what happened. The driver may have been hit, for the truck
suddenly slid out of control and tipped over on its side. Hanson
and I tumbled out onto the road and were met with a barrage of
bullets. Small arms re rained down around us from the high
bluff that surrounds Schnberg.
A house stood directly on our right as we faced the town.
As the bullets whistled and ricocheted by us, we ed into the
house, where a well-dressed, young couple met us wide-eyed
inside. They clung to a small child between them, a cute little
girl probably no more than three or four years old. We tried to
explain what was happening, but they werent waiting to listen.
Perhaps the family slipped away to an outdoor cellar or some
other prearranged refuge from the hail of debris and projectiles,
but they left the house like ghosts, and we found ourselves
suddenly alone.
I began to take stock of the houses layout to determine which
room would be safest for us to wait out the artillery storm. In
one room, I came upon a fellow soldier rummaging through the
familys drawers, stufng his pockets with jewelry and trinkets
and any small items he could conceal in his clothes. He turned,
startled, like a rat caught in an empty attic when I entered the
room.
What do you think youre doing? I screamed. Youve got
more to think about here than that!
He never had a chance to give an answer. At that instant, as if
to reinforce my words, another squall of roaring shells shook the
house. It was artillery re from both sides. We plunged into a
fruit cellar beneath the house and huddled among the stacks and
shelves of fruit jars. Thinking foolishly that I could somehow
remain protected in the cellar and still make a hasty exit if the
house caught re above us, I scrambled over shelves to be near
the cellar window. Hanson crouched close behind me.
Some shells exploded just outside the small window. Frozen
earth and glass and shrapnel blasted in. A shard of ying glass
or shrapnel struck me just below my kneecaps. I hardly felt the
gashes below each of my knees at rst, but during a lull in the
ring, I noticed the blood running down my legs.
Why arent we getting some help? we wondered. Why isnt
relief coming from St. Vith? There was still time. The Germans
arent yet here with such a force of troops that they couldnt be
routed.
When the shelling ceased, we left the house, and the rst
person we saw was a man we knew well. It was Melvin Pollow
from our detachment, the aid man to Service Battery. Captain
Brown is in the area, Pollow told us, and he knows a trail to
get across the Our River by a little bridge south of Schnberg.
Not much use staying round here really. Our guys cant hold
Schnberg much longer. Youre all welcome to come along with
us, if youre ready to wake up from this nightmare.
But before we turned to accompany Pollow to the river, one
of us noticed a Red Cross banner ying further uphill among
some buildings on the ridge above Schnberg. We knew it had
to be an aid station, so we climbed up toward the ag.
There in a barn we found our ofcers whom I hadnt seen
since leaving headquarters to serve as a route marker: Sergeant
Gordon, Medical Lieutenant Connely, and Sergeant Jerasky.
They were treating a wounded ofcer, Captain Cagle of Service
Battery, who was wounded in the buttocks, and a man from
another outt who was badly wounded and struggling for life.
I recognized another soldier there named Bill Debolak, a quiet
man who lived on a farm not far from me back home. We traded
names and addresses and vowed to each other that if one of us
returned home and the other did not, we would contact wife and
relatives to tell them exactly what had happened.
As it grew dark, we could tell by the signs of activity below
the ridge that the Germans had occupied the Belgian town of
Schnberg in force. We could see them milling around in the
streets of Schnberg, arranging weapons and equipment. We
realized it would be only a matter of time before the Germans
would come up the hill to take us prisoner.
We gathered in the kitchen of the farmhouse connected to the
barn. As at the last house, a mother, a father, and their young
daughter had remained in their home. The girl looked about
thirteen or fourteen years old. We had difculty communicating
with them, but they understood that the tides of war had changed
again. The Germans were back and probably would arrive at the
farmhouse soon. With somber faces, the three crept out into the
snowy night.
Collect any weapons, Lieutenant Connely ordered. We
gathered all the weapons from the wounded men so that we could
not be accused of having arms. By the Geneva Convention,
medics are not allowed to bear any rearms of any kind. We
took two or three carbines and several knives. Anything that
could be considered a weapon we hid under the hay in the barn
at the side of the house.
No sooner had we nished collecting and hiding the weapons
than Germans entered the farmhouse. Two SS troop ofcers
strode in. One spoke very good English. He asked rst for
proofs of identity.
As medics, we wore an identication tag around our neck
with our dog tags. I passed the identication tag bearing my
photograph to the SS ofcer to prove that I was a medic.
You have lost weight in these last days, no?
He looked from me to the photograph and back again.
Of course, I probably had lost weight. With high anxiety and
lack of food, a man can shed weight rapidly.
I have been in America before the war. The SS ofcer
tossed the tag back to me. The deaths-head emblem of the SS
leered at us from the collar of his dark uniform.
He talked about Newark, New Jersey, where he had lived
before the war. And that was it. He examined each of our tags
and commanded us to stay there. It was a great relief to us that
we had been captured by an ofcer who could speak English.
At least he was not the kind who would sooner shoot than take
prisoners.
Then, it was all over. We found a place to curl up in some
hay in a stall of an old barn that stood separate from the house,
and fell asleep to the same artillery thunder that had awakened
me two days before.
CHAPTER THREE
Dreams among the Dying
T
hat night I dreamed of home and of my wife Elsie. I saw
her standing at the screen door of our log cabin home in
Gilchrist, Michigan. The white door behind her showed off her
dark curls, and she wore a light yellow dress, tied at the waist
the same dress she had worn on the day I was called up by the
draft. She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
Hugh and Elsie, last furlough before deployment overseas,
October 1944
Almost ten years before I met Elsie, my father had built the
log-and- plaster cabin a short distance away from my parents
main house. I remember walking down through the gardens
when I was ten or eleven years old to help him hold the logs in
place while he fastened one end to the other, doing whatever a
small boy could to help. My mother rented the cabin out to deer
hunters and summer tourists, and Elsie and I lived there for the
rst years of our marriage.
Then my dream shifted abruptly, or another one began,
for I found myself no longer in Michigan but racing along the
muddy roads at the Belgian border in an army jeep. My wife, vis-
ibly pregnant, clung to the seat beside me. With the prescience
peculiar to dreams, I knew she was about to give birth. Lieu-
tenant Connely checks on the German farmwife every day, I
cried out in my dream. Hell know what to do. The jeep ew
through Schnberg and up a crooked, narrow road, up the ridge
and through a forest, past Engineer Cutoff, over to Radscheid,
and on toward our makeshift aid station.
In reality, our son had been born two Decembers before I
ever saw the snowy ruins of war-torn Europe. And I was there
when John Robert Fisher, our little Johnny, arrived. My wife
always said that, in my excitement, I had trouble starting the car
to drive to the hospital, but we did manage to start the car and
drove forty miles to the hospital where the baby was born. That
was December 7, 1942. I had received my draft notice a month
earlier, and it seemed inevitable that I would soon be sent where
the war was raging in Europe or the Pacic. Like nearly every
able-bodied young man in our town, at twenty years old I felt
ready and willing to go, but I only wished that I could stay home
until after the baby was born.
My father-in-law suggested that I contact a lady named Lydia,
head of the county draft board, to see if my departure could be
deferred until after the baby was born. I was overjoyed when
the board granted me a three-month deferment. I would see my
babys rst few months before I left in March.
Hugh with little Johnny
Successive dreams came in a blur that night in the Schnberg
barn, but one dream stood out among the rest for its arresting
clarity. It was the afternoon of my birthday, just as I remembered
it from the previous spring. My buddy and fellow medic
Harland Hanson and I were nearing the end of our training in
the Armys Tennessee Maneuvers, camping with our tent-like
shelter halves in the Appalachian Mountains. Each of us soldiers
pitched his shelter half with his buddys, so that when buttoned
together, they made a full tent for two. And each soldier had
two blankets. We doubled one blanket to cover the ground, and
doubled another blanket on the other side so that we still had two
blankets remaining to cover us. A rolled up jacket or sweater or
sometimes even our shoes served for a pillow, but most of the
time I kept my shoes at the end of the tent to keep them warm.
We had all our gear in the tent, too: our packsacks, shaving
stuff, soap, and toothbrushes.
My birthday was a beautiful day. The sun came out, burning
away the fog and clouds that wrapped the mountains. Hanson
and I had a lot of dirty clothes to wash, so we went down to a
river and washed our clothes with soap on the smooth, mud-
smelling rocks. We scrubbed our underclothes and socks and
hung them to dry on tree limbs where the water cast webs of
waving light. Every few minutes, a sh at the far side of the
river leaped up to somersault in the sunshine. Hanson talked
about duck hunting on the Mississippi River.
I had stripped down to my undershirt while washing my
clothes, and by the end of the day, my shoulders were bright red
from the sun. Sunburn was a novelty for me, having grown up
in Northern Michigan.
Hansons birthday fell three days later on March 29, the day
we left Tennessee for Camp Atterbury, Indiana. The weather
could not have changed more dramatically. On the day we
left, we wore our wool coats, wool knit caps, and gloves. It
was snowing and raining when we left the mountains. Hanson
reached over and shook my sunburned shoulder. The Germans
are giving out soup down in the town.
I felt straw at the back of my neck. Hey, Fisher! Were
gonna head down to the town where theyre giving out soup,
Hanson repeated.
I realized I was no longer dreaming.
A German guard came from the sentry posted a short distance
from the barn and marched us down into Schnberg. Along the
way, the guards added to our ranks other captured GIs held in
other houses until there were nearly one hundred of us lined up
along a main street of the town. A horse-drawn wagon rolled up
with a pile of brown tin cans and an enormous pot of vegetable
soup. The Germans scooped the cans into the soup and
distributed them, each with a piece of black bread. The bread
looked like a loaf of sawdust and had a soggy, sour line along
the bottom, which we later called the vinegar line. All German
soldiers carried a half loaf of this same bread with them in their
pack as rations. Despite the acrid taste, we devoured the bread
greedily. This was my rst taste of food in days. Afterward, they
collected the cans and marched us back up to the barn, where we
slept another night.
~~ * ~~
In the late afternoon of the following day, December 19, the
guards took Hanson and me down to the town. They told us we
would have to help care for some of the wounded and led us to a
large building that the Germans had converted to a eld hospital
or aid station.
The building reminded me of the old town halls or social
centers in the States, with their large, open oor space for
parties and dinners and dancing, with an elevated area at one
end like a stage. In a little anteroom at one end of this building,
Lieutenant Connely, Sergeant Gordon, and a German medical
ofcer performed operations, doing what little they could for the
wounded. On the main oor of this eld hospital, approximately
fty or sixty wounded German soldiers lay on one side of the
hall, and about the same number of American wounded lay on
the other side. These men had been brought in or had walked
in and were lying on the oor with only the clothes they had on
their backs. Only a lucky few had blankets.
My own knees were bothering me, but I kept myself cleaned
up with gauze and sulfa powder and was able to ward off
infection.
Usually, the rst thing wounded men call for is water. In the
Schnberg eld hospital, their dry lips turned nearly white as
their bodies dehydrated. We knew it was dangerous to give the
wounded water, especially if they had an intestinal, stomach,
or lung wound. We could not give them water to drink, but
we dipped handkerchiefs and bandages into water and rubbed it
on their lips. We went from one soldier to another and tried to
comfort them in this way.
One young fellow, an infantryman from the 422
nd
or 423
rd
,
could only say to me, Take my ammunition, Medic. Please
take my ammunition. He had a couple clips of M1 bullets on
his cartridge belts and in his pockets. I gently slipped them from
him and set them aside. The ammunition was no use to him and
no good for me, but it was uppermost in his mind, even above
the seriousness of his wound, because there was a shortage of
ammunition, and that was all he could think about.
There was also a Negro soldier, the rst I had seen in the
battle area. He was wounded badly, and his face contorted with
pain as he cast fevered glances toward the German side of the
hall. You cant hate a person who helps you, he gasped. You
cant hate a person who helps you. A German had helped get
him to the eld hospital in Schnberg, and like the infantryman
in his delirium, he could repeat only one thing. The severity of
his wounds made me doubt if he would survive the night.
Hanson and I continued from soldier to soldier,
administering water to their lips, morphine for their pain, and
dressings for their wounds. This went on late into the night until
a guard came and ordered us back up the hill to the barn.
Our shifts at the town hall eld hospital continued for
four nights. As always, Hanson and I acted as a team, even when
performing unpleasant duties. Sometimes a wounded soldier
died during an operation in the anteroom. Whether the dead
were German or American, the attending ofcers would call for
us to carry the body away. Often the German medics would
take away the German dead, but there was little effort toward
preserving such a distinction, and we carried out our share of
Germans as well.
We took the bodies to another smaller building about fty
yards from the town hall. We carried them inside and lay them
on their backs against the wall, piling them on opposite sides of
the building, Americans on one side and Germans on the other.
Despite the gravity of the task, something struck us that we
would not otherwise have thought about.
Well, Fisher, Hanson said, I wonder which side of the
building will have the highest pile when we come with the next
one. And this went on for the four nights we worked there. In
the end, we noted with some morbid satisfaction that there were
more Germans piled up on the one side than there were on the
American side.
The operating table where our ofcers and the German doctor
worked was only a litter, like the one on which we had carried
Godwin through the snow. Beneath the litter was a bushel basket.
When amputating a wounded leg, the doctors did not take time
to remove overshoes or combat boots. They simply cut the leg,
fastened the clothing away from the wound, and dropped the leg,
boot and all into the basket. Along with the bodies, Hanson and
I had to carry the amputated limbs away from the building. That
was a hard job, but we did it. Somebody had to do it.
Lieutenant Connely, who directly assisted the German doctor,
soon noticed that if there were a slight wound on an American
soldiers arm or leg, a wound which probably could be treated
with soap and water or sulfa powder to prevent infection, the
German doctor was quick to amputate the limb. I recall one
American captain in particular. He was wounded severely near
St. Vith, and they immediately amputated both of his legs when
he arrived at the town hall.
Keep the fellows in the barn, Lieutenant Connely whispered
to me when we were alone for a moment. Dont bring them
down. If they arent suffering from infection already, just keep
an eye on the wound.
We did manage to keep several men with minor wounds
safely in the barn and other outbuildings on the hill. Our
wounded Captain Cagle, for one, was never sent down to the
eld hospital.
Not far from the barn was another shed where wounded
American soldiers were held prisoner. Some of these men were
badly wounded and already feverish with infection, but they had
somehow heard of the careless amputation of legs and arms in
Schnberg and were terried of being moved to the town hall
eld hospital. Lieutenant Connely eventually had to go up to the
shed and bring down those who needed treatment. Hanson and I
accompanied Lieutenant Connely. We almost had to wrestle the
wounded men onto the litter to carry them back to the town hall
and save their lives.
I never knew what happened to these soldiers, for I had no way
of recording their names without paper and writing instruments.
Even those names I tried to memorize vanished from my mind
in the coming months.
Each night, the guard took us back to the barn after our turn
at the town hall. He walked with us as far as the German sentry
post on the hill and then sent us on alone to the barn. He knew
that escape was impossible, for there was nowhere for us to run.
The Germans were thickly entrenched around Schnberg.
On the second day when we trudged up the winding road
from the town hall to the barn, the guard stopped at the sentry
post as before and ordered us on ahead. As we continued toward
the barn, there in the road three-quarters of the way up the hill,
we came upon our very own Dodge weapons carrier. Its back
end was facing us, completely unguarded, and it was empty
except for my duffel bag and Hansons duffel bag, labeled with
our names and lled with all our extra clothing. Even better, we
found four blankets with the bags. Hanson took two and I took
two.
This is a godsend, Hanson! I crowed. Have there ever been
two luckier guys? All we had until then were the clothes we had
been wearing when we were captured, our helmets, and medical
kits. But in the duffel bags were extra socks, our overseas caps,
wool knit caps, handkerchiefs even a few cigarettes and the
French phrase books the army had issued us.
How do I look? Hanson cocked his overseas cap over one
eye in the military manner and struck a jaunty pose.
I removed all the clothes I could possibly carry from my bag,
cramming as much as I could in my pockets and aid kit, but
we couldnt take everything. I had to leave the one Christmas
present that had reached me from home before our capture. It
was a folding stationery kit with paper and little pockets for
pens, from my brother-in-laws wife Thelma.
Just as we retrieved our precious duffel bags from the weapons
carrier, bullets began rattling around us. They were stray shots
from our own men from the 422
nd
or 423
rd
trying to gain ground
near Schnberg. We dashed to the barn, unharmed, and remained
indoors until our next shift at the town hall.
That night as we lay in the barn, we heard the drone of
airplanes in the distance. We didnt know if they were our planes
or enemy planes, but it gave us a moment of hope to think that
our air force might yet come to our rescue.
A MEDICS WAR 33
CHAPTER FOUR
Yuletide March
A
round noon on December 23, the guards announced that
we were to be evacuated from Schnberg and moved to
German prison camps. Upon hearing this news, my rst thought
was rather silly. Well, people say Germans like sauerkraut, so
if they have a ration of sauerkraut, I want mine because I love
the stuff.
The guards marched us all down into town, all hundred or so
GIs who had been taken prisoner in the area of Schnberg. We
waited at the junction of the road that came down from the ridge
and the road from St. Vith, while more captives streamed in from
all directions. By the time we left Schnberg that afternoon,
there were 1,800 prisoners of war waiting to march with us back
into Germany.
Hanson and I each had our two blankets draped over our
shoulders, but another prisoner informed us that the Germans
would soon conscate the blankets. Hearing this, we took our
bandage scissors from our medical kits and cut armholes in the
blankets and wore them like jackets. With big holes in them now,
we gured the Germans wouldnt want them. The holes seemed
to work, for the guards showed no interest in our blankets.
They lined us up, ve abreast, and started the march. There
were prisoners as far as I could see, hundreds streaming down
from the hills where their outts had been overrun in the initial
days of the German offensive. Behind me and before me, we
were a dark, human river coursing among the snow-covered
hills.
We marched to the tiny town of Andler where our medical
collecting station had been only a week earlier. Little remained
of the medical tents now, their contents strewn across the snow,
their canvas hanging in shreds from the wreckage. In the cluster
of farm buildings that constituted the town, there was no sign of
life.
I thought back to when I had come here to the collecting
station on December 15 with a wounded man from Service
Battery. Andler had been swarming with activity then. Around
noon that day, Sergeant Jerasky had asked me to drive him to
St. Vith by jeep for additional medical supplies. I knew vaguely
the route we would have to take from our farmhouse aid station
between Schlausenbach and Laudesfeld, passing through
Schnberg, to St. Vith about 15 miles to the west. My mental
picture of the route was dim. I could recall some of what I had
seen from the back of a weapons carrier when our convoy had
moved into our positions on December 9: a narrow blacktop
road receding behind us as we moved at a rapid pace along high
ground past Schnberg. A dark evergreen forest shaded our left,
while elds spread out upon our right, dotted with farms and
steeples, patches of woods, streams and vales. We had entered
an area wooded on both sides, and then another area of open
elds and sky where the convoy nally groaned to a stop, and
the ofcers announced that we had reached our location. Still,
despite my cloudy recollection of the route back to St. Vith, I
thought I would be able to nd the way with Sergeant Jerasky.
We drove the jeep across Engineer Cutoff, clattered over the
corduroy road and the narrow bridge over the deep ravine, and
reached our Service Batterys position. We paused at Service
Battery to see if they might have the supplies we needed and
save us a trip to St. Vith.
While we were stopped there, a staff sergeant from Service
Battery was busily putting together a little gas motor to run a
generator. It looked like a gas motor from a washing machine.
As the motor sputtered to life, a piece of metal from the ywheel
snapped off and shot through the sergeants knee, like a rie
bullet passing from one side of the knee out the other. Sergeant
Jerasky and I gave him immediate rst aid, bandaged the wound,
and attached a tag to his uniform to indicate the type of injury
and other pertinent information. We loaded him into the jeep and
made a detour to the medical collecting station at Andler, north
of Schnberg. There he could receive further care before being
transported further back to the hospitals and medical clearing
station.
Turning the jeep around again, we headed on to Schnberg
and Division Headquarters at St. Vith for supplies. St. Vith
had been an imposing town at the junction of railroads and
highways. Among the remains of its few buildings that had
withstood repeated bombings, I caught glimpses of Belgian
civilians poking along the streets.
The wreckage of St. Vith in wartime
Like our mess hall near the farmhouse, the division headquar-
ters was draped with pine boughs, its entrance covered with a
series of blankets and heavy canvas to mask the light of its bus-
tling interior. The scene that met us within was a mass of of-
cers running in all directions, with others barking orders from
rooms off to the side captains, lieutenants, and colonels com-
ing and going.
As we packed the jeep with medical supplies, I grew
increasingly concerned. Night would come quickly, and we did
not know the password to get back into our area without being
challenged by a sentry in the dark. I hope we can get back
before nightfall, I hinted not too subtly to Sergeant Jerasky.
We nally left St. Vith, and I sped the jeep up the crooked,
narrow road along the ridge, hurtled through the evergreen
woods, past Engineer Cutoff and Radscheid until I sighted the
church steeple of Laudesfeld to the northwest and knew that we
were nearing our position. We made it back to the farmhouse
without being challenged for the password. It was the evening
of December 15.
Now, as I marched through the shattered remains of Andler in
a river of prisoners, I wondered about what might have happened
if Sergeant Jerasky and I had not left St. Vith in time to return
to our position. We would have been far enough back that the
initial German attack that awakened me the next morning would
not have affected us. Yet, even St. Vith was in ruins by the end
of the Germans Ardennes offensive.
The guards kept us on the main roads beyond Andler. We met
German military vehicles driving to the western front: tanks,
trucks pulling guns, 88s, and foot soldiers. As we passed them,
the German soldiers would give us a goofy grin, but they never
mocked us or made an obscene gesture.
A short distance from Andler, we left the main road and
turned to the right onto a narrow, cross-country cow path. Still
we marched in columns, ve abreast as the guards required for
ease of counting. We could see that there had been some kind
of trafc along the cow path before us, for we were following
a trail of debris and tracks to where it crossed a rushing stream.
Although the stream was knee-deep, we had no choice but to
plunge in with our combat boots and layered socks. In addition
to the numbing cold that seized our feet and legs, we soon learned
that wet feet blister easily.
We traversed a region of steep, knobby hills. As my section
of the column reached the crest of a hill, I looked forward
and back at the mass of captives. No more than three guards
marched along the line, ries slung over their shoulders. Only
three guards were necessary, for even if we could escape the
guards, we were too weak and disoriented to run anywhere.
The knobby knolls eventually evened out into gradual, rolling
hills. We left the cow paths and began following another road,
along which, in the gathering dusk, we could see half-track
tanks dug in on the side of the hills. The tanks were part of our
14
th
Cavalry, an armored outt that had been overrun when the
Germans made their breakthrough at the little town of Auw and
advanced toward our position. The Americans had abandoned
their tanks and other equipment along the road.
Soon we entered the badly battered town of Auw. With 1,800
prisoners, the guards could nd no place to put us all under
cover for the night, so they led us to the bombed-out ruins of the
largest building in the town, now a mere shell of naked walls.
There were so many of us packed between the walls that I could
not lay out at. I slept with my back against a brick wall of the
shattered building, the open sky above our heads.
The next morning as they started marching us, we entered
an open area. Still ve abreast, we took up most of the road. I
gured we were now marching to the northeast of our original
location where the American forces had been routed. Once in a
while, we would come across an American vehicle upside down
in the ditch. We saw one truck on its side in the ditch near a
telephone pole. A man from the battalions wire section had
been climbing the pole when he was shot. His body still clung to
the base of the pole, frozen the way he had fallen. His comrade
lay in the same position on the ground beside him. It was one
of many similar scenes we saw as we marched deeper into the
Reich.
Our greatest difculty while marching was the lack of water.
We crossed no other streams, and the guards seemed unable
to nd any place where we could get drinking water. A man
can go without food, but he cannot go long without water. As
we continued marching cross-country, we entered a cluster of
farmhouses where two women staggered out to the roadside
with a washtub full of water for us. A cheer went up from the
prisoners. We who were on the outside of the column near the
tub started dipping into it with our helmets as we went by. I got
about half a helmet full and passed it around to the four or ve
guys nearest me. But the guards saw what was happening, and
they ran up the line shouting curses. They kicked the tub into
the ditch and struck at the women with the stocks of their ries,
knocking them to the ground. The women ed back into their
house.
Since I had been wearing my full eld pack when captured,
I still had my canteen. With Hanson and I sharing the canteen
between us, our initial water supply lasted the rst day and
night, but then we had to start looking for water wherever we
could nd it. I quickly learned to march on the outside of the
column as often as possible. As medics, we had a supply of
water-purication tablets with us. Sometimes there would be
a trickle of water in a ditch from the rain or melting snow, and
I would scoop ditch water into the canteen. Then, I would add
two or three purication tablets, shake it well, and let it settle for
a while. In this way, we had something to drink.
We couldnt simply pack snow into our canteen for drinking.
The snow along the German roads was soiled with the constant
trafc: trucks and refugees with horse-drawn wagons, teams of
horses pulling big guns or trucks. Facing a shortage of fuel to
continue the war, the Germans had resorted to horses for pulling
vehicles to the front lines. The snow on the roads was beaten to
slush, while that on the roadside was coffee-colored and littered
with debris. Conditions were worse when we passed through
towns. Even if we had been able to pack some clean snow into
the canteen, it would have taken hours for it to melt, hugged
against our body under our clothes. Dipping into the ditch
and adding purication tablets was the best method we had for
wetting our lips.
Getting water from the ditch could be hazardous. If a guard
saw anyone step out of line, he would come running to give the
offender a blow in the ribs with his rie butt. And shortly after
scooping up water from one roadside ditch, we found a dead
horse lying bloated in the same ditch upstream. Still, the water
looked clean enough to us. I put in a double dose of purication
tablets as a precaution, and we drank it anyway.
We didnt know where we were going, but rumors rippling
through the line said we were heading toward the high ridge
above Prm, the town that was to have been our objective in the
spring offensive. From the top of the ridge, we could see behind
us for several miles. We looked down upon Prm and across a
patchwork of German farmland and forests.
It was December 24th, Christmas Eve, our rst full day of
marching after being marched to Auw on the rst afternoon.
Some of the captives began saying things like, Were going to
get a train. Theyre going to put us on a train when we get to
Prm. We marched down into the city, down the main street of
Prm, where the rubble from ruined buildings was ten feet deep
on either side. The column wound its way among the wreckage
from one side of the city to the other.
The ruins of Prm
Still hoping to catch a train, we reached the outskirts of Prm
by twilight. But instead of putting us on a train, the guards
marched us into a warehouse-like building, a colossal, empty,
one-story building with doors at least thirty feet wide and ten
feet tall. Its glass windows were set high in the walls, about six
feet above the oor, and covered with a screen on the outside.
With all of us crowded inside, there was hardly room to stand.
We had not received anything to eat since beginning the march,
and we were all hungry and exhausted.
Shortly after we piled into the warehouse, we heard the
whine of aircraft engines in the distance. They were our own
ghter planes, capable of dropping small bombs and incendiary
bombs, and they dropped some on the warehouse. The bombs
pounded the roof above our heads. None of them fell through
near Hanson and me, but where they did come through, some
of the prisoners had the presence of mind to beat out the ames
with their overcoats before the oor or anything else caught
re. Other men panicked, and, running as well as they could
among the crowd, they leaped at the high windows. They broke
the glass and slashed their hands and faces, then tried to break
through the heavy screens beyond. It was impossible, and none
made it out, but they battered themselves trying.
Something my mother-in-law told me before I left home
came to my mind. Stay put, she had said. Stay put and pray
to the Lord. That is what I did there in the dark warehouse,
with the res hissing through the roof and men shrieking from
the sea of bodies. Hanson and I passed the night unharmed,
mostly standing or sitting, draped with our blankets that we had
cut holes in for sleeves. Those blankets probably saved our lives
on several occasions in the harsh winter conditions.
~~ * ~~
On Christmas morning, the guards marched us out through
the enormous doors and onto the street where a snowy slope
rose up beside the road. They lined us up among the few trees
that peppered the hillside, and word spread among the crowd
that we were going to get something to eat. This news cheered
us all because it was already our third day without food. Some
prisoners shouted down the line, Everybody nd something to
put food in, a container or something.
Hanson and I searched for some kind of container, but we had
nothing suitable on our person. We looked up the line of troops,
and saw two Germans coming. They had a kettle and a wooden
ladle, and one of them carried a sack. They were doling out a
ration of molasses to each prisoner. Hanson and I found an old
piece of cardboard in the snow. We tore it in two, and put out
our hands with the cardboard on them. The guard with the ladle
scooped into the kettle, got a ladle full of molasses thickened
with the cold, and slapped it onto the cardboard. I had never
eaten straight molasses before.
They also gave out little bags of cracker-like biscuits from
their sack. The biscuits were about the size of a thumbnail, but
I soon realized that I could make them twice as big by putting
a little water on them. We licked up the molasses and soaked
the biscuits in the water from the ditch. That was our ration for
December 25, 1944. That was our Christmas dinner.
Were marching, someone shouted. Resume the march.
We were still hungry, but we forced our cold and blistered feet
back on the road. Rumors now reported that the guards would
make us cover at least fteen miles a day. We marched for the
remainder of Christmas Day.
Just before dark, we reached a small town. As usual, I was
on the outside of the column, marching on the left side this time.
The guards stopped us in the town for some reason, and while
we waited for further directions, I noticed two women walking
along the road to church. I dug into my pocket to nd something
I might trade with them for food and chose a metal soap dish. It
contained a fragrant bar of faded red Lifebuoy soap that I had
partially used. Only three quarters of it remained, but it still
gave off its aroma a fresh, pungent aroma. As the women
passed by, I slipped the cover from the soap dish. They acted as
though they had never seen soap like it. Through broad gestures
and ridiculous pantomime, I made them understand that I would
trade them the soap for something to eat. One woman hurried
away, leaving the other beside me. She returned with half a
pie. It looked and tasted something like a banana cream pie or
a coconut cream pie always one of my favorites. The women
were equally thrilled with their bar of soap, though I kept the
metal dish. One of them carefully wrapped the little luxury in
a cloth and put it in her pocket. Hanson and I had a quarter of
a pie apiece, and we gulped it down. It seemed like I had never
tasted anything so good in my life.
The column started forward again, and we trudged away from
the little town. We slept in a barn that night, which was better
than a brick warehouse or a factory building, and the guards
gave us each a ration of three or four little potatoes the next
morning. The potatoes were steam cooked with the skins on.
If they were clean, which they generally were when they were
steamed, we wouldnt even bother to peel them. We would eat
them, skins and all.
It was now December 26, and we still did not know where
we were going. We still had not caught a train. Along the line
of prisoners, we heard rumors about catching a train just around
the next bend, and then we would hear about the railroads being
bombed. So, we marched on.
We followed a gravel road in fairly open country now, where
the snow was about ve or six inches deep. Again, American
planes appeared on the horizon. We feared they would mistake
us for bedraggled German troops and open re. As the shadows
of the ghter planes overtook us, we broke ranks and ran. I ran
into a eld with one group of prisoners who were stomping out
U.S.A. in enormous letters in the snow. The German guards
joined us in making the snow letters, because they knew if the
ghter pilots got the message, they would be safe too.
The pilots waggled their wings to acknowledge us and did not
shoot. They sped on toward the east while the guards reorganized
us.
Before we resumed marching, one of our military vehicles,
driven by a German, roared past our scattered ranks. It was one
of our battery mess trucks, according to the number on its back:
C Battery, 589
th
. Oh, how it hurt us to see that! But about that
time, one of the ghter pilots returned and spotted the truck. A
short distance down the road from us, he blasted it. Loud cheers
went up from the captives. Later, when we were reorganized
and marching on the road again, we passed the burning remains
of the battery mess truck.
We marched until nearly dark and came to another little town
where a railroad track crossed the road. Evidently, the same
ghter planes had bombed this track because the Germans had
captive laborers working with picks and shovels to repair it.
The guards escorted us to what looked like military barracks
in a vacant German camp. There were half a dozen one-story
buildings arranged in a horseshoe shape where we were to spend
the night. As in the warehouse and factory buildings on previous
nights, there were no means to heat the barracks, but Hanson and
I still had our blankets, and the building served to cover us from
the elements. We had a roof over our heads, but Hanson said,
Lets get under that table in the corner and see if we can get
some sleep under there.
During the night, Allied planes ew over on night patrol to
take out the freshly repaired railroad track again. Some of the
bombs hit the roof of our building, so we were thankful to have
the table covering us too.
In the morning, we lined up again to march out of the little
town.
That day, with the air attacks foremost in everyones mind,
the guards avoided the roadways and led us through the elds.
I was near the middle of the column, where I could again see
hundreds of men ahead of me, winding their way through the
farmland, and the same thing behind me.
Some of the prisoners discovered little mounds of dirt covered
with snow in the elds. The soldiers who had grown up on
farms gured there would be something in the mounds, maybe
potatoes, rutabagas, or turnips. Those at the front of the column
started digging into the mounds with their hands to uncover the
vegetables. By the time the guards could chase them away, they
had the treasures exposed.
We rushed to ll our pockets with raw potatoes, carrots,
rutabagas, turnips, beets, or whatever was under the mounds.
We ate the vegetables as we marched, though we had no way
to cook them. We simply sliced them up however we could.
Hanson and I used a scalpel from our medical kit. The mound
raids occurred several times, and each time the guards would
chase us back into line.
There were two or three Negro soldiers in our group, marching
in the same part of the column near Hanson and me. In my
customary position near the outside of the line, I noticed that the
German civilians in the countryside were more apt to throw these
soldiers something to eat, simply out of curiosity, as though they
were animals on parade. As the order of the column reshufed
at various stops, I made a point to march directly behind one
of the Negro soldiers to catch what food he might miss. This
happened numerous times. I would pick off the road whatever
he didnt catch. It was one of the things we learned to do as we
went along.
It became difcult to keep track of days, but it must have been
December 27 when we came to a beer hall at the edge of a town.
The Germans put us up there for the night. The beer hall was
far more comfortable than our previous lodgings not warm but
not drafty, well-built and clean. I felt like we were walking into
a church. We had a good nights sleep there.
The next morning was the usual routine. We all lined up
outside the hall while the guards counted us. We had nothing to
eat that morning unless we had saved some of the raw vegetables
from the mounds. Again we marched cross-country avoiding
the roads.
Some pilots captured from the Allied air force joined our
ranks. Their planes had been shot down, and the Germans
had taken them prisoner immediately. They marched with the
column dressed in their leather ying suits with eece linings. It
was difcult for them to march in their thickly padded suits.
By this time, the column of captives faced widespread
dysentery, the result of contaminated food and water. Thanks
to our purication tablets, Hanson and I had no problems yet,
but many of the prisoners did. Occasionally, I would see one of
them leave the line to squat by the road while a guard prodded
him impatiently, but the sick man had to relieve himself. We
relieved ourselves wherever and whenever we could. We had
no choice.
That night, we stayed again in a barn and slept in the hay. At
dawn, we received some potatoes and a brew they called coffee,
prepared by the farmers. The drink tasted nothing like coffee,
but it was wonderful to swallow something besides puried
ditchwater.
Now there was no more talk about trains as we continued
traveling north. We crossed the Rhine River where a city strad-
dled its banks. This must be Cologne, I decided. The people of
Cologne peered out at us from upper story windows, and many
hurled trash at our column. Captive airmen were special targets.
The townspeople saw the aviators among us and recognized that
they were from the hated airplanes. Terrorieger! the Ger-
mans shrieked. Terror yers!
They pitched rocks at the airmen, some hitting us. I pitied
these airmen above all, because it was hard enough for them to
march in their ying uniforms and clumsy, padded boots.
Beyond the Rhine, we came to the edge of another town. It
might be Gerolstein, we supposed, though we had no way of
knowing for sure. A web of railroad tracks converged here,
crowned with an old brick building tumbled in upon itself. Only
a shred of roof and a couple walls remained standing. Little
narrow-gauge tracks ran into the building, making me think it
must have housed some kind of loading apparatus for the trains.
The guards ordered us to take cover between the walls for the
night.
That late December night was one of the bitterest we had ex-
perienced. Many of us already had frostbitten feet. Like Han-
son and me, most of the captives had no footwear appropriate for
winter, and our combat boots, lacking insulation, did not keep
our feet warm. Worse still, many of the prisoners had wounds or
writhed with dysentery. We were exhausted and starving.
The Germans distributed a ration of bread in the railyard that
night. It was the same sour, black bread with the vinegar line
that we ate on our rst day in Schnberg, but the bread seemed
to taste better now that we were hungrier. We also received
part of a Red Cross parcel. By some miracle, the Germans had
obtained Red Cross parcels. Unfortunately, the parcel from
which I received a portion contained only foods like rice which
I could not eat raw. We had no way of cooking such food and
nothing to put it in to boil it.
When some of the men tried to build little res within the
building to warm their hands and feet, the guards were outraged.
They cursed and swore and kicked the res out. With jabs from
their ries, they made it clear that they would start shooting if
we made any res. The smallest light could bring down a rain
of re and brimstone upon us all from the ever-strengthening
Allied air force.
A MEDICS WAR 49
CHAPTER FIVE
M. Stammlager IV-B
L
ong after daylight the next morning, the guards started
loading us into boxcars, fty men to a car. The boxcars
were not as large as those in the States. They were single trucks
with only four wheels on each car, and they did not ride smoothly;
every joint in the track jolted us inside. It was rough riding, but
that was hardly the worst of our problems.
The guards loaded fty men into each boxcar, where
thirty-ve would have been too many. We had only enough
room to sit with our backs wedged against the wall, our knees in
an upright position with our feet to the middle of the oor. The
men on the other side of the boxcar sat in the same way with
their feet against ours, shoulder to shoulder along the walls and
across the ends of the car.
More than half of the prisoners, including me by now, had
succumbed to severe diarrhea. We had to relieve ourselves, but
we could only accomplish this by crawling across one another
to the sliding door of the boxcar. We could not open the door
because it was locked from the outside, but there was space near
its base large enough to see out. There we would squat and
relieve ourselves through the gap along the door. The guards
never opened the door during the entire ride. In the sub-freezing
temperatures, our waste quickly froze in a pile along the door. It
was unavoidable. Personal hygiene was simply nonexistent.
The journey by boxcar lasted about three days and
three nights. If timekeeping had been difcult during our long
march from Schnberg, marking the alternation of daylight and
darkness within the boxcar was nearly impossible. To us, time
became inconsequential. The train ride seemed endless.
When we had boarded the boxcars at Gerolstein, the guards
had again given each of us one-tenth of a Red Cross parcel, about
one pound of food. Like the food from the parcels of the night
before, not everything was edible without cooking; but among
my possessions, I had a little drawstring bag in which I was able
to store the inedible or leftover food from the Red Cross parcel
after eating a small portion. During the rst night in the boxcar, I
hung the drawstring bag just above my head on the wall because
I didnt want to sit on it and there was no other place to put it.
But when daylight again shone through the cracks in the car, I
found my bag missing. I stood and cried and cursed, but thats
all I could do.
To discover that a fellow soldier a soldier suffering under
like circumstances and having equal provisions had stolen
from me, disturbed me more than the loss of food. All fty of
us in the boxcar were in the same situation and had faced death
for the same cause. I had never expected any problem. The
thief could not have been Hanson, for the two of us shared all
things equally by the deep, unwritten codes of friends who are
depending on one another for survival and future homecoming.
Still, the thief could only have been someone sitting very near to
me. I burned with the realization of broken trust and the feeling
of suddenly being very alone in a crowded, squalid boxcar.
We were all in miserable condition when the train lurched
to its nal stop. The guards never opened the doors throughout
the journey, until we stopped at a densely wooded area near the
prison camp at Mhlberg which was to be our destination. A
drizzle of rain and snow lashed us as we staggered from the
boxcar, stumbling through our own waste to the step below the
door and falling heavily to the mud and snow. The guards lined
us up again in rows of ve, and we started to march.
We marched about a mile to the prison camp on a road lined
with evergreen trees. For the last stretch of the mile, Hanson had
to support me. My knees just wouldnt go any further, and I was
too weak. Hanson was not much stronger, but he helped me.
Suddenly, I could no longer feel alone. Instead, in my stupor,
it seemed like I was back at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. In-
stead of wallowing through the snows of Central Europe, I was
nishing a required 25-mile march through loose, ankle-deep
sand at the end of basic training. I had been hospitalized with a
case of dysentery for six days at the Fort Jackson inrmary, and
as I lay there wracked with cramps and losing so much of the
strength I had built up through training, I was tormented with
the knowledge that my unit might be heading into the eld for
the 25-mile march without me. If a recruit did not have the 25-
mile march on his service record, he would not be eligible to go
overseas.
The Fort Jackson inrmary released me on a Friday afternoon
when my buddies were out in the eld, ready to start the march.
Though still sick, I was determined to join them on the march.
I should never have attempted the march in my condition, but
I did. I reached the eld just in time to start the march with
my unit. Like most others in the service, I wanted to do my
best, to stay with my group, to go overseas with my unit and
defend our families and rights as free people. Without a certain
qualication, I might not make it.
On the twenty-fth mile, I suddenly knew that I could go
no further. I was still too weak from my recent illness. In the
distance, I could see the trucks that had come to pick us up, but
I had no strength left. Hanson and another guy supported me
under my arms and helped me along the last mile. Finishing felt
like winning, like getting a certicate at school. And I nished
thanks to my friends.
Whats wrong with you, Fisher? the medical ofcer asked
me afterwards. You shouldnt have gone on that march. You
could have made it up another time.
Oh, I had to do it, Lieutenant. I had to be with my
buddies.
Now Hanson supported me again as we approached the
heavily fortied entrance of the prison camp. The name above
the gate told us it was Stalag IV-B: M. STAMMLAGER IV
B it proclaimed. American soldiers steel helmets were piled
ten feet high on both sides of the gate, and my gaze lingered on
the many helmets bearing the Red Cross emblem, like child-
scribbled roses among the dark piles.
The guards likewise conscated our helmets at the gate and
ushered us into a large barracks-type building. There were
already prisoners residing in the building, British prisoners
who had probably been there for months, if not years. As new
arrivals, we did not stay long in the rst building. The guards
soon moved us into an empty building where we remained for a
couple nights. Well, this is it, I thought. Weve nally reached a
place where were gonna stay.
Camp IV-B at Mhlberg, east of the River Elbe, was probably
within a hundred miles of Berlin. I judged the date now to be
between January 9 and 11. During our rst two days at the prison
camp, the German ofcials processed the arriving prisoners.
They searched us, questioned us, took our picture, weighed us,
and issued us prison numbers, our stalag numbers, on metal tags
like our dog tags, though nearly twice their size.
The seasoned British prisoners in the barracks had advised
us not to answer the Germans questions with any information
beyond our name, rank, and serial number. Questions about
jobs and occupations were particularly dangerous, the British
prisoners warned. Based on what we might answer about
former jobs, the Germans could assign us to specic work detail.
Prisoners before us had been sent to salt mines, factories, and
farms. Since I had worked alongside my father, a section foreman
on the railroads, I dreaded the possibility that the ofcials would
learn of my previous occupation. I could be sent to labor on the
German railroads, favorite targets of the Allied bombers.
We are all students, we told the ofcials and refused to give
any further information. The prison ofcer merely shook his
head in resignation.
I knew by previous experience the consequences of heedlessly
declaring ones occupation. Upon joining the armed services, I had
completed a questionnaire regarding past employment. Section
gang on the railroad, I had written, and Worked three months
in hospital. At age seventeen, I had worked at a mental hospital
for a summer. My job detail at the mental hospital included
little more than janitorial duties, but the military inferred that I
had medical background. A shortage in medics lent unexpected
importance to my records. I suddenly found myself reporting
to the Fort Jackson dispensary, attending a training school for
medical corpsmen, and administering smallpox vaccinations to
fellow GIs. A cursory scribble on a draft form had made me
a medic, but a careless answer to the Germans at Camp IV-B
could be a matter of life or death.
Fearing that the guards would conscate any valuables, I
hid a photograph of my wife and son in my boot, along with
my wristwatch, wedding ring, and class ring, before we were
stripped down to our underwear. Later, they returned all our
clothes to us, including my knitted wool cap and overseas cap
with its medics emblem, and I found my photograph, watch, and
rings still tucked safely in my boot. We lost only our helmets
at the gate and our blankets with the armholes, which were not
returned with our clothes.
The ofcials gave every arriving prisoner an injection in his
chest, directly in the left nipple. The shot stung intensely like a
bee sting. No one explained to us what this was for, though it
may have been intended to prevent typhus or tetanus.
We had triple-decker bunks at Camp IV-B. They were six feet
long, narrow, with eleven to thirteen wooden slats and some straw
forming the bed of the bunk. A couple inches separated each
slat and left bizarre imprints on our backs and hips by morning.
The blankets provided were threadbare and thin. Hanson and I
longed for our GI blankets with the armholes. As we had done at
our farmhouse aid station, I slept in a middle bunk while Hanson
took a top bunk, because he was tall and long-legged and could
climb up more easily than the rest of us.
There were three Negro soldiers in our group among the
bunks where we spent the rst several nights, and these three
men could sing like angels. They sang Christmas songs in rich
harmony: Silent Night, Jingle Bells, popular songs of the
day. Ill be home for Christmas, they crooned. Warmth and
reverence swelled the room. As we listened from our bunks,
Im sure each mans thoughts, like mine, were lled with scenes
of home. Home had never been far from our minds, but since
our capture, we had thought far more about our loved ones at
home than we thought of ourselves. We counted on the regular
delay of news by radio and hoped that our families had not heard
about our situation until after Christmas. We did not want their
Christmas to be spoiled in any way, overshadowed with worries
about what might be happening to their husbands, sons, and
brothers.
The future for us seemed uncertain at best. We had no
way of knowing if IV-B would be a permanent camp for us or
if we would be marched deeper into Germany, murdered by a
vengeful people who would feel they have nothing more to lose
or held as political hostages, bargaining chips in a nal stand for
the desperate fhrer in Berlin. Rumors were as varied as they
were terrifying.
Within days, we were led from the barrack of triple-
decker bunks to another building a barren, one-story barrack
with no bunks. There we slept on the oor.
From what little we understood, the Germans had separated
all the non-combatants from the privates. In other words, anyone
from a corporal on up was separated from the soldiers of lower
rank. The medics, of course, were non-combatants and were
therefore included with the ofcers when the separation took
place. Perhaps the Germans feared that the ofcers and other
non-combatants would attempt a large-scale escape or try to
organize resistance. We were divided into separate barracks.
The empty barrack was a type of staging area, a large building
where masses of captured troops could be temporarily housed.
Here the guards gave us a chance to write home. Capture
cards furnished by the Red Cross enabled us to send brief
news of our circumstances and to ask for things that we needed.
There was very little space on the cards in which to write, so
the priority of our desires quickly became evident. Since most
GIs smoked, most of us asked for cigarettes, but the cigarettes
were not merely for recreational smoking. They were like gold
in the prison camp. If a prisoner had a cigarette, he could trade
it for food. So we all asked for cigarettes and food, of course
anything that could be safely shipped and would not easily
perish. I wrote two cards:
My Darling Elsie -
Jan. 11, 1945
Writing to let you know Im fine and safe, and not to worry about
me. Send me razor blades, double edge, socks, coffee, jam, figs,
cigs., pipe tob., and other things that wont spoil. This will have
to be 10 lbs., send through R.C. Cigs. are not included in 10 lb.
pkg. I love you, Darling and Johnny.
Jan. 21, 1945
Able to write you a few lines again, to let you know that Im
getting along fine, and for you not to worry. To best of my knowledge
I am in a permanent camp now. Would like clothes and toilet
articles. Go to Red Cross for information as to what you can do for
me. Your loving husband Hugh
Being able to write home and ask for things gave us immense
satisfaction, though some of our initial requests later seemed
foolish to us. At the time, Hanson and I thought that we were
certainly going to need supplies like razor blades. We gured we
would have to shave and try to look presentable, never realizing
that our beards would scarcely grow due to malnourishment and
that we would never have any hot water for a shave anyway. It
was hard enough to get water to drink, let alone water to wash
ones hands and face.
We were housed in the barren barrack for only two days,
during which we received at least one ration of food per day.
Then, we were led out of Stalag IV-B and packed into another
train. We were all corporals or sergeants on this train ride, and
we didnt know where we were going.
CHAPTER SIX
M. Stammlager VIII-A
L
ike the boxcar that carried us to Stalag IV-B, the door of
our second boxcar locked from the outside, and we could
not open it even for a breath of fresh air along the way. Unlike
our rst train ride, there were now fewer men to a car thirty-
ve instead of fty prisoners in each boxcar. Again the guards
distributed some food just before we departed.
Our thirst was far worse than our hunger. We were continually
thirsty. In the boxcar, our breath condensed and froze on the metal
parts of the boxcar wall. When we awakened each morning, we
found nail heads and bolt heads frosty with our frozen breath.
We scraped the frost off with our ngernails and sucked it off
our ngers.
Like most boxcars, this one had a small window on the right
hand side of the car in the corner near the rooine. Our little
window had bars over it but no glass. When the prison train
stopped at stations along the way, we often heard childrens voices
outside. Then, whoever was nearest the window would boost
another man up so he could look out. The man at the window
would make faces at the children, and they would respond with
a volley of snowballs. Inevitably, some of the snowballs would
break against the window bars and shower clods of ice into the
boxcar. This is exactly what we wanted. We would carry on
with silly faces at the window the entire time those children
were out there and the train was stopped. By the time the train
would roll away from the towns, all of us would have a bit of ice
from a snowball to suck on.
The trip lasted at least two nights and two days. We traveled
slowly, starting and stopping, inching our way southwest across
the German heartland and nally arriving at Grlitz, Stalag VIII-
A, near the Czechoslovakian border. Once again, we tottered
out of the boxcar, lined up ve abreast, and started marching
toward the prison camp. We couldnt see the camp from where
the boxcars unloaded, but the guards pointed us toward the
River Neisse that cuts through Grlitz, and we marched in that
direction.
As usual, I was marching on the outside of the formation,
and I noticed a German ofcer approaching along my side
of the column. Even in the difcult conditions of the camps
and marches, I always tried to look my best. I had put on my
overseas cap instead of my knitted wool cap when we left the
boxcar, and I was wearing it cocked over my right eye, perched
the regulation two ngers width above my right eyebrow. It
gave me a rather cocky look the Yankee look, some called it.
Perhaps the German ofcer thought I looked too self-assured,
for as we passed, he struck me with his left st right between my
eyes. The blow knocked me to the ground. I went down on one
knee, yet something seemed to tell me, Dont make a fuss about
this. Just get up, and shake it off. Not making a scene probably
saved my life. The ofcer continued walking up the line. If I
had done something or said something, he would have probably
turned and shot me right there. One could never depend on the
German ofcers and guards. We never knew what they might
do. They could be very cordial to us one minute, and the next
minute, they might kick us. I simply brushed myself off and
rejoined the column.
Stalag VIII-A loomed before us, a bristling fortress on a
windswept plain. Here were the familiar guard towers and
double fences of barbed wire enclosing a disarmed army. Here
were the identical one-story, wood frame buildings we had left
at Stalag IV-B.
We soon discovered that the barracks of Camp VIII-A were
warmer than those of IV-B, despite the fact that mere wooden
shutters instead of glass covered the windows. The mid-January
temperatures were somewhat milder here, and the buildings
effectively sheltered us from the winds of the plain. We
reacquainted ourselves with gaping wooden slats on our new
bunks, nding some comfort in the fact that the barracks of VIII-
A were not as overcrowded.
A captured British medical ofcer in the barrack had taken
charge. He asked every medic who arrived to hand over all his
medical supplies. He had commandeered a corner of the barrack
to set up a dispensary and provide what care he could to the
sick and wounded. Hanson and I added the supplies from our
medical kits to the British ofcers stock.
After a week at Camp VIII-A, we received our rst showers in
captivity. A guard announced that we would leave the barracks
in groups to take a shower. By this time, we had heard reports
among the prisoners detailing the atrocities committed against
Jews in the concentration camps. They told of methodical mass
murders, like those of the Bergen-Belson concentration camp,
where deadly gases owed from shower spouts instead of water.
It was a terrifying prospect, but the guards made it clear that our
showers were mandatory. Well, we said, if they say were
going to have showers, well have to take them for their word.
Having gone a month without bathing, we were almost resigned
to the danger.
Hanson and I stayed together and followed the others to a low,
stone building. The guards made us strip naked in the bitter cold,
and they gathered our clothes in little carts, each with a number
that corresponded to our stalag identication number. We were
glad it was only a few, short steps into the shower room. When
we were all inside, the guards held the group back in one room
and made us enter the showers four or ve at a time. Hanson and
I were among the rst to go in. We stood there, naked, staring up
at those spouts and praying that water would come out.
Relief! Euphoria! They were wonderful, wet, slippery
showers! The guards allowed us no more than a few minutes,
but we were able to scrub down with some soap they provided,
and it felt marvelous. Then the guards called us out and we
waited again in the holding room until our clothes were ready.
Bundled up in little carts that ran on a narrow-gage rail, our
clothes had passed through an oven for de-lousing. The heat
was supposed to kill all the lice and eas and anything else in
our clothes. Without any mix-ups or mismatches, we collected
our clothes, still deliciously warm from the ovens.
~~ * ~~
Around nine or ten oclock each morning at Camp VIII-A,
we received a ration of coffee. At least, the guards called it
coffee. It was a terribly bitter potion, which tasted nothing like
what we would have recognized as coffee, but it was something
to drink.
And each morning, the guards asked for volunteers to go get
the rations. In time, we organized a group to get the rations. The
volunteers would haul in the pot of coffee at nine oclock and a
meal at noon. The meal was usually a cup of soup, a green soup
of boiled grass, with the tops of a turnip one day and the root of
the turnip the next. Sometimes, there were bits of sugar beets or
horsemeat in the soup, but we never paid much attention to the
ingredients. Almost anything tasted good.
We each had spoons from the guards, and I had a little tin
cup that held about as much as a coffee cup. In it, I received
my coffee, soup, and anything else. About twice a week, the
guards gave us an added ration of cheese. We called it sh
cheese because it had fetid odor like a dead sh, but its avor
was tolerable. Everyone received a tablespoonful of sh cheese.
A few days later, we might get a spoonful of apple butter instead
of sh cheese.
We received bread regularly. Ten men would share a loaf
of sour, black bread, divided in portions called stalag cuts or
military cuts. We would measure along the top of the loaf
with our metal stalag tags, and the width of the tag was the width
of the piece of bread that each of the ten men would get. The
bread distribution occurred at another designated time of day.
Nothing came all at once. The guards spread the food out over
the hours: rst, the coffee; then after two hours, the soup; then
another two hours, the bread; and sometimes a tidbit of cheese
between courses. In this way, we always had something to do
and something to look forward to.
We lined up to receive our food. Soup was dished out of
a large kettle carried by two men. When the soup contained
vegetables or meat, the men who were rst in line got mostly
liquid. Those at the end of the line got the thick soup from the
bottom of the kettle. If there were any meat or vegetables, they
would be at the bottom. We took turns being at the front and
end of the line so that no one was disadvantaged. Informal
rules like this were necessary because, in our rst few days at
Camp VIII-A, men had started ghts over a piece of bread being
bigger than anothers. It was the same with the soup. Everyone
needed an equal chance to get soup from the bottom. With the
bread, the heels of the loaf always tasted better and were more
nutritious than a stalag cut from the middle of the loaf. If a
prisoner received the rst slice from the heel of the bread one
day, he could not have another heel slice for ten more days until
everyone had a chance for the heel of the bread. Such rules were
important, for we depended on the meager rations for health and
survival.
We made the rules among ourselves. The punishment for
breaking a rule or for stealing another prisoners belongings
or food was the communication of the offenders name to the
German guard, a report that usually relied upon the services of
the prisoner who could speak German. Ours, like most barracks,
housed a German-speaking prisoner. Sometimes, the prisoners
uent in German took advantage of their skills at the expense of
the other prisoners. They gained special privileges in one case,
his own separate room within the barrack. They could be a great
help to us at times, but we were suspicious of the prisoners who
could speak German. In any case, they helped to communicate
and enforce our system of necessary rules with the guards.
Between the distributions of allotted rations, we created
elaborate recipes in our heads, and wed jot them down if we
could borrow a pencil from somebody. Often a single pencil
would make the rounds so that every prisoner could write down
a favorite recipe, real or ridiculous, that he planned to make
when he returned home. Without exception, our recipes called
for massive amounts of sugar. One of my favorite inventions
was to Peel a banana and split it lengthways, ll it full with
peanut butter, roll it in sweet dough, and bake it in the oven.
I could only imagine the results of such an experiment, and I
recorded many similar fantasies in the note pages at the back of
the French phrase book I had retrieved from my duffel bag:
Graham Cracker Loaf
Layer of Crackers layer custard Layer sliced banana
Marshmallow chocolate syrup Cover with meringue & bake.
Trifle Freds
Plain cake, cut up in squares 1
Spread cake with strawberry preserves.
Lay cake in desert serving bowl.
Make up a sweet sauce (custard) with a shot of cherry wine.
Pour sauce over cake while still hot.
Let cool & top with whipped cream & cherries.
Sunday Evening Delight
1# Frankfurters sliced onion
1# Amer. Cheese Pie crust dough
# Sliced bacon.
Slice Franks down center Place sliced cheese in Franks Wrap
bacon around Franks. Place onion on top. Wrap all in pie crust.
Bake in oven Serve with hot rolls.
We knew just enough about the kitchen to be positively
dangerous, and I lled page after page with culinary mirages.
I also craved the sweet jelly doughnuts called bismarcks
that I remembered from my childhood, and the cream puffs my
grandmother used to make with sweet dough and frosting and
cream in the middle. I dreamed of going to her house and eating
those cream puffs. When I get home, I announced from my
bunk, Im going to buy a dozen of those bismarcks, lled with
red jelly, and Im going to sit down and eat every last one of
them!
We coveted any food, especially the tidbits. I found a
discarded lid from a jar and began to store my rations of apple
butter in it. I would take a tiny driblet of butter from the lid and
then smooth the butter over where I had dipped in, eventually
doing the same thing with the sh cheese. I rarely ate my lid
reserves all at once, so I habitually smoothed over the surface of
the butter and cheese so I could tell if anyone had disturbed it.
If a y walked across this leaving little y tracks, I reckoned, I
would know it.
I kept the lid hidden by my bunk but soon discovered that
someone was stealing food from my lid. They had been dipping
into it while I slept. It had to be someone from our barrack,
probably someone from my row of bunks and probably the same
guy who stole my little drawstring bag of food in the boxcar.
There were no facilities for cooking any food. We ate food
as it was distributed to us, though in other barracks some of the
more ingenious prisoners, who had endured months and years
in the camps, had fashioned what they called blower-cookers
out of cans, especially Klim powdered milk cans from their Red
Cross parcels. The blower-cookers were designed like miniature,
blacksmith-style forges. A crank turned a fan, which blew air
up under burning wood, and this produced a more intense heat
for cooking food, heating soup, or toasting bread. For fuel, the
prisoners gathered whatever wood scraps they could nd, even
cutting wood shavings from the bunks. Necessity may be the
mother of invention, as some say, but war and prisons are its
fathers. The prisoners in my barrack were neither fortunate
enough nor resourceful enough to have a blower-cooker. We ate
everything as it arrived, with no means to heat it up.
One day, I had opened the wooden shutters on the barrack
window and was gazing toward the kitchen when I saw a team
of horses and a driver approaching with a wagon piled high with
turnips. As a boy, I used to eat turnips raw from my fathers
garden. My father and I would cut slices off the turnips and
nibble on them. I would not choose a diet of raw turnips, but
when I saw this wagon coming, I said to myself, Im going to go
out this window, and as soon as that guard goes in the kitchen,
Im going to go out to get me a turnip or two.
So I did. I slipped out the window, and had just grabbed hold
of a couple turnips when a guard on a bicycle appeared. He
saw me and ran me right down with the bicycle. We both fell
to the ground. The guard kicked me a few times, and I dropped
the turnips, ran back, and crawled through the window into
the barracks where Hanson was waiting to give me a hand in
climbing back through the window.
I was furious about the whole incident and was determined
to get a turnip. When things quieted down and the guards and
wagon driver disappeared, I ran back out and claimed my two
turnips without further altercations with the guard. Hanson and
I carved them up with a knife we had made from a scrap of
metal and had sharpened against the masonry inside the barrack.
Most of the barracks had remnants of masonry where there had
apparently been a stove at one time. There was no stove now,
but there were enough bricks and cement remaining to sharpen
a makeshift knife.
The established prisoners, who had been captured before
the Battle of the Bulge, received Red Cross parcels. Some of
the prisoners at Camp VIII-A had been in a prison for four or
ve months prior to the Bulge; the British soldiers, captured
at Dunkirk or other early engagements, had been prisoners for
years. They all received one Red Cross parcel per man. Each
parcel contained ten pounds of good food, plus cigarettes and D-
bars dense, dark bars of chocolate that a prisoner could spend
all day eating. In the prison camps, one could live like a king
with a full Red Cross parcel.
The prisoners who had arrived more recently, on the other
hand, never received full parcels. Usually, the guards gave us a
tenth of a parcel, as they did before we boarded the boxcars at
Gerolstein. Ours was a meager diet with only the German food.
When Red Cross parcels did arrive and we could receive our
tenth, it felt like Christmas.
There were far more smokers than non-smokers among the
prisoners. Cigarettes were precious to us. Three of us my
buddy Hanson, another fellow, and I made a pact that if any
of us, through barter or any other way, obtained a cigarette, he
had to share it with the other two. The arrangement worked
fairly well. If I got a cigarette, we would light it, each take
a puff or two, passing from one to the other and back to the
original person. Then we would extinguish it. The next time the
remainder of that cigarette was lit, we repeated the procedure,
taking a couple puffs each and snufng it out.
One day when I went to the latrine just outside the barrack
door, I found a member of our three-party system smoking a
cigarette. Do you think youre special that you get a cigarette
to yourself? I bellowed. What about our bargain? He
seemed unaffected. He stared straight ahead without answering.
I was convinced in an instant that he was the same guy who
dipped into my lid of apple butter, the same guy who stole my
drawstring bag. He was one of us, but he was not trustworthy.
I told Hanson about the incident, and we dissolved our little
bargain. We shared nothing more with him and did not expect
him to share anything with us.
~~ * ~~
Most of the prisoners maintained a good sense of humor
despite our circumstances. The cold of the barrack and the
painful wooden slats of the bunks caused us to have to frequently
urinate throughout the night. It seemed like we had to get up to
relieve ourselves every couple hours in the latrine at the other
end of the building. Our boots were always under the bottom
bunk, so we would climb down and slide our combat boots on
without taking the time to fasten the leather straps with double
buckles at the top. The noise of the resulting two-way parade
reminded us of a couple popular cowboy western songs, and we
combined the two songs to serenade the shufers:
Oh, give me land, lots of land under starry skies,
Dont fence me in.
Let me ride through the wide-open country that I love,
Dont fence me in.
Send me off forever but I ask you please,
Jingle, jangle, jingle Dont fence me in!

I want to ride to the ridge where the west commences
And gaze at the moon till I lose my senses
And I cant look at hobbles and I cant stand fences
Jingle, jangle, jingle Dont fence me in.
No, Poppa, dont you fence me in!
The constant trafc of jangling buckles going to and from the
latrine may have disturbed our sleep, but we found humor in the
situation.
~~ * ~~
There was talk among the veteran prisoners about a
compound that housed French prisoners in a barrack just two
buildings away from ours. I decided to go there and see what
it was like. One late afternoon about the time that rations were
usually served, no rations came, for we had already received the
total of our allotted rations for the day. I took this opportunity
to approach the guard at the gate between our compound and
the French. Like nearly all the guards, he was an older man,
probably in his sixties. He stood by the gate in a low wooden
box, two-feet square and full of straw to keep his feet warm. He
understood enough English to understand that I wanted to enter
the French barracks, and he permitted me to pass.
The French prisoners were living fairly well. They worked
outside the camp on German farms during the day and would
smuggle pocketfuls of food back to their barracks. With this extra
food, they did not have to depend on the German rations. I think
the German guards must have known about the French smuggling
food in from the farms, but they let it go unchallenged.
As my eyes adjusted to the dim light of the French barrack,
I saw bacon and eggs in a frying pan and a short wooden table
where each prisoner had spread his cache of bread and vegetables.
If I can just make some kind of connection hereI thought.
I still had the photograph of my wife and son, taken shortly
before I went overseas. My wife is of French descent, and her
maiden name is Boucha, of French derivation. I removed the
photograph from my boot where I kept it for safety and showed
it to the French prisoners. French! French! I said. She is a
French girl!
They passed the photograph around the table. Ah, Yank
married to French! French girl! That is great!
This was my in. The French prisoners invited me into their
group and offered me food. They had already eaten, so they
gave me the food that was left: bread and fried eggs whatever
they had on the table, they shared with me.
After that, I visited the French barrack every day. Hanson,
I said, This is such a good thing. Maybe you could come with
me.
No, no. he replied. Youd better leave things well enough
alone as they are.
One night after I had been visiting the French prisoners for
about a week, I crawled into my bunk and felt a terric pain in
the left side of my chest. As prisoners, we were very worried
about getting appendicitis or having a heart attack or anything
like that because we knew if anything happened to us, the
Germans would not help us and we would die. Slowly starving
was bad enough, but to die in preventable pain was unthinkable.
That was the rst thing that came to my mind when I felt the
pain in my chest. Having had my appendix removed as a boy,
and having had a rupture in my navel repaired years before, I
decided that this sharp pain must be my heart.
I went to see the British ofcer who had pooled all the medical
equipment when we arrived. He had arranged a sickbay in the
corner of the barrack, piling straw and blankets on the oor with
boards around the edges to hold the straw in place. Lacking a
stethoscope, the medical ofcer put his bare ear to my chest.
Stay overnight here in the straw, he said, and well see what
happens by morning. He had heard telltale signs when he
listened to my chest, but he did not tell me right away.
The next morning, he told me I had pneumonia. And I had a
fever, a high fever. The ofcer gave me sulfa tablets, made of
the same antibacterial agent as the powder I had used to treat
wounded soldiers, but that is all he could give me.
Shortly after taking the tablets, I became so ill that I drifted in
and out of consciousness.
At one point when I awoke, Hanson came to the edge of my
crib in the straw. Fisher, were leaving. Theyre evacuating all
the able-bodied men that can march out, and theyre leaving the
sick and wounded behind.
We had known that something was about to happen because
we had heard guns in the distance. The Russians were advancing
on Berlin, and the Germans were growing nervous. They ed
from the path of the marauding Red Army, and now we would
be going with them.
Hanson had somehow acquired one of the makeshift Klim-
can blower-cookers. You keep this blower, Fisher. Youll be
able to heat up your toast or heat up your soup.
I didnt know how or where he had gotten it, though I supposed
he had traded for it with somebody else who was leaving.
I whispered, Hanson, thank you. Always my buddy.
And thats the last I saw of him. I must have slipped back into
unconsciousness, for I do not remember anything more.
~~ * ~~
I awoke in a boxcar, surrounded by other sick and wounded
prisoners. A big, elderly Australian man was sitting beside me.
He was evidently a soldier in the British army and wore his
hat cocked on one side, in the typical manner of the Australian
soldiers.
Where am I? I asked him.
Were all in a boxcar, going to another camp.
How did I get here?
Two Frenchmen brought you on a stretcher and hoisted you
into the boxcar with the help of those inside the car.
I realized it must have been the French soldiers who had fed
me and with whom I had become friends. Again, I thanked the
Lord. These French prisoners did not know me, yet they had
taken me in and fed me and even gave me extra food. They had
befriended me. Finally, they had carried me to the train when
they learned that I was laid up sick. The British medical ofcer
from my barrack had provided the old Australian soldier with
sulfa tablets to give me two or three times a day while we were
in the boxcar.
It was now mid February. Near Valentines Day, I thought. I
lay on my back in the boxcar.
No one knew where the train was going, but it was a far more
bearable journey than the previous two. On this ride, the guards
opened the doors whenever the train stopped. Usually, we were
stopped long enough that those who could get out could relieve
themselves. At one stop, the guards even brought some soup in
a big kettle for us. Since all the prisoners on this train were sick
or wounded, the guards generally did not bother to relock the
doors before we started on our way again.
The old Australian soldier loved tea as much as the British
prisoners we had met. He was always asking around for someone
who might have tea so he could make a cup for himself. At one
of the stations when it looked like we were going to be stopped
for a while, he climbed out of the boxcar and approached the
engineer, asking him for some hot water from the boiler of the
engine. The engineer gave the Australian a cup of hot water, and
he returned to the boxcar and made some tea. I marveled at how
long he must have been saving that tea. He made a cup for me
as well and gave me my pills. It felt wonderful to drink the hot
tea as I took the sulfa tablets.
CHAPTER SEVEN
M. Stammlager XI-B
T
he train frequently pulled into sidings to make way for
German troop trains rushing eastward or hospital trains
eeing westward. At one stop, our train was shunted into a
sidetrack to make way for a military train loaded with tanks and
guns on its way to the front.
I was still at on my back, unable to get up, when Allied ghter
planes dive-bombed the military train. They had no way of
knowing that the train next to it was full of British and American
prisoners, for the prison train boxcars were not marked as POW
or Red Cross. Ours looked like any other boxcar.
Of the thirty-ve men in our boxcar, about thirty managed to
get out, as the fty-caliber machine gun bullets ripped into our
train. Some of the prisoners had already ed from the car when
the bullets strafed the area. Again I recalled what my mother-in-
law had told me: Stay put and pray to the Lord. But this time, I
had no choice in the matter. I could not have gotten out if I had
wanted to. I could only lie there and pray.
I prayed while the bullets tore away the upper corner of the
boxcar and splinters rained down upon me. From where I lay,
I could see that corner, and it was disintegrating rapidly. The
bullets penetrating the roof ricocheted to the oor and killed more
men before they could clamber out. By the time the shooting
ended, at least ten men from our boxcar were dead. My body
was covered with shattered wood, but I survived unharmed, and
the old Australian soldier who helped me also came through
unscathed.
We were stopped at the sidetrack for several hours before the
train got on its way again. The dead were left beside the tracks
where they fell and could be attended to later by a labor detail.

~~ * ~~
Judging by what the old Australian told me, the train trip
lasted about two nights and three days before we reached the next
prison camp, the massive Stalag XI-B at Fallingbostel, halfway
between the cities of Hamburg and Hanover on the atlands of
northwest Germany. I was still too sick and weak to walk to the
camp. The old Australian soldier and a couple men I did not
know carried me off the train on a stretcher to the lazaret, the
German hospital in the prison camp.
The lazaret was not a large building. It contained rows of
clean, double-decker bunks for the sick and wounded, mostly
British prisoners, and I was assigned to a bottom bunk.
As I regained some strength, I was able to make short walks
along my bunk and talk to nearby prisoners. One man, George
Mattson, came from the old mining town of Ramsey, Michigan.
He was also sick with pneumonia, and his condition was probably
what mine had been in the boxcar. It was difcult for him to
talk, but he gave me his address, and I recorded it at the back of
my French phrase book.
We received Red Cross parcels in the lazaret. This time, my
portion was half a parcel ve pounds of good food! I had no
desire to smoke while sick, so I traded the cigarettes from the
parcel for more food.
I began to feel like the worst was now over. Everything was
looking up. The lazaret was far better than the old, drab barracks
with no heat, and as the days and weeks went by, even the rumors
and news grew brighter. The war is going well for the Allies.
The end is in sight, the recently captured prisoners told us. I
decided that if I could just get through the pneumonia, all would
be well.
I no longer felt discouraged or feared death. It seemed like
years had passed since those rst two days of the Battle of the
Bulge when I had most feared for my life. Being a medic, I
could not ght back when the Germans were overrunning our
positions, our leadership was in disarray, and it was every man
for himself. I had to depend entirely on the integrity of the
enemy soldier. He could be a soldier who respected the medical
symbols on my helmet, or a bloodthirsty butcher with nothing
on his mind but killing.
A British prisoner of war from another part of the hospital
could walk around without assistance. He had been recuperating
in the hospital for months. For the tea from my Red Cross parcel,
he gave me some chocolate and sugar. The sweetness tasted
heavenly and gave me a surge of energy.
In the hospital, I discovered that half of my toenails from one
foot were missing from the frostbite I had suffered on our march
from Schnberg to the rst boxcars. Even after all the weeks
since then, my feet were still blue. But I was among the most
fortunate. I saw other prisoners lose their toes in some cases,
an entire foot to frostbite. On the march, we were afraid to
take our boots off to check our feet. If our feet were swollen,
we would not be able to get our boots back on. If the guards
ordered us to march again and we were unable, they would shoot
us right there. If a prisoner couldnt go any further, he could be
destroyed.
A British medical ofcer had been given charge of the lazaret.
Only twice did I see the German doctor: once when he came
along the rows of bunks with another doctor to look around, and
again when they examined my lungs with a uoroscope.
The British doctor checked me every day. Finally, he told
me I could try to walk, and it wasnt long before I could get
around on my own. I could walk to Mattsons bunk and sit with
him to talk. Mattson was still too weak to participate much in
the conversation, but we both drew strength from each others
company.
I stayed in the lazaret from the end of February through the
rst part of March. One day, the British doctor informed me,
We are going to take you over to another building, where they
will take a picture of your lungs and assess your condition.
They used a uoroscope rather than an X-ray to examine my
lungs, and then took me back to the lazaret. I was there for four
more days before the medical ofcer returned and said I could
move into the regular barracks. I was not eager to move because
life was good in the lazaret.
The guards assigned me to a barrack in the American and
British compound where most of the prisoners were British.
As in the barracks at Camp VIII-A, there was no glass on the
windows here, only wooden shutters that we could open and
close, and there were no bunks in this barrack. We slept on the
oor in straw and thin blankets, side by side the entire length
of the building, which I guessed to be about seventy feet long.
A washing area where we could clean our faces and hands
partitioned the building into two parts. There was no hot water,
but we were relieved to have the water available for drinking.
We were fortunate to have water available most of the time at
Camp XI-B. The worst problem in our section of the camp was
that there was only one latrine. Seventy men used one toilet.
Of course, it wasnt long before that toilet was inoperative. So,
the guards took a detail of men one day, and they dug a big slit
trench, twenty to thirty feet long, and erected a canvas over it.
That is where we had to go from then on, whatever the weather.
We were exposed to the elements there except for the canvas
over our heads.
One dim light bulb served each half of our long barrack.
There was no heat and no stove, but there was a chimney. An
opening in the chimney served as a clean-out for ashes. With our
homemade knives, we whittled shavings off discarded boards,
just enough shavings to build a little re in the clean-out under
the chimney to toast our bread. The bread tasted so much better
when toasted. The German guard sometimes noticed our re
when he made his rounds, and he would usually say nothing
about it. At other times, he would storm into the barrack, stomp
out our re with his boots, and curse at us in German.
We always slept with all our clothes on for warmth, though
we might take our boots off. I slept in the straw alongside two
or three British paratroopers who had been captured at a big
parachute drop over Holland in the fall of 1944. The parachute
drop had not gone according to plan, and many paratroopers
were captured, wounded, or killed.
We talked for hours about home, comparing descriptions of
our families. Home seemed closer every day now, as bits of news
informed us of the Allied forces tightening stranglehold on the
German heartland. It could only be a matter of time before the
wars end. I showed the British paratroopers the photograph of
my wife and son.
How does a Yank and his wife handle money? they asked.
Who handles the money in your family?
In my case, I answered, my wife does. I get the paycheck,
but she buys the groceries, pays the rent, and knows where all
the money goes.
Oh! they gasped. We would never do that. No bird is
going to take care of our money.
This surprised me, and to hear the British prisoners refer to
women or girls as birds always made me chuckle. It was a
typical conversation.
~~ * ~~
A few days after I had been released from the lazaret, my
own sergeant, Staff Sergeant Gordon, suddenly walked through
the door of the barrack. I could hardly contain my surprise and
joy at seeing him again. I had not seen Sergeant Gordon since
leaving the Schnberg town hall hospital where he performed
surgeries with the German doctor in the anteroom.
How in the world did you get to this camp? I asked him.
But he shrugged the question off and changed the subject. He
preferred to talk about where I had been.
When the guards issued our rations later that day, Sergeant
Gordon noticed that I didnt have a cup to put my soup in. My
old tin cup from Camp VIII-A had gone missing when I was sick
with pneumonia, and I now had to borrow a cup from somebody
else who had nished eating. Sergeant Gordon pulled two cups
from his packsack. I will give you one of these cups, he said
with his distinctive, rened air. I have a blue one and a red one.
Which one would you like?
I liked the little red granite cup. The name Frieda was
painted on the side. From then on, the cup that Sergeant Gordon
gave me served for soup and coffee and any other wet rations, so
that I no longer had to eat from someone elses cup or can.
Sergeant Gordon found me again the following day with
news that a soldier we knew from our Service Battery was
housed in another barrack of the prison camp. We went to visit
him together, and that was the last time I saw Sergeant Gordon.
He was held at Camp XI-B for only a few days before being
transferred to another.
The men in my barrack were a pleasant group. Conditions
were rough without bunks, but we made the best of it. In our
barrack, sleeping with our clothes on, body-to-body in the straw,
the eas were erce. Some of the prisoners had head lice, but
eas were a far greater problem. They infested our underclothes
and bit us throughout the night. The British paratroopers and
I devised a little game to count the many brown spots on our
undershirts in the morning. We would feel the eas biting us in
the night and try to nd them and squash them. This left brown
spots on our undershirts. In the morning, one of us would call
out, Well, Ive got ten new ones.
Ive got ve new ones. How many have you got, Fisher?
Oh, Ive got seven or eight here. It became a favorite joke
among the prisoners.
Curiously, when I rst became ill with pneumonia at Camp
VIII-A, I had no problem with eas. Fleas plagued Camp VIII-
A, too, but with my fevers, the eas stopped bothering me until
I was discharged from the lazaret.
~~ * ~~
The weather began to improve as spring approached. On my
birthday, March 26, I managed to barter for a small jar of peanut
butter. One of the prisoners had somehow acquired peanut
butter, and I traded a pair of socks for it, an extra pair that I had
retrieved from my duffel bag in the weapons carrier.
It was a tiny jar, about the size of a small cup, but I didnt want
to eat it in front of the other prisoners when they had none and
there was not enough for all to share. I took my prize outside,
where the guard allowed me to sit and eat it on the sunny side
of a hill near the edge of the camp. Simply being outside was a
treat, for we were normally not permitted to leave the barracks
except to use the latrine and to line up for morning roll calls. I
sat there on the hill like an emperor on a throne, with a wooden
spoon and the knife I had made, and devoured the entire jar of
peanut butter. It gave me a stomachache, but it provided energy
and nourishment that I craved.
As I sat licking the last traces of peanut butter from the jar,
a column of boys led by two German ofcers came goose-
stepping along the grassy road below the hill. I guessed the
boys to be about eleven or twelve years old, all with swastikas
on their armbands. They spotted me on the hillside and struck
up a chant. In my ignorance of German, their shouts sounded to
me like We kinder! We kinder! I assumed they were voicing
their pride at being so young and serving their Reich, though I
could imagine only danger and disillusionment ahead for them.

~~ * ~~
Like the French prisoners at Camp VIII-A, the Russians at
Camp XI-B worked on the farms by day. The guards marched
them out to the elds before dawn and brought them back at
night. I decided to visit the Russian compound to see if I might
have similar good fortune as I had with the French, for the
Russian laborers also smuggled food back into the camp. Even
if the Russians dont take a liking to you, one of the British
paratroopers told me, there is always a chance that you can
get some extra food from them if you have anything to barter.
But be warned: bartering with the Russians can be a delicate
business.
The Russians, so hated and feared by the Germans, did not
receive full rations as we did. Their rations were less. Moreover,
since Russia was not a signatory of the Geneva Convention, the
Russian prisoners did not receive Red Cross aid either. Most of
their food was what they could bring in from the farms.
I took my wristwatch to the Russian compound to see what
extra food they might be willing to trade for it. A gray-haired
Russian, whose feet were bound in burlap, gingerly examined my
watch, turning it this way and that in the dim light. He handed
it to another prisoner, and this second examiner walked away a
few steps. I had to observe him carefully because there were
only a couple light bulbs in the entire barrack, and I feared that
the Russian might sneak off into the shadows with my watch.
I followed him. He continued moving further toward a dark
corner, pausing to dangle the watch in the direction of the light
every few seconds, and I kept following him.
I suddenly noticed a man lying in a bed with a blanket over
him. Whats wrong with this fellow? I asked. It wasnt yet
time to be in bed. In broken English, the Russian replied,
Died two days ago. We will have to reports him dead soon
because he is starts to smell. The Russians had kept the corpse
in the bed so they could continue to collect his rations.
When I later related this incident to a war-wise American
prisoner, he told me a story of his own experience in dealing with
the Russian prisoners. Long before I arrived at Camp XI-B, some
of the GIs obtained a package of Lucky Strike cigarettes from
a Red Cross parcel. They opened the package very carefully,
and, when all the cigarettes were gone, they preserved the
package. They determined the proper weight of a full package
of cigarettes and lled the package with sand accordingly. Then
they cunningly steamed the cellophane and wrapped the tin foil
back around the box until it looked and felt like a full, unopened
pack.
They took their handiwork to the Russian compound in hopes
of trading it for something. The Russians gave them a dozen
eggs from the farms in exchange for the cigarette package.
But to the GIs astonishment, when they returned to their own
barrack, they found the dozen eggs to be full of water!
I pitied the Russian prisoners. We would see them occasionally
as the guards marched them back to their compound at dusk.
Most wore the same rags they had been wearing when captured
months or years before, and the guards would throw their rations
to them on the ground as though they were less than animals.
The Russian prisoners were a erce and rugged people.
~~ * ~~
On the morning of April 13, the German guards entered our
barrack and announced that the President of the United States
had died the day before. They allowed us to go out into the
yard and hold a service in our own way in memory of President
Roosevelt.
It was a clear day and the sun was shining brightly. We had
a little ceremony on the parade ground in the sunshine and
the spring air, observing a moment of solemn silence for our
President. It lasted about fteen to twenty minutes, and then we
all returned to the barracks in formation. It was the only time the
guards of Camp XI-B ever permitted us to be all together outside
the barracks.
Later, several of the British soldiers asked me, The Vice
President, now, will be taking ofce. What kind of a man is
President Truman?
I dont know too much about him, I confessed. In our
system, the vice presidents often remain somewhat inconspicuous
in the background, and one doesnt always know just what
theyre capable of doing. Only time will tell.
I thought for a moment, struggling to recall what little I knew
of Truman. I do remember that he ran his own haberdashery
once.
The British soldiers burst out laughing. A mad hatter! they
howled. A hatter for President!
~~ * ~~
The Germans occasionally added air force pilots to the prison
camp. Their planes had been shot down nearby, and they were
captured by the Germans and brought to Camp XI-B. Whenever
we heard of a new prisoner arriving, we rushed to the gate to
see if we could talk to him. We were wild to learn what was
happening at the front. The new prisoners brought bits of
information about how the Allies had advanced since the Battle
of the Bulge, and where our troops were now. The news was
encouraging. The Germans were starting to act differently, too
somewhat friendlier. We knew that something was about to
happen.
Camp XI-B at Fallingbostel was located directly north of
Hannover, a principal target for Allied bombing. We talked
to the recent air force prisoners about their bombing runs on
Hannover. When we heard planes ying over at night, we were
always worried that they might have some bombs left from
their raid and would try to dislodge them as they ew over
us. The captured airmen conrmed our fears, saying that they
would often get a bomb hung up in the bomb bay and would do
everything possible to break it loose. With hundreds of bombers
now ying over every day and night, we worried about them
shaking a bomb loose over our camp so near to their targets.
A MEDICS WAR 83
CHAPTER EIGHT
Liberation
T
he day after we commemorated President Roosevelts
death, a guard informed us that the camp was to be
evacuated. We would be moved out on another march or
train. Two days passed, and the guard returned to say, We are
going to be leaving the camp, but we are going to leave you
people behind. All we ask of you is that you remain quiet: no
celebrations, no loud noises. Just remain calm, and everything
will be ne. We will leave the camp, and you will be liberated
by someone, either American or British troops.
We were ecstatic with joy. Our liberation would only be a
matter of a few days wait, if that long. The guards did not want
loud noises because they did not want the Allied troops advancing
on the area to know when they were evacuating. As a precaution
for their safe withdrawal, they told us not to make any noise out
of the ordinary. We abided by their request fairly well. There
were no loud celebrations. Rather, a sort of calmness came over
all the prisoners. In a matter of hours, or days at the most, we
would be free men.
The tanks arrived on April 16. A cry arose: British army
tanks coming through the gates! The rst tanks crumpled the
gates as though they were made of paper. Behind the tanks, a
British ofcer strode in, and we were liberated. The German
guards had disappeared and left us on our own.
A ood of ex-prisoners of many different nationalities lled
the compounds and parade grounds, free to mill around wherever
they pleased. Immediately, our liberators brought us white
bread. It was the rst white bread I had seen in four months.
The Russians seemed never to have seen it before. I noticed
one Russian crouching between two barracks. He clutched a
loaf of white bread and was chewing on it like a dog would
chew on a bone. American cake! he cried between mouthfuls.
American cake!
The British ofcer ordered us to stay in place. As soon as
they could work out a method for getting us out of there in a safe
and orderly fashion, he told us, they would do so. They could do
nothing for us if we took off on our own.
The Russians were told the same thing, but the warning fell on
deaf ears. Most of the Russians had been prisoners for so long
and had been so mistreated that they stampeded out of the camp
as though they had gone crazy, like kids at a circus. There were
even reports of them returning to the towns or farms where they
had been abused and beating the men and attacking the women.
I doubted the reliability of such reports. The prison camps had
left us all weak and emaciated. I, for one, was hardly capable of
attacking anyone even if I had wanted to.
I do know that many of the Russians from Camp XI-B escaped
into the countryside. If they found a bicycle, tractor, or vehicle
of any kind that would run, they took it and took off. They knew
only that they wanted either to nd their way home or to reach
the western front where Allies might take them in, one or the
other. But they were going. A couple days later when we moved
out of the camp by trucks in an orderly fashion, we passed some
of the Russians. They were piled on a tractor, as many as could
t, and pulling a wagon with more Russians behind it. They
were getting out of there!
We had to wait by the gate before leaving Camp XI-B. Trucks
came at intervals and loaded up groups of prisoners. With almost
100,000 prisoners held in the vast patchwork of compounds and
barracks at Camp XI-B, many hours passed before my group
could board a truck.
The trucks took the liberated prisoners westward to various
tent camps and hospitals for care. Our truck, carrying twenty
of us seated in its canvas-covered bed, roared through several
small towns where the citizens had hung white sheets from their
windows as a token of surrender and of hope that the gesture
would spare the buildings from further bombardment.
We soon arrived at an aireld where the runways were thickly
pockmarked with craters but for one narrow strip. Here we
boarded a bitterly cold American C-47 operated by a British pilot
and navigator. From the nationality of the crew, we guessed that
we were heading for England.
How hard would it be for you to bypass England and take
some of us boys right back to the States? we joked with the
pilot. Got enough fuel?
But we ew directly to England and landed at an airport where
blackout conditions were still in effect a reminder that the war
was not over yet.
Weary-looking ofcials interrogated us briey in the airport
hangar. They asked me who I was, where I was from.
Do you still have your dog tags?
I did. I even had the stalag tag I had received at Camp IV-B.
They asked for whatever information I could give them about
my family and about any medical problems I might have. At
the close of the interview, they gave me new, ill-tting army
clothes a wool shirt, an old-style dress blouse, and an overseas
cap and disposed of all the clothes I had been wearing for four
months. For my average-sized feet, there were no shoes left that
would t me, so I kept the boots I had worn all along.
We boarded a truck heading to an American general hospital
near Oxford. Along the fteen or twenty miles of that short ride
to the hospital, the full realization of my circumstances nally
ooded my mind. I was free, I was wearing new clothes, and I
would see my wife and son again!
At the 97
th
General Hospital near Oxford, the staff rst gave
us good, solid food, but it was only a matter of hours before
our emaciated digestive systems reacted the same as when we
had no food. Unaccustomed to large portions of good food, we
became ill with diarrhea again. The doctors had to take us off
solid foods and give us a liquid diet with vitamin pills for a few
days. Within a week, we recuperated. They gradually nursed us
back to a normal diet, and we were able to hold our food without
getting sick.
While at the hospital, I was able to write my rst letter home
since the Red Cross capture cards I had written at Camp IV-B in
January. It was a V-mail letter, a type of mail that traveled faster
than regular mail because the letters were reduced to miniature
photographic negatives, transported across the Atlantic in this
smaller form, and delivered to the addressee as a photocopy
measuring about four by ve inches. Members of the Armed
Services could send V-mail letters free of postage.
I joyfully wrote as much as I could cram within the strict
margins of the V-mail form:
England, April 22, 1945
Hi! my Darling, its me again, and am I a happy man. It sure
seems good to be a free man again. The gov. has probably notified
you of my liberation by now, so this letter probably wont be news to
you.
Dont be alarmed at my address being a hospital. Its just a
matter of routine: sort of have to get back in shape again for my big
trip back to the States.
How are you, anyway, Darling? Just fine, I hope. And Johnny
boy too! I hope you received at least one of the cards I sent from
Germany. Its awfully hard for me to write a letter, so much to
write about, but yet cant seem to do it. Darling, you dont know
how much you have meant to me in the last few months. Youre the
one thing that kept me going Darling.
Dont know when Ill be starting for the States. Within a month,
I hope. I love you, Darling, with all my heart. Tell everybody
Hello! for me. Will write again tomorrow.
Hi Johnny Boy!
Goodbye now.
Your loving
Hugh
My wife wrote back immediately, and more letters followed
between us.
England, May 6, 1945
My Darling Elsie & Johnny Boy,
Dearest Darling, I never knew a letter from home could make a
fellow so Happy. Ive been running around in circles since I got
your airmail letter this morning. I was so excited that I ran off to
dinner at the mess hall, without taking my cups & silverware. Sure
glad you sent the picture. You look just as Sweet as ever, Honey,
and Johnny sure has changed. Thought I noticed a little mischief in
his eye ha, ha. Hanson, Gordon, and I were together until about
the middle of Feb. but now I dont know where they are, whether they
were liberated or not. I sure did miss Hanson when we got separated.
He was the best buddy a fellow could ever have, and I pray that he
is all right wherever he is. Ive met two fellows from the 589
th
since
Ive been here in the Hosp. They were also POWs. Surprised to
hear Sig is in Italy, but its all over there now anyway, and should
be the same in Germany any day now. Should leave Hosp. any day
now, but dont know just when Ill catch a boat, just hope it isnt too
long. Well Darling, Ill close for tonight cramped for space.
I love you, Darling.
Your loving
Hugh
We received excellent care at the hospital. I went to the dentist
twice to have teeth pulled. Our teeth were in pitiful condition
after four months of neglect, for we had been unable to brush or
clean our teeth in any way while in the prison camps.
I began to feel healthier and stronger during my three weeks in
the hospital. When the doctors deemed my recovery complete, I
was sent to the Hans Crescent Hotel in London with a number of
other GIs. The Hans Crescent was a handsome, old Edwardian
hotel, temporarily converted to lodge GIs who were either on
leave in London or stopping over during the war.
I didnt have much money for extra food or entertainment in
London. The Red Cross had issued us some spending money,
but the initial amount they gave us didnt last long. Fortunately,
a few times when we were in town, kind Londoners invited us
into their homes for a warm meal. One middle-aged woman,
whose son and husband were still ghting overseas, took
another soldier and me in and gave us an excellent dinner. Her
friendly hospitality was wonderful, and made us feel like we
were halfway home.
I befriended another American soldier who was staying at the
Hans Crescent. We took walks through Hyde Park, Piccadilly
Circus, and throughout downtown London. Once in a while,
when we had enough money to split a pint of beer between us,
we would stop at a pub. In this way, along with writing frequent
letters home, we occupied our time until the last week of May
when word came that we would be departing for home.
Approximately 150 men, most of them liberated prisoners
of war, began the journey home by truck. Upon reaching the
coast, we boarded a Liberty Ship, a little freighter built at the
Kaiser shipyards in the States. Liberty Ships were not the best
means of transportation for crossing the Atlantic. These Kaiser
cofns, as some nicknamed them, were small ships that had
been manufactured rapidly and transported military supplies to
Europe during the war. The ship we boarded had been retted
for transporting troops.
The 150 men came from various divisions, various prison
camps. The good food and fellowship on board was a heady
combination for us liberated prisoners heading home. I met GIs
from states I had never visited: from Florida, Alabama, and Ar-
kansas, among them two or three Negro soldiers.
Many of the 150 had been wounded in combat. Many had
suffered frozen feet. Several men were crippled from severe
frostbite. One fellow had lost all his toes. Another man had
lost his foot right up to the ankle. Others had suffered severe
malnutrition. I considered myself one of the fortunate ones. I
had been ill with pneumonia and gotten through it. I had suf-
fered frostbite, but had only lost a few toenails, and the shrapnel
gashes below my knees were my only combat wounds.
I had lost a great deal of weight in the stalags. At the time
of my capture, I had weighed 172 pounds, which had fallen to
130 pounds by the time I was liberated. And I noted other odd
effects of malnourishment: I had never had a heavy beard, but
my whiskers did not grow at all while I was a prisoner. I laughed
to think of how I had asked my wife for razorblades in the rst
of my two Red Cross capture cards from prison. My remaining
toenails and ngernails, those not destroyed by frostbite, were
not any longer when I was liberated than they had been when the
Battle of the Bulge began.
The Liberty Ship was fairly comfortable. We slept in good-
sized hammock bunks with ample room so different from the
hammocks on the U.S.S. Wakeeld coming over from the States.
The hammock bunks on that ship had been piled three high. The
luckiest soldiers had the topmost tier of the bunk, for the top
hammock sagged down on the man in the middle, while the man
in the middle swung low over the man on the bottom. Our duf-
fel bags hung on hooks near our hammocks, and there was very
little room. I had never been in such a crowded place as the
berths of the Wakeeld. But, crowded conditions notwithstand-
ing, the men who loved to gamble were soon at it. They played
cards or rolled dice, huddling wherever they could nd a space
big enough for four or ve men to squat around a blanket.
The U.S.S. Wakeeld
I recalled my initial trip across the Atlantic to Europe as if
that voyage had occurred decades instead of months earlier, as
if I had crossed a different ocean in a different world. We had
embarked at the Port of Boston on the Wakeeld, a former luxury
passenger liner rebuilt as a troop transport. Her gangplanks were
down when we lined up on the docks, and a constant stream
of GIs owed up the gangplanks and disappeared into her. I
found myself wondering how many men the ship could possibly
hold. We soon became part of the stream, walking in single le
up the gangplanks. We wore our full uniforms with our eld
packs, our bedrolls slung over our shoulders and hooked onto
the eld packs, our lead belts around our waists. Despite having
traded in our two barracks bags for one duffel bag to carry all
our clothing, we were heavily weighted down. Upon reaching
the top of the gangplank, we made a few turns and descended
into the belly of the ship in a zigzag pattern.
E Deck was my assigned berth. I knew nothing about ships or
what the name E Deck might designate, but I soon discovered
that E Deck was the lowest in the ship one could go, well below
the waterline. The rumors among the men on E Deck fueled our
worries about German submarines. Everyone was talking about
the three-mile limit. Three miles offshore was the boundary for
international waters, and crossing the three-mile limit meant we
had left the dominion of the United States. We knew it was
possible for German submarines to be lurking near our coast,
and we wondered aloud about exactly when we would pass the
three-mile limit not that such a limit would provide much
protection in a time of war, but it was symbolic of our departure
from the relative safety of the U.S. As the rumors spread, we
began to imagine scores of German submarines waiting for us
just beyond the three-mile limit. Still, the ship churned onward
to the east without encountering problems.
Hearing all the talk of submarines and having an inveterate
dislike for water, I decided to remain on the top deck as much as
the commanding ofcers allowed. I was on the top deck when
we lost sight of Boston, and I spent most of the journey near the
ships fore-end, where I could watch the porpoises swimming
alongside the bow.
When we departed from Boston, we nally knew for certain
that we were heading for the European front. This was a
welcome realization, for we all hoped to go to Europe instead
of the Pacic. At least, I thought, we will be among other
English-speaking people on the European front. The crew of the
Wakeeld was British, including the cooks. Some of the British
food they served was vastly different from our usual menu, but
it was tasty. I rather liked it. Not long after we reached the high
seas, however, at least three-quarters of the GIs became seasick.
I was among the fortunate number who did not become ill. As
much as I disliked the water, the ocean waves never made me
sick.
I saw no other ships during our seven-day crossing; but near
the end of our rapid voyage, I sighted the shores of England in
the distance. An escort vessel came out to meet us. It was a
British corvette, like a destroyer, only smaller and faster. The
corvette moved quickly from one side of the Wakeeld to the
other, escorting us all the way into the harbor at Liverpool. It
was late afternoon of November 17, 1944, when we anchored
in the harbor, but we waited until the following morning to
disembark.
We had crossed the Atlantic from Boston to Liverpool in only
seven days on the Wakeeld. The Liberty Ship took twice as long
to make the return trip. In the middle of the ocean, the packing
around the propeller shaft at the stern of the ship started leaking.
The little freighter, designed to carry large military equipment,
wasnt sufciently weighted down with only 150 men. When
we ran into rough weather, the propeller would rise out of the
water. Wrib wrib wribb wribbb! The propeller spun faster out
of the water, causing the whole ship to vibrate. A couple days
of this sort of thing wore the packing loose around the propeller.
We drifted out in the ocean for two days while engineers repaired
the leak and got us moving again.
We reached the States on June 6, landing at Hampton Roads,
Virginia. The summer sun blazed, and a brass band played on
the docks to welcome us. We were home.
A MEDICS WAR 95
EPILOGUE
On the Homefront

Fisher, I never thought Id see you alive. I think Ive seen a
ghost, a soldier exclaimed upon meeting me shortly after I had
arrived back in the States.
For my part, I hardly recognized him, but slowly I
remembered his face and realized that this GI had been in some
of the same prison camps with Harland Hanson and me. I asked
him if he knew anything about my best friend. The last time I
had seen Hanson was when he came to my sickbed in the straw
at Camp VIII-A, gave me the precious blower-cooker, and told
me that the Germans would be leaving the sick and wounded
behind and marching out the able-bodied men.
The Germans had evacuated the men able to leave
Camp VIII-A and marched them in pointless circles through the
countryside for fty-seven days or more. They had no place to
put the prisoners, so they continued the forced march until the
skeletal group was nally liberated by the advancing Russians.
But before the Russians reached them, Hanson, who was
normally a cool-headed, amiable man, reached his limit. The GI
reported that he had seen Hanson attempt to jump onto a horse-
drawn wagon driven by a German farmer or military man. His
foot slipped, and his leg went into the spokes of the wheel.
The last I saw him, his leg was broken, the GI said. He was
on the ground, and a German guard was standing over him.
I could imagine what had happened.
Still, it was not Harland Hansons nature, as I knew it, to
do something so rash unless he were in terrible pain or had
thought, I cant take this anymore, and decided to escape at all
costs. The story contradicted the Harland Hanson I had known.
Throughout the marches and boxcars and stalags, I had never
given up because I knew Hanson would help me, or Hanson
would need me to help him.
I also heard from other soldiers that the Russians retained
prisoners from Hansons group and forced them to participate in
combat during the drive to Berlin. All rumors, all hearsay. Still,
I wondered if Hanson might have died in this way instead of in
a reckless attempt to escape.
Prisoners of war who return are automatically raised one rank.
Hanson would have been made a staff sergeant when I was made
a sergeant. But he never came back.
~~ * ~~
Additional tragic news clouded my joyful reunion with my
wife and family. My wifes brother Alfred, I learned, had been
killed on the European front around the same day that I rst
landed in England on November 17, 1944.
My sister-in-law Emma, meanwhile, had been ghting her
own war with cancer. As the world celebrated victory in Europe
and then victory in Japan, Emma was silently succumbing to
an internal defeat. I received a second, two-week furlough in
September after returning home from England. By September,
Emma was slipping away quickly. Although she was very ill,
she recognized me, and I was thankful to be able to talk to her
before she died.
Story by story, I pieced together what the war had been like
for my family during the seven months of my absence. My wife
had not received either of the two Red Cross capture cards that
I was able to send from Camp IV-B in January. In fact, I was
discharged from the army and back working at home when the
cards nally arrived in the mail. Under normal circumstances,
prisoners would receive something from home in response to the
Red Cross cards, but due to the rapid deterioration of Germany
in the winter and spring of 1945, the German ofcials had about
all they could handle simply in taking care of themselves, and
sometimes they did not do a good job of even that. By the time
I could get my name on the register for Red Cross help, the
Germans would move us to another camp and I would have to
register again.
Our hometown newspaper had reported the following on
January 20, 1945:
MISSING IN ACTION: Cpl. Hugh J. Fisher,
22, son of Mr. and Mrs. Herbert J. Fisher
of Gilchrist, Mich. has been missing in
action in Germany since Dec. 17 according
to a telegram from the War Department to his
wife, the former Elsie Boucha of Engadine,
Mich. Cpl. Fisher entered the service March
18, 1943, received his training at Fort
Jackson, S.C., maneuvers in Tennessee, and
Camp Atterbury, Indiana. He was with the
Med. Det. of the Field Artillery of the 106

Division. He went overseas in November 1944,
landing in England. In a letter dated Dec.
10
th
he wrote he had been through France,
Belgium, and into Germany.
Cpl. Fisher is father of one child, a son
John Robert Fisher, 2 years old, residing at
Engadine with his mother. He has one brother
in the service, Sgt. Cecil H. Fisher, who
is stationed in South America.
Through this newspaper article and others that similarly
reported missing soldiers, my wife was able to make contacts
with other local people who clung to hope for their loved ones
safe return home. The sister of Bill Debolak was one such
contact. Debolak and I had met in the barn in which we were
eventually captured and had promised that if one of us returned
home and the other did not, we would contact wife and relatives
to tell them what had happened. Debolaks sister learned of
Elsie through the newspaper, and they began a correspondence,
relaying whatever information each could about the war in
Europe and their husband and brothers situation. In the end,
Debolak and I both returned home safely. He stayed with his
parents on their farm in Trenary, Michigan, after the war; and
when his parents passed away, he took over the farm himself.
But the war left Debolak changed from a pleasant, reserved,
debonair man into a recluse who never left his farm. I never
saw him after our capture at Schnberg, despite the fact that only
a few miles separated our homes.
My experience in the war taught me that the human body can
withstand a great deal of abuse, but the mind sometimes cannot.
I saw young fellows only eighteen years old, away from home
for the rst time. Physically they were all right, but mentally
they went to pieces. I saw men I had known in the army who
did not know where they were or who they were after the war. I
can thank the fact that I had a wife and son back home, without
whom I might not have made it; for I had something to come
home to, whereas some of the men did not.
By her correspondence with Debolaks sister and other
women, my wife learned that I had probably been taken prisoner.
She found great comfort in this news, in spite of it being little
more than rumor. My mother, on the other hand, was ready to
have a memorial service for me. Nobody has heard from him
in months, she said. We ought to have a proper service.
But my father would have none of it. No, Alice, just hold
off. Just hold off.
My parents had no electricity in their home, but my father
religiously maintained an enormous radio, which he ran on
automobile batteries. He could manipulate its four large dials to
nd the best broadcasts, including foreign stations, and used a
pair of earphones so that he could sit in front of the machine and
listen to whatever he wished without disturbing the household.
One December night as he was tuning in to foreign news, he
caught reports of what was happening on the European front,
reports of the German surprise offensive in the Ardennes. He
even heard my division mentioned, but he kept it to himself. He
did not say anything about it to my mother or wife so as not to
increase their worry.
As a section foreman for the railroad, my father had to walk ten
miles along the railroad to check the rails during the winter. The
deep frost would heave the rails in the night, leaving them very
rough in the joints between rails, so that my father would have to
work them over with shims to level the rough patches. Toward
spring, an additional man would join the roster for working that
section of track and would ride over the section with my father
in a little, two-man motorcar for patrols. A windbreak formed of
canvas stretched over a few boards protected the front of the car,
and the two men peered around each side to examine the rails
for breaks and uneven places. My fathers section of the track
ended a mile from Engadine, where my wife was living with
her parents during the war. He would always walk or drive the
extra mile to ask how little Johnny was and if Elsie had heard
anything about me. Then he would go on his way, back along
the track. My wife felt sorry for him. He looked so cold, with
his collar ringed with ice where his breath had frozen during the
ride on the motorcar. But my father kept up his spirits, checking
in at Engadine throughout the winter and early spring. He said
he just knew I was coming back.
When I returned home from Europe, the war against Japan
was still raging in the Pacic. International law discouraged the
redeployment of liberated prisoners against the same enemy, but
there was nothing to prevent me from being sent to the Pacic
front as a medic or combatant.
I was allowed sixty days for my rst visit home, followed
by two weeks of recreational leave in Florida. I would have
happily gone without the recreational leave because I could not
take my family with me to Florida. Then, by the time my leave
had expired, Japan surrendered. The war was nished.
The Army transferred me to Camp Crowder, near Joplin,
Missouri, a horribly muddy place of drizzling rain and shoe-
clinging clay. Although Japan had surrendered, I had to resign
myself to having a relatively low number on the Armys point
system for priority discharge from the service. A soldier gained
one point for each month of service, two points for each month
overseas, and ve for each decoration. A total of seventy or
more points made it likely that he would be discharged. My
total came up far short of the necessary number because I had
only been in the army for about thirty months, seven of those
overseas. I estimated that I would be in the Army for at least
another six months before I could hope to be discharged.
I was next reassigned to a more permanent post at Camp
McCoy, Wisconsin, which was only six or seven miles from
the town of Sparta, Hansons hometown. I knew that Hansons
father, Oliver Hanson, worked as county clerk in the Sparta
courthouse, so I telephoned him and arranged to meet at the
United Service Organizations (USO) Building in town. He
took me home to meet his wife and one of Harlands sisters. We
had a long conversation about Harlands seless actions in the
war, our friendship, and the events leading to his death. I was
not sure how he died, I told them, but I had heard that he had
died on the Germans desperate march. I didnt go into any more
detail than that.
At Camp McCoy, I became an acting ward master in the
general hospital because I was a medic, had seen some action,
and had completed the appropriate training. Since my position
at Camp McCoy seemed to be more or less stable for the coming
months, I began thinking about moving my wife and little boy
to the area. The surrounding towns were pleasant, and my wife
and I decided that if it became clear that I would be there for a
few more months, we would arrange the move.
But things were changing quickly in the aftermath of the
war. Soon, the Army lowered the number of points needed for
discharge from 70 to 60 points. Having accumulated 62 points,
I became eligible for discharge.
So came the ofcial end of my 32 months of service. I went
home on November 16, 1945, the second day of deer hunting
season. Ill still have time to get some hunting in, I thought
with a grin, as the train sped northward to Michigans Upper
Peninsula.
I chose not to take advantage of the GI Bill, but rather went
to work as soon as possible. Thinking I would enjoy being a
mechanic, I took a job at a local garage to learn about automobile
repair. Soon I was changing oil, greasing cars, and changing tires,
but I was not learning much at the garage. I also drove a school
bus once a day, taking the schoolchildren home in the afternoon.
It was good experience, but I wasnt getting anywhere.
I decided I would go back to the railroad. I had seniority rights
on the railroad, having worked there before I enlisted. Since my
father was a section foreman, he expected me to follow in his
footsteps, and I began to expect the same.
One Monday morning while I was working in the garage, a
man came in to get his car greased and oil changed. Where are
you going, Leonard? I asked. On a trip?
Well, I suppose you could say Im going on a short trip. Im
heading to the Soo to take Civil Service. The Soo was about
sixty miles away, and Leonard was planning to drive there the
following Saturday to take the test to be a conservation ofcer.
You know, Leonard, thats a job I would love to have. It
would allow me to spend a lot of time in the woods. I had
always enjoyed the woods and hunting and shing. I certainly
would like to do something like that.
Ive got an application blank in the back seat of my car here.
Ill give it to you, and if you get it lled out and postmarked by
today, you just might hear back in time. You could ride with me
to the Soo to take the exam.
I ran home to tell my wife about this, and she thought it was a
ne opportunity. I lled out the application by noon and rushed
it to the post ofce. One of Elsies sisters was postmaster, and
she made sure it was postmarked for that day. By Thursday, I
received word to report for the examination at the Soo, and I
rode with Leonard that Saturday.
There were at least thirty men taking the same examination
there. I pored over the questions. There were many multiple-
choice questions that did not seem to have anything to do with
conservation, but the examination was similar to some of the
tests I had taken in the military. If John can ride a bicycle ve
miles in half an hour, and Bill has to walk the ve miles, and it
takes him an hour, how much faster is John going on the bicycle
than Bill on foot? We had seventy minutes to complete seventy
questions.
Less than halfway through, I saw guys getting up and turning
in their paper. I thought, Am I that dumb that Im not getting this,
and these guys are nished already? But I stayed and nished
all the questions, thinking there was no way I could best the guys
who had already turned in their papers. Later, some of the men
who had left early told me that when they had seen what type of
questions were on the test, they didnt want any part of it. They
said they were unaccustomed to those questions, and couldnt
imagine what any of it had to do with conservation. They had
not even nished. At least I knew that I had nished.
I made an 82 on the exam, which I thought was a fairly good
score. However, I ended up being number 102 on a ranked list
of 1,200 people who had taken the exam. There was a training
school for conservation ofcers that autumn, but the school
didnt admit any students past the rst hundred on the list. I
could not attend the rst training school, but about the same time
the following year, the Conservation Department offered another
training school. The Department called me to attend that one,
and I took a job as a conservation ofcer.
By 1947, I was stationed as a conservation ofcer in the
little town of Garden in Delta County, Michigan. In the years
since the war, I had maintained a correspondence with Hansons
parents. They contacted me in the summer of 1947 to tell me
that the Graves Registration search and recovery operations had
located Hansons remains. The family was having his remains
returned for burial in Sparta. When the time for the burial drew
near, the Hansons contacted me again and asked me to serve as
a pallbearer.
It was a proud and reverent ceremony. I was glad for the
chance to tell Hansons family more about what he had meant to
me during our training, combat, and captivity.
I had long before decided that if my wife and I had another
boy after I came back from the war, I was going to name him
Harland. That opportunity came not long after the funeral in
Sparta. My wife and I had been growing worried that we might
be unable to have more children. Our attempts since my return
from Europe had been unsuccessful, and I began to suspect that
the injection all the prisoners received at Camp IV-B had been for
purposes other than preventing typhus or tetanus. One medical
ofcer had warned me that it might have been an injection to
make us sterile. But our second child arrived in 1948, and I
named him Harland.
A third boy was born to us about 15 months later. We named
him Charles. Years later, I stopped to visit Hansons grave in
the Sparta cemetery, and perhaps for the rst time, I read his
name on the tombstone: Harland Charles Hanson. I had
forgotten Hansons middle name. After all, we only addressed
one another by surnames in the military. Hey, Fisher! Hey,
Hanson! wed say. To know that my third son also shared part
of my buddys name was a source of deep joy.
CHRONOLOGY
1944
June 6 Allied forces storm the beaches of Normandy
on D-Day.
November 10 My medical detachment leaves from Boston
with the artillery battalions of the 106
th

Division on the U.S.S. Wakeeld, bound for
the European front.
November 18 We disembark in Liverpool, England.
December 6 After crossing the English Channel to Le
Havre, we travel up the Seine River to
Rouen.
December 16 The German Army launches its counteroffen-
sive. The Battle of the Bulge begins.
1945
January 11 I am able to send the rst of two Red Cross
capture cards from Stalag IV-B.
March 26 I celebrate my birthday at Stalag XI-B, Fall-
ingbostel, with a jar of peanut butter.
April 12 President Franklin Delano Roosevelt dies at
3:30 p.m.
April 16 The British Second Army liberates the re-
maining prisoners of war from Stalag XI-B.
May 7 Germany surrenders.
June 6 I return by Liberty Ship to the United States.
August 15 Japan surrenders.
November 16 I am discharged and go home to stay.

A Medic's War

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