I spent six weeks of basic infantry training in Jefferson Barracks in St.Louis, Missouri. During this training we learned to march, dig holes and handle weapons. I met Starky there; we had beds next to each other and ended up serving together in Europe. After St. Louis I spent a short time at Camp Maxey in Paris, Texas, before being sent overseas. I soon realized that I would be an infantryman and not a pilot.

We traveled by ship to England and moved on to France and Belgium. I served as a second scout in a rifle squad. A squad is made up of 12 men, a squad leader, assistant squad leader, scout and assistant scout. The scouts, usually some of the better soldiers, went out in front of the squad to check for the best and safest trails. Our division was in the front line in Belgium, Luxemborg and Germany.

When the Battle of the Bulge started our squad was out on patrol in the forest. We got back after dark and really were more afraid of our own men shooting us by mistake rather than the Germans. When we got back to camp, two guys were missing. One was a hillbilly from West Virginia and the other my friend, Starky, from St. Louis. We waited and finally Starky came back. The guy from West Virginia, who couldn’t read or write, was lost and never did come back.

One of the funniest stories I remember was after France when we were on the front lines. We rode in trucks about 200 miles and stopped one night after dark. We were all tired and spread our sleeping bags out on a pasture. During the night we all smelled something but were so tired we slept anyway. In the morning one of the guys realized he had put his sleeping bag on top of fresh cow manure. He tried to clean it, but it held the smell for quite a while!

Sometimes we were picked for outpost, which was in front of the front line. We would make booby traps around the perimeter of the outpost with grenades to keep the Germans out or warn us of their arrival. We would string the pins of the grenades and tie the strings around trees. If someone tripped the string, it would pull the pin on the grenade making it go off in five seconds. There were times when we forgot where the strings and booby traps were hidden. As we were walking, someone might feel a string and quickly yell "hit the deck". We all knew what that meant and dove for safety.

As I look back, I do remember that we were afraid, but not paralyzed with fear. We all feared being maimed almost more than dying. In the infantry we knew that most likely something would happen to us. We joked with each other and hoped for a "million dollar" wound, a small injury such as shooting off your little finger. I was never wounded but I was captured by the Germans in Belgium along with my other squad members.

There were approximately 200 Germans in one area. Our division was outnumbered and decided to dig foxholes for the night. When our platoon of about 30 awoke in the morning, we were the only platoon left. The rest of the division had withdrawn in the night. A runner was sent to inform all squads and platoons, but the runner couldn’t find us in the night and left us there. I remember that very cold morning when the first fellow stood up to urinate he was shot in the helmet. It flew off his head, but he wasn’t injured. We quickly realized we were the only platoon around. Several of us were upset with the runner for quite some time. We felt that he should have continued searching until he found us.

Our platoon went on for four days trying to get back to our own lines. The Germans held the fields, cities, and country around us. We tried to travel at night behind the German lines so we wouldn’t be seen. When we traveled in the day we were in an open field and shots were fired at us. At dawn on the fourth day, shells started coming in all around us. We all felt sure they were shells from the U.S. meant for the Germans. We found a big pit about three feet deep and the size of a small room. All of us got in the hole. It was a good thing we found the hole and got in it because about a half-block distance away we saw a German tank, followed by three more. The tanks were firing back at those who were firing the shells. I remembered thinking that if I had a grenade I could go over and drop it in the tank, but I didn’t do it.

It was about 2:00 AM, black, cloudy, and no moonlight on the day we were captured. There was a glow on the distant horizon that we thought to be a town so that’s where we headed. It was so black that we had to hold onto each other as we traveled or we would get lost from each other. As we were walking, the light on the horizon was just enough that we saw, about an arm’s length away, two German helmets behind a machine gun. We walked right by them expecting to get cut in half by the machine gun, but they never shot. We dove into a hedgerow and made it through several fields before the Germans shot up a flare. Our lieutenant stood up and put up his hands saying "comrade, comrade." There were 17 of us left of the 30 or so from the platoon that was initially stranded. A German threw a grenade, but it didn’t kill any of us. We all stood and dropped our weapons.

The Germans captured us and marched us for more than an hour with our hands up. It was snowing, cold, with lots of snow on the ground. My hands were freezing as I held them up while marching. We marched on until we got to a small house. A German officer came out of the front door shouting to us, "Weinflialdye! Weinflialdye!" a German command none of us understood. Later, we figured out he was saying, "One Fly, All Die," meaning if any of us ran or tried to escape we would all be killed. The Germans took our Lieutenant to question him and that was the last we saw of him. His body was found years later.

I was a POW for almost six months at Stalag IVB. The camp was made up of long buildings with about 200 prisoners per building. There were rows of double bunks. We were divided into French, Russian and English sections. The Americans were boarded with the English. The camp was surrounded by two rows of fencing, electric wires, mines, and guard towers.

Here are two telegrams my parents saved. The first one they received is dated February 22, two months after my capture. It states that I was Missing in Action. Here’s the second one dated April 8, stating that I was a POW. It makes tears come to my eyes thinking of how my parents must have felt receiving these telegrams.

I lost 50 pounds during those six months. We had kohlrabi soup, which is like a turnip soup. Even though it was awful I was starving so I made myself eat it. We would get one teaspoon of sugar and one pat of margarine once a week. Two days a week we would get 4 or 5 little potatoes. Twice we had meat, probably horsemeat, and all had diarrhea immediately. There were two toilets for 200 men. The lines and waiting were long and painful. Here is a picture of some Prisoners of War. I’m not one in this picture but I looked like them. Although it wasn’t pleasant at the camp, the Germans weren’t as inhumane to their prisoners as the Japanese were. The Germans had very little food themselves because we were bombing their roads and the food wasn’t getting through.

One morning we awoke and noticed all of the guards in the towers were gone. An English prisoner in the camp had a hidden radio and heard that the Russians were coming and getting close to our camp. The Englishman would send around a man to all of the buildings to let us all know the news from the radio. Eventually, we all became the custody of the Russians. They were our allies and agreed to take care of us. They could not let us go because they needed to keep us safe from the Germans. If we were freed, we would have been recaptured or killed.

This photo shows a pile of helmets probably gathered from dead soldiers or POW’s. I remember it because a German soldier knocked a friend’s helmet off and said he wouldn’t need it anymore. Later after being released, my friend picked up a helmet to use from this pile.

The Russian camp had brick barracks where we stayed. We were in a small town that we could walk around but couldn’t leave. There was a chain link fence around the town marking our boundary. One morning Starky and I decided to escape the Russian camp and take our chances finding the American troops. We took two bicycles from Russians who lived in the town, crawled under the chain link fence and took off down the road on the bicycles. We rode the bicycles all day. Starky got tired several times along the way and wanted to give up. I didn’t want to leave him but wanted to go on. I had to get angry with him in order to keep him going. It was too bad, because we didn’t end up friends after that.

Starky and I finally made it to the American lines. Thankfully, the Americans had a big presence there. We had a great American meal. The bread tasted like cake, unlike the German bread in the POW camp that tasted like sawdust. I remembered a loaf with the year 1933 stamped on it, and we were eating it in 1945. We were sent to a big camp in France to get "fattened up". There were approximately 30,000 prisoners there all living in tents. We had three meals a day and twice a day could stop by stands set up among the tents to get eggnog. We were there about 10-14 days.

I was sent back to the U.S. on a coast guard vessel. Funny, but I remember the Bosun’s mate on the ship looked just like the actor, Victor Mature. I was filled with joy when I got home. I was sent to Hot Springs, Arkansas and got to stay in the Arlington Hotel. It was so nice to order my meals off the menu choosing anything I wanted. It was May and the war was over with Germany, but I still expected to be sent to the Pacific and fight with Japan. My brother was in the Navy on a submarine in the Pacific. After two weeks of rest and eating meals at the Arlington Hotel, I was stationed at Little Rock, Arkansas. The bombs were unloaded in Japan and the war with Japan was over so I didn’t have to go back.

While in Little Rock, I met a lawyer who also served in the war and we discussed what to do the rest of our lives. The government would pay tuition for us to go on to school. This lawyer suggested that I study to become a dentist. Dentistry was becoming popular at the time. I hadn’t been to a dentist since I was about 14 and hadn’t been much before that. That was typical at the time. I went on to school and practiced dentistry for many years.

Thinking back on my war experience I consider myself fortunate. I had a taste of battle but wasn’t maimed. I experienced being a POW, learned how to lose weight and wasn’t tortured. It does seem to me that the best guys get killed; Ghandi, Jesus Christ, my best Sargent. I found him with a hole in his forehead. Captain Ferguson, a good person and leader was killed by a machine gun the first week on the line. Yet Stalin--the nasty dictators survived.

My division has had reunions for many years. I went to my first reunion in 1985, the 35^th reunion. I saw one of my lieutenants. It was his first reunion too. He was quiet and aloof. He hadn’t been a good leader and he knew it. There could no longer be hard feelings among us.  We were all young then and inexperienced at war.