A DAY IN THE LIFE OF AN AMERICAN P.O.W.

A Memory of Time Spent In A German Prison Camp

I was captured by the Germans in the infamous Battle of the Bulge in the winter of 1944, along with 23,000 American troops in one of the worst episodes of WWII.  

One week before Christmas we were marched into central Germany to Stalag IX-B, a large POW camp containing long and short-term prisoners from several countries, only months before the German surrender.  Food was at a premium, with such a scarcity that we were all constantly hungry and rapidly losing weight.  That fact dominated our thoughts and conversation, to a point that not much else was taking up our time.

Our day would begin with being rousted out and sent outside into a formation allowing a count to be made by the guards.  Occasionally one or two would be missing "in the latrine", so were accounted for.  Once one of ours was shot trying to climb the fence, and several times toward the end of our stay, people were in the "infirmary", suffering from what was then called yellow jaundice, and the first signs of starvation.

Returning to the barracks, we were greeted with a large tub of a very thin form of broth, without taste and most likely lacking any nutrition.  Each man got a cupful. That was all until the evening meal - a loaf of bread for every 10 men.  I was appointed chief carver, then we drew lots for choice of a piece, there being plenty of pressure on me to cut the pieces evenly.

Some in our camp were sent out on work details, but that stopped early because of our deteriorating physical strength, so in order to keep occupied we set up a program of classes, each led by someone with enough talent to keep things interesting.  Among us was a New York Broadway producer, an Ivy League history professor, a restaurant owner and chef and several other volunteer speakers.  Well, you might imagine what happened.  After several sessions the attendance at all but the restaurant owner's session dwindled down to a few hard cases.  The rest of us, some two or three hundred, listened raptly to Johnny Barbeau, owner/chef of Barbeau's Restaurant in Columbus, Ohio.  Funny how I remember those details!  He started out well, telling us some of the funny or interesting anecdotes connected with his restaurant service, but it soon degenerated into questions from the floor, such as "What was on your menu?", or "How do you cook corned beef?"  The flood gates then opened and everyone, I mean everyone, asked questions (questions??) like "How about steak sandwiches?" or, "Did you ever serve Skippy's peanut butter?" or, "Remember a bowl of Wheaties crammed with heavy cream and sugar?"  Everyone wanted to talk about his dream, because that was all we could do about our never-ending hunger.

We were liberated by the Americans after five months and flown to a French base where we were divided into two groups, those of us in the worst condition going into the hospital, where I spent three weeks recovering.  The medics told us that we had about two weeks at the POW camp before we would have begun dying from malnutrition, a close call.

Most of us made it back into army hands and are now eating steak sandwiches, Skippy's peanut butter and Wheaties (now covered with 2% milk!). .Sixty two years later, I'm still wondering what Johnny's menu looked like.