Page 59 - Anthology

So, I didn’t get anything done. I was hit by a bullet, but I was lucky, it went on through and didn’t stay in
there. I had a hard time with that.

When we were taken (captured) we were withdrawing. We had to withdraw, they had tanks. We just had
one anti-tank gun and they got it knocked out, so our officer was afraid they were going to come down to
the end of that hedgerow and just shoot it right up there where we were.

I just couldn’t believe that was happening. All the time we was in basic training, we thought about being
shot and in the hospital. We didn’t think about being taken as a prisoner – never. Nobody ever thought
anything about it. There were about thirty of us taken prisoner.

The Germans took us up to their headquarters. It was a little house – an old house – a farm house. Our
colonel wouldn’t let our forces put any artillery on that house. He wanted it for his headquarters. So we
was up there and we were there a while before the Germans marched us nearly all night. We had a pack
that had some pills in it.
You was supposed to take them if you were wounded and drink plenty of water. But I didn’t have any
water – I’d drank all mine. So, I asked a German for a drink. He gave me his canteen and I took a big
drink – it was cider! It was terrible, but I took my pills and drank that cider.

When we got to where the Germans had taken us, they had a barn. The wounded stayed on the bottom
and the others went up into the loft. There was an old guy there that was the German ubersetzer -
translator. We lost everything we had right there. We lost our wristwatch, rings, everything – that guy
wanted them, and he got them. He didn’t have to beg to get them.

I was so worried and give out, and tired and hungry that I went to sleep; I slept through the night on the
floor of that barn. The next morning the translator asked me if I wanted him to help me up. He said, “You
want me to help you up?” I said no, I can get up, but I couldn’t. I had lost so much blood that I couldn’t
even get up. So, he said: “We are going to get you to the hospital right away. The ambulance was an old
modified pick-up truck.

They took me to a German field hospital – a big tent. They dressed my wound – the doctors did and gave
me a blood transfusion. I couldn’t believe that, but they did. As many people they had wounded and as
long as they had been fighting, I couldn’t believe that. When I came out of the hospital, they had a big
tent where we slept on the ground on something like bedding straw for animals. It was a 2x4 shell with
straw in the middle. The Germans were coming through there too. I was scared to death they might see
me and attack me, but they didn’t. I was they only American there – the only one I saw.

Some guy comes around with some kind of cereal. I’m not sure what it was. He said it was good, but I
said no, no way, I don’t want any. I thought he might poison me. He said: “You need to eat something.”
So, I took some of it. It was as good as it could be. We didn’t have time to eat that day. We had our
rations, but we were fighting and didn’t have time to stop and eat. I had not had nothing to eat for over a
day.

I stayed at the field hospital only a couple of days – I wasn’t there very long. I was glad to get out of
there. I don’t know where they took me. We were in the backend of a run- down city. The back part was
just out in the open. The bathroom was just a big hole in the ground covered by a concrete cap around it.
That is what was our bathroom.

We wound up in Ruins, France. I was in the hospital there in Ruins. They dressed my wounds, and
when the Americans came and captured that place, they had a record of me being there. That is how my
parents found out I was a prisoner. The Red Cross told them I had been in Ruins hospital. We stayed on
the grounds in back of the hospital.