Page 63 - Anthology

Let me tell you about one of the things that I was most grateful for while I was a POW. I had to work
every day. The clothes I had; I had them on. We worked in the rain and snow and the cold. We had to
sleep in our clothes to keep somebody from stealing them. So, I did all that; I worked every day in all
kinds of weather for ten months and I never had a bad cold. I never had one sick day – not one. I was so
thankful for that, because if you had a sick day you was in trouble. You didn’t know what was going to
happen. One thing was for sure; if you were sick, you were not going to get much attention. The
Germans would take you to sick-bay, but they didn’t do much for you. But that tells you how good a
shape I was in. The army had me in good shape.

On the day I was liberated the Germans had left. They did not want to get caught. At about two o’clock
our tanks came through with that big star on them. We knew that was it. It was over. It was not long
before an officer came. He told us to stay where we were that he needed to go clean out some
apartments for us. He said to not walk around Munich because we might get shot. We lived in an
apartment there for several days.

After a few days in Munich they put us on a plane headed to France. We were only there a few days and
we boarded a ship back To Boston. It took about eight days to get back to the states. This ship was
smaller than the one from Boston to England.

This was the Marine Dragon. The Dragon wasn’t near as big as the Wakefield. It was just a few days
before we shipped out, headed home.

SS Marine Dragon
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