One Year

December first was an anniversary.  It was now one year, and one day since I had landed after my successful parachute jump.  We had prisoners here who weren’t even in the army a year ago.  There were several guys from a crew who had landed by mistake at a Belgium airport.  They weren’t even aware of this error in navigation when they saw soldiers running up to their plane and realized they were the enemy and they were prisoners.  They were the only guys in the camp who brought their own personal things with them.  They had literally flown into prison camp, never to see anything but this life of ours until everything would come to an end.

Christmas, 1944, was wonderful.  We each received a Red Cross parcel, a whole parcel for each man.  Of course, as usual they were all opened so we couldn’t save anything too long.

Almost everyone received mail, and we shared with anyone who didn’t get a letter.  Sharing meant that we let them read the letters.  We got a group of new prisoners just a day or two before Christmas.  They were all amputees, some with missing arms and some missing legs.  All were able to move around on their own and only recently released from German military hospitals.

New people and so much food made life sort of exciting.  Every room was having banquets on Christmas, and the next day was misery for a lot of the fellows who had eaten too much.  Many of us ate well but sparingly.  We wanted to spread this abundance until the next parcel.  We had been through too many times now when food was very scarce and we had only the bread and stew from the cook house to satisfy our hunger.

There were some men who had nothing left from their parcel because they wasted their supplies or even sold things to get a big supply of cigarettes.  As usual, I had used my cigarettes for D bars; prices were down so I got a few bars.  I believe I now had about eight or nine D bars hidden out of sight from everyone.  No one, not even my close friends, knew of my wealth.

January was very cold and we all stayed in our rooms a lot.  The rooms were crowded and cold, and tempers were short.  Some guys played poker or bridge all day long and only stopped at night when the lights went out.  Then they stopped while cussing and swearing at the Germans for turning off the lights.

A few days after Christmas as secretary of the camp I was present at the departure of our amputees who were going home.  I wished so desperately that I had lost an arm or leg so that I could go with them.  I stood and watched them march out of the camp.  The gate closed behind them and tears came but just for a moment.  I didn’t want the guards to see that I was really depressed.  I went back to my barracks and into my room and tried to forget those lucky amputees.

I now wore my coat all the time.  The stoves could only keep us above freezing.  In the mornings we always had frost inside the room.

Our BBC radio news gave us news of the Germans being beset with many problems.  Their advance into Russia was a disaster.

©Joseph H. Harrison 1999