Pain in Many Flavors

Days were getting longer and it was even getting warmer in the room.  Spring was finally here, early spring, and I should have felt better, but I didn’t.  I had a toothache; it was a constant ache.  The pain became very bad most of the time.  I knew there was a POW who had been a dentist in private life, and I knew that he had a pair of pliers and did do some emergency dentist work.  I went to him for help.  There wasn’t anything he could do but pull the tooth.  He had no drugs, nothing but his pliers.  I sat on a stool, showed him my aching tooth, gripped the seat of the stool with both hands, and waited.  He got the pliers into my mouth, gripped my tooth firmly and started to pull.  He pulled and pulled.  He changed his grip a couple of times much to my dismay, and gradually I felt movement of the tooth; then it was out, completely out.  It didn’t break.  I was lucky it came out whole.  My jaw was very sore, but the terrible pain was gone.  I did feel bad so that I forgot for a few hours that I was hungry.  My toothbrush was gone and had been for some time now.  The only thing I did for my healing jaw was to wash my mouth out frequently.

With spring coming, we’d be able to wash our clothes and had the pleasant surprise of a real shower.  We were taken to an outdoor arrangement where there were a lot of overhead sprinklers.  We stripped and crowded onto the wooden platform.  Not everyone was brought at once, but there were so many of us when I was there that we were elbow to elbow or face to face or back to back depending on how you stood.  It was dangerous to drop your soap.  If you could stoop, you’d probably never get back to a standing position.  But it was so nice.  We had time to wash and to get really clean, and the water was warm.  This happened only this once in this camp.

I began to get sores on my legs.  They began as little red spots and grew into ulcer like lesions.  They caused me much pain, and as they developed, they seemed to stab painfully into my muscles.  The outward signs were small, quarter-size crater-type sores.

There was gunfire in the far distance every once in a while, and this made me worry about my painful legs.  I needed them.  We had to assume that the fighting was sometimes close and sometimes driven back by the Germans.  The gunfire coming from the east, we felt sure it was the Russians they were fighting so close to us.

I really worried that the sores on my legs would make it impossible for me to walk.  I forced myself to walk many times around the camp.  The pain was intense when I started to walk, but once I was moving the pain subsided.  But, to stop walking caused the pain to come on again just as severe.  Much later I was told this was due to my poor diet and lack of protein among other nutrients.

I knew that we would be forced to leave here soon, and I just had to keep myself able to walk, so walk I did everyday round and round still agony to start and stop but fine while I moved.

Even with the constant pain in my legs, life was a lot better.  It was warm, and we could get out in the daytime.

In April a German soldier who had been a guard in our first camp came looking for Rudy and me.  He remembered us because he’d done some trading with Rudy and me due to the fact that I’d been the secretary of that camp.  We remembered him.  He was a brutal overbearing guard and not one we were interested in ever seeing again.

He sought us out.  He was desperate and wanted our help if he could get to America; he wanted to be able to go to either one of us for help.  He probably had also been to the other guys he knew and whom he had mistreated.

Neither of us would do anything for him.  We had even suspected him of stealing our food at times.  We hardly spoke to him, and he left us.  He looked miserable.  I felt a little sorry for him but not enough to even say I’d help him.

The battle sounds were more frequent now, and one of the guards one day said you guys had better dig yourselves a shelter.  He spoke English well.  He was a considerate chap as were many of our guards.  They weren’t all brutal.  He also said that the Russians might be over this camp even today.

Then we could hear the battle very close and could even see the clouds of smoke from explosions and gunfire.  We all grabbed our klim cans and dug, but long before we could dig an adequate shelter, the battle moved away and we relaxed and even stopped digging without a thought that we might still need a shelter.

Digging with klim cans was not the most effective means, and I really felt if the town near us, Barth, fell, then surely the Russians, who were our allies, would certainly take over this prison camp.  Surely, I hoped, we’d be turned over to the American Army — I hoped, I hoped!

Life went on at a dull pace.  I continued to look for potato peels and I walked.  Rudy’s foot had healed, and he walked too.  I’m sure for the same reason as I did.  We didn’t talk about our ailments.  I had no idea how far I’d have to walk when this was all over.

We never went out together.  There always had to be someone watching what food we had.  Everyone had a food partner for protection.  Just being out of the room did cut down on the time we thought about food so intensely.  Very often we told each other about great feasts we had with our families, wonderful memories but painful.  We thought more about the feasts than about our homes.

We no longer had a radio to depend on.  Our only news was rumors and what the guards told us.  We knew the war was going badly for the Germans but nothing of the details.  We were told Roosevelt had died and that Harry Truman was our new president.

We had burned all the wood we could tear out of the barracks.  Many of us were bothered by sores on our legs.  We no longer got any mail.  Red Cross parcels did get through in some amounts sometimes.  We hadn’t had parade for some time now.  I thought that most of the officers were gone because we saw only the guards on duty.  Some of these guards yelled at us for our obvious lack of sorrow because of the death of Roosevelt.  That wasn’t our most important problem at the moment, but some guys tore off pieces of our roofing as mourning bands on their arms, and that seemed to satisfy the guards.

One day while I was walking around the camp, a guard in one of the towers yelled down to us.  He was a guard we knew from the previous camp, one we liked.  It was very painful for me to stop walking, but I did so that I could hear him.  He repeated himself a couple of times telling us how lucky we were we would be going home soon, but he, he would be lucky if he ever saw his home again.

Painfully I started walking again, and I walked a long time that day.  I wanted to be able to walk out of this camp, and if need be, walk west until I could get help.  I decided I’d take nothing but my food, go it alone or with Rudy if he wanted to do this.  These plans were never firm; so much depended on what happened next or in the coming day or week.  We had no idea what would happen.

©Joseph H. Harrison 1999