“Calvert, you’ve been promising to tell me more about your POW time once Larimore arrived. No better time than now,” Colonel McGarr said. “You were a POW from Maison Rouge to almost the end of the war, right?”[1]

“Yes, sir. Three and a half months as a ‘Kriegie.’1

After the Krauts

captured us, the officers were segregated in Stuttgart and put into jail cells, two or three to a cell. Then someone came up to our cell and said, ‘Calvert? Come on. An SS officer wants to talk to you.’ I figured, ‘Hell, this is not a good thing.’

“I went down to this small room and was told to sit. The interrogator had a ledger, and he read from it: ‘Your name is Calvert, and you are an intel­ ligence officer with your regiment.’ He had a roster of everyone, which one of our guys must have had tortured out of him. He asked, ‘Third Division?’ I didn’t say anything. So, he reached over and ripped the camouflage netting off my helmet so he could see the insignia. I said, ‘Okay Third Division.’ He asked a few other questions, but nothing seemed to need an answer, so he sent me back. That was it.”

“Intelligence reported that our POWs were treated awful. Did that happen to you?” the colonel asked.

“It wasn’t a day at the beach, but we were luckier than most. It must have been true,” Ross said sarcastically, “because a Red Cross representative explained in great detail how our captors were doing all they could to keep us comfortable. He said we shouldn’t be complaining because it made the Germans nervous.”

“Those lying bastards!” McGarr exclaimed. “They didn’t want the damn Germans to be nervous? Maybe they should have worried a bit more about my guys and not licking German asses!”

Ross smiled. “Well, 900 calories a day sure made us nervous. And we saw the German staff had quite a bit more. So food was of considerable interest to us. Each day, we were given a loaf of bread for seven men. They guaranteed that it wasn’t more than 25 percent sawdust, but it did not always meet that standard. It looked like regular German bread, but it didn’t taste like much of anything. We divided it very carefully. That was our ration for the day. Some guys would wolf down their piece immediately, while others would just nibble on it. Nobody ever knew which was the better approach.

“We never knew whether our breakfast beverage was coffee or shaving water. It came out about the same. Eunch was supposed to be the heavy meal of the day, although it was pretty light. It was mostly a dehydrated vegetable—I can’t think of the name. Just dried-up leaves, which, of course, added to our dietary problems. No surprise that I lost about forty pounds.”

Ross took a deep puff from his cigarette. “We were treated like hell, sir. I’m not sure I’ll ever be the same.”

(TO BE CONTINUED TOMORROW)

~~~~~

[1] Larimore, At First Light, 314.

[2] “Kriegie” was a term former POWs in Germany called themselves. It comes from the German word Kriegsgefangene, which means “prisoner of war.”

[3] Larimore, At First Light, 314-315.

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December 24, 1945M