He apparently is in good health, somewhat thinner than when captured, but regaining weight lost on the very skimpy diet of the prison camp.

A 60 day "delay enroute" orders will be followed by 14 days at Hot Springs, Ark., then Jefferson Barracks and probably discharge from the army. Elwin has 95 points, with 85 needed to qualify for discharge.

On April 8, 1941, he entered service in the infantry, after three years of college at Iowa State, at Ames. Ten months later he was shipped to Ireland, Scotland, England and then North Africa on November 8, 1942.

Two months of guard duty at Algiers were followed by front line action. On February 17, 1943, after 17 days at the front, the Germans broke through the American lines at Fiad Pass and cut off and captured 3,000 Yanks, among them Elwin.

The prisoners were marched from Fiad to Sfax and then put in box cars and sent to Tunis. They were flown from Tunis to Naples, as the Germans were flying in considerable supplies and taking back prisoners.

Tense Moments

After 10 days in Italy, they were taken through Brenner Pass and into Germany, to Stalag 7A, at Mooseburg. A week later he was taken to Stalag 3B, at Furstenburg, where he spent most of his prisoner of war time, remaining there until January 31, 1945, when the Russian advance forced the Germans to move their prisoners west.

On January 31, he was marched to Stalag 3A at Luckenwalde, then to 483C at Ludwigsfelde, then to 11A at Altengrabow, near Germany. Here they were liverated, shortly before VE day.

The liberation was one of the tensest moments in Elwin's prison life, he says.

English officers paratrooped into the camp with wireless equipment and reported back to their troops. German guards ordered the prisoners out of cam, with machine guns trained on them, but the British officers served an ultimatum on the guards to march them back into camp or the neighboring German towns would be leveled by the allied gunfire. After some tense hours, the Germans ordered the prisoners back into camp and four days later they were rescued by the allied troops.

The prisoners were trucked to Hilderscheim, a big German airport, where they waited for a week for planes which flew them to LaHavre. They arrived in the French port on VE day, and the wild celebration by the French people was their first knowledge of the German surrender, although they imagined the break up would come soon.

In a week they sailed to England where the shop picked up war brides and wounded soldiers and 1500 sailed for home, arriving in Boston in 10 days, on May 29. From there Elwin went to Jefferson Barracks, Mo., and then he came home to Marquette Saturday morning.

[not transcribed: several paragraphs detailing prison food and daily prison life]

Elwin survived the 27 months imprisonment with only a few colds, a sore knee injured when he stumbled on the ice, and with the loss of a few teeth, due to malnutrition. While getting his teeth attended to at Jefferson Barracks last week, a German prisoner, a dental technician, made his teeth and it turned out he was a member of the German unit which captured Elwin in Africa. After the first months, the American prisoners had their own doctors, but the equipment and medicine was not sufficient, the Marquette youth stated.

In the prison camp, he met only one soldier from near here. For a while he was in the same camp as Cletus Unterberger, a brother of Miss Alberta Unterberger, McGregor school teacher, whose home is near Waterville. He met him first at Camp Claiborne and later again in a prisoner of war camp.

Elwin was 27 on the day he left Jefferson Barracks. He has no immediate plans after his discharge from the army.

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