Prison Camp Experience - 1945
The following is an account written about Walter Dieterichs who served
his country in overseas duty with the Army, and tells about his experience
at prison camp.
Thursday, May 31, 1945
SERGEANT WALTER DIETERICHS
RELATES EXPERIENCES
IN PRION CAMP
HOME ON FURLOUGH
AFTER TWO YEARS
OF OVERSEAS DUTY
Friday, April 13, will probably forever stand out in the
memory of Sergeant Walter Dieterichs, as a red letter day in his life, for
it was on that day when an American reconnaisance group, including a few
jeeps and some half-tracks, liberated him from the German prisoner of war
camp along with thousands of British, Russian and American prisoners that
had been driven from camp to camp as American and Russian armies closed a
ring of steel about the crumbling Nazi empire.
Sergeant Dieterichs is back, home now enjoying good home
cooked food and the experiences he had gone through during the past 11
months are like a black cloud of a retreating hurricane. Sergeant
Dieterichs struck the Normandy beachhead on D-Day plus one with General
Bradley's second army, and then going across France was tough. Six days
later, on June 14, he was wounded. He can smile now as he related that
experience, but he considers himself lucky when he looks back at it from
the safety of his own home.
He had been up with his outfit on the front line where
the going was hottest, and had been relieved to go back some distance
behind the lines for a much needed rest. They had dug two-man fox holes
and had taken cover. "The night was pitch black," he relates, "you could
not see your hand before your eyes." Since the fox holes were shallow
affairs, he and two other fellows decided to roll up in their blankets
on top of the ground a short distance away from their fox holes and sleep
there. Walter's fox hole companion decided to occupy his shelter alone,
with his raincoat over him as a covering. Along in the night the Germans
infiltrated the American lines and soon all hell broke loose right around
them. Sergeant Dieterichs decided it was time to head for his fox hole and
join his partner, so he took off and dived in beside his sleeping buddy.
Aroused suddenly from his sleep by the shooting, and thinking it was a German
who had dived in beside him, his buddy pulled his 45 on Sergeant Dieterichs
and let go. The bullet entered his left leg at the thigh, just above the
knee and took a course through the fleshy part of the leg, coming out near
his crotch. It fortunately missed both the bone and the artery, but tore
a nasty hole in his leg.
Not until morning did he get medical attention and was laid
up in the hospital for three months. "I should have warned my pal I was
coming," he said, "but I was lucky it was no worse."
VON RUNDSTEDT'S
BREAKTHROUGH
The progress of the war is familiar to those who followed the
course of the American, British and French armies as they pushed toward the
German frontier. They were anxious days for those of us back here when word
was received that Von Rundstedt had broken through into Belgium. The stand at
bastogne probably received most of the headlines in the news, but military
plans all down the line had to be altered and split decision made. Sergeant
Dieterichs' outfit, which was supposed to support the 9th and 38th Regiment
was ordered to go to the support of the 99th.
On December 16, his company was loaded onto trucks and sent
to support the 99th. They got to their position and dug in that night,
expecting their own artillery to give them support. The Germans came at them
with a small arms attack at 1 p.m. on December 17th, and the Americans released
them, but the artillery was not anywhere around. "All we had were rifles and
machine guns, not even a bazooka among us," he relates.
After the Germans had withdrawn with their small arms attack
they sent in Tiger tanks late in the afternoon of December 17. Each tank was
flanked by a squad of German infantrymen. "We saw we could not match that
sort of attack and began to withdraw to the rear. Our ranks became
disorganized and we could not form a line, so our first thought was to
get out of what looked like a picket."
That night of December 17, a small group of his outfit had
withdrawn to a farm to the rear and they took shelter in a barn, believing
they had escaped a German trap. They were dead tired, disorganized and
bewildered, but thought they were comparatively safe and could catch some
sleep and perhaps reorganize in daylight.
Along in the night tracer bullets began streaking through
the barn and they realized they were in for trouble. The farm house was a
short distance from the barn and they made a run for it, and ducked down
in the basement. A group of Americans were in the cellar. They had a radio
transmitting outfit set up down there and were directing American artillery
fire from the rear. "American shells were dropping pretty close to the
house. German soldiers were on two sides of the dwelling and American shells
were dropping on the third side.
It was getting daylight on the morning of December 18 and the
top Sergeant, concluded that chances of escape was hopeless. The German officer
was signalled that they wanted to communicate with him, and the Americans
informed him they wanted to give up. The rest in the meantime were destroying
the radio transmitter and their arms.
The twenty or more American prisoners were conducted through
the German lines and to the rear where they joined a number of other prisoners
that had been taken. Dieterichs and the rest were ordered to carry wounded
Germans and Americans to the rear. As soon as this task was done they were
herded to a big shed two or three miles to the rear, and from then on they
were more or less on the move as the American lines drew closer.
January 1, he was stationed at Stalag IV-B where there
were a number of British and Russian prisoners of war. Some of the British
prisoners had been captured in North Africa and had been confined as prisoners
for nearly four years.
It was from then on that Sergeant Dieterichs suffered his
first sensation of genuine hunger in his life. With snow on the ground, no
heat in the barracks, and only a pint of turnip soup and a small ration of
dark bread to live on each day, the thought of food was uppermost in his
mind as well as the rest of the prisoners in that prison camp.
Then the Russian front started moving toward Berlin and on
February 14, prisoners were moved again. On that day the thousands of prisoners
started their long 500-mile hike to the next prison camp at Braunschweig, west
and southward. The men were showing signs of hunger and malnutrition. They
could not walk more than 20 kilometers a day or about 16 miles. It took the
group 37 days to make the trek to Braunschweig. Two wagons drawn by horses
followed along behind the long column of prisoners as they grew too weak to
march and fell by the wayside. They were loaded into these wagons and carried
along. Dysentery broke out among the prisoners, sanitary conditons were
deplorable and the lack of proper food made resistance to disease very low.
The only hot drink they received was an occasional brew made
from burnt barley and a mint tea that tasted as bitter as gall. Three times
a week each prisoner received a small part of oleomargarine which was the only
semblance of it they had in four months.
Braunschweig was a German garrison and a railroad center, so
had been the target of American and British bombers prior to their arrival. It
had been a city of considerable size at one time, but was a virtual shambles
when they arrived the last week in March.
But, they were not to be in this camp long either. The
American armies were fast closing in and it was not very long before they
began to see the distant flashes of the American artillery at night. They
kept posted on the progress of the allied armies by talking to the slave
laborers they saw working in the fields. These French, Polish and Belgian
slaves were prisoners as much as the P.W.'s but they were allowed a little more
freedom as they worked in the fields. Whenever the opportunity afforded, these
laborers would converse with the prisoners and tell them how the war was
going. It was the thought that the Americans would soon arrive that kept the
spirits of the men alive.
The German captain in charge of the prison camp at Braunschweig,
realized that the American army was virtually breathing down his neck, but he
had not received orders from his superiors to move his prisoners out. Finally
he decided to move them out without any official orders.
So, once again the prisoners were ordered to line up and
march 25 or 30 miles farther north. "We were getting so starved for food,"
Sergeant Dieterichs relates, "that food was the sole subject of our
conversation. No matter what might come up, the conversation always went
back to eating.
The Germans piled their turnips and potatoes along the
highway and then covered them with straw and dirt to keep them from freezing.
Sergeant Dieterichs explains, and then they are uncovered as they are used.
Along the highway as they marched, the remnants of these piles could be seen
where a few cast off turnips or potatoes had been left, considered undesirable
for use on the German table.
The prisoners would break rank and grab up these small
half-spoiled vegetables and devour them in a vain effort to satisfy their
hunger. Potatoe peelings found in garbage cans as they passed through
towns and villages would be snatched out and eaten.
FRIDAY, APRIL 13
Then came Friday, April 13, when the American reconnaisance
group headed for the camp located in a farm yard. Some of the German guards
took off and escaped being captured, but a number of them, glad the thing was
over, surrendered to a handful of Americans.
The prisoners were forced to remain at this camp for one
more night, but the next day American transportation was supplied to take
them to the rear. They were taken to a German airport where planes flew them
to a hospital in Paris. Sergeant Dieterichs was given a blood transfusion
of 600 cc's and 500 cc's of glucose fed into his veins. He had lost 45
pounds of weight and weighed 135 pounds when he was released.
On May 10, he started out from Paris in an army transport
carrying 23 other litter patients for the good old U.S.A., and landed at
Mitchell field, New York May 12. he was confined in a hospital for two days
and then taken to Schick hospital in Clinton, Iowa, where he stayed until
Saturday, May 26. He was granted a furlough until June 16 when he will
return to Schick hospital for further treatment.
The hospital care, good food and rest had brought him
almost back to normal. And he had practically gained back all his former
weight. "It is good to be home, and I wish I could stay here for good,"
Sergeant Dieterichs commented to friends who come to greet him."
[From reprinted article in St. Ansgar
Enterprise, Dec. 18, 1986, pg 6.]
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