Liberation

This is a tribute to my father, who was a prisoner of war in Nazi Germany from December 1944 until May 1945. I've written about his actual capture, nine-day forced march, and prison experience in previous posts on this blog. You can find the links to those posts in the right hand margin of this blog. Here's the account of his liberation as he related it to me.

May 1945
Neubrandenburg, Germany
Liberation Day
The prisoners kept wondering who was going to reach them first – the Americans or the Russians. Well, the Russians reached them first. When the Russians arrived, they shot every German guard right on the spot. Then the Russians left the prisoners there for the Americans, who were fast approaching.

When the Americans arrived, an Army Colonel walked into the infirmary where my father was. My father said the Colonel went crazy at the sight of the condition these men were kept in. He was yelling and swearing in anger over the situation. Just imagine this battle-seasoned Army officer. He had surely seen men killed and others seriously wounded. Yet when he looked inside the prison where my father spent six months, he could not believe the deplorable conditions he saw there.

My father was reduced to skin and bones, with bruises on his hips and the skin taut over his face. He only weighed 90 pounds. His hair and beard had not grown due to malnutrition. He also lost some of his hair because of the lack of proper vitamins, but it all eventually grew back.

The prisoners were so happy they made there way outside any way they could. Some men crawled; others went down the steps one at a time in the sitting position, because they couldn’t walk.

They were taken by Army ambulance to a Field Evacuation Hospital.

Field Evacuation Hospital
At the field hospital they told my father to take off his old, filthy, tattered uniform that he had worn for months. Those clothes were full of lice. Then after a shower (his first one since before being captured), he was given clean clothes to wear. After a short stay there he was flown to the 194th General Hospital in Paris, France.

194th General Hospital
Paris, France
Upon arriving at the airfield in France, my father was transferred to an Army ambulance. The driver said, “You look like you’re well enough to ride up front with me, so my father hopped in the front passenger seat. The driver said, “I’m gonna drive you right through the heart of Paris.” Then he proceeded to do just that. They saw the Eiffel tower and passed right through the Arc de Triumph (pictured above) on the way to 194th General Hospital.

At the Paris hospital he was given clean pajamas and a bathrobe to wear. Paris looked like a real modern city. He was unable to get out on pass and even if he could he was unable to walk.

He had jaundice, so he was unable to eat any food. In the hospital, they gave him all the hard candy he wanted all day long. Other patients helped him devour the candy, and the nurses just kept refilling the bowl whenever it became empty. It was wonderful to be back in good hands. He got good medical care there. The nurses at the hospital were so nice to them. As Kline puts it, “They were just great.”

May 1945
The plane my father flew home in was a Douglas C-54 (4 engine) aircraft. The ride was very choppy. He was on a stretcher in the plane as it went from France to England and then West across the Atlantic. The plane stopped at the Azores Island airport and was refueled. This trip was great, knowing they were on their way home. Their next stop was Newfoundland.

Mitchell Field, Long Island, New York. After arriving and being checked by the officials he was taken to the hospital. He stayed at the Mitchell Field Hospital for a short time before being transferred to Lovell General Hospital near Fort Devens, MA.

Lovell General Hospital near Fort Devens, MA.
My father arrived there in his pajamas. There they put him on a bed. It was a weekend and most of the other patients were gone home. The doctor asked my father if he would like to go home. My father gladly accepted the offer, so the doctor left the room to prepare him a weekend pass. The doctor didn’t know my father was a “stretcher case”. Although he didn’t even have his own uniform, his roommate let him borrow his uniform. Even though my father didn’t even have any sox or underwear, he put on his roommate’s uniform. When the doctor returned, my father was standing between the two beds, supporting his weight inconspicuously. After the doctor gave him the pass, he saluted the doctor sharply. Once the doctor left the room, my father made his way down the winding long, corridors of the single story hospital and caught a bus to Manchester, NH.

When he arrived in Manchester at the Carpenter Hotel bus station on Carpenter Street, he took a taxicab with another soldier who was headed to Amory Street. He went to his parent’s house, but they were not home. So he walked all the way to his sister, Jeanette’s, house on Kelly Street and climbed the stairs to the second floor -- all this with another man’s shoes and no sox or underwear on. But there was no one there either. Have you heard the saying, “Until you’ve walked a mile in another man’s shoes”? Well, my father literally did this with bad feet. So he walked all the way to Lafayette Street to his brother’s house. He was not even supposed to be walking, as he hadn’t done so in months and his feet had not yet healed from the surgeries he had at the prison camp.

He knocked at the door, and his sister-in-law, Maria, answered the door. Her jaw dropped and her eyes were popping out of her head with surprise. She said, “What are you doing here?” She would not even open the door. He asked if he could come in and sit down, so she let him in. He asked if he could take his shoes off, since his feet were hurting. When she saw that his feet were bleeding, she nearly passed out. She then explained that her husband – my father’s brother, Ray, had driven the whole family down to see my father at the hospital in Mass. They eventually returned home and were incredulous to find him there. He was so glad to be home, he managed to stand up and greet his parents with warm hugs.

After the weekend visit was over, his brother Ray drove him back to the hospital near Fort Devens. The doctor on duty who readmitted him was a different doctor than the one who gave him the weekend pass. This doctor was shocked when he discovered that my father went all the way home to NH for the weekend in his condition. He did not think it was funny, and was quite upset that this had happened.

The rest of the story about my father's life in the land of the free and the home of the brave can be found in my next post called Life After the War.

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Len Lacroix is the founder of Doulos Missions International.  He was based in Eastern Europe for four years, making disciples, as well as helping leaders to be more effective at making disciples who multiply, developing leaders who multiply, with the ultimate goal of planting churches that multiply. His ministry is now based in the United States with the same goal of helping fulfill the Great Commission. www.dmiworld.org.

Prisoner of War Experience

After his division was captured, my father, Roger Lacroix, was forced to march for nine days across country to Germany, where he was a prisoner of war. The full story of the battle that led up to this and the march are covered in previous posts shown in the side margin of this blog. Here is the account of his German prison camp experience.

At Stalag II-A, in Fünfeichen, Neubrandenburg, Germany, the buildings were single story wood frame and would accommodate, normally, about 500 men. They were extremely overcrowded. They were quite large and separated into two sections. Other than Americans, prisoners there included Russians, Poles, Czechs, French, English and Serbians in camp. At first they had to sleep on the floor and eventually he was given a bed to sleep on. There were no regular beds. They had wooden platforms, about one or two feet high, that they slept on -- very much like in a chicken coop. These platforms were stacked two-bunks high. All they had to spread on the bed slats were their two thin blankets. Like John Kline wrote in his journal, my father carried bruises on his hips and upper legs for months after he was liberated. They were caused by the hard boards he slept on in camp, as well as from the floors in the many buildings he slept in during the evacuation march.

This prison camp had an infirmary and a hospital. An official report* regarding medical care at Stalag II A Neubrandenburg states, "Initially, the infirmary of Stalag II A Neubrandenburg comprised two barracks, one for patients with less serious conditions, and the other for more seriously ill patients." My father was in the infirmary, which he didn't remember as being too cold. There was some sort of small metal stove. As Kline states: “We were out of the wind, and the many bodies huddled close together probably accounted for the warmth.” My father said he did not catch a cold during his captivity, and he attributes this to the many Army-issue vaccinations he received prior to his deployment. They normally got grass soup and rotten spuds to eat.

My father had to share a filthy, community bedpan with all the others in his section where he was bedridden in the infirmary. The prisoners called it a mandolin, because it had a handle on it and made a noise when it was used. So whenever they needed it, they called out “mandolin” and one of the prisoners who was well enough would bring it over. There was no nurse or orderly to assist them. The small convenience of toilet paper was nonexistent. My father used the paper currency in his wallet as toilet paper. He had just been paid before being captured, so he had plenty of currency.

However, the currency could not buy anything there. The cigarettes he received from the Red Cross were used as money to buy things from the guards. The German guards were older men. As Kline described: They wore long gray winter coats and had the little red triangular patch on the lapel that shows they had had service on the Russian front. They carried old bolt-action rifles and wore a leather belt, much like the American web pistol belt. The belt had a pouch hanging down in the back, which was used to carry their food and personal articles.

My father confirmed what Kline writes: “The other prisoners would cut your throat for something to eat, like a bunch of starved rats…Your own buddy would turn you into a guard, if it would bring food as a reward.” My father said that he would get a Red Cross box perhaps once a week. These packages were designed for a single man, but the Germans always required that he share it with another man. There would be canned meat in there, and my father would cut the can in half to share with the other man. However, this caused the meat to spoil and it was not edible. He definitely attributes his survival to these packages though. He is certain he would not have survived without them. One night he saved some food in the Red Cross box and put the box under his head like a pillow. While he slept, another prisoner cut a hole in the side of the box and stole the rations from it.

A loaf of bread was shared among 15 to 20 men, and they spent a great deal of time making marks on the bread deciding how to divide it among themselves. The Germans mixed sawdust with their dough, and it is known as "ersatz bread." Each loaf was very heavy like a brick, made from whole grain, cracked grain, and sawdust mixed together. All my father could think about was food; he was starving all the time. He also had body lice and other bugs, which caused him to scratch every minute of the day. He was fed rutabaga soup once a day, which is turnip greens, boiled in hot water.

According to the report, "When the War started, each German POW camp was envisaged to hold no more than 10 thousand POWs, with a staff of about 150 to guard them. In practice, these figures were much higher. The maximum for Stalag II A Neubrandenburg was recorded in a report for November 1941 and amounted to about 50 thousand" POWs. Imagine 50 thousand POWs being crammed into a camp that was designed to hold only 10 thousand prisoners maximum!

The report states that "The Germans tried to break the morale of those who stayed in the camp and reduced their food rations, which were limited to just bread and potatoes. Luigi Roso recalled that they were not allowed to take a bath or change their clothes. His arms were covered with wounds which bled because he scratched the lice bites."

The report states that in 1942: "There were just three POW doctors, two Frenchmen and a Pole, looking after them. An entry in the records for April 1942 says that only one French POW, Dr Dumont, was still working in the infirmary. He was overworked..."

According to my father, at the time when he was there, only one American doctor was there at the prison camp, a captain whom my father saw perhaps no more than once per month. There was no medicine, and medical care was not that great.

My father was bedded between two foreign prisoners from Yugoslavia (Serbia) and Czechoslovakia. One of those prisoners had tuberculosis, and had a tube inserted into his lung, which drained into a can on the floor beside my father’s bed. It was this man from which my father eventually contracted the disease after he returned from the war. (He later spent two years in a sanatorium after his release from the Army and was completely healed of tuberculosis). While he was in the prison camp, he had to have the tips of two toes amputated by a French doctor, due to his frostbitten feet. This was done with no anesthesia and they needed to have men sit on my father’s chest to hold him down. His feet were so frozen that the gangrene had set in, and the feet had become black as coal. The gangrene began to move up his legs toward his heart, and they planned to amputate his leg, but the lights went out due to a power outage before they could carry out the amputation.

The French doctor, which must have been Dr. Dumont (mentioned above in the report), spoke to my father only in French. He said he needed to make incisions in his leg and dig a hole in there to let the gangrene out. He said, “You will want to swear at me, but I don’t care. I’m going to save your life.” Sure enough, with men sitting on his chest, my father swore at the doctor and screamed as he dug into his leg with the scalpel. The doctor inserted crepe paper funnels into the holes he made in my father’s leg. This surgery had to be repeated one or two more times. This eventually caused all the gangrene to drain and the doctor truly saved my father’s life through these crude operations in terrible conditions with no anesthesia.

Until the day he died at age 83, my father had the scars to show for this, where several holes were made in his calf. Throughout his lifetime, he had pain in his feet as a result of the frostbite and amputations, and his balance was less than optimal, but he continued walking on those feet ever since the time he returned from the war.

Please see photos below of Stalag IIA also known as Camp Fünfeichen. 

If you would like to follow the rest of the story, it's continued in the next post called Liberation.

Photos

In the first photo at the beginning of this article, there is a local newspaper clipping from Manchester, NH, showing my father, Roger Lacroix, in the top left corner of the photo, and three of his brothers (my uncles) who were also serving our country in the military, fighting in the war overseas.

In the second photo above, you can see a postcard that my father wrote to his parents on January 27, 1945, one month after being captured. He was careful not to say anything negative about the conditions, or else his postcard probably would not have been allowed by the Germans to be mailed to his parents. His parents did not receive the postcard until after he had already been liberated and returned to the States.

 

The photo directly above is a memorial located at the site of Stalag IIA in Neubrandenburg, Germany.

The photo above shows a group of Polish, Serbian, and Soviet POWs in front of the hospital of Stalag IIA Neubrandenburg (1944). Since the caption in the report calls it a "hospital", it was apparently not the infirmary where my father was imprisoned and bedridden. However, since it looks like the infirmary that my father described, it may actually be the infirmary. Archives of Centralne Muzeum Jeńców Wojennych, Łambinowice. Photographic collection, Ref. No. I-7-26

The photo above shows a group of Polish POWs working in the Stalag II A Neubrandenburg hospital. In the background of the photo are seen two buildings. The one on the righthand side of the photo seems to fit the description of the infirmary of Stalag IIA Neubrandenburg (1944), where my father was imprisoned. However, I am not certain if this was the infirmary or the hospital. Dr Wojciech Leski POW No. 9199, standing first right (1941). Archives of Centralne Muzeum Jeńców Wojennych, Łambinowice. Photographic collection, Ref. No. I-7-27. 

Attribution notice: *The official report cited in this article is "Medical care for prisoners-of-war in Camp Fünfeichen Stalag II A Neubrandenburg) during the Second World War," from Proceedings 2021 - Behind the Barbed Wire 2021, by Joanna Lusek.

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Len Lacroix is the founder of Doulos Missions International.  He was based in Eastern Europe for four years, making disciples, as well as helping leaders to be more effective at making disciples who multiply, developing leaders who multiply, with the ultimate goal of planting churches that multiply. His ministry is now based in the United States with the same goal of helping fulfill the Great Commission. www.dmiworld.org.

Death March

My father, Roger Lacroix, was captured on 19 December 1944, during the Battle of the Bulge. It was the greatest battle of World War II. His entire division was destroyed by the German SS troops. Immediately following his capture, he and his division marched 110 miles to a prison camp in Limburg, Germany called Stalag XII-A.

Another veteran named John Kline, who was in the 423rd Regiment of the 106th Infantry Division, kept a personal journal of his experiences leading up to, during, and after that great Battle. We are very thankful for Kline’s excellent record of events, which are very accurate. A great credit goes to him for this, and much of his work is re-posted in this blog. Here is the account of the nine day forced march.























12/20/44
Left Bleialf at 6:30 AM, they were on the road until 2300 that night. “They had no water or food except for the snow from the ground. There was much evidence, in the area, that a large-scale battle had taken place.”

Kline records: “I remember as we were leaving Bleialf walking through a small village. It could have been outskirts of Bleialf, or some small village nearby. There were German troops in American jeeps. They were opening ration boxes and meat cans. They were eating our Christmas dinner. My guess is that this had been our battalion supply depot. There had been had been a real shoot out, with hand to hand fighting. There were dead Americans and Germans lying in doors, ditches and hanging out of windows. The infighting must have been fierce, for some of the bodies were on top of each other.”

Dad remembered women handing them food through the windows as they walked through the small village. The road they were on eventually took them through the town of Prüm (pronounced “Prom”), Germany. They ended up that evening sleeping in an open field near Gerolstein, Germany.

12/21/44
At Gerolstein they were awakened at 0600, and given their first food since breakfast on Dec 18th. They fed them hard crackers and cheese. Seven men to one can of cheese. They left Gerolstein during the evening.

12/21/44
”Arrived in Dockweiler Dries 2300. Billeted in an old German barracks. During the three and one-half days there, they were fed one ration of very weak potato stew. They received two bread rations of one loaf split between five men, one ration of cheese and one small can between four men. They were each given two old German Army blankets. They were old and worn, but did give some warmth. They would prove to be lifesavers as time went on.”

12/22/44
During the night the road along side the barracks was strafed and bombed by a British Spitfire. The English usually flew night missions; the Americans flew during the day. The weather was clearing and cold.

12/25/44
Christmas Day Dockweiler Dries: On the march by 0630, marched all day and night, no water, or food, except snow. Kline remembers there was “No Christmas, except in our hearts.” And to that my father agreed!

12/26/44
They stopped at a cluster of farm homes about eight miles north of Mayen. They were billeted in one of the barns. No food.

Kline points our that “In Germany you always see several farm homes and barns clustered together, as if they were built that way for protection. Many of them have a common courtyard arranged around a square, with each family living in buildings on opposite sides of the square.”

12/27/44
Koblenz: They arrived there in the afternoon. They were fed soup and bread served from a portable kitchen. Koblenz is a big city. It took a lot of punishment from bombings. They were walking in groups of about 500. Dad remembered seeing a uniformed German photographer taking pictures of his group, as they walked by.

They were billeted in one of three large brick barracks just on the south edge of Koblenz. They were three stories in height. The barracks were said to be part of a former officer-training center. They slept on the cement floor using the blankets. It was at least out of the weather. There was a bucket at the entrance to be used as a latrine.

12/28/44
At 1430 (2:30 PM) bombers began to bomb the rail yards near them. The guards herded them into the basement. Dad remembered that he and other prisoners jumped into a trench outside when this bombing occurred. Many of the bombs fell around the barracks. Fortunately, there were no direct hits. They counted fifteen bomb craters around the buildings. It was very cloudy and overcast. It had to be American planes bombing by radar, for the practice was that Americans bombed during the day and English by night.

12/29/44
Again at 1430 the antiaircraft guns started firing. They were bombed again. This time the guards would not allow them to go down into the basement. He was in a room on the second or third floor. Again bombs fell around them. They were hitting very close by. After the raid they all went outside, to see what happened. There were bomb craters all around the area. The bombers had been aiming at the nearby railroad yards, but hit in their area.

The high-ranking noncommissioned American officers (noncoms) asked for a meeting with the German guards. These noncoms insisted that they could not keep them in a place of danger. They told the Germans, if they did not voluntarily take them out of town, the Americans would walk out on our own, as a group. The guards were as frightened as the Americans were. They agreed, but told them that they would have to walk all night, over 25 miles, without stopping. The noncoms agreed to that and they prepared to leave Koblenz on a forced overnight march.

12/29/44
1700 - Darkness had set in when they left Koblenz. They crossed the Rhine over a wooden bridge, which Dad remembered, that had replaced the one that had been bombed. They turned right after they crossed the Rhine River bridge. Then they followed a road to the left, up into the hills. They walked until 1030 the next morning. One of the toughest trips for these weary men so far, 40 kilometers with very little stopping. When they did stop we were not allowed to get off the road. The guards were afraid they would try to escape. It had turned very cold and the two German Army blankets did little to ward off the cold. But, as thin as they were, the blankets kept them from freezing. There was no water, so they ate snow. Some of the men were developing diarrhea.

They had traveled at night most of the time since leaving the front lines. The roads were narrow and rough. Kline recounts: “There were many German troops and vehicles, including tanks, moving in the opposite direction, towards the front. In the blackout conditions it was difficult to see how large the towns and villages were. You could be walking along on a valley road and the silhouette of the hills with a building on the skyline, would give you the impression you were in a large town. The German troops, in particular the tank troopers, would not give way for our columns. It was a matter of just stumbling along, following the man in front of you.” Dad remembered this well.

12/30/44
Arrived Stalag XII-A, Limburg, Germany 1030 in the morning. This was a large prisoner transit camp. Large circus style tents and what seemed to be adequate food. They still had not been registered as Prisoners of War. My father received his number, which he believes was POW#10011.

A typical boxcar

They left Stalag XII-A, Limburg at 1600, 30 December 1944. They were loaded into old 40&8 style boxcars with sixty men to each boxcar. Their boxcars are much smaller than those in the U.S.A. The larger U.S.A version of these boxcars were designed to hold forty men or eight horses, so you can imagine how cramped these POWs were with sixty men packed into a boxcar smaller than a 40&8.

There was a very small amount of straw on the floor. There were two small vents, high on each side near the end of the cars. The vents were covered with boards and barbwire. “There was one metal can to be used as a sanitary facility. It was about the size of a five-gallon lard can. They had no canteens or jars with which to carry water.” Many men had dysentery at the time and the hardship of being confined to the freight cars was aggravated by the filth and stench resulting from men who had to urinate and defecate inside the cars.

During their short stay at Stalag XII-A, they had been given a large portion of bread, but no water. The sanitary conditions in the boxcars, using the lard can as a toilet, were terrible. Many of the men had developed diarrhea. They could not all lie down, to rest or sleep, at the same time. Someone was always left standing. They slept in short shifts and when they did get settled down, they would all decide to try to lie more closely on top of one another to allow others to lie down. Often someone would have to run for the lard can. Usually there was someone over it. It caused a lot of problems, since a man with diarrhea has little "holding power." The stench was terrible.

They were not allowed out of the boxcars. That was until at one point, during the day when they were being attacked by one of the British planes. First the tracks in front of the train was bombed, causing the train to stop.

Amazingly, Kline was in the boxcar immediately behind my father’s. Here is Klines account: “The train stopped and the guards headed for the fields. The prisoners in the car just ahead of mine managed to break out of the car and get to the fields. They formed the letters 'POW' in the snow. This kept us from being strafed. Those of us in my boxcar were not able to get out. We were told that the pilot dipped the plane's wings and waved when he recognized us as prisoners. I had no opportunity to see it, for I was not next to the small window. Most of us huddled on the floor, in fear of our lives, when we heard the plane.” This testimony of the incident by Kline is confirmed by my father’s own account. Since I was a child, I remember him telling me about this incident where the man laying in front of him in the boxcar was cut in half by the planes strafing. He and his fellow soldiers in that boxcar immediately panicked, and banged on the door to be released. Once the Germans let them out, they formed the “PW” in the snow, identifying themselves to the pilot as prisoners of war.

After that, due to the heavy Allied air strikes, they traveled at night. The travel was erratic. They would go for a long time, stop and sit, then they would go again. This was due to bridges and other sections of the railway being bombed out, forcing the train to find alternate routes.

From Leipzig, the rail system leads southeast to Dresden a major railroad center. Their destination turned out to be Mühlberg, about thirty-two miles north northwest of Dresden.

01/07/45
My father arrived at Stalag IV-B, Mühlberg, Germany. Stalag IV-B was just a few miles south of Muhlberg on the Elbe. The Commandant welcomed incoming prisoners and told them, "For you, the war is over" and told them about the warning wire and what would happen to them if they stepped across it. Stalag IV-B was a transit army camp. They lived a horrible existence there. The camp contained 240 or more acres and was surrounded by a page and barbed wire fence on 10-foot posts, 4-6 feet apart. The 240 or so acres were subdivided and cross fenced sometimes with a double fence into 8-10 compounds or more.

The buildings were wooden frame, single story structures, 40-50 feet wide and 150 feet long, with lined interior walls and ceiling with inlaid red brick floors, running water and electrical power. Down the one side and half way up the other were a double set of tandem triple bunks, which would cover an area approximately 12' x 7' and accommodate twelve prisoners. At the one end was some washing facilities, running water and a large vat for brewing up tea, coffee or cocoa and at the other end near the entrance to the hut a single toilet: used for emergencies only. The balance of the floor area, approximately 25%, was used for the dining eating area and cook stove. The cook stove was made of brick with a sheet metal steel plate top, more of a grill than anything. The Germans supplied the prisoners with a ration of coal and wood for heat and cooking.

Security on the camp consisted of watchtowers around the perimeter manned by armed guards and in between patrolled by guards on foot. Sixteen feet inside the perimeter fencing was the warning wire and if you crossed it you were shot. Here the prisoners were fed 1/6th loaf of bread, a pint of Grass Soup with five boiled potatoes. They were fed once a day.

At this camp, they were finally registered as Prisoners of War. They were also each given a German POW postcard to write home, which my father used to write to his mother on January 27, 1945. She received it (as pictured below) after he had already returned home the following summer. He wrote: "Dear Mom and Dad, Here I am this morning to say that I am fine and in good health also. Hoping you are the same. I am a prisoner of war in Germany. See Red Cross about writing back. Time to say goodbye. God bless you. Love, Roger."

Mr. Kline explained to me that this was the point where his party got separated from my father’s out of Stalag IV-B. He said that when they classified the Americans as prisoners of war, “They split out the non-coms "Sergeants" from the Pvt's, Pfc's and Corporals and sent them to different Stalags or Work Camps (all in accordance with the Geneva Convention). That is why I ended up with the Non-Com group shipped to Stalag VIII-A, Gorlitz, Germany.”

During the march to Neubrandenburg, Germany, many had to sleep outside on the ground in the freezing weather. There was two feet of snow and 19 degree temperatures. Sometimes my father would find a rotten potato on the ground and eat it. He carried an old hunk of cheese in his shirt that he would pull out occasionally and take a bite.

My father clearly remembered one occasion when he slept in a very cold, bombed out school building. It was just as cold in that school as it was outside and he slept on the floor. There were two cans by the door for sanitary purposes. But to get there you had to climb over other men sleeping on the floor in the dark, and it was difficult to do so without stepping on someone’s feet. Since everyone had frozen feet, it really hurt when they were stepped on and they wanted to kill you when you did so.

On another occasion, his party bedded down for the night in a train depot. It was overcrowded and there was no room left on the floor to lie down. The only place my father could find to lie down was between the small rail tracks used by the coal cars.

At another time they were moved to some barns in town. Once when they slept in a barn, the farm lady, cooking potatoes for her cattle, brought out a whole tub of freshly boiled, steaming hot potatoes for the prisoners to eat. This was so refreshing to the hungry and exhausted prisoners. They devoured every potato in that tub!

There were political prisoners there as well. They wore old, dirty and tattered striped prisoner’s uniforms and caps. They looked like they were the walking dead. They were nothing but skin and bone -- pitiful, emaciated creatures in striped pajama-like uniforms, their faces hollow, eyes haunted, and movements halting. My father said that all prisoners wore uniforms. However, by the time he got there, they were out of uniforms, so for six months he wore the same Army uniform he had worn since arriving in Germany in December.

My father recalls that he was marched out to a bombed out street and told to clean up the debris. He was so weak that he collapsed. He still had diarrhea, as everyone else did. It was making them all so weak they could hardly walk. At this the point my father was moved from there to an infirmary at Stalag II-A in Neubrandenburg, Germany.

If you would like to follow the rest of this story, it is continued in my next post titled Prisoner of War Experience.

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Len Lacroix is the founder of Doulos Missions International.  He was based in Eastern Europe for four years, making disciples, as well as helping leaders to be more effective at making disciples who multiply, developing leaders who multiply, with the ultimate goal of planting churches that multiply. His ministry is now based in the United States with the same goal of helping fulfill the Great Commission. www.dmiworld.org.