News-Info-Alerts

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Re: POWs

Date: June 18, 2001

"Prisoners of War
Saturday, June 16, 2001; Page A20

I empathized with Hampton Sides's May 27 Outlook article, "Now Their Stories Can Be Told," about experiences of American POWs during World War II. I was especially moved by his comments about feeling helpless and ashamed by being in the hands of the enemy and feeling as though he had failed his country and comrades in arms.

I spent six months in a German POW camp (Stalag 12B), and though I did not suffer most of its rigors I vividly recall breaking into tears before a fellow prisoner, a British medical officer who was dressing my wounds a few days after my capture, to express my unworthiness in allowing myself to be taken prisoner.

Thankfully, other than the terror of being bombed at night by our own aircraft (our camp was adjacent to a German V2 rocket launching site), my experience was mostly benign compared with that of other Allied POWs held by the Japanese and Germans.

Most important was the knowledge that victory would soon be ours -- a knowledge sharpened by Voice of America and BBC news broadcasts picked up by our clandestine radios and disseminated by fellow inmates. Other benefits flowed from the protection afforded by the Geneva POW convention, which included receipt of Red Cross parcels and periodic inspection of the camp by Swiss Red Cross officials. Our status even reached a point where we were invited by the Nazis to switch sides and join an Anglo-American unit being formed by the Waffen SS to fight on the Eastern Front. No one in our barracks thought very highly of this idea.

JOHN D. BLUMGART

Bethesda"
© 2001 The Washington Post Company