News-Info-Alerts

Re: Ex-POW Stole Bullets to Escape

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: May 04, 2003

"POW stole bullets to escape
World War II veteran, captured in North Africa invasion, spent 29 months in camps

By JAY C. GRELEN Knight Ridder Newspapers

On the night Dan Ray escaped from the German prisoner of war camp during World War II, he stole his guard's ammunition before he took off, which wasn't as hard to do as you might imagine.

The camp was, in some regards, sort of "Hogan's Heroes" meets Mayberry.

Either the Germans were short on bullets or didn't trust their guards, but at shift change, the duty guard would remove the ammo from his gun and give it to his relief. On the night of Ray's escape, the relief guard laid his three bullets down and Dan Ray, intrepid American POW, was quick to relieve him of them.

To add to the comedy, the soldier never realized he had forgotten to load, Ray said, and the entire night, guarded his prisoners with an empty gun.

The short version is that Ray and two buddies, Junior Nicely and Bernard Miller, slipped out on a Friday and were recaptured on Sunday. That was his only "holiday" during his two years and five months as a POW.

Ray, 85 and now living near Nichols, was captured during the invasion of North Africa. He was a member of the 34th division, 168th infantry, a National Guard outfit based in Iowa.

After stops at a series of POW camps through Italy and Germany, Ray spent much of his time at Stalag VII-A. He has photographs of some of his friends at the camp because, with cigarettes as currency, they bribed guards to buy a camera for them, to buy film, and to have the film developed.

They also pooled their cigarettes to buy a HAM radio and could track the war through BBC reports.

In his 29 months of captivity, Ray had two hot showers.

Despite the occasional security lapse at his camp, Ray's war experience was frightening and intense. In the invasion of North Africa, he doesn't know, nor did he ever want to know, whether he killed anyone.

"I just fired," he says. "I've been shot at. The good Lord was with me. I never got hit." He came home physically whole, but 60 years later, nightmares still haunt his sleep. "I'll go to bed not even thinking about things. I jumped off the bed just the other night."

The Army honored him with two silver stars and two medals for his time as a POW. And among his other mementos of the war, Ray has something of which he is especially proud: the trio of brass-jacketed bullets he swiped from his German guard before he made his dash for freedom."