Re: The Bus-uem - POW Stories on the Road

Date: April 28, 2004

"Bailey's story part of POW bus museum

By: Dan Ehl - Managing Editor

Gail Bailey of Centerville is only too familiar with the subject material of a traveling bus museum that will make its appearance in Centerville on May 14. Sponsored by the non-profit educational organization TRACES, the bus contains artifacts and the histories of Nazi Germany prisoners of war from the Midwest.
Bailey is the subject of one of those stories. He was taken captive in November 1943 after German soldiers personally led by Field Marshall Rommel overran the mostly green American troops at Kasserine Pass in Tunisia.
American casualties numbered thousands dead and hundreds taken prisoner.
While the main body of troops surrendered during and just following the battle, Bailey was with a handful of soldiers who retreated into the desert. Luck abandoned the exhausted soldiers one night when their weapons were stolen. They were then robbed by Arabs who took their uniforms and left them only rags to wear.
Hungry and cold, they were given a couple small donkeys by a Frenchman to aid them on their trek to American lines. Instead, they walked into the hands of German troops.
Thus began Bailey's life as a German prisoner of war until his liberation with the fall of Germany in 1945.
At first listed as missing in action, the Allerton native said he asked his mother upon his return home how she reacted to the ominous telegram about her missing son.
"She said she just screamed," Bailey told of his mother's answer.
He began receiving letters and packages from home once he reached a prisoner of war camp in East Prussia after having been moved through Sicily, mainland Italy and into Germany.
Bailey remembers the camp food as stark and never enough - mostly potatoes and old, heavy bread.
"If it hadn't been for the Red Cross boxes, we'd have been in trouble," he remembers of the food packages.
On the whole, Bailey said his captors were not overly sadistic.
"They didn't beat on us every day," he remembers. "They took our privileges away as punishment."
That didn't mean it was a picnic. Sixty years later, Bailey's eyes water as he remembers finding the naked, bloody bodies of several American prisoners in the showers who had attempted an unsuccessful escape.
The German guards fled before advancing Russian troops, who then liberated the prison camp. Bailey said the Russians did not want any of the American troops to leave on their own, but were to remain until there could be an official turnover of prisoners to their allies.
Not wanting to wait, Bailey said he and a friend from Rockwell City waited for an American Army truck bringing rations to the prisoners. He jumped on it, but his friends was too short and left behind. He never saw his friend again.
Bailey said he looked up the Army buddy years later, but was told by his widow that the former soldier was dead. When she heard Bailey's name, she exclaimed that her stepson was named Gail and that her husband had said it was the name of an old Army buddy.
Spurred by the Iowegian interview, Bailey called Gail Cripe of Jolley Friday and explained who he was.
Bailey said his namesake hadn't been told much about his father's POW experiences and hadn't known the origin of his first name.
"We had a good talk," said Bailey, "and he said he would visit the next time he went fishing at some ponds near Leon."
And so, almost 60 years later, Bailey has made another connection to his years as a young soldier and prisoner of war. And it this case at least, it ends with a smile rather than tears.

©Daily Iowegian 2004"