Prisoner of War
By CHUCK MARTIN Staff Writer
ZANESVILLE -- Bill Johnson survived seven months as a prisoner of war in Stalag 7A, near Moosburg, Germany, at the end of World War II.
He was captured in the Apennine Mountains of Italy, but he's not sure of the date. He remembers it as not long after his birthday in July 1944, but it could have been in August.
A member of A Company, 362nd Infantry Regiment, 91st Infantry Division, Johnson was a scout and the number 2 man on a Browning Automatic Rifle, meaning he carried the gun's extra ammunition and took over if the number 1 man was injured.
"We never got a chance to use it," he said.
The unit had been sent into the conflict in central Italy to keep the Germans running after the fall of the Cassino line in May and the fall of Rome in early June. They were sent on a scout to draw enemy fire, but nothing happened, Johnson said.
The unit entered a small town near nightfall and settled into two stone houses on either side of the road. There were 22 men and a sergeant was in command. A request for reinforcements had been refused.
"We had a second lieutenant in charge," Johnson said, "but not long before, he made a mistake and stuck his head up when he shouldn't have and took a bullet between the eyes."
In the morning Johnson looked out to see the street was full of Germans with automatic weapons.
"I called to the staff sergeant and he looked out and said to start shooting," Johnson said. He then told the sergeant the BAR was in the other house and all we had to fight with was carbines and pistols.
"We got our heads together and decided to they up. There was no way we could fight our way out with the equipment we had."
They piled all their weapons and ammunition in a corner and Johnson started down the stairs to the first floor. A German soldier came through the front door at the same time, saw Johnson and started yelling.
"He ran up the stairs and shoved a burp gun in my face," Johnson recalled. "He told us to get out into the street."
Once the men were outside, including those form the other house, the Germans called for trucks and sent them north.
"One young guard wanted to unload us and shoot all of us," Johnson said, "but an older soldier said 'no, we're taking them to Germany.'"
They were shipped by truck and rail across the Po River, through Bologna and on to Moosburg, about 35 kilometers north of Munich in southern Germany.
Johnson's story
Born July 8, 1920, Johnson was living in South Zanesville and working at Line Material (later McGraw Edison) when he was drafted in 1943. He had also been a member of the 174th Field Artillery National Guard unit in Zanesville.
He was sent to Missouri, where he was part of the 75th Infantry Division, but was transferred to the 91st before he went overseas. He recalls undergoing more amphibious training when they got to the Mediterranean, but they never used it, being sent to the front by truck instead.
Stalag 7A was a major prisoner of war camp, with areas for all the Allied combatants, and a separate area for flyers. By the end of the war, there were roughly 15,000 prisoners as many were transferred there before their previous camps were overrun.
For many enlisted personnel, like Johnson, Stalag 7A was a temporary stop, but a permanent population was kept there for work details. Johnson said he weighed about 180 pounds when captured. He was down to about 120 pounds when liberated.
At Stalag 7A, the prisoners did not get all the Red Cross packages they were entitled to, but received enough to keep the from starving.
"I think the world of the Red Cross," Johnson said. "If not for them, I don't think I would be here today."
Water was another problem for the prisoners. When hut in which they were housed had a spigot against an outside wall, but they would just drip, even when wide open.
"We took turns on our hands and knees, putting our mouth on the spigot, just to get enough to drink," Johnson said. Showers were almost unknown.
Beds were nothing more than sacks filled with straw on a rough wooden frame.
Food was scarce. Boiled potatoes or turnips were a staple, for prisoners as well as German civilians. But other fare included a concoction Johnson called "grass soup." It actually had grass in it, as well as worms and bugs of all kinds. In the kitchens, turnip tops that were sliced off and fell on the floor were swept up and tossed in the pots. And there was barley soup, which consisted barley, water and no seasoning.
Sometimes, they would get German bread, "soldier's bread," Johnson said, "that was so tough you could bounce it on the floor like a ball."
One day, while on a work detail, Johnson was asked by a civilian if he liked pickled pig's feet. He said yes and the next day the civilian gave him one.
"Some of the Germans were wonderful," Johnson reflected. "I have no grudge against them. "But those civilians that wore a black swastika on a lapel you had to watch out four."
Those were Nazi true believers.
The work parties Johnson was sent out on probably helped him get fed a bit more often as, according to historical accounts, the workers were usually fed something. The workers were all enlisted men. The officers, especially Air Corps officers, kept in a separate area, never left their compound.
"I think the German civilians would have killed them if they had," Johnson said.
His primary work duty was helping to repair railroad tracks damaged by allied bombs, but he also worked on the telephone and electrical systems and was often sent into bombed out buildings in Munich -- often with them still on fire to retrieve the bodies of bombing casualties.
"You could smell burning human flesh," he said, "and we had no robber gloves. We had to use our bare hands. We also were given straw brooms to sweep the dirt and dust off the faces so the German authorities could identify the dead."
He witnessed some bombing raids from the prison camp and in Munich, one lasting for six hours. Sometimes, he said, the bombs looked like rain falling, there were so many.
"Munich used to be the most beautiful city in Europe," Johnson said, "but it was a hell of a mess" when he saw it.
He also got a look at the fences of something less attractive. On the other side of Munich from Moosburg was the Buechenwald concentration camp.
"We knew there were a lot of political prisoners there, especially Jews," Johnson said. He even thought some of the women who worked in the soup kitchen came from there.
The Stalag 7A complex held prisoners from different nations in different compounds, but one incident Johnson remembers occurred near a train complex at Munich. A number of Russian soldiers were being kept in an apartment house near there and when an air raid warning sounded, the Russians refused to go to a shelter. Bombs hit the building and killed all the Russians inside.
"They brought in wagons and we had to pile the bodies in them to be taken away to burn or bury," Johnson said.
Sometimes the air raid sirens would signify something else.
"Hitler was a coward," Johnson said. "When he came to town he would have the air raid sirens set off so everyone would leave the streets and he could drive on through without delays." He also recalled that Hitler once ordered all prisoners of war shot, but that never happened.
While a prisoner that winter, Johnson said he got word that a friend from Zanesville had been killed. Like Johnson, Karl Klinger was a prisoner sent out to work on a railroad repair crew. He died Oct. 16, 1944, as the result of an Allied bombing raid.
In April, Johnson was working on a crew sent to a small town some distance from the camp. They were working in a small barnyard when they heard gunfire in the distance.
"The guards came over and handed us their firearms, saying 'The Americans are coming.'"
Not sure what to do with them, the P.O.W.s told the guards to leave, then went to work bending the rifles barrels and otherwise disabling all the weapons. Not long afterward, American solders appeared, members of the 16th Armored Division in Gen. George S. Patton's 3rd Army.
The prisoners were taken to a nearby airfield and a couple days later a fleet of C-47 cargo planes came in.
"Some had doors and some didn't," Johnson recalled, "But we were all loaded in and flown to Rheims, France, to an Army hospital."
Johnson returned to Zanesville and McGraw-Edison. He even has a picture of himself back on the job only a couple weeks out of the Army, looking healthy, but skinny.
On Dec. 19, 1953, he married Leona Untied.
He eventually put in 34 years with the company (including service before the war), and retired in the late 1970s.
©2004 Times Recorder