Former POW recounts memories
PAUL SOUTH Associated Press
PASCAGOULA, Miss. - Even with white hair, retired Army Sgt. Guy Krebs Jr. is a stout man, looking still strong enough at 84 to storm the French coast, or a German forest.
His eyes still gleam, though the details tucked in his memory still fade a bit.
And still, nearly 60 years since the end of World War II, Guy Krebs, former POW, is a hero. Earlier this month, he recounted a hard story, his story of life as an inmate in Adolf Hitler's Stalag 9A. William Tecumseh Sherman said, "War is hell."
Sgt. Guy Krebs can vouch for Sherman's assessment.
Listen to him, and he'll tell you of cold German nights with only a thin blanket covering a mattress filled with wood shavings and dinners of dark bread laced with sawdust.
He'll tell of his fellow prisoners of war: Americans, Brits, French, Poles, Moroccans, Soviets; of little contact with the outside world, save visits from a Polish priest, a fellow prisoner allowed by his Nazi captors to go into a nearby town to celebrate Mass.
Even in the horror of a Nazi prison camp, Krebs considers himself a fortunate American son.
"I was standing with three boys in the Ardennes," Krebs said. "A mortar round hit near us. They died, I didn't. The Lord was looking out for me that day." Asked if classic films like "Stalag 17," starring William Holden accurately portrayed POW life, Krebs smiled.
"Somewhat," he said. "But you know the movies, they have to juice it up a bit."
The story of Krebs' capture needs no "juice," no blarney, nor embellishment. In mid-December 1944, the Germans mounted a final push to crush Allied momentum by pushing the soldiers who had successfully invaded Normandy to the sea, and forcing a peace deal in western Europe.
Hastily moved on the morning of Dec. 16, Krebs' unit, already surrounded by Axis troops, took only what was on their backs, with little food. Heading toward Belgium, American forces dug in along the edge of the Ardennes.
German tanks relentlessly shelled Allied positions. Soon, the order came to surrender.
On Dec. 19, 1944, at about 4 in the afternoon, Krebs officially became a prisoner of war.
"We were searched," Krebs said. Jewelry, overshoes and overcoats taken from us. We were assembled in a long column and started marching."
That December was part of one of the coldest European winters in history. First the POWs were marched to the town of Belaf. Then, for the next three days, the men, with little food or water, were forced to march for three days, sleeping occasionally on roadsides.
At Gerolstein, they were loaded into unmarked boxcars, called 40/8s, for they could hold 40 men or eight horses.
Seventy-five soldiers were squeezed into each car, Krebs recalled.
Tragedy struck on Christmas Eve near Frankfurt, Krebs said. "Allied planes strafed the boxcars. The Germans opened the boxcars, but some (prisoners) were killed, some were wounded. The next stop was Stalag 9B on Christmas Day. Some, including Krebs, were transferred to 9A.
"Conditions were horrible," Krebs recalled.
Soldiers slept on bunks stacked two-to-three high. The thin mattresses, filled with shavings were "teeming with lice."
Breakfast was "ersatz tea, mostly colored water. Lunch consisted of soup with "some kind of greens, like turnip greens. But the greens hadn't been washed, so worms were still in them," Krebs said. "We ate (the worms) because we were hungry."
Dinner was a slice of black bread with sawdust.
"You could hit the side of your bunk with the bread, and sawdust would come out," Krebs said. Even with meager rations, food was swapped for cigarettes.
"With nothing to do, you mostly thought of survival and food," Krebs said. "You lost track of time."
Finally, in 1945, the Allied forces earned victory in Europe. An armored division commanded by Gen. George Patton freed the more than 5,000 POWs of Stalag 9A, including Sgt. Guy Krebs Jr.
On the day of his release, Krebs weighed 125 pounds.
After the war, Krebs worked in the family contracting business. He lost his first wife to cancer. He and his second wife, Mimi, have been married for 24 years. Between them, they have 10 children.
"I think he's a hero, I really do," Mimi Krebs said. "He went on that beach (Normandy) and two boys on either side of him were killed. People were killed all around him. It's a miracle he lived. God's grace is the reason he came back."
Traumatized by war, many soldiers struggled to adjust to peacetime America, a transformed nation. Some families crumbled under the weight. Guy Krebs' family was not one of them.
Today, in retirement, Krebs is the commander of the Department of Mississippi American Ex-POWs. Recently 55 Mississippians, former POWs all, gathered on the Coast, to remember, and to celebrate. Krebs was among them.
But being a POW is only part of the Krebs story.
Sgt. Guy Krebs Jr. is a man of the old school who still opens doors for his wife.
"He's a true gentleman," she said.
Too, as a sign of the amazing grace that has followed Krebs, throughout his life, taking this survivor of Stalag 9A to wartime hell and back, he and his wife of 24 years can even find laughter in the tragedy of a German prison camp. Love and courage can do that.
"I tell him that his time in the prison camp is the reason he could stay married to me," she said. "He's the most long-suffering man I know."