Son spent years in search of stalag where his father was a POW
The Times Herald
By ALEX McRAE
The photograph hit Ben Boling like a blow to the chest. After 20 years of searching for a place that seemed to exist only in a battered wartime photo, there it was ... more proof that a German POW camp named Stalag IX-A was as real as the blood of the men who suffered and died there.
The photo was included in a history of the U.S. 6th Armored Division during World War II. It depicted a sea of smiling American faces and the words "Happy Allied POWs freed by the 6th Armored Div. near Ziegenhain, Germany."
"When I saw that picture my heart started pounding," Boling says. "I knew I wasn't chasing a ghost anymore. I vowed to find that POW camp and see how my father spent the last months of the war."
Ford R. Boling Jr., better known as Ben, was always aware his father was a World War II veteran. But there were always more questions than answers about what his father had done in the war.
Boling remembers scraps of conversation around the kitchen table when relatives visited after the war, but doesn't recall any talk about a POW camp.
Ben Boling was 9 years old when his father passed away in 1964. The young boy's curiosity grew as he browsed through his father's wartime souvenirs. He was especially intrigued by a single, faded photograph.
It showed six men standing outside a low-frame building. The printed photo caption said: "Barracks 21-B, M-Stalag IX-A, Ziegenhain, Germany, April 7, 1945. Liberated March 30 by 3rd Army."
The tall man in the middle of the back row was identified as Cpl. Ford Boling of Hawkinsville, Ga.
"I didn't really know what it meant at first," Boling says. "But the older I got, the more I wondered. Everybody talked about what their parents did and where they were during the war. But I had this gap I couldn't fill about a place called Stalag IX-A.'"
After graduating from Hawkinsville High School, Boling studied commercial art at Middle Georgia College, then he went to work, got married and moved to his wife's home state of Virginia. There was little time for solving wartime mysteries.
When a second child came along, Boling sought a job with better health care and benefits. In 1981, he joined the Army. Boling knew there was a 50-50 chance he would wind up in Europe, so he started studying German before he learned to salute.
"If there was a chance I'd get to Germany, I wanted to be ready," he says.
Boling spent the first three years of his hitch at Fort Stewart, Ga. In early 1984, he was called to the First Sergeant's office for news of an overseas assignment. Boling entered the meeting with all his fingers crossed.
Seconds later, his heart sank when the sergeant informed him he was going to Korea.
"After all that time hoping to get to Germany, it was the most disappointed I think I'd ever been," he says.
The mood didn't last long. The next day, the First Sergeant told Boling the Korean assignment had been a mistake. Instead, he was going to Germany.
"I was speechless," he says. "And I got busy getting ready to find out about my father."
The Internet wasn't around, so Boling had to rely on military history books. He found plenty of references to his father's outfit, the 28th Infantry Division. He learned the 28th had arrived in Normandy just days after the June 6, 1944, invasion and had fought some of the toughest battles of northern Europe, earning the nickname "Bloody Bucket" from Germans impressed by the unit's fierce fighting.
Boling learned his father's outfit had fought in the Battle of the Hurtgen Forest, where German tree bursts reduced an entire forest to splinters, killing and wounding thousands of men.
He already knew his father had fought in the Battle of the Bulge and been captured on Dec. 20, 1944, at St. Vith, Belgium, after his outfit Ñ reduced to less than 60 men Ñ had been surrounded by a German regiment.
But as hard as he searched, Boling could find no reference to Stalag IX-A. He found plenty of references to the town of Ziegenhain, where the camp was supposedly located. But that's where the trail always ended.
Boling thought the posting to Germany was all the help he would need. He soon learned the Army's schedule didn't include family research projects.
The Cold War was at its height. Every time the East German army hiccuped, American forces went on heightened alert. Boling spent his first year in Germany in the field.
"Yeah, it was frustrating," he says. "But I dealt with it. I knew I'd be there a while and sooner or later I'd get my chance."
In March 1984 he went on a three-week assignment in Bad Tolz, Germany. While browsing through the post library, Boling came across the photo of prisoners being freed at Stalag IX-A.
"Once I saw it, I knew it was time to get busy," he says.
A month later, on the spur of the moment, Boling, his wife and two children set out for Ziegenhain. They arrived late in the day, but Boling found several people and inquired about the POW camp. He was told there had been several nearby and was asked which one he was interested in. It was late, it was cold and Boling returned to post without learning a thing.
It was three more months before he had a full day off for travel. In July 1984, Boling and two other soldiers loaded up and went to Ziegenhain.
This time, Boling learned the truth was just down the road.
When he arrived in Ziegenhain, Boling drove around looking for dilapidated buildings or ruins that might have once been a POW camp. He saw nothing. He finally went to the Ziegenhain police station and asked if anyone knew about Stalag IX-A.
To his amazement, the police said they not only knew about the camp, they would lead him to it.
"I was stunned," he says. "I was so excited I could hardly sit still."
Boling followed the Ziegenhain police out of the city and through the countryside. About two miles outside Ziegenhain they reached the village of Trutzhain. The Ziegenhain policeman got out of the car and pointed down what looked like a residential street.
"He said to go down there and I'd find it," Boling says. "So I did."
Boling drove down the short, dead-end street. It was lined with well-kept houses with lush trees, bright flowers and laundry flapping on the line.
At the end of the street, Boling got out and looked around. There was no sign of anything that looked remotely like a former POW camp.
He pulled into a driveway and a local man came out of his home. Boling asked if he was near Stalag IX-A.
The man laughed, pointed up and down the street, and said, "Ja, it is all around."
Boling looked again and the truth slowly dawned on him. He realized that Stalag IX-A had never disappeared at all. Instead, the barracks and offices had been refurbished and redecorated, and ultimately, Stalag IX-A had become the village of Trutzhain.
"It was just unbelievable," he says. "I'd been searching for some deserted dump, and the camp had been saved and turned into a town. I was shocked."
Boling spent nearly an hour photographing everything in sight, overjoyed at solving the mystery that had haunted him for years.
He couldn't wait to get back and share the news with his family. That turned out to be a problem. When he got back to the base, Boling realized he had loaded his camera improperly. Not a single picture turned out.
Boling knew he couldn't leave Germany without proof, but it was four more months until he made it back to Trutzhain and Stalag IX-A.
As Boling was taking pictures an elderly couple introduced themselves and asked what he was doing. When he told them, they took him down the street and introduced him to an elderly gentleman named Horst Munk. When Boling explained his mission, Munk brightened and began to tell Boling all about Stalag IX-A. Munk had served as a guard there, overseeing French prisoners.
Munk gave Boling a tour of the town, explaining which houses had been barracks, bath houses or mess halls. They drove to a small French cemetery on the edge of town where Munk pointed out the elaborate wooden gate hand-carved by a French prisoner.
Munk told Boling that every year on the third Sunday in November, local citizens held a memorial service in the French cemetery to honor those who died in the camp. The annual ceremony was to be held the next day, Nov. 18, 1984.
Munk then took Boling to a home Munk said once served as the American officers' mess. He introduced Munk to the owner, Herr Plotz, who invited Boling inside and showed him to what appeared to be a large storage room. On the wall was the last thing Boling ever expected to see, a beautifully detailed painting of the Statue of Liberty. Plotz said it had been done by an American prisoner.
Plotz escorted Boling and Munk to the small Stalag IX-A museum in an upper room of city hall and showed Boling memorabilia and photographs, including one of then-French President Jacques Mitterand, who had been held at Stalag IX-A during the war.
After the tour, Boling was invited to sign the museum's guest book. Munk told him he was the first American to visit Stalag IX-A since American POWs were liberated in 1945.
"That was the most shocking thing of all," Boling says. "To realize I was the only American who ever went back."
Munk invited Boling to attend the next day's memorial service in the French cemetery. Boling was scheduled for duty and begged off. But on the way back to the base, he had second thoughts. He paid another soldier to pull his duty so he could return to Trutzhain and Stalag IX-A.
Boling arrived 10 minutes late but was given a place of honor during the ceremony. He was then invited to a tavern to chat with the locals over a beer.
"I learned the Germans who worked there weren't monsters," Boling says. "They were just 18- and 19-year-olds who were given a gun and told to do a job or they'd wind up like the Jews. I made lots of friends that day, and I think we all left understanding each other better." It's been more than 20 years since Boling learned the truth about his father. But now the Luthersville resident has decided it's time to solve the last riddle of Stalag IX-A. He wants to learn the identity of the American who painted the picture of the Statue of Liberty on the wall in the former prison camp mess hall.
"Twenty years ago, there was no Internet," he says. "Now, I can get that picture out there, and who knows what might happen? I solved my mystery. Maybe I can solve a mystery for somebody else."
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