The Wrong Place at the Wrong Time
by "Gary" Gaarenstroom

I have been asked to write about being a prisoner of war. I did not suffer the terror of many who were captured. I was unconscious as the result of tank cannon fire. When I came to, I was looking down the barrel of a German gun – from the wrong side.

My experience started with a walking tour of the Black Forest. The trip, under other circumstances, would have been enchanting. A railroad trip in locked boxcars came next. During this trip, we were stopped in railroad yards during bombing raids.

We arrived at a Stalag, which was not like the movie or the TV series. Our barracks was one long room with a small wood stove that had little or no fuel. The sleeping accommodations were three-deck shelves that extended from one end of the room to the other. Each paired up with another prisoner. One overcoat was placed on the wooden shelf and the other coverd the two of you. We had no change of clothes or facilities to launder them. We didn’t remove our clothes, except for our shoes. We got to shave only once. Without a mirror, we shaved each other. My bunk mate was from Georgia, so my sideburns were down to the bottom of my ears. His sideburns were cut at the midpoint of his ears or higher.

On our first stop, we saw a French doctor, who told us that we would die of starvation in six months – if we didn’t die of something else first – on the food from the Germans. Our diet consisted of a container of watery soup without seasoning – I still cannot stand rutabagas – and one loaf of black bread, hard and partly sawdust, for each 7 or 8 men. We had to divide it ourselves and the divider got last pick. Occasionally we got a little cheese. Food was more dear than gold. Stealing food from a fellow POW was punished by throwing the thief in an open latrine trench. Food theft was rare! We were supposed to receive one Red Cross parcel each week. During my 97 days of captivity, I received one-half of a parcel once and one quarter of a parcel twice. These parcels very likely helped us to survive.

One day, we unloaded Red Cross parcels, and stacked them with all the Red Cross labels showing. After a picture was taken of us and the parcels, the Red Cross representative left, and the parcels were then taken away by the Germans. We all wanted to do KP. You could eat the peelings and possibly snitch a potato, a carrot or some food to take back. When I returned to American control, I had a 22-inch waist.

Later, we were transferred to a work camp in Stendal where we were required to work filling bomb craters in the marshalling yards. Fifty prisoners with shovels surrounded the bomb crater and shoveled until it was filled. With our reduced strength and lack of enthusiasm, the work went slowly. An old German guard, complete with gray handle-bar mustache, couldn’t contain his contempt for our work habits. He stopped the group of us and announced that he would show us how we worked. He took a shovel and walked slowly to the dirt piled around the crater. He dug the shovel in slowly. When he drew it back, he carefully emptied half of the load. Then he walked slowly to the crater and dumped the dirt. After starting back, he stopped and looked back at the crater to see if it was filled yet. Then he announced that he would show us how were supposed to do it. He went to he soil bank and proceeded to heave two full shovels of dirt in the air at the same time. After the demonstration, we proceeded to work in the manner of the first demonstration.

The building we were first housed in, an unused beet processing plant, was bombed out. We were moved to an old building previously used for horse shows. We slept on the dirt floor, which wasn’t too hard. The building was unheated but kept the wind out.

Once during a bombing raid we were taken outside and lined up next to the brick wall. We could see the B-17’s coming. We saw the smoke trail from the lead plane in the formation, which was the signal for all the planes to drop their bombs, We heard the bombs approaching. The concussion caused the brick wall to shake. After the wall stopped shaking, I continued to shake.

Around April 10, 1945, the guards told us that they were going to march us to an open city. Our leaders instructed us to cooperate as long as we marched toward the sound of the guns (East). The city we were leaving, Stendal, had white flags hanging from the windows. A short distance down the road, the column turned to the west. Every GI had to answer the call of nature. The column began to stretch out and the guards, who were old and no longer enthusiastic, could not control everyone. I, and several others, ran into the woods. We captured a worker on his way home. His lunch case was empty, which disappointed us. We asked him in our few words of German how far it was to his house. He spoke some words that we did not understand and then said "Ein kilometer." We walked with him a fair distance, returning through Stendal.

We few escapees, without so much as a penknife among us, captured a city of over 100,000 people. Shortly, we noticed some black (SS) uniforms discarded. We no longer felt like conquering heroes, and became concerned for our safety, We met a French slave laborer and, with my high-school French, I found out that the worker’s house was one kilometer on the other side of Stendal. We decided to stay with the French slave laborers in their compound. I was greeted with a glass of cognac. It went down and immediately came back up. We stayed in the guard quarters until American troops entered the town. When they arrived, the first news we heard was that President Roosevelt had died. A stop at the troop’s mess produced a steak on field bread. It was exquisitely tasty, but that, too, stayed down only a short time.

We were trucked to Hamburg. While there I volunteered to guard German POWs on a work detail. We had to feed them, so I gave them a K-ration for each three men. The K-ration consists of four crackers, four cigarettes, a chocolate bar scored to break in half and a can of some type of meat. Revenge is sweet!

I was flown to LeHavre, where I was hospitalized and then returned to the United States in the sick bay of the ship. I took a hospital train to an Army hospital in Chicago. My parents received the telegram about my safe return just before Mother’s Day. They visited me in Chicago.

I did not see nor hear of American prisoners being physically abused, although the Air Force prisoners were abused by the population. On one occasion, we were ordered to stand and watch a Russian prisoner being punished. He was tied to a post and beaten to death.

Being a prisoner with six months to live on the diet you receive (if you don’t die of something else first), created a deep religious feeling. My only reading material was a New Testament. I read it.

I came away with a deep appreciation for our form of government. Our guards were older men who had not grown up under the total Nazi indoctrination. Along, a guard would start that Roosevelt, Churchill and Hitler were no good. If another German was within earshot, he would say nothing against Hitler. The German people lived in fear of being taken away and never being hard of again. The children were indoctrinated to the point that they would inform on their own parents. It was a government by terror.

We all should count our blessings that we live in a free country where we can express our opinion our leaders without fear of retribution.

This article written by Conrad Gaarenstroom about his experience originally was published in the May 2002 issue of "Residents' Reflections", a writing publication by residents of the San Camillo apartments, Wauwatosa, Wisconsin.