Life in a German Prison Camp

We dropped out of the box cars onto the side-walks of the little summer resort town of Bad Orb, Germany. The people were out to see the Americans. We could tell they hadn't seen anything like it before. There was a ray of hope for success in their war-worn faces. Little did they know that in a few months our tanks, doughboys, our armies would be marching through their town. The American Prisoners, in the midst of captivity, cold and hunger, would often say, "Laugh now, you Krauts, it won't be long."

We marched through Bad Orb and after several miles up a high hill on the very top we came to our "home."

Dogs barked as we trudged through the snow and into our quarters. The camp had housed Russians and French, but we were the first Americans to occupy it.

Germany seemed to have three classes of camps. The best were for the American and British, next came the French and Serbs, while the Russians and Poles were last. This was a third-rate camp and most of the men who had to stay there for several months were hospital cases. I lost about thirty pounds from the time I was captured until I left that camp, or about a pound a day. Others lost as much as one-fifth of their weight.