Thirty-Six Days March Through Germany

In our group we had a guard company of fifty officers and men. This is how they worked. A forwarding party went ahead and made arrangements for us to sleep in barns. Then the kitchen truck would catch up with them, get a stove or two and have a soup cooked by the time we arrived. Sometimes they would fix coffee before we left the next day. The stoves were large vats with fireboxes under them and were formerly used to boil potatoes for hog food. Almost all the farms had them. The truck was an old one and was used only to go from town to town and for pulling the German colonel's car. The guards would detail a civilian to use his wagon and team to get stoves, bread, and potatoes. The goon guards ate at their own kitchen and had more food than we did. The civilians also gave them food.

We walked varying distances, some days ten miles, some days less. The distance depended on whether they could find room or food for us. Some days they had to keep us moving to keep us away from our own advancing troops. We marched in companies and squads. The guards were divided so that to every twenty or thirty men there would be two guards. An extra number of guards were at the rear. In case a man fell out they left a guard with him—and, believe me, we gave the guards several headaches along this line.