Missing The Boat: War Stories of Thomas Alan Dirkin

31 Dresden Dresden was about 300 miles from Stalag VIIIB. I remember an emotional argument between my mother and father about the experience of being bombed. My mother had been in air raids while in Coventry, in central England. My father seemed remarkably unsympathetic. “You do not know what bombing is like!” he said to my mother who was obviously reliving a terrifying event in her life. “Dresden, was bombed ”. Dresden, famous for its pottery and fine china, was a manufacturing city and consequently a strategic target. Dresden was bombed so heavily that much of the city was consumed in a firestorm. Fire engines driving past the end of a street were sucked into the inferno as the backdraft created a massive vacuum. Twenty-five thousand to thirty-five thousand people were killed in Dresden on February 13-15, 1945, March 2 and March 17, 1945. My father’s route when marched north and west from Stalag V111B in the winter of 1945, passed by Dresden at the time of the bombing. My father and other POWs were conscripted as laborers in “clean up” work details. Aftermath of bombing of Dresden. Human remains and shells of buildings