Missing The Boat: War Stories of Thomas Alan Dirkin

67 As the war progressed, Red Cross parcels helped supplement a starvation diet. Camp life had some degree of organization. Some recreation was woven around working party duties. All in all, the men had a bad experience that was far from any movie or television portrayals. They waited for some sign that they would not be a slave laborer forever. About six months after his repatriation in 1945, one POW told of how he was watching a comic movie. His face hurt as he laughed and he realized he had not really laughed since 1940. The Long March West At dawn on January 22, 1945 the POWs of Stalag VIIIB were summoned from their huts. They were given as little as 30 minutes to get ready to march west. Snow was deep on the ground. Desperately, men made make-shift sleds out of their wooden bunk beds to carry their essential possessions and any food they had. Some men did not have time to dress in all their clothes. Some did not have boots but wooden clogs, with and without socks. Many were ill and had to rely on their comrades to help them even start the march. This poorly prepared group of men set off walking west. In the last few months they knew that change was coming. Secret radios had given them information of the American and Allied advance from the west, following the D-Day invasion of June 6, 1944. They also knew that the Russians were close, driving the war west from the devastating battles that had taken place on the Eastern front. The guards at the prison camp knew if and when the Russian troops arrived, their fate was certain death. The POWs got little information from the Germans as to where they were going. The answer was that the Germans did not know. The Germans were updated as the march progressed. The POWs had value as wartime bargaining chips. As for the POWs, rumors of mass executions had surfaced as the war began to be lost by Germany. The German SS, the Hitler youth and fascist extremists were still very capable of the wholesale murder of the POWs.