Post by connie on Sept 23, 2021 23:54:24 GMT -5
OVERVIEW of CAMPS that Held Members of the 106th 106thdivision.proboards.com/post/752/thread
MAP of GERMAN POW CAMPS: 106thdivision.proboards.com/post/4961/thread
FINDING a POW's WORK CAMP: jrwentz attached two helpful posts near the bottom of the following thread: 106thdivision.proboards.com/post/4942/thread
Stalag XIII-C Hammelburg en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalag_XIII-C
According to Wikipedia: "In World War II the German Army used parts of camp Hammelburg for Stalag XIII-C, a camp for other ranks and NCOs. Oflag XIII-B was located close by. As was usual for Stalags, many of the prisoners were located in Arbeitslager on farms or adjacent to factories or other industrial operations. The camp served as the base for distribution of International Red Cross packages and mail. A Lazarett (hospital) cared for prisoners that were sick or had been injured in industrial accidents or air-raids. A number of enlisted men and NCOs were housed in the adjacent Oflag to provide necessary services...
January 1945 - American soldiers arrived from the Battle of the Bulge.
March 1945 - many prisoners arrived in deplorable condition after marching 500 miles from Stalag VIII-D in severe winter conditions
6 April 1945 - camp is liberated by Combat Command B of the U.S. 14th Armored Division"
MAP of GERMAN POW Camps: 106thdivision.proboards.com/post/4961/thread
106th connection
List of 423 Infantry Regiment POW's: www.indianamilitary.org/106ID/Rosters/REFERENCES/64%20-%20423rd%20roster/64.htm
Sidebar List of POW Camps & some names of POW's there www.indianamilitary.org/German%20PW%20Camps/SoThinkMenu/GermanPW-START.htm
Sidebar List of Diaries, Obits, & Articles, etc. alphabetically on the Indiana Military Site: www.indianamilitary.org/106ID/SoThinkMenu/106thSTART.htm
Campagna, Nicholas (Nick) 589tth Field Artillery Battalion- A, POW XIII-C brief write-up and link to 2003 video interview: 106thdivision.proboards.com/post/5025/thread
Devine, William, 423 SV Co. Supply Clerk, POW XIII-C, stone quarry work camp, farm labor near Bastheim, thirty-day march www.indianamilitary.org/German%20PW%20Camps/Prisoner%20of%20War/PW%20Camps/Stalag%20XIII-C%20Hammelburg/WilliamDevine/WilliamDevine.htm
Devine a detailed account from from being drafted through stateside time and into the ETO. Details of capture and time at this encampment are included.
Devine tells of marching eastward for what sounds like at least two weeks before being loaded in box cars. After several days travel by rail, he noted: "They marched us up a steep hill that was more like a mountain to a prison camp, and after all we went 'through to get there the camp commander refused to take us because they had been bombed the night before and some prisoners were lost. The dysentery was getting to more of us all the time and I can tell you we were a very sick bunch of men. If you were not ill yourself you felt sick looking at the poor devils that were. There was no way of cleaning ourselves, so down the mountain we went again to be put in the same filthy box cars, this time even sicker and dirtier. The next day we thought we would be taken into another prison camp but it was for officers only, so on we went again.
The following day we arrived at Hammelburg, and were again marched a good distance to a prison camp. This was called Stalag XIII-C. Here we were accepted and sent to barracks. We were called down to the mess hall and told to bring our canteen cups with us. They fed us bread and sauerkraut soup, which nearly killed me. I couldn't sleep with the excruciating pain and nausea. I made my way through the snow to the latrine where I fell over with the-pain. No one was there to help me so I crawled to the nearest barracks and hollered for help, and finally a guard came along and half carried me to the next barracks where a Russian doctor and an American medic, both prisoners, were running a little sick bay for the prisoners. I thank God for these wonderful men because they saved my life..."
"After a couple of weeks in Stalag 13C we were split up and sent to different parts of Germany. (Along with 9 others) I was sent to a stone quarry not too far from the prison. We left by train in the morning and arrived at night in a little railroad station deep in the mountains...Two soldiers came sliding down the mountain on snowshoes to take us up to the quarry. By the time we reached the top of the mountain I was on the verge of collapse, but they put us immediately into a house that was like a palace compared to what we had been in before. Each room was equipped with four bunks and a belly stove. It was very comfortable, but we had to be careful using the coal as we were allotted only one pail a day."
"We left from the same station where we had arrived about three weeks previously, and were given a bag of food to eat on the train as we would be traveling most of the day. We traveled in circles, probably for security reasons, so we rode about sixty miles, and very slowly at that, in order to cover thirty miles. Finally we stopped at a town about five miles outside of Bastheim, a farmers' dorf, and they walked us the rest of the way to Bastheim. The Allied Air Force must have been here before us because there were quite a few craters on both sides of the road and also a few big bombs that were duds. It was a cold clear day In February or March, probably the latter, because the fields were starting to come alive with crops." Here POWS were lined up and chosen by individual farmers to work on their land. Time spent here lasted months.
Then: "At three in the morning our guards, who had been with us from the start, awakened us and told us to get dressed. We were to go to our farmers and get enough food supplies for about three days." When I knocked on the door Elsie let me in and cried when I told her I was leaving. She fixed a good supply of wurst, hardboiled eggs and bread... I noticed that all the command cars had left the yard, which indicated that the military was moving also, and the Allies must be very close. We started to march, but it was not for three days; it was the famous, or I would say infamous, thirty day march through Germany? I had been through a lot in a short time and suffered much, but I think this was the worst of all. Perhaps it was because I had taken so much my body and soul were almost at the breaking point and I didn't know how much longer I could hold out..."
"April 12, 1945, the American prisoners of war in our quarters were instructed to form a straight line in front of our building. A German officer addressed us, saying, "I have sad news for you. We learned today that your President died this morning, and we are going to let you stand at attention and salute for one minute to pay your final respects to him." Considering everything, I thought this was rather a decent thing for him to do."
Little did we know when we went to bed one night in the middle of April that this was to be our last night as prisoners of war. In the morning when I awakened there was a lot of excitement and the G.I.'s all around were yelling, "Here come the boys in a jeep!” I didn't believe it until I saw just one jeep coming up the road with two G.I.'s in it. When they drove up to where we were we pulled them out of the Jeep and hugged them with joy. They gave us cigarettes and chocolate and told us it was all over; we were to relax for a few days, stay where we were, and they would be back to see that we had a decent place to be quartered for the time being. Before the Jeep took off they rounded up the German guards to confiscate their arms and munitions, but they had no trouble doing this as the Germans had already piled them in the middle of the floor of their quarters. We were told to guard them, but the truth was that they too were glad it was over and did not want to run anywhere.
Holtzmiller, J. Don Cpl. 589 A, POW Stalags XIII-C, XIII-D, VII-A 106thdivision.proboards.com/post/5001/thread
POW Journey: I remember, what I believe was on the 23rd of December, we were locked in boxcars in the railroad yards at Bonn, Germany. All afternoon the B-I 7s flew overhead. Fortunately for us they were bombing Cologne instead of Bonn. That Christmas Eve was pretty bad. I was locked in a boxcar, was very cold, and had eaten nothing in the prior 48 hours. On the morning of the 25th we arrived at Limburg, Germany. We were unloaded and marched to the gates of the prison camp, but were turned away as bombs had been dropped the night before and many of the facilities had been destroyed. I found out later that Lieutenant O’Toole from my battery had been killed in the bombing of the Limburg POW camp. We were marched back to the Limburg station area and had to wait till night to be reloaded aboard the boxcars. The trains ran only at night to avoid the fighter bombers who flew around Germany in daylight looking for trains to destroy.
Some time during the night we arrived at the town of Hammelburg, Germany. We detrained and marched up a big hill to German Prison Camp XIII C. Thus, on December 26, 1944 my 128 days of incarceration in a German prison camp began. Prison Camp XIII C at Hammelburg was the camp portrayed on the television show “Hogans Heros”. We were put in wooden barracks which housed about 80 men. We were given a small piece of German black bread and a tin bowl filled with a hot liquid which tasted somewhat like tea. I drank the tea, but the bread tasted so bad that I couldn’t eat it and I gave it away. In a couple of days this bread started to taste like cake! ...
From Hammelburg he arrived in Nurnburg (XIIID) on April 1 & was there until the 4th. After a 2-week walk, his trek ended at Mosburg VIIA. This was his point of liberation. In his words: "At last, on April 29th, we awoke to guns firing around the camp. There was a pretty good fire fight going on and bullets were flying overhead,. The prisoners stayed close to the ground while the battle was in progress. Then, about ten o’clock a.m., an American tank broke down the front gate of the camp and we were liberated." This was followed by a wait for transport. "The next ten days were spent waiting for transport back to an area under American control."
MAP of GERMAN POW CAMPS: 106thdivision.proboards.com/post/4961/thread
FINDING a POW's WORK CAMP: jrwentz attached two helpful posts near the bottom of the following thread: 106thdivision.proboards.com/post/4942/thread
Stalag XIII-C Hammelburg en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalag_XIII-C
According to Wikipedia: "In World War II the German Army used parts of camp Hammelburg for Stalag XIII-C, a camp for other ranks and NCOs. Oflag XIII-B was located close by. As was usual for Stalags, many of the prisoners were located in Arbeitslager on farms or adjacent to factories or other industrial operations. The camp served as the base for distribution of International Red Cross packages and mail. A Lazarett (hospital) cared for prisoners that were sick or had been injured in industrial accidents or air-raids. A number of enlisted men and NCOs were housed in the adjacent Oflag to provide necessary services...
January 1945 - American soldiers arrived from the Battle of the Bulge.
March 1945 - many prisoners arrived in deplorable condition after marching 500 miles from Stalag VIII-D in severe winter conditions
6 April 1945 - camp is liberated by Combat Command B of the U.S. 14th Armored Division"
MAP of GERMAN POW Camps: 106thdivision.proboards.com/post/4961/thread
106th connection
List of 423 Infantry Regiment POW's: www.indianamilitary.org/106ID/Rosters/REFERENCES/64%20-%20423rd%20roster/64.htm
Sidebar List of POW Camps & some names of POW's there www.indianamilitary.org/German%20PW%20Camps/SoThinkMenu/GermanPW-START.htm
Sidebar List of Diaries, Obits, & Articles, etc. alphabetically on the Indiana Military Site: www.indianamilitary.org/106ID/SoThinkMenu/106thSTART.htm
Campagna, Nicholas (Nick) 589tth Field Artillery Battalion- A, POW XIII-C brief write-up and link to 2003 video interview: 106thdivision.proboards.com/post/5025/thread
Devine, William, 423 SV Co. Supply Clerk, POW XIII-C, stone quarry work camp, farm labor near Bastheim, thirty-day march www.indianamilitary.org/German%20PW%20Camps/Prisoner%20of%20War/PW%20Camps/Stalag%20XIII-C%20Hammelburg/WilliamDevine/WilliamDevine.htm
Devine a detailed account from from being drafted through stateside time and into the ETO. Details of capture and time at this encampment are included.
Devine tells of marching eastward for what sounds like at least two weeks before being loaded in box cars. After several days travel by rail, he noted: "They marched us up a steep hill that was more like a mountain to a prison camp, and after all we went 'through to get there the camp commander refused to take us because they had been bombed the night before and some prisoners were lost. The dysentery was getting to more of us all the time and I can tell you we were a very sick bunch of men. If you were not ill yourself you felt sick looking at the poor devils that were. There was no way of cleaning ourselves, so down the mountain we went again to be put in the same filthy box cars, this time even sicker and dirtier. The next day we thought we would be taken into another prison camp but it was for officers only, so on we went again.
The following day we arrived at Hammelburg, and were again marched a good distance to a prison camp. This was called Stalag XIII-C. Here we were accepted and sent to barracks. We were called down to the mess hall and told to bring our canteen cups with us. They fed us bread and sauerkraut soup, which nearly killed me. I couldn't sleep with the excruciating pain and nausea. I made my way through the snow to the latrine where I fell over with the-pain. No one was there to help me so I crawled to the nearest barracks and hollered for help, and finally a guard came along and half carried me to the next barracks where a Russian doctor and an American medic, both prisoners, were running a little sick bay for the prisoners. I thank God for these wonderful men because they saved my life..."
"After a couple of weeks in Stalag 13C we were split up and sent to different parts of Germany. (Along with 9 others) I was sent to a stone quarry not too far from the prison. We left by train in the morning and arrived at night in a little railroad station deep in the mountains...Two soldiers came sliding down the mountain on snowshoes to take us up to the quarry. By the time we reached the top of the mountain I was on the verge of collapse, but they put us immediately into a house that was like a palace compared to what we had been in before. Each room was equipped with four bunks and a belly stove. It was very comfortable, but we had to be careful using the coal as we were allotted only one pail a day."
"We left from the same station where we had arrived about three weeks previously, and were given a bag of food to eat on the train as we would be traveling most of the day. We traveled in circles, probably for security reasons, so we rode about sixty miles, and very slowly at that, in order to cover thirty miles. Finally we stopped at a town about five miles outside of Bastheim, a farmers' dorf, and they walked us the rest of the way to Bastheim. The Allied Air Force must have been here before us because there were quite a few craters on both sides of the road and also a few big bombs that were duds. It was a cold clear day In February or March, probably the latter, because the fields were starting to come alive with crops." Here POWS were lined up and chosen by individual farmers to work on their land. Time spent here lasted months.
Then: "At three in the morning our guards, who had been with us from the start, awakened us and told us to get dressed. We were to go to our farmers and get enough food supplies for about three days." When I knocked on the door Elsie let me in and cried when I told her I was leaving. She fixed a good supply of wurst, hardboiled eggs and bread... I noticed that all the command cars had left the yard, which indicated that the military was moving also, and the Allies must be very close. We started to march, but it was not for three days; it was the famous, or I would say infamous, thirty day march through Germany? I had been through a lot in a short time and suffered much, but I think this was the worst of all. Perhaps it was because I had taken so much my body and soul were almost at the breaking point and I didn't know how much longer I could hold out..."
"April 12, 1945, the American prisoners of war in our quarters were instructed to form a straight line in front of our building. A German officer addressed us, saying, "I have sad news for you. We learned today that your President died this morning, and we are going to let you stand at attention and salute for one minute to pay your final respects to him." Considering everything, I thought this was rather a decent thing for him to do."
Little did we know when we went to bed one night in the middle of April that this was to be our last night as prisoners of war. In the morning when I awakened there was a lot of excitement and the G.I.'s all around were yelling, "Here come the boys in a jeep!” I didn't believe it until I saw just one jeep coming up the road with two G.I.'s in it. When they drove up to where we were we pulled them out of the Jeep and hugged them with joy. They gave us cigarettes and chocolate and told us it was all over; we were to relax for a few days, stay where we were, and they would be back to see that we had a decent place to be quartered for the time being. Before the Jeep took off they rounded up the German guards to confiscate their arms and munitions, but they had no trouble doing this as the Germans had already piled them in the middle of the floor of their quarters. We were told to guard them, but the truth was that they too were glad it was over and did not want to run anywhere.
Holtzmiller, J. Don Cpl. 589 A, POW Stalags XIII-C, XIII-D, VII-A 106thdivision.proboards.com/post/5001/thread
POW Journey: I remember, what I believe was on the 23rd of December, we were locked in boxcars in the railroad yards at Bonn, Germany. All afternoon the B-I 7s flew overhead. Fortunately for us they were bombing Cologne instead of Bonn. That Christmas Eve was pretty bad. I was locked in a boxcar, was very cold, and had eaten nothing in the prior 48 hours. On the morning of the 25th we arrived at Limburg, Germany. We were unloaded and marched to the gates of the prison camp, but were turned away as bombs had been dropped the night before and many of the facilities had been destroyed. I found out later that Lieutenant O’Toole from my battery had been killed in the bombing of the Limburg POW camp. We were marched back to the Limburg station area and had to wait till night to be reloaded aboard the boxcars. The trains ran only at night to avoid the fighter bombers who flew around Germany in daylight looking for trains to destroy.
Some time during the night we arrived at the town of Hammelburg, Germany. We detrained and marched up a big hill to German Prison Camp XIII C. Thus, on December 26, 1944 my 128 days of incarceration in a German prison camp began. Prison Camp XIII C at Hammelburg was the camp portrayed on the television show “Hogans Heros”. We were put in wooden barracks which housed about 80 men. We were given a small piece of German black bread and a tin bowl filled with a hot liquid which tasted somewhat like tea. I drank the tea, but the bread tasted so bad that I couldn’t eat it and I gave it away. In a couple of days this bread started to taste like cake! ...
From Hammelburg he arrived in Nurnburg (XIIID) on April 1 & was there until the 4th. After a 2-week walk, his trek ended at Mosburg VIIA. This was his point of liberation. In his words: "At last, on April 29th, we awoke to guns firing around the camp. There was a pretty good fire fight going on and bullets were flying overhead,. The prisoners stayed close to the ground while the battle was in progress. Then, about ten o’clock a.m., an American tank broke down the front gate of the camp and we were liberated." This was followed by a wait for transport. "The next ten days were spent waiting for transport back to an area under American control."