POW's meals

[connie]

This is the toughest to ask... and maybe the memories are so bad that remembering is not something anyone wants to do. But, a high percentage of the division did not get to experience whatever passed for normal living beyond sometime in late December. For these, the experience differed, too. There was the journey... maybe there was finally a camp... or several camps in succession. Food was short. Even when the attempt was to be humane, there wasn't much to eat. Some got red cross packages occasionally. I believe some never saw these. I don't know if any packages from home came through. One man who spent most of his time as a POW walking talked of digging potatoes out of the storage hills and eating them raw. I don't want to ask anyone to write about something that is too difficult to write about. But, I don't want to ignore the experience of so many...

[bigjohn]

As we know, none of the men who were held as POW's got enough to eat.
Dad often mentioned that food, when provided, consisted of dark or black bread, watery soup (probably cabbage soup) and ersatz coffee which consisted of ground up nuts mixed with something like sawdust. Very rarely they might see some cheese or a little butter but he stressed that this was extremely rare. Apparently by this time the Germans had enough trouble feeding their own soldiers.
He did mention sometimes getting Red Cross packages which had the standard POW issue in them but often these were gone thru by the guards before being distributed to the men. If I recall, these packages had coffee, chocolate, cigarettes, chewing gum, toilet paper and some other items in them.