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Attached is another for your reading..
and you might want to pass it on to your POW/MIA section...
I have the original article by Dr. Caplan and his testimony
before the War Crimes commission.
In February of 1995, I posted Capt. Caplan's story and testimony
of this forced march to the conferences.
Now Air Force magazine has finally written an article about it.
It is of interest to me as the 5 surviving gunner of my B-17 crew
came through this ordeal. Two of those five survive today.
Our march from Stalag Luft III was much shorter and the march from
Nuremberg was not in winter.
Jim Beatty and I departed the march as it left Nuremberg.
We were in Paris at the end of hostilities.
Jim Sanders
Lest We forget
- By John L. Frisbee
During the winter of 1944-45, 6,000 Air Force noncoms took part
in an event of mass heroism that has been neglected by history.
Most Americans know in at least a general way about the Bataan
Death March that took place in the Philippines during April 1942.
Few have even heard of an equally grim march of Allied POWs in
northern Germany during the winter of 1945, the most severe winter
Europe had suffered in many years. The march started at Stalag Luft
IV in German Pomerania (now part of Poland), a POW camp for US and
British air-crew men, most of them captured aerial gunners.
A prelude to that tragedy took place earlier and set the tone
for what was to follow. In mid-July 1944, about 2,500 POWs from a
camp near Memel, Lithuania, were jammed into the holds of two
dilapidated coastal coal tramp steamers and spent five days en route
to the German port of Swinemunde, thence by cattle car to a rail
station near Stalag Luft IV.
The POWs' shoes were taken from them, they were chained in pairs
-- many of them ill and wounded--then double-timed three kilometers
through a cordon of guards who used bayonets, rifle butts, and dogs
to keep them moving. Some were seriously injured. (German doctors
later testified that the injured suffered only from sunburn.) They
had neither food nor water for five days. The next day they were
given water and driven through a gauntlet of armed guards and guard
dogs, then strip-searched and had most of their clothing and
possessions taken from them.
Early in 1945, as the Soviet forces continued to advance after
their breakout at Leningrad, the Germans decided to evacuate
Stalag Luft IV.
Some 3,000 of the POWs who were not physically able to walk were
sent by train to Stalag Luft I, a camp farther west. On Feb. 6, with
little notice, more than 6,000 US and British airmen began a forced
march to the west in subzero weather for which they were not
adequately clothed or shod.
Conditions on the march were shocking. There was a total lack of
sanitary facilities. Coupled with that was a completely inadequate
diet of about 700 calories per day, contrasted to the 3,500 provided
by the US military services.
Red Cross food parcels added additional calories when and if the
Germans decided to distribute them. As a result of the unsanitary
conditions and a near starvation diet, disease became rampant--typhus
fever spread by body lice, dysentery that was suffered in some degree
by everyone, pneumonia, diphtheria, pellagra, and other diseases.
A major problem was frostbite that in many cases resulted in the
amputation of extremities. At night the men slept on frozen ground or,
where available, in barns or any other shelter that could be found.
The five Allied doctors on the march were provided almost no
medicines or help by the Germans. Those doctors, and a British chap-
lain, stood high in the ranks of the many heroes of the march. After
walking all day with frequent pauses to care for stragglers, they
spent the night caring for the ill, then marched again the next day.
When no medication was available, their encouragement and good humor
helped many a man who was on the verge of giving up.
Acts of heroism were virtually universal. The stronger helped
the weaker. Those fortunate enough to have a coat shared it with
others. Sometimes the Germans provided farm wagons for those unable
to walk. There seldom were horses available, so teams of POWs pulled
the wagons through the snow. Captain (Dr.) Caplan, in his testimony
to the War Crimes Commission, described it as "a domain of heroes."
The range of talents and experience among the men was almost
unlimited. Those with medical experience helped the doctors. Others
proved to be talented traders, swapping the contents of Red Cross
parcels with local civilians for eggs and other food. The price for
being caught at this was instant death on both sides of the deal. A
few less "Nazified" guards could be bribed with cigarettes to round up
small amounts of local food.
In a few instances, when Allied air attacks killed a cow or horse
in the fields, the animal was butchered expertly to supplement the
meager rations. In every way possible, the men took care of each
other in an almost universal display of compassion. Accounts of
personal heroism are legion.
Because of war damage, the inadequacy of the roads, and the flow
of battle, not all the POWs followed the same route west. It became
a meandering passage over the northern part of Germany. As winter
drew to a close, suffering from the cold abated. When the sound of
Allied artillery grew closer, the German guards were less harsh in
their treatment of POWs.
The march finally came to an end when the main element of the
column encountered Allied forces east of Hamburg on May 2, 1945.
They had covered more than 600 miles
in 87 never-to-be-forgotten days.
Of those who started on the march, about
1,500 perished from disease, starvation,
or at the hands of German guards while
attempting to escape.
In terms of percentage of mortality, it came very
close to the Bataan Death March. The heroism of these men stands as
a legacy to Air Force crewmen and deserves to be recognized.
In 1992, the American survivors of the march funded and dedicated
a memorial at the former site of Stalag Luft IV in Poland, the
starting place of a march that is an important part of Air Force
history.
It should be widely recognized
and its many heroes honored
for their valor.
Thanks to George W. Guderley, a survivor of the march.
AIR FORCE Magazine / September 1997
Jim Sanders
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