REMEMBRANCE DAY...we shall remember them.

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Being managing editor at our hometown paper, we decided to do a five part series on local veterans in honor of Veteran's Day. I would like to share two of those with the Lounge. I will post the others when they publish next week. I found their stories remarkable, and I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I did meeting them.


SHARBROUGH SURVIVED MOTAR HIT WHILE SERVING IN THE KOREAN WAR

By JAMIE PATTERSON
Managing Editor

Overshadowed by World War II and Vietnam, the Korean War is often referred to as The Forgotten War.
But William C. “Red” Sharbrough will never forget his time in Korea. His walking brace and head full of memories remind him everyday.
Looking through a gift bag he received in honor of Veteran’s Day, Sharbrough admits the Korean War is often overlooked. That makes every gift, card and personal thanks all the more special to him.
“The card means the most,” he said, smiling as he put his gift bag away.
A Purple Heart recipient, Sharbrough was wounded during his short time in combat. He served in Korea for seven weeks, two days. But he has lived with the aftermath of war well after his wounds healed.
Sharbrough joined the National Guard in Yazoo City after graduating from high school. He had also served three years at Chamberlain Hunt Academy in Port Gibson.
“I learned everything I knew at knew at Chamberlain,” he said. “There was a hard Marine drill instructor there, but he probably saved my life. He taught us a lot.”
Serving with Company D of the National Guard, Sharbrough was at an Alabama camp when he heard North Korea invaded South Korea.
“We were then told we were basically going to be inducted into the Army,” he said. “By late December, we found out we were going to Fort Jackson in South Carolina.”
As part of the Dixie Division, Sharbrough said a group of draftees were sent to “feel them out.”
“We had to teach them what to do,” he laughed. “Some of those boys didn’t know how to hold a rifle. I remember most of them came from coal country in West Virginia.”
Sharbrough was able to return home for a period of time with his wife, Annie Lois, and their baby.
“They called me to come back in,” he said. “Two weeks later, I was with a draft of about five or six.”
Sharbrough arrived at a San Francisco Army base. It was there that he would head to the Pacific islands.
“I got on a ship for 11 or 12 days going to Japan,” he said. “I stayed in Japan for about three days before we went into Korea.”
Sharbrough entered the divided country one year after General Douglas McArthur’s arrival.
With a 40-foot tide, Sharbrough remembers the intense journey from the ship to the shore.
“We got off the ship and onshore, and then the ship got out of there,” he said. “With 40 feet of water going up and down, in a 12-hour period, that’s a lot of water.”
Sharbrough arrived at the Kimpo Air Force base when he ran into a familiar face. Amidst the hustle and bustle, it was good to see someone from home.
“I ran into Otis Wilkinson,” Sharbrough smiled. “He was telling everyone where we were going.”
Passing the 38th parallel, or the dividing line for Korea, Sharbrough began moving in and around Old Baldy, which was a prominent hill that earned its nickname after artillery and mortar fire destroyed the trees on its crest.
It was there that he ran into another familiar face, one that showed the signs of battle.
“While moving from one position to another, I came across Breezy Baker, a friend of mine from Greenwood who got us an apartment in South Carolina,” Sharbrough said.
The reunion was short, but it had the markings of war.
“He had been hit the night before,” Sharbrough said. “He wore glasses, and they were cracked. His nose was scraped clear across the front where shrapnel had hit him.”
Sharbrough moved out the next day with two platoons. It was a day that would scar him for the rest of his life.
“There was a small place that China had already come in and dug trenches around,” he said. “We got hit there that night. That’s when the mortar hit me.”
Sharbrough takes a quick glance down at his leg.
“I left the next morning, and it took me two days to get back to Seoul,” he said. “That was where I got my first medical attention besides first aid.”
It was a difficult and long journey for Sharbrough. Due to foggy conditions, helicopters were unable to land to transport the wounded.
“They hand carried me to the first aid station about two or three miles further back,” he said. “They cleaned me up and added more stints. Then I was put in a Jeep to get back to the railroad.”
Staying in Seoul for about five days, Sharbrough then flew back to Japan. It would be ten more days before he returned to the United States.
“I spent three years in a hospital,” he said. “They told me I could be home in six months, but they would have to take my leg off.”
Sharbrough is able to walk with the assistance of a brace. But he still has to cope with bone infections.
Looking over photographs of his time in Korea, there are several moments captured in time where Sharbrough is seen laughing with others. He said he wasn’t able to develop lasting friendships with many of the men.
“I was in the position where I couldn’t make a lot of friendships,” he said. “I had to tell people what to do. Sometimes it was things people didn’t want to do. But I got along with everyone.”
Sharbrough remembers a time when his men were able to share a laugh at his expense. It was well needed at the time with him replacing a sergeant after many in the platoon had been killed.
“We had come to some rice paddies with little levees and water down in them,” he said, already smiling. “I was trying to be sure everybody was doing what they were supposed to do when I slipped. I was told everything went under water except my rifle. It took me a while to live that down.”
Sharbrough was 21 years old at the time of his service in Korea.
“They called me an old man,” he laughed. “I had one man with me who was just 16 years old.”
Even at a young age, Sharbrough knew he wanted to enlist in the military. But his time in the Korean War shaped him for the rest of his life.
He shares his memories with both laughter and moments of pauses. But there is a bond there that he shares with other veterans, crossing every generation gap.
“It’s different for different veterans,” he said. Combat veterans are a lot different from people who never got in combat through no fault of their own. There are different feelings.”
Sharbrough remembers a connection he felt with the uncle of a neighbor, who served as a combat marine during World War II in the Pacific.
“My friend never entered combat because he was with intelligence,” he said. “But his uncle and I could look across the table at each other when everyone was telling war stories. We just knew.”
Sharbrough said he shares that bond with most veterans.
“It doesn’t make much difference what war you were in,” he said. “In any of them, you can get killed or wounded. They always ask you if you were scared. Of course we were. Anybody who said they wasn’t scared was lying or sick in the head.”
Sharbrough said he got his head straight and had his mind made up during his time in combat. And that’s how he survived.
“You just had to make up your mind,” he said. “You might get killed. But if you were to stop and constantly think about it, it would drive you crazy. I just made up my mind.”

 

[Cricket]

http://i1212.photobucket.com/albums/cc443/poekemp/th_1116burnett.jpgBURNETT KEPT COMMUNICATION FLOWING ALONG LEDO ROAD

By JASON PATTERSON
Editor & Publisher

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about 17-year-old Marshall Burnett’s decision to sign up for World War II is that it didn’t seem remarkable at all to him at the time.
“Every boy in my class enlisted, and the only one who didn’t serve wasn’t eligible because he had a heart defect,” Burnett recalled. “We didn’t think it was unusual. Everybody who could joined because we were at war, and we didn’t know then if we were going to win. Those were dark days. Everyone was afraid.”
But Burnett also remembers it as a time of tremendous patriotism and unity.
“You’d go to the movies and everyone would sing God Bless America,” Burnett said. “They’d put the words up on the screen. They don’t do that anymore. I don’t think our country has ever been more united.”
So on June 14, 1943 Burnett joined the U.S. Army.
“I went enthusiastically,” he said. “It was something that I was reluctant to do at all.”
Burnett began training at Camp Shelby and then headed to Fort Benning, Ga. for infantry training. During basic training Burnett was the only soldier in his group selected to serve in the Signal Corps, the group responsible for maintaining all army communications.
“We learned telephone construction, how to string wires on poles and all things related to communication,” Burnett said. “Then we learned about cable splicing.”
Burnett and his fellow soldiers took a train ride across the country to ship out.
“I remember as we were arriving to leave for the war, there was another group of soldiers coming home,” Burnett said. “One of them leaned out the window and shouted, ‘Ya’ll are going to regret it.’”
The next month was spent at sea as they headed for Melbourne, Australia.
“It took 31 days, and we didn’t see land until we got there,” Burnett said. “One funny thing I remember was that the captain announced that we were crossing the equator and a bunch of guys who were even dumber than me ran to the edge of the ship to see the equator.”
Burnett was in Australia when he heard the news that President Franklin D. Roosevelt had died.
“I almost fell down when I heard the news,” he recalled. “He had been our president for as long as most of us could remember.”
Soon Burnett was headed north to India, where he served in the China-Burma-India Theater. He was among the soldiers tasked with maintaining communication along the Ledo Road, a winding mountain road that was built so the Allies could supply the Chinese as an alternative to the Burma Road which had been cut by the Japanese in 1942.
“Our job was to maintain telephone communication along that roadway,” Burnett said. “Monsoons would come and wash out the roads, and everything would have to be fixed.”
Experiencing foreign lands was exciting, but Burnett said he longed for home.
“I was the son of a Methodist minister, and I had been just as sheltered as any other kid over there,” he said. “I was as homesick as I could be, but all of the other guys I was with felt the same way. We just did what we had to do to make it through. We had to do our duty.”
And their duty was no small task. Starting in April 1943, Signal Corps soldiers built the trans-Himalayan telephone line – some 1,800 miles long – linking Calcutta, India, with Kunming, China. It was completed in 1945 and required ongoing maintenance.
In February of 1946 Burnett got a letter saying his mother was seriously ill.
“The next thing I knew I was on a plane back home to see her,” he said. “She only lived 10 more days after I got home, but at least I got to see her.”
Burnett completed his service and went on to earn a degree in chemistry from Millsaps College. He began his career with the State Board of Health before joining Mississippi Chemical Corporation in 1951 while the plant was still under construction. After a couple of years Burnett said he found the work unsatisfying.
“I felt like I was just punching a clock, and one day someone else would come along and punch it and it would be like I had never been there,” he said.
Burnett then started feeling called to follow in his father’s footsteps as a minister.
“There was no audible voice or visionary experience,” he said. “It just seemed like all of the other doors were closing while the door to the ministry was wide open. Once I started really investigating it, I found it more satisfying than anything else I know of. When I made the decision I said, ‘You’ve got to help me Lord, because I don’t know what I’m doing.”
Burnett went on to study at Duke and began his career as a Methodist preacher. From 1959-63 he served at Benton Methodist Church. He retired in 1992 in Flora. He and his wife Lynn raised four children.
Looking on his days in the service Burnett says he believes it is important to remember those days, especially those who lost their lives fighting for their country. Burnett lost many friends in the war.
And while many would consider Burnett to be an example of what makes America great, he is quick to downplay his own contributions.
“I did nothing spectacular,” he said. “I did what we came to do, and I came back home.”

 

[Story]

CHÂTEAU-THIERRY, France — The remains of some of the last American doughboys of World War I to be identified were found just a few years ago, buried in a vegetable garden in this little town, wine bottles clasped in their crossed arms. They had died of their wounds in a field hospital set up in an adjoining farmhouse.

The museum, with workers racing to finish in time for President Nicolas Sarkozy of France and the public, cost 28 million euros ($38 million), divided between state and regional authorities.
Because dog tags rusted so quickly, soldiers created their own unofficial method for future identification: They wrote a note identifying the dead, with the date and manner of death, and two comrades of higher rank signed it as witnesses. They then stuck the note in an empty bottle, corked it and buried it in the arms of the corpse, said David Atkinson, superintendent of the sweeping Aisne-Marne American Cemetery, at the foot of the hill where the Battle of Belleau Wood was fought, a site sacred to the Marine Corps.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/11/w...-world-war-i-resonate-anew.html?_r=1&src=recg

 

[amador]

I am so sorry that I did not find this Thread until today. I started 11-11-11 at 11:11 by calling Jimmy. He had just returned from Iraq from his second tour. I told him that on this interesting confluence of numbers I was calling to honor his service with my personal thanks. I spent the rest of the day going around town to the stores and shops and every time I identified a veteran, I expressed my sentiments. One fellow told me that he had been to a funeral at 1100hr, a fellow vet.
My father was a proud veteran, he became a US citizen while serving in England, just before D-day. As an illegal alien he had joined up and was given the opportunity to become a citizen. He always felt that one should validate their citizenship with service.
Someone said once "They also serve who stand and wait". My sincere gratitude to all, the fallen and the ones waiting for their turn.

 

[Cricket]

Although the day has passed, I would like to post the other stories that we ran in my newspaper, similar to my earlier posts. These three stories were reamarkable to write, and I felt honored to have sat down with two of these men who shared their stories. I hope you enjoy them.

Three posts will follow to break up the stories.

 

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KELLY AND THE MULESKINNERS KEPT THE FRONT LINES SUPPLIED

By JAMIE PATTERSON
Managing Editor

As gunshots and mortar surrounded many soldiers during combat, sometimes the most welcoming sight was a tall man on the back of a mule.
Carrying everything from C-rations to ammunition, groups of mules were used to bring material to many soldiers on the front lines.
As odd as it may seem, mule skinners were a vital part of World War II in certain theaters. And at six feet tall, Harold Kelly was the perfect man to do it.
“Yeah, I was a mule skinner,” Kelly said, with a slight grin. “You had to be six feet tall or better to do it because you had to load so many things on the mule.”
Kelly, 88, recalls the time he spent in the service as a mule skinner. There were times when it was a slower pace, distributing food and other essentials to soliders. But then there were times he was right in the middle of combat, handing over ammunition and other weapons on the front line.
It all began for Kelly when he graduated from high school.
“After high school, you really didn’t have a choice with the compulsory draft,” Kelly said. “When I reached 18 years old, I registered into the draft.”
In August of 1942, Kelly made the decision that would later change his life. He joined the Army Reserves.
Eight months later, Kelly would be called into World War II.
Kelly took his six weeks of basic training in Arkansas. Then he spent two weeks in Texas.
And then Kelly headed overseas. He had never left the country before, and he was unsure of what sights and conditions he would run into with his new travels.
“I had never been outside the country,” he said. “It was a whole new experience for me.”
Traveling on Liberty Ship from New Jersey, it took 28 days for Kelly to reach Africa. But it wasn’t exactly a peaceful cruise.
“We had to put up with air raids and submarines,” he said. “There were 125 ships in a convoy, and five of those ships were in the middle with troops.”
Kelly, 19 years old at the time, spent some time in Africa with the 5th Army Detachment.
“I didn’t see any action there, but the detachment was composed of animal packers, or mule skinners,” Kelly said.
With narrow mountain paths, mules were the only way to transport many goods, weapons and ammunition to soldiers.
“We had C-rations packed on those mules,” Kelly said. “You started on the mountains because it was the only way to go through the trails. There wasn’t room for Jeeps. Our mules were the only way to get food to those who were fighting.”
Aside from food, Kelly would load mortar shells, .30-caliber machine guns and ammunition onto his mule.
“Half of our group were mountain climbers who would also observe posts of the enemy,” he said.
Leaving Africa, Kelly then headed to southern Italy. It was there that he would have his first experience with the Gurka Indians.
The Gurka Indians were from Nepal and fought with a kukri, a forward-curving Nepalese knife. Beginning in World War I, the Gurkas served in the British Army. By World War II, the group served in almost all theaters.
“They were night fighters, and they fought mostly with knifes,” Kelly recalls. “It was a gruesome experience.”
Kelly recalls his and a few other men would ask the Gurkas to show them their impressive knifes. Many would refuse.
“Then there was an English captain who made them show him his knife,” he said. “They did. But before they put the knife back into its slip, they would slice their own finger. It was their religion. If they every drew the knife, they had to draw blood.”
Kelly said he stayed with the Indians for about 45 days, but their fighting skills remain with him to this day.
“I would say they were among the best soldiers I have ever been around,” he said. “I have to admit, they were better than some GIs. They were bad is all I can say.”
Italian mules had smaller feet and were able to move through the rock paths in the mountains.
“There were 24 people in my squad,” Kelly said. “We were divided into four groups, with six men and six mules in each group.”
Kelly also began to see his share of combat.
“We were packing things to the front line,” he said. “Mortar fire and artillery fire were our biggest enemies. We would run into two or three ambushes, but we always tried to avoid mortar and artillery fire.”
Kelly was never hit directly during this combative time. But he did spend some time in a field hospital from ear complications as a result of shell fire.
“You almost got to the point where you thought, ‘whatever is to be will be,’” Kelly said.
Once leaving the mountains, Kelly disbanded his mules because they were then able to work with Jeeps.
Kelly said his time as a mule skinner is probably unheard of in today’s battles.
“Times have changed,” Kelly said. “With all the technology today, it had changed the method of fighting. What would a mule range do doing today? Today they would use a helicopter to get supplies and such down.”
Times may be different. The weapons may have changed. And the method of war could be completely different.
But Kelly said the heart, courage and drive of a soldier is something that time will never touch.
“That remains the same,” he said. “You still have those 18 and 19 year olds who are volunteering to fight without being drafted. That is something to say about a person who would die while defending democracy.”

 

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WHEN ONE DOOR CLOSED, LUBY FOUND ANOTHER WAY TO SERVE

By JAMIE PATTERSON
Managing Editor

His dream was to join the Marines and do his part overseas in battle like so many of his childhood friends.
Eagerly volunteering at 18 years old, the young country boy was anxious to see where the Marines would take him life.
But one word from a doctor sent all those dreams crashing to the crowd.
That was when Tom Luby knew he would do what he could for his country on the home front at Camp Shelby.
“I was determined to join the services with my buddy W.A. Davis,” Luby said. “We left one night to go in together.”
But Luby began to get nervous and sweat when five medical employees began gathering around him at the testing facility.
With glasses already on, Luby was concerned they wouldn’t accept him.
“They called in five doctors to look at my eyes,” he said, looking down. “I interrupted them and asked, ‘that’s not gonna keep me from getting into the Marines, is it?’
One of the doctor broke the news to Luby that because of his vision impairment, he couldn’t fulfill his dream. He would not become a Marine.
“My heart sank to my stomach,” Luby said. “My heart and soul was in it to become a Marine. All I could do was sit there and wipe the tears out from my eyes.”
Disappointed, Luby wouldn’t return to Yazoo with the rest of his friends. He couldn’t break the news to his family and community.
Luby would stay at Camp Shelby for basic training with the Army. If he couldn’t serve as a Marine overseas, he would what was asked of him at home.
“I had the ability to do a whole lot of drill commands,” he said. “One of the commanding officers overheard me drilling a battalion.”
The commanding officer liked what he heard coming from Luby. When a group was being assembled to ship to Alabama, the officer remembered that.
“They were asking him to pick someone to stay there and work at Camp Shelby,” Luby said. “He said, ‘I want Luby.’”
There were five companies at Camp Shelby, and Luby was in Camp #2.
“There were a lot of Yazoo boys in that company,” he smiled.
At 18 years old, Luby was the youngest in his company. And he was well aware of his commanders.
“Sgt. O.W. Pittman was over me,” he said. “He was 300 pounds, played football at Mississippi State. He had a bit of that unknown tongue.”
Camp Shelby was new a surrounding for Luby. He was a country boy who hadn’t done much traveling in his life. He was meeting new faces, going new places and curious about everything.
“That was the first time I had ever been south of Jackson,” he said. “I had never been there before. It was new territory. It was the first time I had ever really been away from home.”
It would have been easy for Luby to forget everything he was taught at home, in rural Yazoo County.
“When a country boy like me left home for the first time, involved in a totally new world, you had two choices,” he said. “You could go wild, let your hair down and do things you had never done before. Or you could closer to the Lord. I did that.”
With uncertainity of what the war would hold, Luby found comfort in devotionals and faith. The entire world was being turned upside down by the war, and there was patriotism lined with fear at every corner.
Luby recalled many soldiers from the North Caroline and Tennessee area who let the sudden freedom get to them. Fueled with hidden moonshine and a love for shooting craps, Luby kept his distance.
Luby had a purpose. If he couldn’t serve his country as a Marine overseas, he would serve at home.
Luby assisted with training new soldiers. They were taught the basics– using, cleaning and firing guns.
“I would like to think that things we taught those boys early in their lives as members of the armed services may have saved their lives,” he said.
Aside from operating as a mail clerk, Luby’s responsibility involved mapping the locations and actions of both the Allied and Axis forces at the camp.
Huge maps would be posted in a hallway. Different colored pins would represent the Allied and Axis forces.
“We kept it updated so that anyone who walked in the hall would know where the enemy stood, whether we advances or retreated,” he said. “It hurt me when I would have to pull out our pins and move them back.”
When he wasn’t helping with training or maps, Luby was back in the mail room. Sorting through thousands of letters, he kept the news circulating.
“It was not as nearly tough as dodging bullets,” he said. “But it was what I did.”
But Luby always dreamed about Yazoo. He was very homesick and waited for any opportunity to get a pass home.
Many soldiers wouldn’t wait. Luby recalls a time near Christmas when there were about 300 men reported absent without leave.
The first time Luby received a pass home, his parents sent him $5 for a bus ticket back to Yazoo.
“I celebrated and bought me an RC,” he smiled. “But when I went to put my money back in pocket, I must have dropped it. I couldn’t find it.”
Luby’s parents wired him some more money. And after a series of bus mishaps and hitchhiking, he finally made it home.
While at home, he even got to visit with Doris, his future wife.
But a few days later, he was back on his way to Camp Shelby.
“I’ll never forget it,” he said. “We were leaving to head back to the bus station when little 5 year old Bud Dixon came walking down the road with his Daddy. He wanted to see Tom Luby before he headed back to the Army.”
Uncertainity was still in the air for Luby. Thinking the war would be over in a few months, he put off marrying Doris until the end of the war. Three months passed, and the end looked nowhere in sight.
Sending his class ring until he would afford a proper engagement ring, Doris accepted his proposal.
As the years passed, things began to take shape for Luby. He and his new wife Doris hopped from rental place to rental place, all while serving in the forces. He purchased his first vehicle. And when he was discharged, he found his way home to Yazoo.
Luby, now 86, still has regret in his voice when looking back at the day he was told he couldn’t be a Marine. But he is as patriotic as they come.
“Veterans are responsible for us being able to enjoy the freedoms we have today,” he said. I am very patriotic for that.”

 

[Cricket]

SHOT DOWN OVER THE SEA, RODGERS SPENT NEARLY TWO YEARS AS A POW

*note: this veteran was like so many who inspired the 1953 Williams Holden film, Stalag 17

By JASON PATTERSON
Editor & Publisher

Even as a young man Lamar Rodgers wasn’t the kind of guy who liked sitting around waiting.
So when the Navy took too long responding to his application, the 19-year-old went ahead and signed up for the U.S. Army Air Corps.
Soon Rodgers was serving as a top turret gunner on a B-52 bomber based in North Africa.
“My duty was to protect us from enemy aircraft,” Rodgers said. “I remember the first time I saw flak and how scary it was when I realized what that smoke was right outside my window.
It was dangerous work, but Rodgers found it exciting.
“To be honest I liked it,” Rodgers said. “Of course it was scary. Anyone who says they weren’t scared wasn’t there, but I enjoyed the thrill.”
Rodgers and his crew flew 35 successful missions before they were shot down over the Mediterranean Sea.
“We didn’t have time to get scared,” Rodgers said. “We got hit, and all of a sudden I started seeing black smoke everywhere and the airplane started shaking terribly. The pilot and co-pilot saved our lives because they fought that plane all the way to the water.”
They hit the water at 2:13 p.m. Rodgers knows the exact time because his watch stopped.
Several P-38 fighters flew overhead protecting the men from Germans. One of the American pilots, Robert H. “Bobby” Smidt stayed for over four hours and circled the life raft until he was nearly out of fuel. Smidt dropped his canteen to the men below before flying away, never to be heard from again.
Rodgers and his fellow crew members were stranded in the sea until 11:30 the next morning.
“We finally decided to send out an SOS, and the Germans were on us within 30 minutes,” Rodgers said.
From there they were taken to a German prison camp, and all of the crew except for the officers ended up in the infamous Stalag 17-B.
Stalag 17-B was a series of long single story buildings divided into halves that shared up to 240 men. Rodgers and his fellow prisoners slept on straw-filled, flea-ridden mattresses.
“The barracks were separated by a washroom that only had cold water,” Rodgers said. “We only got hot water when we were deloused. My bunkmate got scabies because we were always filthy dirty and I was hoping to get it too because he was getting hot showers every day.”
The biggest challenge was fending off starvation. Rodgers weighed over 170 pounds when he was captured and was down to 114 when it was all over.
“My friend Ed Youngers was bigger than me going in, and he only weighed 88 pounds when it was all over,” Rodgers said. “He wouldn’t eat the worms.”
The prisoners were primarily fed a dehydrated cabbage soup. They sometimes received small bread rations.
“It was very worm-infested,” Rodgers said. “You would look at it at first and refuse, but after three or four days with nothing you’d eat anything.”
The Americans often stole whatever scraps they could find.
“The Germans ate potatoes, and we would steal the peels from the garbage and make soup,” Rodgers said. “It kept us alive.”
Some events were so terrible that Rodgers can still remember the date they happened all these years later.
“On December 3, 1943 it was snowing everywhere,” he said. “A couple of guys tried to escape and one of them was shot and killed instantly. While they were shooting at the other guy one of the guards just turned around and shot into the barracks, killing a man who was in his bunk. You never knew what they were going to do.”
One sadistic habit of the guards was unleashing vicious dogs on the prisoners.
“They really seemed to enjoy turning the dogs loose on us,” Rodgers said. “The did it every couple of months or so. To this day I still don’t like German Shepherds or Doberman Pinschers because that’s the kind of dogs they used.”
But throughout the ordeal Rodgers and most of his fellow prisoners kept their spirits up and did what they could to make life difficult for their captors.
“We harassed them more than they harassed us,” Rodgers said. “Most of the Germans had served in war just like us. Generally speaking they were good, but every once in awhile one would want to show his authority. We harassed them the most.”
Rodgers said men would play pranks like sneaking to the end of the line to be counted again during head counts.
“One guy picked lice off of people and put them in a jar,” Rodgers said. “He would bump into the guards and dump the lice in their pockets without them knowing.”
The Americans even managed to hide a couple of shortwave radios. One was in a toilet and the other was tucked into a wall.
“It wasn’t allowed, but we got away with it,” Rodgers said. “The Germans could never find our radios, but they came to us for news because we were listening to BBC radio news.”
Hiding things from their captors became a way of life.
“We had people who could do everything,” Rodgers said. “We had a guy who could pick locks, just about anything you can think of. There was a guy from New Jersey we called ‘the ferret’ who was always crawling underneath the barracks.”
On April 8, 1945 the Russians were drawing near and Stalag 17-B was evacuated. Rodgers and all of the prisoners who were healthy enough to walk were forced to hike 288 miles in 18 days.
“The Germans couldn’t stand it, but we were ready to go,” Rodgers said.
Along the way the men got a firsthand glimpse of the horrors of the Holocaust.
“We met a group of Jewish people being led by Germans, and they walked right through the middle of us,” Rodgers said. “One of them fell down, and instead of shooting him the guard just went over and killed him with his rifle butt. There are things like that I don’t even like to remember.”
Eventually they arrived in a wooded area near the Austrian town of Hitler’s birth.
“The Germans turned us loose and said, ‘Fend for yourselves,’” Rodgers said. “We immediately started making everything we could. We peeled the bark off of nearly every tree in that forest.”
Rodgers and his fellow POWs were liberated on May 3, 1945. He married Robbie Bishop in 1946. They had three children, Robbie Ann, Phillip Lamar and Karen Denise.
He re-enlisted in 1947 and served until he retired in 1964. Rodgers then worked for International Harvester for 17 years before retiring for good.
“It took me about 15 minutes to get used to retiring, and 10 of that was driving home,” he said.
Robbie Rodgers died in 1995. Lamar married Clara Mauk in 2000, and they remain a happy couple today.