Magdeburg - A Fatal Mission
Continued from last issue

A continuation from the last issue of the Bulletin of the Edward Stoy story of his traumatic bail out where only three survived. The following is his story of his subsequent POW experience.    Editor

We were each given a thick piece of black bread with some kind of jelly on it. I took one bite and had to put it on the windowsill. I could not eat it because it tasted like sawdust. The next morning I scraped the ants off of it and ate it. The taste was a lot better from then on.
We were taken by truck to the railroad station in Frankfurt, Germany and given a small parcel from the red cross. It contained a lot of the daily necessary items we needed. I was given an English jacket to replace the clothes that were torn up by the bombs and also a pair of pants. The crowd at the railroad station was very mad and I was glad to get on the train not knowing what they would do. We were taken to Stettin, Germany where our first prison camp was located. It was called Stalag Luft 4D not too far from Berlin.

It consisted of four compounds surrounded by one half mile of bare ground. Each compound was surrounded by a double fence about ten foot high and filled in between with barbed wire. About ten foot inside of this fence was another fence about two foot high which you were not allowed to step over or get shot from the guard towers. There were about ten barracks to each compound which held about 250 men each. Later small huts were built between the barracks to hold more prisoners. When we marched thru the gates we were greeted by the prisoners with the standard greeting (you’ll be sorry). As time went by our room had 28 men and some had to sleep on the floor which I think was probably better than the bunks. Each bunk had 5 three inch boards to hold the mattress which was filled with straw. As you were sleeping the straw would go down between the slats and your circulation in arms or legs would be cut off. The food situation was very bad. The days started with a cup of hot water or if you were lucky enough to have some instant coffee. Lunch was usually a cup of barley or what we called grass soup. Sometimes it had small beetles or bugs in it. Supper was one boiled potato with no salt or butter for it. One loaf of bread to a room which was sliced down the middle and cut into twenty pieces. One for each man. Two decks of cards were used. One card dealt to each piece of bread and the other to each man. No arguments about who got the biggest piece.

Once in a while the red cross would send in parcels of food or clothes which were raffled off with the cards. I received a warm coat in the middle of January. The food parcels contained spam, coffee, jelly, chocolate, and cigarettes. Two men to a parcel. If you did not smoke you could trade the cigarettes for food from the other prisoners. We were always hungry and could think of nothing but food. Mail call was once a day. A radio was constructed by some of the men and kept us informed of the war progress as it happened. One man was stationed at the barracks door while they went from room to room with the news. The doors were locked every night and the guard dogs were turned loose in the compound.

Every couple of weeks or so the prisoners were awakened and made to stand outside in the cold and be counted. At the same time they searched the barracks for food cans and weapons and anything else they wanted. I spent time sketching the compound. One of my sketches was taken. The other I still have. I volunteered to drive a truck in the compound but I could only stand it for two days. I did not know what kind of truck it was at the time. It was called a honey dipper, a tank truck with a 20 foot long hose on it. The hose was 5 inches in diameter and was used to suction out the latrines in the camp and drain it out in the fields for the farmers to fertilize their fields. A cemetery was located outside of the camp for the prisoners but I do not know how many men died or were killed in the camp.

Christmas time was a sad time thinking of my wife, mother and food. I think it was mid January when the Russian army was getting closer on the eastern front and the camp had to be evacuated. The sick and handicapped were taken out first to an officers POW camp in Barth Germany. Officers and enlisted men camps were separated. The rest of us were marched to the railroad yards and saw our home for the next 8 days. It was a French made boxcar. It was called a forty and eight. meaning forty men or eight horses. They forced us in until it would hold no more men and then locked the door. You either had to stand up or sit down with your knees pulled up to your chin, it was so crowded. We were given one half of a food parcel to each man for the trip. For bathroom use a five gallon bucket would be passed around for anyone who needed it. The bucket would only be emptied when the door was opened. No urine was allowed in the bucket to keep it from filling up too fast. You were supposed to urinate through cracks in the boxcar sides. That bucket always seemed to end up between my legs in the morning when I woke up.

We were locked in this boxcar for 8 days with one break outside to relieve ourselves for about twenty minutes. With nothing to show that this was a POW train we were always afraid that the train would be attacked by American fighter planes but it did not happen. We were each given a large piece of cheese. I took one bite and had to spit it out. It was contaminated with ammonia, possibly a bombed out ware house.

We arrived in the town of Nurenburg, Germany, the same town which would later be the site of the war crimes trials. This was a double town. Old and new Nurenburg connected by a railroad which was used by the British as a bombing run at night. Every night was very nerve racking. You could hear the big bombs as they were falling through the air. There was no real target just the two towns. The camp was only known as 13D and was a concentration camp. The bunks ran the length of the barracks and were about four bunks high. You had to climb up the front and enter from the end. I tried the bottom bunk but the bugs were so bad I used an upper bunk. The barracks was full of jumping fleas and other bugs and were in my clothes which I never got rid of. The bathroom facility was a large pit dug into the ground. It had a board running the length of the pit supported by posts. You had to sit on this board and hope you did not fall in. Everyone was very careful. The only good thing about this prison was that it had a shower room which I used for the first time.

The nights were very bad with all of the bombing going on. At the middle of January the American forces were getting close and we were put on a forced march to Mooseburg, Germany, just north of Munich. There were about ten thousand of us on this march. It was cold and raining most of the time. We had to sleep on the ground next to the road. The column was strafed by a P47 American fighter plane who mistook us for German troops. I have no idea how many soldiers were hit.

While in the Nurenburg prison I had received a parcel from my wife containing four cartons of cigarettes. Two or three days into the march we passed through a town and stopped for the night about a half mile away. I had met a buddy in the first prison camp and we were inseparable. That night we escaped into the woods and made our way back into the town trying to find food in exchange for my cigarettes.

No one was in sight and it was very quiet as we walked down a street. A hissing sound was heard and we saw two ladies in a doorway motioning us to come in. We went in and through signs and motions they were trying to tell us that their son was a prisoner of the Americans and they wanted to know how their son was being treated by the Americans. We reassured them. They gave us two eggs and we walked out the front door right into two Gestapo soldiers with guns on us. They walked us back to the rest of the prisoners and there was a big argument between the Gestapo and the men in charge of the POWs.

Sometime in March we arrived at the Mooseburg prison camp. It was a camp of ten thousand and we increased it to twenty thousand. We had to sleep in a gravel pit and the stones would cause poor circulation in your arms or legs. I gave the guards at the Russian compound some cigarettes and they let us in to try to barter with the Russians for food. It did not work because they had no more food than we did.

A few days later we dug our way under the fence and went into the countryside and found a farm with French labor people working. They gave us a sack of potatoes which we carried back to the prison camp. We did not try to escape because we knew that the American forces were getting very close and it was only a question of time before we were freed by Patton’s army.

During our stay at this camp I got into the German Headquarters and removed my pictures from their files. Later I gave one to my mother which I never saw again. I kept the other one and to this day after fifty three years I still have it in my wallet.

Shortly after this Patton’s army came in shooting and took over the prison camp. They kept us locked in for two days and then took us by truck to an airfield in Reims, France where we were stripped, sprayed for bugs, showered and given new clothes. What a relief. We slept on the cement floor which did not bother us as we were used to it.

We were flown into camp Lucky Strike in Le Havre, France where we were fed by German prisoners and checked by army doctors. We had a rough eight day boat ride and landed in Boston. We were greeted by a small band and put on a train to Camp Atterbury, Indiana for assignment. I was given a two week stay in Miami Beach and then sent to Wright Patterson field to work in the experimental hanger. Six months later I was discharged from the Air Force. After the war we were awarded one dollar a day for each day of captivity.

Edward Stoy
Flight Engineer/Top Turret
571^st Bomb Squadron

Email: POW1825@aol.com