POW camps in American, insider story

[Zinmar]

One of the gentlemen I delivered heating oil to was a seabee. He was stationed to Pearl Harbor one before the attack. The stories he told me about what happened just before the attack, and our island hopping across the Pacific were just incredible!!! I have been talking to him and he has given me the ok to record our conversations. Now I am not a writer but I am sure that there are some guys out there that can do that.

[mookiemookie]

Originally Posted by Zinmar

I have been talking to him and he has given me the ok to record our conversations. Now I am not a writer but I am sure that there are some guys out there that can do that.

That's one of the best things you can do.

There's this bar I go to for happy hour with my buddies sometimes, and there was this little old man named Jack who would come in every afternoon, have a couple gin and tonics and leave, like clockwork. I got talking to him one day and we got on the topic of war. I asked if he served in WW2. He said he was stationed on an escort carrier in the Pacific and was a pilot. I bought him a drink and he told me about flying patrols. I asked him if he saw any action and he told me that he shot down a couple Zeros. I asked if they were really as fast as their reputation makes them out to be and he told me they were, but its like they were made of paper...a few well placed shots and they went down. I made sure to thank him for what he did for us, and in typical vet fashion he told me "Oh hell, that was 60 years ago." and I said "Yes, but think about how things would be if you DIDN'T go and do what you did 60 years ago."

He told me a story about a young Mormon kid from Utah, only 17 or 18 years old. He went up for his first patrol and when he returned to the ship, the deck crew was helping him out of his plane and Jack said his eyes were as big as saucers and he had messed his flight suit. The deck crew asked him what the hell happened up there, and the kid said "I...I saw my first Zero!" They asked if he got him, and the kid told them he did, and they all laughed and told him good job and sent him to go get himself cleaned up. It was a great story, the way Jack told it.

Sadly, that was the last time I ever talked to Jack. I didn't see him for a couple weeks, and I asked the bar owner (who I'm friends with) where he was. She told me he passed away a few days before. So I raised my glass to him. Here's to you Jack!

[Lannes]

Hi all...Long time member and lurker...well, unlurking from GWX long enough to relate the following-

I interviewed my uncle about 15 years ago. I've got about 3 hours of him on tape. I set out to "interview" him, but ended up probably only asking about 4 or 5 questions in the 3 hours over several glasses of sweet tea.

He was a member of the 101st Airborne. Dropped in Normandy, Holland, fought at Bastonge, etc...If you've seen Band of Brothers, you've pretty much seen alot of his story. A few interesting tidbits from that afternoon-

He said the worst thing he ever smelled was the uniforms that were impregnated with an anti-chemical gas substance. Said it stunk so bad once you had sweated in them that no one could stand wearing them and they were soon thrown away.

On the way over to England, his ship conducted constant anti-submarine drills and at one point he heard the escorts in the distance depth charging something...

As he told it, he left the plane on D-Day as a Sergeant and landed as a Platoon Sergeant, which he was until V-E Day.

German prisoners my uncle came in contact with were incredibly disciplined and well behaved. In fact, he said they were better disciplined and mannered than his own troops.

He said that, to this day, if he had to go on a drug raid or get invloved with any other type of shooting, he would stand by his .45 Thompson submachinegun over any modern weapon. He said the Thompson was just unbelievably devastating at short range.

He said the saddest thing he saw in the entire war was a group of children playing and one of them accidently set off a live round, killing them all. He said you could have put what was left in a bushel basket.

He had a girlfriend in Germany during the occupation that he keeps in contact with even now...and I'm the only family member that knows that...Not even my aunt...

In the end, he had earned a Silver Star and 2 Bronze Stars, one for Valor and was on a ship bound for the Pacific to jump on Japan with the 11th Airborne. He said they announced V-J day and turned the ship around for San Francisco...

[nedwreck]

I got this story from the late,great William Ward EaselyII who was a Navy pilot in WWII.
We had a POW camp in Clinton, MS not far from here. The prisoners helped build the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Waterways Experiment Station. Basically, a giant scale model of the Mississippi River and its tributaries. It was built to experiment with ways to control flooding on the Mississippi. You can still go look at it, it's very impressive.
A POW was trying very hard not to get noticed taking pictures of it with a homebuilt camera. (How he planned to get them back to Germany is anyones guess)
He was spotted by one of the engineers who told him he could take all the pictures he wanted because it wasn't a secret project. He stopped taking them after that.

Bob