Paratrooper ~ Vol.VI
MY WORLD WAR II STORY
April 15, 1942 ~ December 14, 1946
© 1997 by Edward M. Isbell
507th Parachute Infantry Regiment
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Chapter 8
Up until this time we had only worked between Schwarzenberg and Johanngiogenstadt. It was about the first of March and we were still waiting for our troops to show up. The real war was catching up with us again.
This section of Germany began to see war from another aspect. Cities, factories, and railroad stations nearby were being bombed and strafed. The German civilians were running out of food, fuel, and I guess most everything else that was needed to survive. Also, we had not had any Red Cross parcels in weeks and our supplies of food were gone, except for a few potatoes and some wormy meat hanging in the pantry. The worms just added flavor to the soup.
Swickau is located about 35 miles northwest of Schwarzenberg. There was a large railroad exchange there. It had been bombed several times. Thousands of slave laborers were being used to fill bomb craters and fix tracks. The Germans gave us an engine with two boxcars, one for our tools and one for us to ride in. The top of the cars were marked POW with large white letters. We needed this protection daily because our fighters were working overtime knocking out freight trains.
Most of our time would be spent working at the Swickau station until the war ended. The slave laborers were kept at a distance from the POWs and could not mingle at any time. We were not pushed around and beaten as they were. Our hours were long and hard, but being out working gave us a chance to get a few things we needed.
Each of us would try to bring back a piece of coal from our coal car or something else to burn in the stove. We also rounded up a little food by putting our lives on the line. Several times we got shot at while throwing potatoes or turnips off a slow-moving freight.
William Horton and I would take turns. While one of us was on the freight throwing the food off, the other would be gathering it up as fast as he could before someone else got it. It wasn't our guards who shot at us, but the ones who were guarding the other prisoners. I don't know if they were trying to hit us or were just bad shots. The best time to look for food was during air raids while the guards took cover in bomb craters or shelters.
Horton was a good friend during those trying days. He came from Spartanburg SC. Not long after Vernon Dalton ~ (a very close friend for many years) ~ and I got out of the service, we went to visit Horton while we were visiting Vernon's parents in Cowpens, SC. Horton didn't seem to be getting along so good. It wasn't easy for any of us trying to get adjusted back to the real world. Horton and I talked about the tough times we had, and wondered how we came through it in one piece. That was the last time we saw or heard from each other.
Our job had been changed from shoveling snow to repairing bombed-out tracks and digging people out of rubble after a bombing. I will never forget a house that was located near the railroad yard that got a direct hit. There was a woman and her brother in a coal bin in the basement of their house. The bomb must have come down the chimney.
While we were digging, a young girl in her twenties came and waited until we found what was left of her mother and uncle. After we brought them out of the rubble she asked for her mother's wedding ring. The left arm was the only part remaining on her torso. A guard let me use his knife to remove the ring. The girl never showed any emotion.
That afternoon, even though she knew we were American POWs and that American planes did the bombing, she and some of her friends made and brought us a large pot of soup. They watched as we ate the soup. When she stood to leave, she thanked us with tears in her eyes. There was a lot of emotion shown as we thanked them for the soup that we needed so badly.
At times we were made to dig out unexploded bombs. That was a frightening job. The bomb was usually about four feet down, so we took turns digging down to uncover the nose to see if the safety pin was still attached. If it was not, it was considered a live bomb. Things like the change of temperature, vibration of any kind, or something wrong with the timing mechanism could cause it to explode.
When enough of the bomb was exposed, a crane could be attached for removal. The area around the bomb would be cleared of people except for one man in the hole. Sometime a railroad officer would come to check the work.
Once I was in the hole and had uncovered a small part of a large bomb when an officer jumped down beside me and struck the uncovered part with an iron bar. I didn't wait for him to strike it again. I jumped out and put as much distance between me and the bomb as I could.
He came over a few minutes later laughing because I had run. He was trying to tell me that I had uncovered a sewer pipe, not a bomb. He told the guards to have me go back and uncover more of it to make sure. I told the guard that POWs were not supposed to be doing this kind of work according to the Geneva Convention and I damn sure wasn't going back, because I knew it was a bomb.
They weren't interested in the Geneva Convention, but they did get some other prisoners to uncover it. It turned out to be a live one. A German demolition crew came to disarm it. Most of the unexploded bombs we dug up were safe because the safety pins were still attached.
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On Friday, April 13, 1945, we were working at Swickau when the air raid alarm sounded. We headed for old bomb craters for protection. They were large enough to bury a two-story house. It was only a matter of minutes after the alarm that fighter planes came swooping down to knock out the anti-aircraft guns.
I climbed to the edge of the crater, not only to see what was going on, but to get some fresh air. These craters were used as toilets by thousands.
It was unbelievable to watch those fly boys in action. No movie, no words, could explain the excitement and feelings watching them dive for the anti-aircraft guns. It looked as if they were going to hit the ground before pulling out of their dive. They were flying P-47s and P-51s. The P-38s were escorting the bombers that were on the way.
There was a small airstrip just across from us that had a few German fighters still on the ground. I saw one of our P-47s go through an empty hanger with his guns firing and the tail of his fighter dragging the ground. He made several passes before destroying the ME-109s and FW-ll0s that didn't get a chance to get in the air.
The Germans were short of pilots, not planes, during this time. It didn't take them long for our fighters to knock out all the anti-aircraft guns, making it safe for our bombers. One of our fighters was shot down in a dogfight and another one was hit by anti-aircraft fire ~ or didn't pull out in time. He exploded into the ground.
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We could hear the roar of the bombers coming. I don't remember how many or what kind of bombers they were. When they realized that all the anti-aircraft guns had been destroyed, they seemed to take their time and came down low, forming a circle. The lead plane dropped a smoke marker and on the next time around they unloaded their bombs.
I had already gone back down to the bottom of the crater when the first bombs hit. I was looking up when I saw box cars, parts of trains, tracks, dirt and all kinds of stuff flying through the air. As the dirt and debris started to fall, it got dark from the smoke and dust and it was hard to breathe. I had my head covered with my arms, praying all the time nothing heavy would fall on us.
There were others in the crater with me. Horton was in another one nearby. This all happened in a short time, but it seemed like hours before the debris stopped falling. We were completely covered with a thin layer of dirt, and choking on dust and smoke. It was good to get out of that stinking hole and know you were still alive. There were some train wheels at the edge of our crater. We were lucky they didn't roll down on us.
I found Horton and we started out to see what we could find before they rounded us up. We hoped to find some food in all those damaged boxcars. We found a refrigerated car that had some meat in it, but there were two cars nearby loaded with explosives that were on fire.
I didn't like the looks of it and didn't want to take the chance, but Horton wanted to get some meat. It turned out that all the meat was in large parts and we didn't have anything to cut it with, so we ended up with nothing.
The all-clear alarm sounded and we started back. Again luck was with us. We had only gone about 200 yards when the ammo cars blew up. Shrapnel was flying all around the place. Getting around all the fires and debris was almost impossible.
Pops was looking for us by the time Horton and I got back. Pops and I got along well. He never gave me a hard time. At times he would give me his rifle to hold when using the crater to relieve himself. I told him if he ever fired his rifle it would blow up in his face. It was hard to see through the barrel ~ it was so dirty. He only grinned. If an SS trooper had seen me with his rifle they would have shot us both on the spot.
Pops had two sons in labor camps and a daughter at home. She came to the station in Schwarzenberg to see her father at times and always smiled and waved to us.
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Our engine and car weren't damaged during the bombing. We had left them on the east side of the station that morning and most of the bombs hit in the center or west side. We thought the main line back to Schwarzenberg was still intact.
As we loaded up to leave they hooked a freight train to our engine. Horton and I were riding on top of a large toolbox at one end of the car, eating a rutabaga. We had gone about 10 miles when, all of a sudden, streaks of fire and wood were flying all around in the car.
We knew immediately what was happening ~ something all of us were expecting. Even the POW markings on the top of our car didn't stop our fighters from coming after the freight train that was hooked to our engine.
The noise from the planes and their 50 and 20mm guns was terrifying as they made their passes. The engine was knocked out on the first pass and the engineer and fireman were killed. The guards were the first off the moving train, followed closely by the rest of us. Fortunately for us, the train had just cleared a bridge that crossed over a river or creek.
We were lucky, or the pilots were the best, because the coal car was all that was between us and our engine. All we got was a few rounds through the top of our car. The fighters must have used their bombs earlier, because they didn't drop any on us, thank God! Friday the 13th had been lucky for us so far.
Just after we jumped from the still-moving train, the planes made another pass but didn't fire their guns. We realized later that they had seen the POW sign on our car and were giving us time to get clear.
Before the attack, the train was approaching a small station at Hortenstine, about 15 miles from Schwarzenberg. During the attack, the station master had been hit and his arm was almost shot off at the elbow. He lived on a hill just above the station. That is where we all headed when we jumped off the train.
Horton and some of the others were in front of me going up the hill. When they got to a fence they opened the gate and Horton turned around as if in slow motion, and closed it. He later denied that, but a man can do some funny things when he's under that kind of stress. When I got to the gate, I couldn't open it.
I was climbing the fence when I looked up to see two planes coming out of the sun with their guns going full blast. Most of the bullets were hitting the train and station, but it looked as if they were aiming at me sitting on top of the fence. I jumped down and made it to the house and got in the barn with some of the others.
The barn was attached to the house and had thick stone walls. I was looking at my left leg, as it had started hurting. I'm not sure when I got hit, but somewhere between the train and house, I was hit by a piece of shrapnel.
A boy about 12 years old came into the stall and sat down beside me. He was the grandson of the station manager. He didn't seemed to be frightened by what was going on. His grandmother and some other people were in the kitchen trying to do something for his grandad's wounded arm.
The boy asked me if we were Americans, and began trying to tell me that the United States' Fuehrer was kapute (dead or finished). He kept on saying, "Like Hitler." I then realized he was trying to tell me about President Roosevelt dying the day before, April 12, 1945.
About this time his grandmother came in carrying a gun that looked like a cannon. She put it to my head, telling me to get out of her house. She had just realized that the planes were American and we were American POWs. I didn't move.
The boy said something to his mother and they motioned for me to follow them into the kitchen. One of our guards was trying to stop the bleeding of her husband's arm. They thought I might be of some help. Someone had put a tourniquet on.
There wasn't anything I could do. His arm was just about off and he had lost a lot of blood. They had someone coming to take him to a doctor. I told them to release the tourniquet every few minutes for a few seconds, but no longer as he needed what blood he had.
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The planes had gone, and the Germans rounded us up to help get another engine hooked up to pull what was left of the train to a side track. We uncoupled the burning cars and left them. They were hoping to move the ones that were burning off the main line with another engine as soon as it was safe.
They thought our fighters had gotten low on gas and had gone. However, they ~ or two other P-47s ~ showed up, knocked out the other two engines, and set more of the boxcars on fire before leaving. The Germans didn't know that the main line had already been bombed that afternoon and was blocked in many places between Swickau and Prague.
There were only about 20 men in our group. The others were in Schwarzenberg working. As we started our long walk to Schwarzenberg, I looked back at the still-burning train. There were three dead engines, all the cars were riddled and most on fire. I don't know what was in the boxcars. I guess it was stuff going to the Russian front. They didn't appear to be carrying explosives.
The walk took most of the night. The next morning we heard that all the stations from Swickau to Prague were hit that day.
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We didn't get much rest before they had us back at work repairing tracks and cleaning up around the Schwarzenberg station. We were happy that no one was injured at the station during the bombing. This was their first taste of real war, and we weren't sure how the civilians would react towards us.
We felt that our guards would try to protect us from the civilians if the occasion arose, but they were old men and wouldn't be of much help. This is something we lived with day by day, never knowing what to expect from one minute to the next.
The only good thing we could hope for would be for the war to end.
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Chapter 9
April 15, 1945, Easter Sunday, found us back at Swickau working with thousands of slave laborers. It was horrible how they treated the prisoners from the concentration and political camps. Old women, men, and children were made to carry heavy rails and cross-ties. They were so weak it was all they could do to stand.
Some of their guards were women dressed in riding trousers and high boots. They carried swagger sticks with thongs of leather attached for beating the prisoners.
There was one old lady who made me think of my mother. She was being beaten by one of the women guards because she was unable to work hard. It made tears come to my eyes for not being able to do something to help her.
There were some SS troops around to keep things moving. We were working long hours on very little food. We received one piece of bread with butter and something they called tea for breakfast. We carried some soup that was mostly water for lunch. At night we got soup, potatoes, bread, and sometimes, a small amount of something sweet. We only had the food the Germans gave us or that we were lucky enough to find on the job.
The last Red Cross parcel we received was just after Christmas. With the railroads and highways in such bad shape, nothing was coming in for us or the civilians. There was a time we could get a few things to eat on the job, but with so many starving people around, the chance of finding anything was very slim.
One day we tried a strike ~ no food, no work. This lasted just long enough for a railroad man to round up some SS troops. It only took a few minutes for them to get us moving. There was a large pile of rails nearby and they made us move them back and forth while they enjoyed beating us with rifle butts and anything else they had in their hands.
If you were knocked down or fell, they would kick you until you either got up or passed out. We should have known that they wouldn't let us get away with that in front of all of those other prisoners. We got a little taste of what being a slave was like.
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A few days after the last bombing of Zwickau we were cleaning the area around the station. We found a young girl in a field. We recognized her as a brakeman on a freight train. Each freight train had a brakeman ~ or brakewoman ~ riding the last car. She only had a small hole in the back of her head, although the concussion and fall would have been enough to kill her.
The bomb must have hit her train, and the explosion threw her several hundred yards. She was a small blonde, very pretty, and she never failed to wave at us as she passed through Schwarzenberg. It saddened us for this to have happened.
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German evacuees were beginning to crowd the stations in the area between the American and Russian lines. The box cars sitting on the side tracks were filled with women, children and a few old men. Most of the people came from the east trying to escape the Russians. They had nowhere to go.
I don't know what they were eating to keep alive. In fact, they had nothing but the clothes on their backs. The officials wouldn't let them have fires in the yard and I don't know what they would have used for fuel if they had. Some died and were buried in wooden boxes in temporary graves.
We were lucky to have a few potatoes and bread. The bread was mostly sawdust, but filling. Even though most of these people were Germans, it got to me ~ hearing babies crying for something to eat and being so cold. It was cold even though it was the middle of April. They had no privacy. It was hard to move about in the railroad yard because of the human waste.
I stopped taking notes long before this period. There were many things that happened during the 11 months that I didn't want to remember, much of which happened during the last weeks of the war.
All of us were skin and bones. I was down to about 97 pounds. It was getting hard for me to climb to the top bunk. By the time we walked to the station, we couldn't do much work. The guards didn't push us any more, but there were some railroad men that were still dedicated to their job and some were just mean as hell.
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We were getting weaker by the day, and it kept us wondering if we would live to see the war end. A notice was posted on our door by the SS (Storm Troopers) that all political prisoners and POWs were to be exterminated before being liberated. The notice was taken down after a few days. It would have made a good souvenir, but at the time I wasn't thinking of souvenirs.
The stress of trying to stay alive was getting to us after months of not knowing if we would get killed by our Allies or the Germans ~ to say nothing about starving or freezing to death.
The German people were hostile toward us, which was to be expected. After all, the Allied forces had beaten them down to their knees, had obliterated most of their country, killed or wounded over three million of their young men and killed hundreds of thousands of civilians.
I could understand their wanting to take their feelings out on their enemies. The Russians were treated much like the Jews by the Germans. They were used as slaves, and killed or starved to death for no reason.
What I will never understand is how Hitler was able to indoctrinate so many people with such deep dedication and hatred that they would kill their own mothers if ordered to do so. The mistreatment and slaughter of so many innocent people during the war bothered me more than anything else. It was such a waste and so unnecessary.
It will soon be 50 years ~ and we have been in several wars since then. Our government calls them "conflicts." It seems that man will never learn how to live together without fighting.
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During the last week of April, our forces got within 12 miles of us and stopped. The Russians turned toward Berlin on the east side of us.
The only thing that was coming into Schwarzenberg were refugees trying to get away from the Russians. Everything had come to a complete stop. All the railroads were knocked out and nothing could get in or out. At times we could hear firing from a distance that must have been coming from American patrols. We were hoping they would soon locate us.
It was getting to the place that something had to be done. We told our commander that if he would let two men go to contact our troops we would make sure that nothing happened to him or the guards when our troops arrived.
He said the civilians were in a bad mood and it would be safer for us to stay put. The guards wanted to go home, but they were staying to protect us from the civilians until our troops arrived.
During the first week of May, the ones of us who could walk had to work a few hours each day. One morning as we were going down to the station, we noticed a big change in the people. Pops told us that Hitler was dead and everyone was happy and relieved that the war would soon be over.
Most of the German people we saw were shaking hands instead of saluting "Heil Hitler". They blamed Hitler and the Nazis for the condition their country was in. We even had some to tell us they were sorry about President Roosevelt's death.
Of course it would have been a different story if they had won the war. We hadn't forgotten how they changed during December when the Germans made the big push in Belgium and thought they were going to make a comeback and win the war after all.
It started to snow about midday on May 5th. We had removed a portion of track east of Schwarzenberg when the commanding officer came and told the guards to take us back to our quarters. The three railroad men put up a fuss. They told him that they had to replace the track because a train was due to come through in a few hours.
Our commander told them that no train was going to get through the Russian lines ~ and to go home ~ that the war was about over. We knew something important had happened. At first we thought our troops were on the move again, but that wasn't the case. The commander told us our POW days would soon be over and they were going to hold us until our troops liberated us, unless the Russians got there first.
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On May 8th (VE Day), not knowing that the war was over, the German commander received news that the Russians were getting close and decided to let two men and a guard leave to contact our troops.
It's amazing that the guards didn't leave us, knowing how afraid they were of the Russians.
Later that day, our two men and the guard returned with an American artillery unit driving two 6x6 army trucks and a jeep. All three vehicles had 50-caliber machine guns mounted on them.
We were all trying to look out the windows when we heard them coming. I can't begin to tell you the feeling we had! Could it really be true? Could the life of hell be over? I'm sure everyone was thinking about the same thing, food, food and more food. I don't think there was a man with dry eyes.
I went to the door that entered our quarters and the German commander went to the head of the stairs. An American lieutenant came running up, followed by two of his men. The German commander saluted the lieutenant, then placed his hands on top of his head.
I stepped up and told the lieutenant that I was Sergeant Isbell and was the highest-ranking in the group. We didn't have to tell him how happy we were to see them.
He and his men stood and stared at us with disbelief. We didn't realize at the time how we looked to others. Our clothes were dirty and in rags ~ wooden shoes ~ we needed haircuts, had not shaved in months and weighed about 95 pounds each. I guess it was enough to shake your soul.
He had the guards lined up against the wall to be searched. By the way he was acting, I was beginning to think he was going to shoot them. He wanted to know if any of these guard had mistreated us.
I told him that the Germans who had given us a hard time were long gone, and we had told our guards that if they would stay to protect us from the civilians, we would promise that no harm would come to them from our troops.
He asked me how many men were in our group and how many would not be able to travel. I told him there were 46, but a few would need hospitalization and wouldn't be able to ride in trucks. He said he would leave two of his men there and send transportation back for the ones who were sick.
The lieutenant told us they had received news that the war had ended that morning, and the guards were free to go. They didn't leave as we expected, but stayed around to eat K rations with us and to see us off.
We had known for weeks that the war was coming to an end, but we couldn't believe it had happened. I don't remember any of us jumping for joy as you would expect. Everyone seemed to be in shock or stunned by the news. It was hard to realize we didn't have a gun at our backs any more.
The lieutenant had some of the men gather the weapons and told us to load up.
Smudin told the lieutenant about some more American POWs in Czechoslovakia, but no one knew just where or how far they were from Schwarzenberg. The German commander and guards didn't know any more than we did.
The lieutenant asked me how we found out about them. I told him that during the cold weather we would write messages in the frost on box cars ~ things like Merry Xmas, or names. Most of the time it was hard to make out what had been written, but we knew they couldn't be far from us. We felt they were on a working kommando from the same Stalag IV-F where we were.
The German commander said most of the farms had POWs working on them. The lieutenant told Smudin to get in the jeep and they would see if they could find where the camp was located. There were three men in the jeep, the lieutenant, the driver and Smudin.
Smudin tossed me his bag, which contained a few things he wanted to keep, and asked me to hold on to it until they got back. I didn't see him until 50 years later.
We climbed on the trucks, and as we pulled away, the guards waved goodbye. It was a happy, but also an emotional time for us. It seemed so unreal (like a dream). One day you were killing each other and the next day shaking hands and saying goodbye as if we had been dear friends instead of deadly enemies.
I'm not sure how Smudin and I missed each other later, but we did. He had not returned by the time we had to move out.
A few weeks ago Smudin left a message on our answering machine. I called him, and sure enough, it was my POW buddy. It was hard for us to believe after looking for each other 50 years, that here we were talking to each other and hoping to get together sometime in the near future.
George Smudin and his wife, Francis, came down from New Jersey to spend a few days with us. They were here on the 8th day of May 1995, 50 years to the day that we last saw each other.
We had so many questions. Did he and the lieutenant find the other American POWs? Yes, they found them being held by the Russians, and that group knew where other Americans were being held. The lieutenant made arrangements to have them brought back to our lines.
Then I asked Smudin if he got his bag. He said he didn't. There was not much of value in it then, but I felt that anything would mean a lot to him now. I wished that I had kept it so I could have given it to him 50 years later.
I got rid of most of my POW things. I did save my paratrooper jump jacket and a wool sweater the British gave me at Stalag IV-B. I'm not sure why I kept them, but they are very valuable to me now. I have received several letters from collectors wanting to buy jackets like mine. They have offered as much as $500 for them.
Smudin and I talked and talked. He remembered a lot of things that I had forgotten, and I remembered things he had forgotten. Actually, there were a lot of things that were not clear in our minds ~ probably just as well.
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