World War, 1939-1945 -- Personal narratives, American; World War, 1939-1945 -- Prisoners and prisons, German
Many of us tried to catch birds, mostly sparrows, which we intended
to eat if we could catch them. We put out a cardboard box with one
end propped up with a stick and attached was a string that led in
the window. We put bread crumbs under the box and took, turns
watching from the window. The birds were so fast that they always got
away before the box fell. We never got any but we never gave up
trying. Another way we passed the time was by laying on our bunks and
watching flies light on the ceiling. How do they get their feet on
the ceiling? Do they do a loop the loop, half roll or flip? We spent
hours arguing about this but we never solved the puzzle.
Another interesting story was about Paul Duncan, a guy in our room
who was from Kentucky, where he had been studying to become a
physical education teacher. He had been shot down over the
Mediterranean Sea and had floated for several days in his life raft
near the coast of Italy. When he got to camp with us he was very
skinny and shriveled up from being so long in the salt water. He and
another boy from the next room got some cement from the guards and a
metal pole and built weight lifting equipment. The weights on the
ends were tin cans filled with cement. They would exercise for hours
each day and it was amazing how he built up his body. He could squat
down with his hands an his hips and hop like a frog. The two of them
were a sight, hopping around the perimeter of the camp this way. By
late summer they could go 3/4 of a mile around the compound in that
position. He would do 100 pushups at a time and would lay on a bench
with his ankles tied to the end of the
bench raised up then touch his elbows to his knees. At one time he
did several hundred of those before we made him stop. He was the one
who wore just the loin cloth all summer and he would shave all the
hair off his legs and body so he could tan all over. He was not in
the cooking group that I was, but when I was sick and couldn't eat my
share I would give it to him as he was exercising and needed the
extra food.
Supplies were brought into camp by a big old wood burning truck. It
didn't go very fast and after unloading the two Germans would try to
get it going again. Several hundred of us would watch them and give
advice. The boiler was on one side of the truck and they had to keep
throwing wood in it to get a good fire going. When they finally got
it started we would all cheer add clap our hands as the truck slowly
chugged its way out of camp.
We had many styles of haircuts and some shaved their heads or wore a
Mohawk. A lot of the men grew mustaches and we even had a contest for
the longest one measured tip to tip, with a prize for the winner.
When the mustache got long enough they would melt the wax off waxed
paper from the Red Cross parcel and make the hair pointed or curled.
A man named Irons won the contest with a mustache nearly a foot wide.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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