Our biggest problem was to eat more food and try to build up our strength for what lay ahead, while saving some food to take with us. On the evening of January 28 we were told to get ready to leave. We put on all the clothes we had and I put on the flannel pajamas over my underwear, not knowing that it would be two Months before I took them off again. We divided our remaining food as equally as possible and sat around waiting for the order to march At the last minute they gave each of us a full Red Cross parcel and we were sorry we had not eaten more during the last few days. Just after midnight, at approximately 12:30 am on January 29 we were ordered to leave. I put on my overcoat carried the heavy Royal Air Force blanket and suddenly realized what a heavy load I was carrying, the miserable conditions, and that it had only begun. Chapter 9 First March There were about lO,OOO British and American POW's who gradually left the compound. We formed a line down the road to the southwest through the pine forest, in the cold, as the snow fell gently. We looked back, Bruce and I, at our home for the past eight months. There was a red glow in the sky above our compound as someone, in a last act of defiance, had set fire to his barracks before leaving. This march was to last for six days and we were to walk sixty two miles. There was about four inches of snow on the ground. and during the first mile we began to realize that we were too weak to carry everything. I took the heaviest cans of food out of my coat and threw them in the snow. I kept the powdered milk as it was the lightest and most nourishing food. Soon the road was littered with food and extra clothing. We knew that we would need the food later, but it was a choice between that or falling behind and possibly losing our friends. About a mile down the road we could hear the Russian guns getting much louder (they were thirty miles away). Suddenly there were some rifle shots and we all scattered off the road, diving head first into the snowy brush. It turned out to be a false alarm so we stopped praying and got back onto the road. At daylight the wind began to blow and for the next two days we marched in a blizzard. We stopped at intervals for ten minute rest periods, dropped into the snow and just dreaded getting up again. We marched this way until noon the following day when we reached Freiwaldu, a distance of eighteen miles in eleven hours. We stopped at a farm house and the barn was full so Bruce and I laid down in the snow against the back of the barn out of the wind. During the afternoon we took turns going to the farmhouse to get warm. Bruce and I got into the kitchen and the farmer and his wife were there just looking bewildered. The German soldiers were noted for taking everything from the people in the countryside in the places they occupied and the Americans were just the opposite. After our time was up and we were warm, Bruce and