Posted on 05/08/2005 6:19:52 PM PDT by SJackson
Sixty years ago today, the Nazis surrendered to the Allies, ending the war in Europe. Ecstatic celebrations erupted from Times Square in New York to Trafalgar Square in London. But no one was happier to know that V-E Day - Victory in Europe - had finally arrived than the 95,000 American troops who had been taken prisoner by Germans and liberated in the days and weeks leading up to May 8, 1945.
Among them are the men who make up the Brooklyn Key Chapter of the American Ex-Prisoners of War. Many are now grandfathers and even great-grandfathers who volunteer at their VA hospital in Bay Ridge.
But they also meet as a support network, to share the hellish experiences they were told would best be forgotten but would forever haunt them.
One ex-POW, Jerry Quinci, 92, vividly recalls the day he was liberated from a German POW camp three weeks before V-E Day.
"A tank smashed through the barbed wire fence," he said. "I looked up and the guard houses were vacant. Then I saw a big star on the tank and I knew it was one of ours."
For such ex-POWs, V-E Day remains a special day, a bittersweet reminder of a terrible time coming finally to an end.
These are the stories of some of New York's brave ex-POWs.
*** Harold Radish, 80, remembers the awful dread he felt while being surrounded by German troops for three days in February 1945.
The young man who hailed from Brownsville, Brooklyn, was especially fearful because he knew the Nazis were keen on singling out Jewish-American G.I.s like himself. So before surrendering, Radish and the other Jewish members of his division threw away their dog tags marked with a letter "H" - for Hebrew.
"The other guys who weren't Jewish threw theirs away in sympathy," he recalled.
Radish and the other soldiers were taken prisoner, marched to a train and shoved into boxcars where they spent a week before arriving at a POW camp. "It was cold," he said. "And guys were dying in the car."
At the camp, an SS interrogator asked him: "Radish. What kind of name is that?" Gripped with fear, he quickly came up with an answer: "It's English, like pepper," he lied.
In early April, Radish and the other prisoners began hearing on a contraband radio that the Germans were losing. The next morning British soldiers came to liberate them.
Radish, who now lives in Douglaston, Queens, returned to his native New York aboard the West Point and was awed by the sight of the Statue of Liberty on the horizon. The ship docked and Radish called home. "You're alive?!" his overjoyed mother cried on the other end of the line.
*** Everytime Sal Grasso looks at his feet - the left one missing three toes, the right one two - the 80-year-old from Bensonhurst is reminded of the agony he endured as a POW.
Grasso was with the Army's 106th Division and in the thick of the Battle of the Bulge when he was captured in December 1944. "We heard they weren't taking prisoners," Grasso remembered thinking.
He was packed into a freezing boxcar and when he stumbled out six days later, he took off his shoes and saw his feet were horribly swollen. "I busted the bubbles and all the water came out," he said. He spent most of his four months as a POW on his back, nearly starving and wondering whether he'd survive.
His family at home and his girlfriend got a telegram saying he had been killed. A funeral Mass was said for him at Our Lady of Loreto on Elizabeth St. in Little Italy.
On April 12, soldiers arrived at his camp. "We thought it was the Americans," he said. It was actually the Russians, and they set the POWs free.
He doesn't really remember V-E day per se, only that he was too sick to party. His day of celebration came a month later when he was brought to a New York hospital - and his family and girlfriend came.
"They just greeted and kissed and hugged me," he said, his eyes glistening.
*** Last week, Ralph Mottola took his wife, Paula, to lunch at a Red Lobster in Brooklyn to mark the 60th anniversary of his liberation on May 3, 1945.
"Four hundred sixty-eight days," Mottola, 82, of Sheepshead Bay will tell you, he spent as a POW, surviving on little more than watery potato peel soup and an occasional chocolate bar from the Red Cross.
After being captured on Jan. 22, 1944, he was marched by minefields, and moved through prison camps and work farms. "But we survived that," he said.
At 4:15 a.m. on May 3, Mottola and the other POWs who had spent the night in a barn were awakened by a door squeaking. "I saw the silhouette of an American soldier," he said, recognizing the shape of the helmet. "We're free!" he screamed.
Five days later, he and other soldiers heard V-E day had come. "We jumped up and down with elation," he said.
He remembers pulling up in a taxi at 37th St. in Brooklyn and his little niece excitedly yelling: "Uncle Ralph's home!"
He recalled a special moment. "One day it was raining cats and dogs," he said. "And I walked in the rain. You know why? Because I chose to. I was free to choose. I was elated."
bttt
While working on my dissertation, I interviewed over twenty veterans who were ex-POW's of the Germans (only two of the Japanese, since the relevant part of my topic didn't involve the Pacific). All were airmen. They told me that after the bail-out and surviving angry natives, the worse memories of their prisons was the soul-stultifying boredom and horrible, horrible food. Even today, they bless the Red Cross and all those women who stuffed canned goods and pulp magazines into those packages.
Bump.
***All were airmen. They told me that after the bail-out and surviving angry natives, the worse memories of their prisons was the soul-stultifying boredom and horrible, horrible food.***
My brother-in-law was in the Air Force, and was a prisoner in a German camp. Food? This should give you an idea of what it was like:
My parents were visiting my sister and brother-in-law after he returned. They knew he loved raspberries and they took him some luscious ones. After the berries were cleaned and sugared, they were left to soak a bit. When they went to eat them, they were covered with grubs, squirming all over them.
My brother-in-law said, "There's nothing wrong with that." And he spooned them over some ice cream and ate them. My mother said, "What could that poor young man have been eating in that prison camp that made him think grubs were delicious?"
On a lighter side,after the air men were released, they had to find their own way back to an American base. They took shelter in a barn one night and found a Mercedes and WITH GAS in it. They...er...um...commandeered it and drove to the base. My brother-in-law said that nothing he'd ever driven felt that good and one day he'd own his own Mercedes. It took a lot of years, but nobody ever enjoyed a car more than he did.
One of these guys told me a long story about the disassembly and stewing of an ox's head. You don't want to know the details.
He didn't talk much about his experience. Mom recently told me that he told her there were a number of POWs that swallowed metal foil to mimic the appearance of an ulcer. That was a ticket to repatriation, apparently.
If possible, I'd appreciate a link to your dissertation.
Well, at least the experience didn't take any years off their lives...
Can you document that item of Japanese atrocity?
The Luzon camp story was the subject of a book:
Ghost Soldiers: The Forgotten Epic Story of World War II's Most Dramatic Mission, Hampton Sides, 2001
Unbelievable. The Japanese troops were barbaric animals.
My dissertation was only accepted a few months ago, and isn't even catalogued. Most of the personal reflections I researched were removed at the command of my jury--however, I'm completing a treatment of same for commercial publication, which will include dozens of my interviews. I've got an agent interested in this, and two other book ideas of mine.
My writing will be slowing up a bit, though, as I start teaching next month, and newbies always get their hinders worked off.
The problem with the Abu Graib affair was that those pictures confirmed all the prejudices engendered in that area of the decadence of Western Civ: sexual liscence, domination by women, lack of respect for human dignity, etc. This increased the morale of our enemies in all the Moslem world, and so will prolong this fight unnecessarily.
The jailors of Abu Graib did a disservice to all the honorable service people fighting in the Middle East through their apparent acceptance of the degraded MTV culture, through their negligence and, to quote Stephen King in The Stand, "We're Americans! We just don't do that!"
War is politics, and you don't hand your enemy political ammunition, whether at home or abroad.
There's lots and lots of anecdotal evidence of Japanese military cannabilism, both in extreme conditions and just out of sheer drunkeness.
The current story being passed around is from the book "Flyboys", and hasn't been corroborated independently. While an excellent read, the sources of information (and author) of that book are considered suspect in the professional history community.
In other words, he doesn't make stuff up, but he also doesn't check the veracity of what he's told.
I'll repeat myself: in CORROBORATED (i.e.: proven independently) stories of Japanese military cannabilism, the soldiers in question were either starving or drunken to near-stupor, and so hardly responsible for their own actions.
". . . they bless the Red Cross and all those women who stuffed canned goods and pulp magazines into those packages."
My Dad who was a gunner on a B-17 was shot down over Austria and spent almost a year in a luftstalag. He largely credited his survival to the Red Cross parcels. He traded the cigarettes for whatever food he could. It is sad what the Red Cross has become, and I can't bring myself to support them today, but my Dad made it through the war because of them.
I'm so glad to see that you heard similar things from those whom you interviewed.
"drunken to near-stupor--hardly responsible for their own actions."
Forgot the sarcasm tag?
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