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Robert Reppa's ordeal began in the morning hours just a week before Christmas 1944. During the second day of the Battle of the Bulge, Reppa's cavalry troop headquarters was overrun by advance elements of the German 1st SS Panzer Division in Honsfeld, Belgium.

At the time, many American prisoners of war were being killed, but Reppa was among the lucky ones to be shipped to Nuernberg and later, Hammelberg.

The POW life was one of cold, crowded boxcars and prison camps, with just one coal-dust briquette per day to warm the room's stove. Food was scarce, and POWs depended on the twice-monthly arrival of Red Cross parcels to help pull them through.

Hope finally came to the prisoners in March 1945. Gen. George Patton sent the 4th Armored Division's Task Force Baum to fight 60 miles through German territory to liberate the POWs at Hammelberg. Unfortunately, the force was too small to handle the hundreds of POWs who were wandering around in the darkness. The task force was surrounded and wiped out, but Reppa was among the lucky few to escape.

Four days after making their way west, the escapees were recaptured by the Germans and returned to the camp; there, they helped bury their fellow POWs who had died trying to free them.

For Reppa, freedom came following a month-long forced march that ended just east of Munich when the Germans prematurely blew up a bridge at Gars. Reppa and another soldier escaped, taking refuge in a German house that flew a white sheet. They waited for the American forces to get closer. When they did, the former POWs were finally free.

Reppa gained a pound a day for 32 days and vowed never to go hungry again.