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Harold Kaschko survived three months of combat field artillery duty with Gen. George S. Patton's Third U.S. Army in World War II only to be taken prisoner in the Korean War.

Kaschko was the commanding officer of Battery C, 38th FA Bn., 2nd Inf. Division, when it went into action on Aug. 20, 1950, at the Naktong Perimeter. On Dec. 1, he and several other soldiers were captured. On that day, his division had 1,461 casualties.

The POWs were herded into a four-foot-high mine tunnel near Sunchon, North Korea, where they stayed for six days. Soon after, they began a 20-day series of night marches, covering nearly 200 miles before ending in the appropriately named "Death Valley."

Many POWs dropped out of the march along the way, from illness, injuries, wounds or exposure. Many more simply died.

Food and sleep were luxuries at their camp. "We could not lie down to sleep for about two months, as there was not enough room in the Korean hut," Kaschko said. "We had to sit up all night with our knees in the back of the man in front of us."

Food consisted of half-cooked mush, he said. "I didn't have a spoon or bowl to eat from for about four weeks, so I used my helmet liner cap and ate like a pig. Later, I received a spoon when someone died."

Death stalked the compound. Diseases like pneumonia, dysentery, pellagra and beri beri were rampant. Starvation, exposure and enemy harassment accounted for more deaths, Kaschko said, especially before the Armistice negotiations began in July 1951.

Kaschko and others were repatriated on the last day of the prisoner exchange, Sept. 6, 1953. He retired from the Army as a lieutenant colonel in 1962.

"I am 100 percent convinced that I am alive today because I prayed to God for help," he said.

Jack Sulser was a squad leader in the 106th Infantry Division's Company F, 423rd Inf. Regiment, on Dec. 16, 1944.

The 423rd, along with the division's 422nd Regt., was in the Allied front lines during the Germans' last big World War II offensive - the Battle of the Bulge.

Some 24 hours into the battle, the Germans broke through the regiments' perimeter defenses, surrounding Sulser and his comrades.

"We were ordered to hold our positions," Sulser remembered. "A U.S. armored division was expected to fight its way to us the next day." But only a fragment of the division actually arrived, not enough men to counterattack.

On Dec. 18, the U.S. regiments were ordered to fight their way out, Sulser recalled. "By then, the Germans had been reinforced by SS and elite armored units. And by midday Dec. 19, a quarter of both regiments had been killed."

The regimental commanders, realizing further escape attempts would be in vain, surrendered their troops.

"Soon after, we were herded into boxcars, en route to our first POW camp," Sulser recalled. "We arrived at Bad Orb, 'Stalag IXB,' on Christmas Day and had the first food we'd eaten since Dec. 16."

Ten days later, Sulser was herded aboard another boxcar for a POW camp at Ziegenhain. Until March 30, when U.S. troops liberated the camp, Sulser lived on what a U.S. Army doctor estimated was a 900-calorie diet: herbal tea for breakfast, soup for lunch and a slice of bread for supper. By January, the men began dying of malnutrition.

"We slept in triple-decker bunks, without heat, and had only cold water for washing and the use of one outside latrine," Sulser said.

"On Easter Sunday, as the ex-POWs began conducting their own sunrise worship service, a U.S. Army chaplain arrived and passed out communion wafers and hymnals. It's then that we felt truly liberated," Sulser reflected.