Ten Thousand Men Cry

Second Lieutenant (Air Corps) Vernon L Burda was a navigator on a B-24 bomber in the Army Air Corps during World War II. Burda was captured by German forces after his aircraft was shot down on or about July 16, 1944, and was held as a Prisoner of War until his return to U.S. Military Control at the end of hostilities in May 1945. (This is a long article but the ending will make you cry.)

While not a resident of Lawrence County, Burda’s experiences were recorded in the George Field Reunion booklet 1942-1996. Being shot down and becoming a prisoner of war must have been a fear felt by many of the men at George Field.

It was about January 16th 1945 when the Russians started their long-awaited winter offensive as the temperature hit a new low for the winter.  The Kriegies watched breathlessly as the Russians broke the back of German resistance and took Warsaw and Kracow and advanced on Posen and Breslau.  Speculation was rife on whether we would be moving or not and betting odds were slightly in favor of not moving. I had a hunch we would be forced to walk, so I made overshoes out of a pair of wool socks with Klim tin soles, which I could tie over my shoes. I made heavy mittens by stuffing German toilet paper between layers of cloth and insulating my blankets with layers of toilet paper. A backpack was made by sewing one stocking on top of a bag and one on the bottom and putting a belt as a strap between them.

On Saturday January 27th, 1945, the Russians were knocking at the door of Breslau and Steinau. Then, like a bolt of lightning, at about 9:00 PM the order came: “Fall out for a forced march at 11:00!” --in two hours. And the big flap started. Men rushed about making packs, bashing food, throwing away useless articles and preparing to move. Joe Doherty ran to the kitchen and started making a huge batch of fudge-- it really seemed funny at the time. Everyone's bowels moved about 3 or 4 times in the first hour.  Boy what excitement. At the last moment, I decided to make a sled, and I took four bed boards, used two as runners and two for the platform and put tin on the runners.

On January 28th at about 3:00 AM we fell out. It was about twenty below zero and dark.  We lined up, drew a Red Cross parcel per man and left Stalag Luft III. The column of men was terrifically long, and we moved very slowly. Along Hwy. 99 we met the once mighty Wehrmacht Ski Troopers, all in white and these ‘supermen’ were begging cigarettes from us as we passed.  They were either about 40 or 50 years old or young kids headed for the front.

At 2:00 in the afternoon we reached Halbau, which we found containing mostly French- forced laborers. The weather was freezing and several of us already had frostbitten feet and hands. We were finally put up about 2000 of us in a church, whose capacity was about 500. It was so crowded we all had to sleep in shifts, and it was very, very cold.  we ate a late meal of cold meat and crackers.

We left Halbau at dawn, cold and stiff and hungry. We walked past Freiseldau.  It had long hill in town, and we were all so weak we had trouble making it.  From there on we hit flat farmland, and the wind and cold blew right through us. We finally came to a small village where we were put up in one story barns, about 500 men to one barn. The only reason we got this stop was the fact that we had General Vanaman along with us. It was so crowded that all of us could not sleep at the same time so some would walk around while others slept. Still there was bitter cold and no German food. We were eating Red Cross food, cold, and it gave lots of the fellas loose bowels.

The General talked the Germans into letting us stay here for one extra day, in order to dry out socks and shoes and rest up. We would dry out our socks by putting them next to our bodies while we slept. We fixed our shoes, packs, and mittens here. We also did a little trading with the German civilians for onions, hot water and brew, in exchange for cigarettes and soap. On January 31, it was a long, long day. We walked and walked and walked. 29 kilometers to Muskau. What made it so bad was the fact that the country was very hilly and the weather was so uncertain; it would snow one minute and then it would rain the next minute. We even had hail.  Sled was still working okay although it was tough pulling it up some of these hills. The fellows were trading cigarettes and soap for bread and spuds and hot water all along the Way, especially in Muskau while waiting for quarters. We were finally quartered in a brick factory, really swell. It was dry and warm and had lights and best of all, we got German black bread and marge (?). We were too tired to do much but eat, and then we slept on the concrete floor.

 On February 1 General Vanaman again talked the Germans into letting us spend the day here. It was like heaven! We washed and shaved and slept, and ate very little. Guys from West Camp and Balaria came to the factory. Their feet were frozen and blue and green and yellow. They really looked terrible. They walked all the way with no stops. Some of them were really in bad shape. One knew the Bombardier and Copilot from my crew and they were OK the last time he saw them. On February 2, we rested.

On February 3rd, we got up at 4:30 AM raining out and thawing so I broke up the sled. I was really loaded down now, but I was determined not to throw away any of my blankets or food or clothes. We walked 18 kilometers to Braustein.

We were bedded down in a barn, with straw on the floor, not bad.  With the barnyard and all, it looked exactly like the pictures we had seen of troops in World War I in France in the barns. We slept fairly good as we bundled two or three of us together for warmth.

It was now February 4th, and we were up at dawn and marched 7 kilometers to Spremburg, biggest town so far. We went into a permanent camp that had good brick buildings, and it was really nice. We stayed in the garages and got some hot soup. Toward evening, we marched through the town to the marshalling yards. We saw plenty of signs that reminded us of home, Shell, Standard, Esso, Mobile Oil, Kodak, Agfa and others. The town looked as if it were in fairly good shape. The Germans crowded us into old French 40 and 8 (railroad cars) and I do mean crowded. There were about 55 men and a guard in our car.  They also brought in a Red Cross parcel for each man, which was very welcome. But it was so crowded. We finally allocated space to each man, but as soon as they would go to sleep, the men would try to stretch out. I lay on the floor and several times I woke up with four men laying zigzag across me so that I couldn't even move. All in all, it was a pretty lousy night.  We only made 30 or 40 kilometers that night. We heard we were to go to Nurnburg, but we had gotten to the point where we didn't care where we were going, as long as we got there. The Germans gave us no water and that was no fun. Most of the guys had loose bowels and were throwing up.

February 5th didn't make much progress all day, but toward evening we made good time. In Dresden about midnight, and there were a lot of German troops going to the Russian front near Berlin. It seems like they are moving a lot of the troops from the West front to the Russian front. One  Jerry kidded with us, said he had fought at Moscow and Paris, and now to Berlin. He would catch the girls nearby and kiss them; he seemed happy and slightly drunk. We didn't blame him. In Chemnitz, we almost were in the middle of an air raid. They locked us up in the boxcar when the sirens blew.  Luckily the train took off like a bat and we left.

February 6th arrived at Zwickau at dawn and finally got something to drink, German coffee. Boy, was it lousy.  The guys all were sick by now and they were having bowel movements all over the place. The civilians were sure peeved, and they screamed to high heaven. We made better time after Zwickau, heard the West Camp went to Nurnburg and that we were going there too. The cars were still awfully crowded, and the Germans would not give us any water. We went through another air raid in the afternoon; we saw the forts and libs this time.

On February 7th, soon after dawn, we were in Augsburg. Still, we were not given any water and we were thirsty as the devil. Finally, we hit Munich, and we were put in a railroad yard, the place was really bombed out. We saw American POW’s, fixing it up. We got so thirsty that Downey got a ‘Trinkwasser’ of steam water out of the locomotive. In the afternoon, we traveled to Moosburg and we got off at Stalag 7A. We went over to the North Lager, which we called the ‘snake pit’. They put 600 of us in a shack with nothing for beds or fuel or anything. We were all sick by this time, cold, damp and everyone was covered with fleas and lice. Morale was really low. There was not enough room to have everyone lay down at once, and many did not sleep.  There was no heat and no hot food.

On February 8th 9th and 10th, we stayed in the ‘snake pit’. I used a blanket and slung a hammock and got some sleep, everyone was really sick.

 On February 11th after supper, we went through a search, which was a farce. We've got saws, hammers, maps, nails, wrenches, and everything else we've picked up along the way, especially at the brick factory at Muskau. We were deloused and we took a shower. Then we were taken to the East Lager, and we were put into barracks, and what a hole. We were put in tiers of 12 men, 3 bunks high with six bed boards per bed. The beds had straw palliases and were full of lice, fleas, and bed bugs.  Our life in  Moosburg started, and what a miserable life it was!

The weather was very cold and damp. The Germans did not give us any fuel for heat so we would have to stay in bed all day. There were no facilities to do anything even if we did get up. The lighting was so poor some of the fellows never did see what their sack looked like. We were so crowded that the only way we had of keeping personal stuff was by hanging it from the ceiling. As I had the top bunk, after hanging my stuff up, I barely had room to lie horizontal. Sitting up in any of the bunks was out of the question.

The German food ration consisted of 1/2 cup of warm water for breakfast, 1 cup of thin watery soup for dinner and a little black bread for supper with extra issues of cheese, marge or blood sausage. For a while we had no Red Cross parcels and the fellas were really thin. We then received issues of parcels one parcel to last two weeks. At first, we were issued British parcels which contained food that must be cooked, but the Germans would not give us any fuel. We made burners and blowers out of tin cans, using the barbs from the wire as nails. For fuel we first burned our bed boards and slung our sacks by nailing the burlap palliase to the sides of the bed. When the bed boards gave out, we did a little more sabotage work and we tore the inner floor out of the barracks. We also swiped sticks from the slit trenches. The Germans refused to clean out the outdoor latrines, 1 latrine for about 2000 men. It finally filled up and overflowed. As everyone was still sick with ‘the runs’ you can imagine the mess it created. We were practically wading in human excrement. It overflowed into the parade grounds so when the Germans told us to fall out to be counted, we refused to go. Finally, after several hours of tension, they promised to clean the latrine out, so we fell in.

The fleas, lice and bed bugs were really bad here. It was not unusual to find one 100 or more bed bugs in one bed. One man became so infected with flea bites he had blood poisoning. Several fellows had their whole bodies covered with bites. The bites weren't so bad, but they itched so that one could hardly keep from scratching them. As soon as the bites were open, infection really set in. For some reason I wasn't bothered too much. I could feel the little devils running over my belly and my legs, but they rarely bit me. As Tipton said, it was probably because we were so filthy. A lot of the fellas had not had their clothes off in four to six weeks and hadn't washed in just as long.  We only had the clothes we wore and no facilities for laundry, and it was too cold to sleep out of our clothes.

Finally, spring came and the renewed offensive of the allies started pushing the Germans back. One day in the latter part of April, we saw fighter planes scouting our camp and on April 29th, we were ordered inside the barracks as we could hear the big guns, rifles and machine guns. By peering through cracks in the wall, we could see allied infantrymen advancing through the fields and pushing toward the town of Moosburg. Almost immediately thereafter, we all heard the most pleasant sound we had heard for almost a year, the rumble of American tanks. And when those tanks rolled into the prison compound, they looked as big as battleships. The Kriegies spilled out of the barracks, unmindful of the live bullets still whistling through the air, and cheered the troops and gobbled the K rations which the American soldiers threw us, just as though those K rations were candy.

Then suddenly for no apparent reason a hush fell over the compound, and all eyes turned toward the town in which stood two high church steeples. Over 20,000 eyes saw machine gun bullets splatter against the steeples, a period of quiet, and then it occurred, a scene the happening of which brought tears streaming down the face of every single American prisoner of war there, and a sob from every throat. We saw the greatest sight, the most emotional minute that we would ever witness, raised before our eyes and flying defiantly above one of the church steeples was a symbol of our beloved land --THE AMERICAN FLAG.

As one great mass all felt emotion that one who has not been deprived of freedom, who has not suffered behind barbed wire for months without adequate food, clothes, heat, or word of loved ones, and of home could not possibly feel. Yes, the tears flowed from over 10,000 faces that day, over 10,000 unashamed faces, as that flag shocked us back with memories of the place we all held most dear OUR BELOVED LAND, OUR HOME.