Raymond Canda interviewed by Ed Wicklein, 19 May 1981, side 1.

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    This is Ed Wicklein. I'm interviewing Ray Canda, who was a prisoner of war during World
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    War 2.
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    The date is May 19 1981.
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    And this interview is taking place in Clayton, Missouri.
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    The first thing I'd like, Ray, is for you to give me your service
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    background up to the point of captivity, where your home
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    was, how you happened to go in the military, what your unit and rank was, and the circumstances leading
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    up to a point of becoming a P.O.W.
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    [Canda] Well it was pretty much I guess what happened to a number of us.
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    My age group at the time in 1941
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    was twenty-eight years old at that time.
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    I had been engaged in the jewelry business in one form or another all my life.
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    Came Pearl Harbor and I was married, had been married for
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    several years at that particular time. And
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    of course we all were aghast at what Pearl Harbor meant to the
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    American people. Man of my particular age
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    thinking that it was a young man's war, was going to be over shortly.
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    I did nothing particular about trying to get involved in military service.
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    I had had a couple of opportunities to get direct commissions but, I thought my
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    mother in law and father-in-law were ill. My wife was an only child, and
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    I was basically an only child. So I thought it best
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    perhaps I could serve my family by doing what I could on my home front.
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    My wife was employed at the time by an organization, the head of
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    which was an ex general or colonel rather from World War
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    One. And he ultimately became the head of the Missouri
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    State Guard, which was the organization that took over protecting the
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    home front so to speak after the National Guard had been mobilized.
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    I got involved in that for the period of a couple of years. And obviously by then the
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    war wasn't over. And, my draft number start getting
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    close to being called. I was in a big
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    draft board and had one of the highest numbers or
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    lowest ranking numbers, and consequently I didn't get called up for
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    being drafted into the service until the fall of
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    1943, at which time of course I
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    took no motion or evidence of any kind to avoid being drafted. And,
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    I ended up in the military service January 3 I think it was of
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    1944. That's what happened to me. Kind and get into the service.
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    Well the activity that I was in in the Missouri State
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    Guard was in the supply division. Having been in merchandising
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    business all my life,
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    why I kind of thought maybe I'd get something in
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    quartermaster in the Army. Not so. They needed infantry
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    replacements. With the pending invasion of
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    Europe, they were quite anxious to get all these warm
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    bodies into the service and over there, which basically is what happened
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    to me and I felt like I was 17.
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    You're 17 weeks rather cycles all the way through
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    basic training for 17 weeks, a couple of weeks to get home and renew
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    acquaintance with my wife.
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    So in those days a wives didn't follow husbands around in
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    various army encampments.
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    And then after two weeks at home, I was promptly shipped to Europe and
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    sent in to France as a replacement infantryman.
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    [Wicklein] You were trained at what place? [Canda] Fort Blanding, Georgia, rather Florida.
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    Pardon the language, the hellhole of the world, but I suppose all training camps are the same way.
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    Ours was probably no better or any worse than that except we
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    didn't go up to North Dakota or something in January for basic training. Having been in
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    Florida, we were there 17 weeks. During our tenure there, D-Day
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    was in Europe. And shortly thereafter I
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    was sent home. As I said. I'm going to go for two weeks time
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    and then on into Europe as a replacement Infantry
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    Division, which was the 28th division of the United States Army, which
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    basically was the old twenty-eighth national
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    guard of the state of Pennsylvania. So I was up there on line and
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    didn't see too much in the way of activity although I was out with everybody every day.
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    We fortunately didn't get too involved, certainly no hand to hand
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    combat or anything which wasn't too much of in the European theater anyhow. at least
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    that part of it. And then I
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    had the fortune or misfortune I guess of getting involved
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    iin a blackberry patch along with most of the other fellows in our
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    organization. And, as you recall what blackberries can
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    do, it did it to me. And, I ended up with a good case of hemorrhoids,
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    which I've always claimed saved my life because, instead of going back to a
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    field hospital to be surgically taken care of, I ended up back in Paris. And,
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    I was there back and forth for another near seventeen weeks before I got
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    back to my outfit. In the meantime, they had been involved in a couple of very serious battles
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    over there. And, in getting back, I suppose, it was about 10 percent of the
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    men that I knew left in the immediate company that I knew. Most
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    of the rest of them were either dead or back in the hospital.
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    So that experience, I say for one, probably saved my life.
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    Shortly after that that the Battle of the Bulge developed. And, we along
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    with practically the entire division ended up as P.O. W.s,
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    having been captured in one form or another. My particular experience we were out on
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    point. I guess it must have been two or three miles from the next nearest troops
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    and the first part of the Battle of the Bulge. It just went around everything
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    circles and came back and cleaned out later. And, we were some of those that were
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    at that particular point taken. And we found out that about half of our
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    actual infantrymen in our division had been captured at that time.
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    [Wicklein] Were you in Belgium or in France? [Canda] We were right in the area of Luxembourg,
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    Belgium, and Germany. and an infantry
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    soldier private. I think I was a private first class
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    but that was about it.
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    Actually you never knew very much where you were. The general location, but that was about it.
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    The war experience
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    was very much of almost nothing.
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    When we got into the prisoner of war camps, of course there was great
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    deal of disgust on everyone's part for having been captured.
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    Our captors told us very little. We were
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    amazed to find out that our so-called guards were
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    all men of ages at that time that I
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    thought was an old man 50 or more years old. Of course, my feelings now have changed a little
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    bit on age respect. But they had nothing.
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    They had no food of their own. They ate very little better than we
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    did and that was not very much. [Wicklein] When you were
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    taken, you knew you had been surrounded? [Canda] Yes, we were quite aware of
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    surrounding because we were on a particular high point that we could observe fairly
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    well what might have been going on. We had lost all contact with our
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    company and battalion headquarters and the like. We knew what was going on and
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    tried to start working our way back. And, we ended up in the hands of the enemy and there we were. [Canda] Face to
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    face. [Wicklein] Where did they shoot you? Did they keep you there immediately or? [Canda] No, they started
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    walking us for a period of several days. During the day
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    they'd walk us. At night,
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    They bedded us down in church buildings or whatever else was available.
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    We got a little bread and that was about all we had to eat. We drank water wherever you could get it.
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    Good, bad or indifferent. And finally about the third day, they took us
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    someplace, where it was I don't know now.
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    I didn't know at the time and really I couldn't care less where it was except that it was
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    there. And then they put us on trains
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    and Christmas we spent in a boxcar.
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    One of the so called forty and eight boxcars where they
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    might've put forty men or eight horses. I don't know whether they had horses in there with us or not. They had been there
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    very recently anyway. And then I guess it was about twenty
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    seventh of December,
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    we were taken to a place. As a matter of fact what we deducted as being
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    Christmas night,
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    we were marshaled in some railroad yard in these cars and
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    the train, the other end of the train, got bombed that night. We never learned how
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    many casualties if any developed out of it.
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    They did bring in other cars and engine and what have you and took us out of
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    there.
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    It was two days later that we ended up in a camp [Stalag IX-B]
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    that they called Bad Orb [Bad Orb, Hesse, Germany] that was about 30 miles east of Frankfort on
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    Main. and that's where we
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    spent our time. We were first there in camp. A
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    lot of people had bad feet from the effects of the marching. [Wicklein] In the
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    cold? [Canda] In the cold in December and it was miserable.
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    And, the accommodations, using the word very
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    loosely, consisted of nothing but slats with a
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    grass mat on them. Toilet facilities were nil.
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    Sanitary facilities of any kind were nil. The food
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    was about as nil as it could be. Something they
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    call potato soup is about all we had for the period of time we were
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    there, potato soup. We got a little piece of a rotten potato in it. We thought we
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    were lucky. [Wicklein] Did you have officers and non-coms in your group? [Canda] In the group that was taken
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    originally, we were a cross-section, including,
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    I guess, a full colonel or two or about as high ranking. We didn't have any generals taken at the time.
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    I was in the assembly area of P.O.W.s, but we had officers of our
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    various ranks all the way down the line and non-commissioned officers all the way down the
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    line as well. We also had,
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    I don't know, a number of chaplains that had been taken as P.O.W.s.
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    The chaplains and the officers were separated from the
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    men. And, the officers and chaplains,
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    there weren't that many of them, were sent to
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    some other area other than where we were. We had an
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    election for. I say we had. Two of the chaplains who were in the group
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    elected to stay with the men. One was a Protestant. The other was a Catholic
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    priest . And, they stayed with us for the entire period of time that we were interned.
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    They were both very fine gentlemen,
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    being Presbyterian and attending the Catholic service, I
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    didn't get too much involved with him but
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    after about the first week or so when the moral attitude of all the me. The profanity that was
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    being used in one thing or another. This old Southern Baptist
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    pastor preacher said he had his belly full of it. And, he
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    talked to whoever was in charge and decided he was going to start holding some religious services.
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    [Wicklein] You recall his name?
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    [Canda] I couldn't tell you today if my life depended on it. I couldn't tell you what he
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    was. He was of the Southern Baptist Convention and somewhere
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    out of the south. He was a fiery little devil. And, he really turned a lot of
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    people around. I had been active in church prior to the war so
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    they had asked if anybody was interested in helping whatever way we could. A
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    number of the men volunteered for it. At least once a week, we tried
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    to hold a religious service and whatever we could do to try
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    to counsel and console and work with the
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    men who were having problems. All of us did. I guess there
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    must have been at least a dozen of us that were with the Protestant
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    chaplain and probably as many worked with the Catholic chaplain as well.
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    And that was a very very rewarding experience for me and I think all of the men that
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    worked together with us all were. I'm still to this day I'm friendly
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    with one of the men who lives up in Wyoming. And,
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    we've been together several times since the war and talk about it when our wives aren't around
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    as to what went on. But the one thing I can say
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    that. I feel I'm not overly
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    religious but I do feel as though I have a good religious
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    background and a good religious feeling. And, it's
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    many years ago as that was I tried to impart it to some of the fellows who
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    weren't atheists, but they certainly didn't know whether there was a god or not. are beginning to
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    doubt whether there was a lot developed into.
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    And it was strange to see. Those who attended
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    the religious services regularly, physically, not
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    because of anything was done by guards or anything else, but physically, fared a
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    great deal better than those who accepted nothing in the way of religion.
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    And it was amazing. I mean. You're there. You have nothing to do. All you can do
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    is pray that you're going to get out of the joint alive, and many of us by the
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    time we were liberated were beginning to question that. And those
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    who just curled up and had no faith in anything, curled
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    up and died. And they died. I don't mean literally, they actually did.
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    [Wicklein] Some of the causes, do you think, were simply giving up?
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    [Canda] Of course when I was in my prime as a foot soldier, I
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    weighed about 180 pounds. By the time I was liberated I think I weighed 130 maybe.
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    Others, and I fared no better as far as diet was concerned. Because I was working with the chaplain I
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    got the same nothing that everybody else got. But at least I
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    felt I had something within me pushing me to want to get out of there.
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    [Wicklein] Did the Germans have medical services for you?
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    [Canda] No. [Wicklein] No. [Canda] No. We had a couple of visiting doctors that came in
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    and they let American doctors they sent around a look at the fellows in the camps, but
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    they had no medication or anything give us. A few aspirins was about all that they had to give out.
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    [Wicklein] Army P.O.W. medics? [Canda] I don't know what their attachment was, but they were
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    medical officers of the United States Army who were P.O.W.s themselves.
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    [Wicklein] You never saw Red Cross or YMCA personnel? [Canda' YMCA we never saw.
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    Red Cross. We did not see personnel. We did get some
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    rest. Red Cross packages one time. Package, as I
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    recall is designed to, I don't know, two or three men
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    to package whatever it was. And we had one package for about every
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    40 or 50 fellows in the camp with whatever was it we're glad to get it but it
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    wasn't anything of substance at all. Might have even been better had
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    we not received it because you were hoping for more when you heard you were going to get Red
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    Cross packages. I guess they told us that ten days ago before they arrived and
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    when you get it, you got nothing anyhow. It wasn't the Red Cross's fault.
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    I don't blame them. Don't misunderstand.
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    [Wicklein] Did you get mail?
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    [Canda] No. No not one piece.
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    Not one piece.
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    [Wicklein] Were there? Were you innoculated for some diseases such as typhus or did they?
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    [Canda] Nothing other than what the Army had given us, our United States Army had given us. [Wicklein] No special
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    medical treatment at all? Not prevention? [Canda] No. [Wicklein] Was it just Americans in your camp?
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    [Canda] Basically it was Americans only, although there were a couple of Russians. How they got there,
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    why they were there, nobody seemed to know. They were P.O.W.'s as well.
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    But basically the camp we were, were all Americans.
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    One thing I neglected to mention that I don't know whether it's ever come out in any other interviews but early
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    in the in our capture when they finally got us to one point.
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    Before they put us on trains, they separated the Jews from
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    everybody else. That was the last we saw or heard of them. [Wicklein] By name?
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    they separated them? [Canda] By dog tag. [Wicklein] Religious identification? [Canda] Yep.
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    [Wicklein] And you never heard of any?
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    [Canda] Never knew what happened to them. We did not have too many of them in the group that was there,
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    but there were some. Some officers, some enlisted men. And, they were
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    separated.
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    Where they went, what was. What happened to them. We just hope it wasn't
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    what they did to the citizens over there, but they were separated by religion.
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    [Wicklein] Did you have epidemics or particular problems, such as
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    typhus? [Canda] Fortunately in our camp, No. We were very lucky,
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    very lucky. What were the casualties, the losses rather, I should say and the
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    deaths were simply a question I would say that they starved to death and then given up all hope.
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    And, they just wasted to nothing. [Wicklein] All right. Let me go back to
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    religious environment. What
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    kind of attraction did these services hold? Were half the men
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    participate in the two services, or a quarter of them? or a handful?
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    [Canda] I really couldn't say from that standpoint. It's
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    unclear in my mind now is exactly how many men we had in our encampment.
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    but both the Protestants and Catholics held separate
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    services and held them regularly with the blessing of the camp personnel.
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    There were no quasi deals or undercover deals. They were openly held in
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    halls that were there big enough. And in our grouping, we'd have
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    150 or 200 of them. I guess we must have had eight hundred or a thousand men in
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    the camp any way. Some days some it might be too doggone sick to show
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    up or the like but it was I'd say from a support
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    standpoint I would say probably pushing 50 percent. I mean
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    that would be my statement that I have to make
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    as far as how many participated. [Wicklein] Did you have a choir?
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    [Canda] We tried as best we could remember songs and what have you, a chorus here or there. We
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    tried it. Fortunately the both chaplains did have
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    Bibles and they had both been apparently in churches before. They
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    weren't just out of seminary or anything. So they had pretty good ideas of how to
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    handle a congregation or parish or what have you. [Wicklein] Bible study or
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    classes? [Canda] They tried bible study. It didn't work too well. They
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    were a little more I think it's happier to go once a
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    week. Or if they had a special thing on their conscience, the
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    pastors the chaplains did try to hold counseling services when they could.
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    But we didn't really have any Bible study or anything like that.
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    [Wicklein] Did you have any work assigned? [Canda] No. not whatever. Other than occasionally they take
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    us out in the woods to gather up some wood and bring it in for our fires, but that was the extent of it. As far as
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    work was concerned no, none whatever. [Wicklein] What kind of activity did you have?
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    Some P.O.W. camps, for instance, they would set up almost a university. This
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    fellow who was an expert in this whatever class in some language and someone with had
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    math classes. Did you have anything like that?
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    [Canda] No.
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    No. I don't know, but I would guess that might have been a little more prevalent in camps
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    where you'd have a lot of officers, because in those days going back 40 years ago you
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    didn't have the preponderance of college graduates that you have today.
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    I personally did not finish high school, and I don't think I was any
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    more literate than the rest of the men there. But
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    I don't know that any of the men that were in our group had college educations.So
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    that you didn't run into too much of that with enlisted men. You had the
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    college grads of course with the wide variety of education today that
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    has come out of colleges, you'd have a different situation prevailing even in the enlisted men,
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    I think. [Wicklein] You might be interested in the camps that the
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    Japanese ran among the enlisted men, they just would take
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    tin cans or whatever make jewelry anything to keep busy and use their
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    minds and hands, made jewelry out of toothbrush handles.
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    [Canda] Well, over there
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    we didn't have anything to get ahold of to start with. We never got any tin cans or anything to
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    be able to work with. And I think the most
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    time consuming thing that I recall as a
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    P.O.W. and the group that I was closer to is
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    talking about food. We didn't have that. You were
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    starving. I mean you had no substitute of what we even called food. You just didn't have
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    anything to talk about it in the way of food other than what you were dreaming about.
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    What happened when you got home. Strangely and
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    I guess looking back on it, not too unusual, but talk about
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    sex never did enter into any conversation. You talk about your wives and how much you
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    love them and those that had kids how much they love their kids and was talking
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    about latrine sex
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    you heard about in training camps. There it was nonexistent.
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    [Wicklein] Did you ever attempt to escape? [Canda] No none. To my knowledge.
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    I don't know that anybody had. [Wicklein] Were you in a very secure camp?
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    [Canda] Moderately so. We were up in the middle of the mountainside. The camp
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    originally, we understood it was some kind of a youth summer camp type of thing. It was
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    well surrounded with barbed wire fences and guards on the corners.
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    And what we saw quite frankly I don't think any of us thought the war would go on as
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    much longer as it did. Because at that particular time, it was
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    a last ditch effort on the Germans part. At the Battle of the Bulge that was their
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    last hurrah. [Wicklein] That was obvious? [Canda] Very obvious, as we were
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    taken back. And you don't see anything in support or anything else behind
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    their lines as we knew it was here, as it was in
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    parts of the occupied parts of some of the countries we're in where you
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    could see evidence of military buildup or military supplies or
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    the like. They were on, really rocking back
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    in their seats that time trying to figure out what they could do if anything.
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    They had no food. They had no supplies. And it was a
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    situation. I don't think any of us expected it to go on as it did in my case
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    until the 1st of April.
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    We thought there would be there long before that.
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    So they are still the ever present so that guy with that gun up there to try to
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    escape and you're there that long you feel you might be able to sweat it
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    out a little bit longer and get out in an orderly manner.
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    [Wicklein] Did you see civilians and how they fared at all as you were?
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    [Canda] As we were taken into the camps. We saw them several days before we got on the train.
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    Walking through the villages and the like, but not after we got to the camp.
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    [Wicklein] What about your relationships with the guards? Communication or aloof? [Canda] Most all of the
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    ones we had spoke a little English. And as I say they were older men.
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    There was one young Nazi, I guess, or Stormtrooper who thought he was in charge of
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    everything. The guards all hated his guts as well as we
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    men hated him. And, the guards were all, as we said, men fifty
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    years and older. A lot of them had physical
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    impairments of one kind or another.
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    One was a one-legged man. Another, I guess he must have been 60 or
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    65. And, he'd tell us he felt sorry for us, but it was his
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    job to stand there and stand guard over us. Not to try anything funny because he could still
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    pull the trigger. They were basically friendly.
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    They were basically at that time I think very much against Hitler. At least that was
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    our feeling that we got from them. [Wicklein] Were you organized in camp?
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    Was there somebody in camp among the P.O.W.s who was
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    accepted as senior? and you had your own system of, your own pecking order, a system of discipline?
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    [Canda] Well we really didn't have too much discipline to be worried about. The discipline in our camp
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    was not bad in any way whatever. That was,
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    I think, a very docile camp. Why,
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    I don't know. But I suppose there, let me
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    think back. There were some things of that nature. And, some of the senior noncoms, the
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    a higher ranking non-coms would have thought they were trying to maintain law and
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    order so to speak among the American troops that were there. We had no real
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    serious problems. We had. Everything we had was taken away from us so we didn't have anything but
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    the clothes on our backs. They were on our backs twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
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    So nobody was trying to steal clothes one from another.
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    As some of the men were dying, we had a chance to get some of their overcoats or what have you. And they were brought
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    back and that sort of thing. So there was nothing really to get out of
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    order in the camp. A few tempers here and there would flare, of course, as they do in most any
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    group of men that are hard pressed for whatever problems they are having.
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    But the camp that we were in, I would say, was
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    from an overall standpoint of discipline or lack of a lack of necessity of discipline, behaved
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    very well. [Wicklein] Given a relatively short duration
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    for being a P.O.W., some people must have had to give up very early
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    to be, to die within a four month period.
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    [Canda] I suppose so. Some of the men, for whatever reason,
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    it's hard to say. At that time I didn't try to analyze it except that I could
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    definitely see those men who expressed a belief in God
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    and tried to look toward God for counsel and
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    consolences at that period of time that I was physically just
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    seemed to fare a great deal better. Why? Other than looking
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    at it as a religious person. I feel I am, have a good religious
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    background. Not overly religious, but I feel I have a good religious background. And, I think
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    that those men who had that, they just seem to morally,
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    mentally, psychologically fed their bodies on
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    something that helped to sustain them. The guy that didn't have it, he fared poorly.
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    And I mean, some of them just absolutely sat in the corner and wouldn't move. They
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    wouldn't get up and walk in the area that we had within the building to walk in or go out in the yard when we
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    could go out in the yard to walk around. They just sat in the corner and gave up completely.
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    Some of them were married men. Most of them were single. I'd say looking back on it,
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    perhaps the married men probably fared somewhat better as a whole than the single men did.
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    [Wicklein] Do you think that perhaps because they had a sense of purpose to return?
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    [Canda Yes I think so.
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    I think that had a great deal to do with it. Because,
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    I don't know that it was a majority of the men that were there with me that were married, but a goodly percentage
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    of them were fathers, with a wife
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    and children, and home, some incentive to try to return.
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    That was another motivating factor.

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