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Raymond Canda interviewed by Ed Wicklein, 19 May 1981, side 1.
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- speakerThis is Ed Wicklein. I'm interviewing Ray Canda, who was a prisoner of war during World
- speakerWar 2.
- speakerThe date is May 19 1981.
- speakerAnd this interview is taking place in Clayton, Missouri.
- speakerThe first thing I'd like, Ray, is for you to give me your service
- speakerbackground up to the point of captivity, where your home
- speakerwas, how you happened to go in the military, what your unit and rank was, and the circumstances leading
- speakerup to a point of becoming a P.O.W.
- speaker[Canda] Well it was pretty much I guess what happened to a number of us.
- speakerMy age group at the time in 1941
- speakerwas twenty-eight years old at that time.
- speakerI had been engaged in the jewelry business in one form or another all my life.
- speakerCame Pearl Harbor and I was married, had been married for
- speakerseveral years at that particular time. And
- speakerof course we all were aghast at what Pearl Harbor meant to the
- speakerAmerican people. Man of my particular age
- speakerthinking that it was a young man's war, was going to be over shortly.
- speakerI did nothing particular about trying to get involved in military service.
- speakerI had had a couple of opportunities to get direct commissions but, I thought my
- speakermother in law and father-in-law were ill. My wife was an only child, and
- speakerI was basically an only child. So I thought it best
- speakerperhaps I could serve my family by doing what I could on my home front.
- speakerMy wife was employed at the time by an organization, the head of
- speakerwhich was an ex general or colonel rather from World War
- speakerOne. And he ultimately became the head of the Missouri
- speakerState Guard, which was the organization that took over protecting the
- speakerhome front so to speak after the National Guard had been mobilized.
- speakerI got involved in that for the period of a couple of years. And obviously by then the
- speakerwar wasn't over. And, my draft number start getting
- speakerclose to being called. I was in a big
- speakerdraft board and had one of the highest numbers or
- speakerlowest ranking numbers, and consequently I didn't get called up for
- speakerbeing drafted into the service until the fall of
- speaker1943, at which time of course I
- speakertook no motion or evidence of any kind to avoid being drafted. And,
- speakerI ended up in the military service January 3 I think it was of
- speaker1944. That's what happened to me. Kind and get into the service.
- speakerWell the activity that I was in in the Missouri State
- speakerGuard was in the supply division. Having been in merchandising
- speakerbusiness all my life,
- speakerwhy I kind of thought maybe I'd get something in
- speakerquartermaster in the Army. Not so. They needed infantry
- speakerreplacements. With the pending invasion of
- speakerEurope, they were quite anxious to get all these warm
- speakerbodies into the service and over there, which basically is what happened
- speakerto me and I felt like I was 17.
- speakerYou're 17 weeks rather cycles all the way through
- speakerbasic training for 17 weeks, a couple of weeks to get home and renew
- speakeracquaintance with my wife.
- speakerSo in those days a wives didn't follow husbands around in
- speakervarious army encampments.
- speakerAnd then after two weeks at home, I was promptly shipped to Europe and
- speakersent in to France as a replacement infantryman.
- speaker[Wicklein] You were trained at what place? [Canda] Fort Blanding, Georgia, rather Florida.
- speakerPardon the language, the hellhole of the world, but I suppose all training camps are the same way.
- speakerOurs was probably no better or any worse than that except we
- speakerdidn't go up to North Dakota or something in January for basic training. Having been in
- speakerFlorida, we were there 17 weeks. During our tenure there, D-Day
- speakerwas in Europe. And shortly thereafter I
- speakerwas sent home. As I said. I'm going to go for two weeks time
- speakerand then on into Europe as a replacement Infantry
- speakerDivision, which was the 28th division of the United States Army, which
- speakerbasically was the old twenty-eighth national
- speakerguard of the state of Pennsylvania. So I was up there on line and
- speakerdidn't see too much in the way of activity although I was out with everybody every day.
- speakerWe fortunately didn't get too involved, certainly no hand to hand
- speakercombat or anything which wasn't too much of in the European theater anyhow. at least
- speakerthat part of it. And then I
- speakerhad the fortune or misfortune I guess of getting involved
- speakeriin a blackberry patch along with most of the other fellows in our
- speakerorganization. And, as you recall what blackberries can
- speakerdo, it did it to me. And, I ended up with a good case of hemorrhoids,
- speakerwhich I've always claimed saved my life because, instead of going back to a
- speakerfield hospital to be surgically taken care of, I ended up back in Paris. And,
- speakerI was there back and forth for another near seventeen weeks before I got
- speakerback to my outfit. In the meantime, they had been involved in a couple of very serious battles
- speakerover there. And, in getting back, I suppose, it was about 10 percent of the
- speakermen that I knew left in the immediate company that I knew. Most
- speakerof the rest of them were either dead or back in the hospital.
- speakerSo that experience, I say for one, probably saved my life.
- speakerShortly after that that the Battle of the Bulge developed. And, we along
- speakerwith practically the entire division ended up as P.O. W.s,
- speakerhaving been captured in one form or another. My particular experience we were out on
- speakerpoint. I guess it must have been two or three miles from the next nearest troops
- speakerand the first part of the Battle of the Bulge. It just went around everything
- speakercircles and came back and cleaned out later. And, we were some of those that were
- speakerat that particular point taken. And we found out that about half of our
- speakeractual infantrymen in our division had been captured at that time.
- speaker[Wicklein] Were you in Belgium or in France? [Canda] We were right in the area of Luxembourg,
- speakerBelgium, and Germany. and an infantry
- speakersoldier private. I think I was a private first class
- speakerbut that was about it.
- speakerActually you never knew very much where you were. The general location, but that was about it.
- speakerThe war experience
- speakerwas very much of almost nothing.
- speakerWhen we got into the prisoner of war camps, of course there was great
- speakerdeal of disgust on everyone's part for having been captured.
- speakerOur captors told us very little. We were
- speakeramazed to find out that our so-called guards were
- speakerall men of ages at that time that I
- speakerthought was an old man 50 or more years old. Of course, my feelings now have changed a little
- speakerbit on age respect. But they had nothing.
- speakerThey had no food of their own. They ate very little better than we
- speakerdid and that was not very much. [Wicklein] When you were
- speakertaken, you knew you had been surrounded? [Canda] Yes, we were quite aware of
- speakersurrounding because we were on a particular high point that we could observe fairly
- speakerwell what might have been going on. We had lost all contact with our
- speakercompany and battalion headquarters and the like. We knew what was going on and
- speakertried to start working our way back. And, we ended up in the hands of the enemy and there we were. [Canda] Face to
- speakerface. [Wicklein] Where did they shoot you? Did they keep you there immediately or? [Canda] No, they started
- speakerwalking us for a period of several days. During the day
- speakerthey'd walk us. At night,
- speakerThey bedded us down in church buildings or whatever else was available.
- speakerWe got a little bread and that was about all we had to eat. We drank water wherever you could get it.
- speakerGood, bad or indifferent. And finally about the third day, they took us
- speakersomeplace, where it was I don't know now.
- speakerI didn't know at the time and really I couldn't care less where it was except that it was
- speakerthere. And then they put us on trains
- speakerand Christmas we spent in a boxcar.
- speakerOne of the so called forty and eight boxcars where they
- speakermight'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
- speakervery recently anyway. And then I guess it was about twenty
- speakerseventh of December,
- speakerwe were taken to a place. As a matter of fact what we deducted as being
- speakerChristmas night,
- speakerwe were marshaled in some railroad yard in these cars and
- speakerthe train, the other end of the train, got bombed that night. We never learned how
- speakermany casualties if any developed out of it.
- speakerThey did bring in other cars and engine and what have you and took us out of
- speakerthere.
- speakerIt was two days later that we ended up in a camp [Stalag IX-B]
- speakerthat they called Bad Orb [Bad Orb, Hesse, Germany] that was about 30 miles east of Frankfort on
- speakerMain. and that's where we
- speakerspent our time. We were first there in camp. A
- speakerlot of people had bad feet from the effects of the marching. [Wicklein] In the
- speakercold? [Canda] In the cold in December and it was miserable.
- speakerAnd, the accommodations, using the word very
- speakerloosely, consisted of nothing but slats with a
- speakergrass mat on them. Toilet facilities were nil.
- speakerSanitary facilities of any kind were nil. The food
- speakerwas about as nil as it could be. Something they
- speakercall potato soup is about all we had for the period of time we were
- speakerthere, potato soup. We got a little piece of a rotten potato in it. We thought we
- speakerwere lucky. [Wicklein] Did you have officers and non-coms in your group? [Canda] In the group that was taken
- speakeroriginally, we were a cross-section, including,
- speakerI guess, a full colonel or two or about as high ranking. We didn't have any generals taken at the time.
- speakerI was in the assembly area of P.O.W.s, but we had officers of our
- speakervarious ranks all the way down the line and non-commissioned officers all the way down the
- speakerline as well. We also had,
- speakerI don't know, a number of chaplains that had been taken as P.O.W.s.
- speakerThe chaplains and the officers were separated from the
- speakermen. And, the officers and chaplains,
- speakerthere weren't that many of them, were sent to
- speakersome other area other than where we were. We had an
- speakerelection for. I say we had. Two of the chaplains who were in the group
- speakerelected to stay with the men. One was a Protestant. The other was a Catholic
- speakerpriest . And, they stayed with us for the entire period of time that we were interned.
- speakerThey were both very fine gentlemen,
- speakerbeing Presbyterian and attending the Catholic service, I
- speakerdidn't get too much involved with him but
- speakerafter about the first week or so when the moral attitude of all the me. The profanity that was
- speakerbeing used in one thing or another. This old Southern Baptist
- speakerpastor preacher said he had his belly full of it. And, he
- speakertalked to whoever was in charge and decided he was going to start holding some religious services.
- speaker[Wicklein] You recall his name?
- speaker[Canda] I couldn't tell you today if my life depended on it. I couldn't tell you what he
- speakerwas. He was of the Southern Baptist Convention and somewhere
- speakerout of the south. He was a fiery little devil. And, he really turned a lot of
- speakerpeople around. I had been active in church prior to the war so
- speakerthey had asked if anybody was interested in helping whatever way we could. A
- speakernumber of the men volunteered for it. At least once a week, we tried
- speakerto hold a religious service and whatever we could do to try
- speakerto counsel and console and work with the
- speakermen who were having problems. All of us did. I guess there
- speakermust have been at least a dozen of us that were with the Protestant
- speakerchaplain and probably as many worked with the Catholic chaplain as well.
- speakerAnd that was a very very rewarding experience for me and I think all of the men that
- speakerworked together with us all were. I'm still to this day I'm friendly
- speakerwith one of the men who lives up in Wyoming. And,
- speakerwe've been together several times since the war and talk about it when our wives aren't around
- speakeras to what went on. But the one thing I can say
- speakerthat. I feel I'm not overly
- speakerreligious but I do feel as though I have a good religious
- speakerbackground and a good religious feeling. And, it's
- speakermany years ago as that was I tried to impart it to some of the fellows who
- speakerweren't atheists, but they certainly didn't know whether there was a god or not. are beginning to
- speakerdoubt whether there was a lot developed into.
- speakerAnd it was strange to see. Those who attended
- speakerthe religious services regularly, physically, not
- speakerbecause of anything was done by guards or anything else, but physically, fared a
- speakergreat deal better than those who accepted nothing in the way of religion.
- speakerAnd it was amazing. I mean. You're there. You have nothing to do. All you can do
- speakeris pray that you're going to get out of the joint alive, and many of us by the
- speakertime we were liberated were beginning to question that. And those
- speakerwho just curled up and had no faith in anything, curled
- speakerup and died. And they died. I don't mean literally, they actually did.
- speaker[Wicklein] Some of the causes, do you think, were simply giving up?
- speaker[Canda] Of course when I was in my prime as a foot soldier, I
- speakerweighed about 180 pounds. By the time I was liberated I think I weighed 130 maybe.
- speakerOthers, and I fared no better as far as diet was concerned. Because I was working with the chaplain I
- speakergot the same nothing that everybody else got. But at least I
- speakerfelt I had something within me pushing me to want to get out of there.
- speaker[Wicklein] Did the Germans have medical services for you?
- speaker[Canda] No. [Wicklein] No. [Canda] No. We had a couple of visiting doctors that came in
- speakerand they let American doctors they sent around a look at the fellows in the camps, but
- speakerthey had no medication or anything give us. A few aspirins was about all that they had to give out.
- speaker[Wicklein] Army P.O.W. medics? [Canda] I don't know what their attachment was, but they were
- speakermedical officers of the United States Army who were P.O.W.s themselves.
- speaker[Wicklein] You never saw Red Cross or YMCA personnel? [Canda' YMCA we never saw.
- speakerRed Cross. We did not see personnel. We did get some
- speakerrest. Red Cross packages one time. Package, as I
- speakerrecall is designed to, I don't know, two or three men
- speakerto package whatever it was. And we had one package for about every
- speaker40 or 50 fellows in the camp with whatever was it we're glad to get it but it
- speakerwasn't anything of substance at all. Might have even been better had
- speakerwe not received it because you were hoping for more when you heard you were going to get Red
- speakerCross packages. I guess they told us that ten days ago before they arrived and
- speakerwhen you get it, you got nothing anyhow. It wasn't the Red Cross's fault.
- speakerI don't blame them. Don't misunderstand.
- speaker[Wicklein] Did you get mail?
- speaker[Canda] No. No not one piece.
- speakerNot one piece.
- speaker[Wicklein] Were there? Were you innoculated for some diseases such as typhus or did they?
- speaker[Canda] Nothing other than what the Army had given us, our United States Army had given us. [Wicklein] No special
- speakermedical treatment at all? Not prevention? [Canda] No. [Wicklein] Was it just Americans in your camp?
- speaker[Canda] Basically it was Americans only, although there were a couple of Russians. How they got there,
- speakerwhy they were there, nobody seemed to know. They were P.O.W.'s as well.
- speakerBut basically the camp we were, were all Americans.
- speakerOne thing I neglected to mention that I don't know whether it's ever come out in any other interviews but early
- speakerin the in our capture when they finally got us to one point.
- speakerBefore they put us on trains, they separated the Jews from
- speakereverybody else. That was the last we saw or heard of them. [Wicklein] By name?
- speakerthey separated them? [Canda] By dog tag. [Wicklein] Religious identification? [Canda] Yep.
- speaker[Wicklein] And you never heard of any?
- speaker[Canda] Never knew what happened to them. We did not have too many of them in the group that was there,
- speakerbut there were some. Some officers, some enlisted men. And, they were
- speakerseparated.
- speakerWhere they went, what was. What happened to them. We just hope it wasn't
- speakerwhat they did to the citizens over there, but they were separated by religion.
- speaker[Wicklein] Did you have epidemics or particular problems, such as
- speakertyphus? [Canda] Fortunately in our camp, No. We were very lucky,
- speakervery lucky. What were the casualties, the losses rather, I should say and the
- speakerdeaths were simply a question I would say that they starved to death and then given up all hope.
- speakerAnd, they just wasted to nothing. [Wicklein] All right. Let me go back to
- speakerreligious environment. What
- speakerkind of attraction did these services hold? Were half the men
- speakerparticipate in the two services, or a quarter of them? or a handful?
- speaker[Canda] I really couldn't say from that standpoint. It's
- speakerunclear in my mind now is exactly how many men we had in our encampment.
- speakerbut both the Protestants and Catholics held separate
- speakerservices and held them regularly with the blessing of the camp personnel.
- speakerThere were no quasi deals or undercover deals. They were openly held in
- speakerhalls that were there big enough. And in our grouping, we'd have
- speaker150 or 200 of them. I guess we must have had eight hundred or a thousand men in
- speakerthe camp any way. Some days some it might be too doggone sick to show
- speakerup or the like but it was I'd say from a support
- speakerstandpoint I would say probably pushing 50 percent. I mean
- speakerthat would be my statement that I have to make
- speakeras far as how many participated. [Wicklein] Did you have a choir?
- speaker[Canda] We tried as best we could remember songs and what have you, a chorus here or there. We
- speakertried it. Fortunately the both chaplains did have
- speakerBibles and they had both been apparently in churches before. They
- speakerweren't just out of seminary or anything. So they had pretty good ideas of how to
- speakerhandle a congregation or parish or what have you. [Wicklein] Bible study or
- speakerclasses? [Canda] They tried bible study. It didn't work too well. They
- speakerwere a little more I think it's happier to go once a
- speakerweek. Or if they had a special thing on their conscience, the
- speakerpastors the chaplains did try to hold counseling services when they could.
- speakerBut we didn't really have any Bible study or anything like that.
- speaker[Wicklein] Did you have any work assigned? [Canda] No. not whatever. Other than occasionally they take
- speakerus 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
- speakerwork was concerned no, none whatever. [Wicklein] What kind of activity did you have?
- speakerSome P.O.W. camps, for instance, they would set up almost a university. This
- speakerfellow who was an expert in this whatever class in some language and someone with had
- speakermath classes. Did you have anything like that?
- speaker[Canda] No.
- speakerNo. I don't know, but I would guess that might have been a little more prevalent in camps
- speakerwhere you'd have a lot of officers, because in those days going back 40 years ago you
- speakerdidn't have the preponderance of college graduates that you have today.
- speakerI personally did not finish high school, and I don't think I was any
- speakermore literate than the rest of the men there. But
- speakerI don't know that any of the men that were in our group had college educations.So
- speakerthat you didn't run into too much of that with enlisted men. You had the
- speakercollege grads of course with the wide variety of education today that
- speakerhas come out of colleges, you'd have a different situation prevailing even in the enlisted men,
- speakerI think. [Wicklein] You might be interested in the camps that the
- speakerJapanese ran among the enlisted men, they just would take
- speakertin cans or whatever make jewelry anything to keep busy and use their
- speakerminds and hands, made jewelry out of toothbrush handles.
- speaker[Canda] Well, over there
- speakerwe didn't have anything to get ahold of to start with. We never got any tin cans or anything to
- speakerbe able to work with. And I think the most
- speakertime consuming thing that I recall as a
- speakerP.O.W. and the group that I was closer to is
- speakertalking about food. We didn't have that. You were
- speakerstarving. I mean you had no substitute of what we even called food. You just didn't have
- speakeranything to talk about it in the way of food other than what you were dreaming about.
- speakerWhat happened when you got home. Strangely and
- speakerI guess looking back on it, not too unusual, but talk about
- speakersex never did enter into any conversation. You talk about your wives and how much you
- speakerlove them and those that had kids how much they love their kids and was talking
- speakerabout latrine sex
- speakeryou heard about in training camps. There it was nonexistent.
- speaker[Wicklein] Did you ever attempt to escape? [Canda] No none. To my knowledge.
- speakerI don't know that anybody had. [Wicklein] Were you in a very secure camp?
- speaker[Canda] Moderately so. We were up in the middle of the mountainside. The camp
- speakeroriginally, we understood it was some kind of a youth summer camp type of thing. It was
- speakerwell surrounded with barbed wire fences and guards on the corners.
- speakerAnd what we saw quite frankly I don't think any of us thought the war would go on as
- speakermuch longer as it did. Because at that particular time, it was
- speakera last ditch effort on the Germans part. At the Battle of the Bulge that was their
- speakerlast hurrah. [Wicklein] That was obvious? [Canda] Very obvious, as we were
- speakertaken back. And you don't see anything in support or anything else behind
- speakertheir lines as we knew it was here, as it was in
- speakerparts of the occupied parts of some of the countries we're in where you
- speakercould see evidence of military buildup or military supplies or
- speakerthe like. They were on, really rocking back
- speakerin their seats that time trying to figure out what they could do if anything.
- speakerThey had no food. They had no supplies. And it was a
- speakersituation. I don't think any of us expected it to go on as it did in my case
- speakeruntil the 1st of April.
- speakerWe thought there would be there long before that.
- speakerSo they are still the ever present so that guy with that gun up there to try to
- speakerescape and you're there that long you feel you might be able to sweat it
- speakerout a little bit longer and get out in an orderly manner.
- speaker[Wicklein] Did you see civilians and how they fared at all as you were?
- speaker[Canda] As we were taken into the camps. We saw them several days before we got on the train.
- speakerWalking through the villages and the like, but not after we got to the camp.
- speaker[Wicklein] What about your relationships with the guards? Communication or aloof? [Canda] Most all of the
- speakerones we had spoke a little English. And as I say they were older men.
- speakerThere was one young Nazi, I guess, or Stormtrooper who thought he was in charge of
- speakereverything. The guards all hated his guts as well as we
- speakermen hated him. And, the guards were all, as we said, men fifty
- speakeryears and older. A lot of them had physical
- speakerimpairments of one kind or another.
- speakerOne was a one-legged man. Another, I guess he must have been 60 or
- speaker65. And, he'd tell us he felt sorry for us, but it was his
- speakerjob to stand there and stand guard over us. Not to try anything funny because he could still
- speakerpull the trigger. They were basically friendly.
- speakerThey were basically at that time I think very much against Hitler. At least that was
- speakerour feeling that we got from them. [Wicklein] Were you organized in camp?
- speakerWas there somebody in camp among the P.O.W.s who was
- speakeraccepted as senior? and you had your own system of, your own pecking order, a system of discipline?
- speaker[Canda] Well we really didn't have too much discipline to be worried about. The discipline in our camp
- speakerwas not bad in any way whatever. That was,
- speakerI think, a very docile camp. Why,
- speakerI don't know. But I suppose there, let me
- speakerthink back. There were some things of that nature. And, some of the senior noncoms, the
- speakera higher ranking non-coms would have thought they were trying to maintain law and
- speakerorder so to speak among the American troops that were there. We had no real
- speakerserious problems. We had. Everything we had was taken away from us so we didn't have anything but
- speakerthe clothes on our backs. They were on our backs twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
- speakerSo nobody was trying to steal clothes one from another.
- speakerAs some of the men were dying, we had a chance to get some of their overcoats or what have you. And they were brought
- speakerback and that sort of thing. So there was nothing really to get out of
- speakerorder in the camp. A few tempers here and there would flare, of course, as they do in most any
- speakergroup of men that are hard pressed for whatever problems they are having.
- speakerBut the camp that we were in, I would say, was
- speakerfrom an overall standpoint of discipline or lack of a lack of necessity of discipline, behaved
- speakervery well. [Wicklein] Given a relatively short duration
- speakerfor being a P.O.W., some people must have had to give up very early
- speakerto be, to die within a four month period.
- speaker[Canda] I suppose so. Some of the men, for whatever reason,
- speakerit's hard to say. At that time I didn't try to analyze it except that I could
- speakerdefinitely see those men who expressed a belief in God
- speakerand tried to look toward God for counsel and
- speakerconsolences at that period of time that I was physically just
- speakerseemed to fare a great deal better. Why? Other than looking
- speakerat it as a religious person. I feel I am, have a good religious
- speakerbackground. Not overly religious, but I feel I have a good religious background. And, I think
- speakerthat those men who had that, they just seem to morally,
- speakermentally, psychologically fed their bodies on
- speakersomething that helped to sustain them. The guy that didn't have it, he fared poorly.
- speakerAnd I mean, some of them just absolutely sat in the corner and wouldn't move. They
- speakerwouldn'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
- speakercould go out in the yard to walk around. They just sat in the corner and gave up completely.
- speakerSome of them were married men. Most of them were single. I'd say looking back on it,
- speakerperhaps the married men probably fared somewhat better as a whole than the single men did.
- speaker[Wicklein] Do you think that perhaps because they had a sense of purpose to return?
- speaker[Canda Yes I think so.
- speakerI think that had a great deal to do with it. Because,
- speakerI don't know that it was a majority of the men that were there with me that were married, but a goodly percentage
- speakerof them were fathers, with a wife
- speakerand children, and home, some incentive to try to return.
- speakerThat was another motivating factor.