Coffin Corner Boys by Carole Engle Avriett

Author:Carole Engle Avriett
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781621576556
Publisher: Regnery Publishing
Published: 2018-05-07T04:00:00+00:00

Dick Morse

We were being taken deeper into Germany. We all knew that. When we arrived in Frankfurt, we were made to walk quite a distance to a Dulag Luft, where we were interrogated once more, received different clothing, and finally got some food, though not much.

I was given a used British uniform, some black shoes, and an overcoat. Then I was put into a small, white room with a very large, bright light and was kept there for the rest of the day.

About two days later, fifty or sixty of us were taken to a train station and crowded into what was called a “Forty and eight” boxcar. These train cars were built during the First World War to carry either forty men or eight horses. Evidently the Germans had used them to carry horses and livestock, because they were extremely dirty and smelly. In each car was one small, high window up in the corner. That’s all the air circulation we had.

Railroads were targets for bombing and strafing, and these trains had no markings on them for identification. The Allies had no way of knowing the trains were carrying helpless POWs.

We traveled about a day and arrived at a large, barn-like building in St. Wendel, Germany. There were about four hundred prisoners on the train, and we stayed there nearly two weeks.

Then in September, once again we were crowded into boxcars. These boxcars were divided with wire fencing into two sections for prisoners, with a smaller section in the middle for the guards. Our section was so crowded that we could not all sit down at one time but had to take turns.

In the center of our section there was a can that we used for a toilet and occasionally, it spilled all over the floor.

One day as I was sitting near the wire barrier, I saw a German coin that apparently had been dropped by one of the guards, and when I got a chance I reached through the wire and picked it up. I still have it.1

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