Photo courtesy of Britannica Image Quest

A Story From the Life of Herman C.

Ghostwritten by his granddaughter, Kelly H.

Vistors

When people learn that I was a part of World War II, they ask questions. They want to know more about the Nazis, the battles and the holocaust, with its haunted concentration camps. I can’t answer those questions because I don’t know. At the bitter end of the war, I was indeed drafted, but when I joined the Navy, I traveled to Central America. I saw beautiful beaches and tropical weather, but never the European theatre. Therefore, I don’t know about the war with the Soviet Union and the British fleet uniting with America to defeat the Nazis.

I do know about the fight from the Homefront. The story of a country with every person dedicated to the military without fail. I do know about the German Prisoners of War who worked on farms, on railroads, some even in the empty diners that dotted the roads. To me, this was World War II. And so I tell them about my little town of Clemmons and the foreign friends who came to us.

Across America, 400,000 German Prisoners of War resided. I grew accustomed to them working on my father’s mill or around the town, sipping coffee on their break. They were kind men, men who would smile as I passed by. The few who knew English would shout hello. The others would continue their conversation in a foreign tongue. I assumed they missed their home and their families. They were over four thousand miles away with no communication, yet they didn’t seem to mind. In fact, there was only one occurrence in which there was a man unaccounted for.

At the time, the men had been working at the rail road. The flour and grain produced at my family mill and other goods needed to be piled into the train and taken to the military. It was beginning to get late when one man had strayed from his pack. He finished loading the particular car and began to walk back towards his group, a group that had vanished. The men of the day had piled on to the truck that would take them back to the Army General Barracks and all that they had left behind was a trail of dust and a friend.

That night, as roll call began, they soon discovered a missing comrade, but no one fretted. To us, these Germans weren’t prisoners, they weren’t the enemy and they definitely weren’t Nazis. No one knows exactly what happened that evening. Perhaps the man stayed in a nearby barn or slept under the shelter of the trees next to the track, but the next day he was there, anticipating the arrival of his colleagues and ready for the work the day would bring.

The theories that had been present throughout the Germans stay were proved in this incident. These men were pleased to be here, grateful for the chance to come to our country and escape the raging war at home. They would not cause trouble- even when left without a guard. Although they held the title prisoner of war, the name did not define them. America was at war with the Nazis, not with the Germans. Not with the kind-hearted men who were paying for the hatefulness of Adolf Hitler as much as others.

Eventually, the war ended and the men boarded boats that took them back to their now crumbled home. I don’t know what happened to them from there. Maybe they would come back to America; it didn’t seem fair that if they were to stay in their home country they would be held to the faults of their leaders.

World War II taught the world a lesson about the wrongness of prejudice and terrorism and the threat it held to our global peace. But World War II taught me about the people of the earth and how they are more than the labels that are pasted on to them, that they can be good and kind despite the evil that surrounds them.