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A Narrative or Short Story— Dana Sinopoli
Price for Freedom: A POW Story
I want you to close your eyes for a moment and try to imagine being 19. Now imagine
being pulled away from your family, your friends, and your home, and placed into hell with nothing
but a gun and a prayer. You are a soldier in 1944, fighting in one of the most gruesome and pitiless
wars of all time: World War II.
It is December 15, 1944. Your company of 250 men, the farthest division advanced in
Germany, has just captured Kesternich. Early dawn of the very next day, the town is lit up by large
klieg lights as an entire tank division comes pouring into the town. The rumble of machines shakes
the ground beneath you and creates a sound so powerful that it seems as though the Earth is splitting
into two.
You are in the basement of a small house when a tank stops right outside the window. The
.88 gun of the Panzer tank points directly at the window, forcing you and a handful of other terrified
soldiers to surrender. At this point, there are only 50 of you left.
Barely able to walk, being so weighed down with fear, you are all marched to a school house
and lined up by a German Prisoner of War lieutenant. This man, for whom you feel nothing but
hatred, walks up and down the line of men, and out of everyone else, points to you. The lieutenant
accuses you of having shot German prisoners. You are pulled out of the line and taken by truck to
Bonn Prison Camp.
You are still only 19 years old and instead of running around a college campus, you are put
in solitary confinement. The cell is smaller than a closet and has only one tiny door. You have no
overcoat and nothing to shield you from the cold. You see no one for six weeks and your only
nutritional in-take consists of Ersatz bread. Because the Germans do not have enough wheat, they
mix wood chips in with the wheat they do have, and that is your bread.
Every few days you are dragged out of your cell and interrogated by officers for a crime you
did not commit. You are crowded by German men with shiny boots and crop sticks and relentlessly
told to sign a paper admitting to killing the German Prisoners of War. Again and again you refuse
even after being threatened with the firing squad.
On February 4, 1945, an Alliance British plane known as a Pathfinder drops flares directly
into the middle of the Prisoner of War camp. The impinging waves level the prison camp and
destroy your solitary bunker. You crawl out and have to remind yourself to breathe as you are a
witness to an inferno.
Prisoners of war of all the Allied countries are screaming out of joy, confusion,
bewilderment, and some scream because it has been so long since they have had the freedom to do
so. There are fires all around, and you see body parts flying through the air.
At dawn, you and the other survivors are organized by your nationality. This mostly
consists of Yugoslavians, British, French, and Americans. You and the other Americans are put into
a box car and shipped to Limburg.
You are still only 19. You are filthy, grossly underweight, sick, yet exhilarated beyond
belief to be out of confinement. The conditions in Limberg are so different from home. There are
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