Bill Stigall on "comradery" as a POW:
Soon after I arrived in Limburg I lost track of Sergeant Birdwell and Corporal Gerry. As noncommissioned officers, they were separated from privates. I thought of them often. I remembered our many arguments, our long, long miles together, our many bivouacs in Louisiana, Carolina, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Italy, England; I remembered our Christmas together in North Ireland, our terrible days together in Normandy. I missed them. I never saw them again.
As private soldiers Stubby and I were required, by the Geneva Convention (we were told), to work. In Stalag XIIA that meant digging pits for potatoes, removing rubble from bombings, and digging ditches. On one such detail, we walked to the edge of Limburg and were given shovels and told to dig. One bright and knowing POW asked the German guard what we were digging.
"just dig," he grunted.
"Are these gun emplacements?" the POW questioned.
"Yes," said the guard, and pointing to the earth he added,
"Dig."
The POW refused. There was a big argument. Other POWs joined the argument. A Luftwaffe officer came over, and the POW explained, "By the Geneva Convention we are not allowed to dig gun emplacements against our own troops." More verbal exchanges.
Big talkers.
Big joke.
From the argument, I gathered we had two choices: resist and take the consequences-probably solitary confinement and no food-or dig. My notes inform me that we all dug. Not willingly; under protest, at the end of a rifle or a bayonet. But we dug; with infuriating slowness and like stumblebums, we dug.
While we worked, one newly captured POW who had recently been in the States enheartened us with, "You should see what the German POWs get at home." We paused to listen. He went on, "They have clean barracks. They get GI chow." "So?" someone said. "And who cares?" The guy went on, "They even mix with American soldiers and civilians."
"Yeah, Americans are softhearted."
Who could refute the reporter? So we argued these international problems while we dug a few lousy holes for the Germans to hold out against the coming of our buddies. It was as funny as hell.
If ever there was a buddy system in some units of the U.S. Army, by October in POW camp it was no longer discernible. Prison life, indeed the boxcar ride, saw the buddy system collapse. Hunger for food and cigarettes dominated our lives. All we had lots of was hunger. All we had to share was hunger. We started begging butts when a man reached for a cigarette. The butt, pinioned on the point of a toothpick or held tightly at the tips of a tweezer, was passed around among ten to twelve men while it burned the last one's lips. We watched our buddies snipe butts from the latrine floors. They begged butts from Nazi guards, from German civilians, while the latter looked on in contempt and the former with withering scorn.
