Samuel D. Rose - Freedom

One morning we woke up and all the Germans, but a couple, were gone. A little later a big tank drove through the front gate. When it got into where I was you could hardly see the tank for the POW. It had to leave soon but by night a truck came in camp and passed out white bread, we thought it was cake. The C.O. said nobody was to leave camp. Some went to town anyway and did some things that made me ashamed to be an American.

They went into houses and threw everything out into the yard, took their food and anything else they wanted. Some came back to camp with dishes, antique guns, furniture, money etc. disgusting. A bunch of the Russian POWs broke into a tank car on the railroad and drank what they thought was alcohol. It was rocket fuel and you could follow their trail back to camp by the dead bodies. Only a few made it back to camp to tell about it. We left camp one day for a walk by the river, very pretty and quiet. May 8th we were trucked to an air field to catch planes to France. The planes didn't arrive so we spent the night in the school building at the field. The place was called Strabun. The DC-3 came the next day on their way back from hauling supplies to Rattons bunch up front. We had fold down seats and a nice trip to LaHarve France. We landed at Lucky Strike air field and camp for returning POWs. We were processed and given a partial payment for our back pay nearly 2 years. There was a PX where we could spend it. They fed us four times a day with an ice cream bar open 24 hrs. a day and free to POWs.

We had all the good stuff that put fat on us so I came home fat faced and flabby. They had an outside movie where I saw Red Skelton for the first time. We went to town and walked around, the place was tore all up. This was my first and last time to see a bathroom built just off the side walk over the gutter and you stood and talked to people on the sidewalk while you went to the bath room, no top and walls about five foot high. Back at camp the 10th of May we got PX supply, 11th clothes, 12th interview and new dog tags. The 21st of May we got on a ship and sat a couple of days for a convoy to form in the English Chanel, we could see the white cliffs on the English coast, my only experience with England.

The ship we got was a small liberty ship that had taken a load of German prisoners to the U.S. but was called back, unloaded, fumigated and we got on board. We had three good meals a day with extra snacks at night. The weather was good a few days then it got rough. We had to stand up to eat and hold our plates. I went on deck early one morning and saw an empty tanker next to us going up and down, about to chop into the ship in front of it, pretty soon it backed off. We had five Marines on board to guard the ship with a 50 caliber on the front and a 1 1/2 inch gun on the back and they had three 30.06 rifles. No trouble knew of anywhere on the way home. We got to Boston around the first June. The most surprising thing for me was everywhere you looked you didn’t see any war damage. The U.S. can't know about war unless you've been in it like Europe, Italy, Africa. Every where I went outside the U.S. I saw bombing and strafing evidence. We landed about noon caught a train to a camp and was processed again and went to the PX and bought me a nice top coat with a shammy skin lining that comes out 90 bucks and I still have it almost unused. After dark we caught a train for California. I went to sleep and missed seeing New York. We got to Camp Beale Calif. sometime after the 11th of June 1945. We got in camp about four o'clock. They processed me and I was on a bus home by dark. I went to Ivanhoe where I last saw my family and
got a surprise.