Long Hard Road - American POWs during World War II

Between 1941 and 1945 more than 110,000 American marines, soldiers, airmen, and sailors were taken prisoner by German, Italian, and Japanese forces. Most who fought overseas during World War II weren’t prepared for capture, or for the life-altering experiences of incarceration, torture, and camaraderie bred of hardship that followed. Their harrowing story—often overlooked in Greatest Generation narratives—is told here by the POWs themselves.

Long hours of inactivity followed by moments of sheer terror. Slave labor, death marches, the infamous hell ships. Historian Thomas Saylor pieces together the stories of nearly one hundred World War II POWs to explore what it was like to be the “guest” of the Axis Powers and to reveal how these men managed to survive. Gunner Bob Michelsen bailed out of his wounded B-29 near Tokyo, only to endure days of interrogation and beatings and months as a “special prisoner” in a tiny cell home to seventeen other Americans. Medic Richard Ritchie spent long moments of terror locked with dozens of others in an unmarked boxcar that was repeatedly strafed by Allied forces. In the closing chapter to this moving narrative, the men speak of their difficult transition to life back home, where many sought—not always successfully—to put their experience behind them.

Available from:
Minnesota Historical Society

A Letter from Frank: The Second World War Through the Eyes of a Canadian Soldier & a German Paratrooper

This is the remarkable tale of a long-forgotten letter. It was written from Germany in the aftermath of the Second World War to a Canadian in a peaceful Southern Ontario town. Both had been soldiers and had met on a German battlefield. The letter lay unseen for years and was found by the Canadian's son long after the old soldier's death. This book tells how that faded letter led to the discovery of the one-time German paratrooper who became his father's friend in the immediate aftermath of the war.

"A Letter from Frank" is part war story and part biography, following the lives of Russ Colombo, the Canadian soldier, and Frank Sikora, the German paratrooper. One grew up during the Depression in Ontario, the other was a German in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia. This non-fiction narrative also chronicles Stephen J Colombo's struggle to come to terms with a father haunted by the war. Their recollections provide insights into the events that shaped the generations that forged a modern Canada and rebuilt Germany after its near-total devastation.

More information on "A Letter from Frank" can be found on the author's website, including extracts from the letters and information on how to research your relatives' wartime experiences.

Available from:
Dundurn Books

Finding Uri
A man's journey to discover the father he never knew

Finding Uri is a memoir written by a man who has only one fleeting memory of his father. Uri Munro, a naval aviator flying off the U.S.S. Enterprise in the Pacific during World War II, was shot down and lost in January 1945.

The author, also a Navy carrier pilot, unexpectedly received a box in the mail following his mother’s death. It contained 190 letters written back and forth between his young parents, Uri and Betsy, while Uri was in the service flying in TBM torpedo bombers.

After almost a year’s consideration, the author began a two-year process of reading the letters and writing about the experience in real time. He includes photographs and often-emotional excerpts, and weaves other family members into the story.

Using thorough research Munro tells the fascinating history of Uri’s Torpedo Squadron 90. But more significantly he gets to know his father — and his mother — during that two-year period in their lives. It’s an intimate, true tale that the reader discovers along with the author.

Available from:
People's Press

Foreign Shores - A True Story

Foreign Shores is the true story of Theodor Terhorst, a former German soldier held as a prisoner-of-war in England. Growing up in a small village in Nazi Germany, Theodor, like many other impressionable boys of his age, was a willing participant in the rallies and events organized by the Hitler Youth.

Called up in 1944 at the age of seventeen, he underwent training as a member of a Fallschirmjager (parachute) regiment before being posted to northern France. Wounded in heavy fighting during the allied invasion of Normandy, Theodor was evacuated to Guernsey in the Channel Islands where, after recovering from his wounds, he was subjected to the horror of gradual starvation. Eventually captured when the islands were liberated, he was shipped back to England as a prisoner-of-war. Weak and emaciated after his ordeal, he was hospitalized and given a special diet to gain weight before being sent to a POW camp in Shropshire.

By the end of 1945 with hostilities over, prisoners were allowed to work outside the camps, but many were prevented from returning to Germany in contravention of the Geneva Convention. Theodor was one of those and sent to work as a labourer on a nearby farm where he met and fell in love with the farmer’s eldest daughter.

Some years later Theodor returned to his homeland to try and settle down, but his experience was an unhappy one. Convinced that he is resented by many people for his healthy young family, his prosperity and even for the simple fact that he is still alive, he returns to England where he spends the remainder of his life, developing a sense of belonging and love for the land against which he had once fought.

Available from:
Troubador Publishing

Wartorn: 1861-2010, Exploring Combat and Post-Traumatic Stress - HBO Documentary

American Civil War doctors called it hysteria, melancholia and insanity. During the First World War it was known as shell-shock. By World War II, it became combat fatigue. Today, it is clinically known as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a crippling anxiety that results from exposure to life-threatening situations such as combat.

The HBO special Wartorn 1861-2010 brings attention to the invisible wounds of war. Drawing on personal stories of American soldiers whose lives and psyches were torn asunder by the horrors of battle and PTSD, the documentary chronicles the lingering effects of combat stress and post-traumatic stress on military personnel and their families throughout American history, from the Civil War through today’s conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. The HBO Documentary Films presentation debuts on Thursday November 11th, only on HBO in the US.

The documentary shares stories through soldiers’ revealing letters and journals; photographs and combat footage.

“Combat fatigue” was considered a character flaw in World War II. In a famous story, Gen. George S. Patton slapped a soldier hospitalized with nervous exhaustion, ordering “that yellow SOB” back to the front. It took 50 years for WWII vets to be diagnosed with PTSD. Today, in the documentary, a group opens up publicly about their traumas for the first time. Al Maher, who was a Lieutenant in the Army Air Corps, laments the toll his war experience took on his family life – he became abusive and took to drinking. As a result, he has not spoken to his sons in 25 years. Abner Greenberg, a corporal in the Marines who lost two best friends in Iwo Jima, kept his wartime traumas pent up and never shared them with his children until he joined a PTSD group and discovered what was wrong with him. Former Army sergeant Bill Thomas remembers shooting four Germans, and being moved when the sole survivor showed him a family photo. “How do you explain the horrors?” Greenberg asks. “It consumes you.”

For more information visit the HBO site.

Lost Between Worlds - A World War II Journey of Survival

Lost Between Worlds is based on a journal written between 1940 and 1945, by Edward H Herzbaum, when he was in his twenties. It is a first-hand account of his horrendous wartime experiences, both physical and psychological, that has just been published for the first time by his daughter: the journal had been lying in a suitcase for 65 years until it was discovered
and translated.

The book spans a period of history from the German invasion of Poland in 1939 to the end of the Italian Campaign in 1945. It recounts how Edward was arrested and interned by the Germans but escaped. He travelled to eastern Poland to avoid being recaptured, but there he was arrested by the Russians and deported to a Gulag, where he suffered starvation, brutality and horrific working and living conditions.

After Germany's attack on Russia, Edward and the other Polish prisoners were amnestied and released to join a newly-formed Polish army, under British command. They travelled through Middle Asia, Iraq, Iran, British Palestine and Egypt, eventually fighting in the Italian Campaign.

Edward writes at times with humour and irony and at other times with desperation, about his arduous journey and the awful psychological after-effects of the experiences which he and the other Poles had endured. The loss of family, friends and country and the feelings of loneliness at finding themselves completely displaced from their 'old world', with no knowledge of what their 'new world' might look like, even if they survived the war.

Edward Herzbaum, born in 1920 to Polish Jewish parents, was educated in Poland. During WWII he was arrested and escaped from both the Germans and Russians and then fought in the Polish Army. In 1946 he settled in the UK and became an architect. He died in 1967.

Available from:
Troubador Publishing

Aterrem em Portugal! - Landed in Portugal

“Aterrem em Portugal” was published in November 2008. It contains the history of dozens of landings from Allied and Axis planes that happened in Portugal during World War II. With the country lying between the routes that linked the United Kingdom to the operational theatres in the Mediterranean, Middle East, Africa and others there were over one hundred emergency landings during the six years of conflict.

About a dozen airmen from the Commonwealth and from USA that where in Portugal between 1941 and 1945, were interviewed for the book. From others, already deceased, it was possible to include information from diaries that family members still posses.

Several Portuguese witnesses also recount their versions about what they saw and lived during those years when war surrounded the country. It was also possible to put together documents from Portuguese, British, Americans, Australians and German archives.

Note that the book Aterrem em Portugal is in Portuguese. However, the fascinating website contains a large amount of information in English, including a list of all the planes that crashed in Portugal during the war.

Available from:
The Author - Carlos Guerreiro