POW's

[Orv Reichert]

True Story:


In the fall of 1944, I was 15 years old and attending High School in Pocatello Idaho. During the war, they had a harvest vacation each year when the spuds were ready to harvest [as most of the young males were gone!] All us kids went to work in the fields [picking spuds] in school buses every day to alleviate the problem. Some of us did very little work...others worked well!


The farm where I worked had a contingent of German POW's working there...about 25. They had one guard armed with a carbine. They were housed at the Pocatello Air Base.


One day, during the lunch break, I noted the Germans all clustered around a blanket on the ground. They had the guards carbine all apart and were examining it. A few minutes later, they set up some spuds on a ditch bank and started firing at them. I asked the guard about it, and he said: Hell, they ain't going no where...all the Sieg Heil boys are in a camp in Arizona!


For lunch they had dry bread, sliced cheese and cold coffee.


They had to 'roll their own' cigarettes, too. They bought tobacco at their PX with the few cents they made for each hour worked. My dad gave me some Camels to take to them. [dad had been in Germany from 1922 to 1925]


One guy, I remember, said he was on a sub that was shot up by a plane they had not seen. He commented that Germany is Kaput!...probably an accurate statement in late '44


Orv Reichert