Todd: Sir, where were you born?
Woods: Fort Smith, Ark.
T: When were you born?
W: Dec. 18, 1923.
T: Who was your father?
W: John Powell Woods. He was born in Northeast Arkansas. My mother was Mable Fairfax Hon and she was born in Waldron, Ark. I have ancestors from both sides of my family who were in the Civil War. My great-grandfather Gaines was a prisoner of war. He was on the south. He was on a prison ship on the Mississippi and didn’t know how to swim. He and some other prisoner jumped overboard and swam to shore. That was the first time he swam.
T: What type of work did your father do?
W: My father and both grandfathers were lawyers.
T: Describe Fort Smith.
W: The main building in Fort Smith when I was growing up was the Goldman Hotel, which was near the old Fort Smith and the troops paraded in this area.
T: Is this old Fort Smith?
W: This is the 1870 fort that lasted. I’m not talking about the 1817 fort. The Old Commissary Building is still there and is the only building in its original condition. It is a rock building. The building that housed Judge Parker’s Courtroom was built later and was not part of the original fort. My grandmother and her sisters were responsible for saving that building from being torn down. When I was a Boy Scout I was a guide in the Old Commissary Building. I remember the antique fire wagon that was there and old musical instruments from the Fort Smith Band.
T: What year did you graduate from high school?
W: 1941 just before Pearl Harbor. I was a freshman in the dormitory at the University of Arkansas when Pearl Harbor was attacked.
T: What was your reaction?
W: It was Sunday afternoon and someone yelled about the news and we all rushed to the radio to listen, and it really affected all our lives. Instead of enlisting, we were asked to enlist in the Enlisted Reserve Corps and be ready when they needed us. I enlisted in 1942 and was called out with a group of about 100 from the University of Arkansas in May of 1943.
T: Where did you take Basic Training?
W: I went to Camp Maxey, in Paris, Texas, to what was called an AFRFC, Army Services Forces Training Center. We were studying engineering. In the spring of 1944, almost all of the AFRFC centers were closed and I went back to infantry basic. I was put in the infantry at Camp Maxey.
T: Would you describe Camp Maxey?
W: We were in 2-story wooden barracks, built very fast for World War II. We had a food shortage. We had a lot of pork and I gained a great dislike for pork. I had Basic two times. The second time was with the 99th Division. I went overseas with the 99th.
T: What was your average day in Basic?
W: We got up around 5:30 to a recorded bugle. I was a slow dresser and because of that, I would sleep in an old uniform, get up, fall in for reveille, then go back and change into a clean uniform.
T: What type of uniform did you wear?
W: We had the old World War I leggings, but they were longer, and we had them until I went overseas in 1944. I finally got the buckle-top combat boots in 1944 and got rid of my leggings.
T: What happened after first formation?
W: We had first formation, then we got ready for breakfast. After breakfast, we had training periods. We had physical workout, training with the bayonet and the rifle.
T: Tell me about shipping overseas.
W: They never tell you anything about moving, but you can tell when you are going because they cut down on training and we began to make boxes.
T: What was your point of embarkation?
W: Boston, Mass.
T: Tell me about the trip?
W: Well I was a Private First Class (PFC) and was in the bottom of the ship. We had two meals a day and I was expecting to get seasick, but I never did. I volunteered for KP all the way across just to have something to do, and it got me out of the bottom of the ship, and I could eat whenever I wanted to.
T: Tell me about arriving in Europe.
W: When we left, we still didn’t know where we were going, and we first landed at Bridgeport, England, and I had it pretty good there because I helped an officer take his bags off the ship. We were going to be in England for about two weeks and each officer could have an orderly, so that officer requested that I be his orderly. For those two weeks we stayed in a castle in Bridgeport. The Battalion officers were in the castle, and the orderlies stayed in the servants quartets. I always regretted that I never learned the history of that castle because it was beautiful. After those two weeks we were sent to the continent.
T: From England, where did you go?
W: We went to France in October 1944. We went to Le Havre on LSTs. This was after D-Day. My first sight of the war was when we landed in Le Havre and there is nothing as shocking as the first time you see war for real. Le Havre was completely leveled.
T: And from Le Havre, where did you go?
W: We loaded on trucks and were taken directly into Belgium and replaced the 2nd Division on the front line. They got out of their foxholes and we got into them. This was in the Ardennes Forest, which was heavily wooded with evergreens that had been very carefully planted. There has been a tree planting program in Europe for many years because they realized long before we did in the States that the trees had to be replaced. I remember the forest had a Christmas atmosphere. The trees were tall evergreen and there was tinsel hanging from them, which had been dropped to deflect radar, but it reminded you of Christmas. It looked like icicles hanging from the trees.
T: Was this the first time you saw action?
W: Yes. It was a quiet period. We knew the Germans were close, but we didn’t expect anything.
T: What were your duties on the line?
W: I was a gunner on a BAR (Browning Automatic Rifle) and had a crew of two people, assistant gunner and ammunition bearer. The three of us shared the bunker with the BAR. The bunker was built for two, but all three of us were in it. One person had to be awake and on guard at all times, so one person was outside and ready to fire the gun. The other two could be sleeping. It was winter and cold with snow on the ground. As long as the ground was frozen, the bunker wasn’t too bad, but on one or two occasions, the temperature got above freezing and that was miserable. The ground would thaw and ice cold water would seep into the bunker and we would by lying in that water. We had to stay in the bunker so the Germans wouldn’t spot us.
T: Did you have sleeping bags?
W: Yes, but they were soaked with the ice water then they would freeze, and it was better to sleep on top of it than inside of it.
T: What did your winter clothing consist of?
W: We had the field jacket with a hood, long underwear, and we got the buckle-top combat boots in Belgium. The most difficult thing was to keep your feet warm. It was almost impossible to keep your feet from freezing. We would take our boots and socks off and wash our feet every day and exercise them to prevent trench-foot. Almost everybody was frostbitten. We were in snow and ice which was almost a foot deep. I had frostbite on my feet and it took almost a year after I got back to the States before I recovered. During that year, layer after layer of skin peeled off my feet. That whole year I had a numbness in my feet and I thought it would be permanent. Some people still have problems with their feet, but I recovered completely.
T: How effective was the BAR?
W: It was very effective except in freezing weather. It could be disastrous when it froze up on you, because it would not fire. The pin moved forward too slow in the freezing and would not strike the round hard enough to fire. That was the problem we had when we were attacked, the BAR wouldn’t fire.
T: Were you captured in the Ardennes?
W: Yes, we were just inside Belgium.
T: What was the date of your capture?
W: Dec. 10, 1944, six days before the Bulge broke out. We were in a holding position in the Ardennes. The Germans were building up and we were not conscious of what they were doing. I want to mention the buzz bombs. You could time them, every 15 minutes another would be fired and would go over us. They were firing into our rear area. They were the V-2 rockets and we called them the buzz bombs. They had an engine that ran on denatured alcohol. They became commonplace, just a whistling sound as they went over.
T: You say you were captured near the Siegfried Line?
W: Yes, that’s the defensive line with the dragon’s teeth. It was amazing how it was built up. We were on reconnaissance into the German area. We were near the border and may have crossed into Germany and 12 or 13 of us were cut off. Two members in the rear escaped and another one was killed. It happened very sudden. I tried to fire, but the BAR was frozen up. I had fallen into a snow covered ravine and snow got inside of the weapon.
T: What was your reaction to being captured?
W: It was bewilderment. I didn’t know what was going to happen. You feel helpless and there is nothing you can do. I remember the ground opening up when we were being taken to the German area. We were marching and these big doors just opened up out of the ground and we walked underground. They were very well camouflaged and also well fortified.
T: Where did they take you?
W: We were taken to the Siegfried Line and left on German trucks. There was snow everywhere and the truck overturned. Germans guards jumped out and covered us, so we couldn’t escape. We were locked in a prison compound. The next day we were taken to a city jail in a nearby town. The Germans had picked up a British flyer, so 10 people were in this cell which was on the second floor. There were windows with bars over them, but no glass to keep out the cold. We only had one blanket to keep us warm. We all took off our shoes and sat in a circle with our feet in the middle like a wagon wheel and put the blanket over our feet. We shared each other’s heat and kept our feet warm even though the rest of our bodies were freezing. We sat in that position for about 2 days. To pass the time, we began telling stories. We even played games. We were moved by train to Frankfurt, where we learned about the Battle of the Bulge. Prisoners were being brought to Frankfurt by the thousands. The 99th Division was hit hard in the Bulge and the 106th Division was completely annihilated.
T: Tell me about Frankfurt.
W: I had my 21st birthday in the compound in Frankfurt. We went through a lot of interrogation in the early part of our captivity. The Germans were experts at psychological warfare. They would separate us and interview each one of us and try to tempt us in giving information. They already knew a lot of information and they let us know they knew a lot. They tried to turn us against each other. They never used physical force, but it was threatened. Interrogation was day in and day out until the Bulge broke out and then it all stopped.
T: What happened after Frankfurt?
W: We were living in a boxcar in Frankfurt. The boxcar was called a forty and eight. The term came from World War I. They were designed to hold 40 men or 8 horses. There were about 100 of us in that one car and we were so cramped we couldn’t move. We had no food and no toilet facility. We had to relieve ourselves where we were standing because no one could move. In order to keep warm we buddied up. My friend was Clarence Deal from Oklahoma City. We stayed together all the way through prison camp. When we had room, we would take off our shoes, I would put my legs under his field jacket and my feet in his armpits and he would do the same to me and that’s how we stayed warm. The prison train cars had the lowest priority on the railroad, so we would be on a siding for several days while other trains passed. It was a long trip.
Stalag 12A was in Limburg. We were starving, cold and we all had diarrhea. We were put into a building and were so crowded we all couldn’t lay down at one time; we had to lay crisscross over each other. There was one toilet in a small room that didn’t work and we all had diarrhea. When we had to go to the latrine, we simply crawled over bodies to the toilet and relieve ourselves. With everyone having diarrhea, it ran back into the room where we were. You cannot imagine the misery. I was suffering along with everyone else and I waited as long as I could before going to the toilet and I waited too long, and the strain of crawling over the people and the movement of my muscles triggered me and I literally filled up my long underwear. All I could do was crawl over the people, remove my long underwear, clean myself as best I could and throw my underwear away. I lost my long underwear there and it was still cold.
On the night of Dec. 23 we were bombed by the British. The Americans bombed in the daytime and the British bombed at night. The target was the airport at Limburg which was next to the buildings in which we were staying. Flares were always dropped to mark the target and we could see the flares coming down on all sides of the buildings. Instead of marking the airport, they had marked the buildings we were in. It was a strange feeling to know that in a few seconds bombs are going to be dropped on top of you and there is nothing you can do. There was no place we could go, we had to lay there and wait. I’m not sure how long it was before the bombs began exploding. The building I was in was lucky because we didn’t take a direct hit. The building next to us did and over 40 prisoners were killed. Although our building didn’t take a direct hit, the concussion of the bombs was so close that all the windows were blown out. So our misery was increased because we had the cold to contend with.
T: What were you thinking, knowing you were going to be bombed?
W: It’s a mixture of emotion, fear on top of misery. We had no place to go; we had to stay exactly where we were because we were so crowded. Some people were affected. One man was affected by the bombing so much that he would never take his shoes off again because he was always afraid he was going to be bombed again and he wanted to be ready to run to shelter. He wore rubber boots and the next spring when we were liberated, we had to carry him because he couldn’t walk. The rubber boots did not allow any air to get to his feet. It affected all of us while the bombs were dropping, but some were affected for a long time.
T: How long were you at Stalag 12A?
W: We left there just before New Year’s. There was an American sergeant at 12A who was collaborating with the Germans and was flaunting the fact. I don’t remember his name but he was getting special treatment from the Germans. No one liked him. At the end of the war he was court-martialed.
T: What was he doing?
W: I don’t really remember, telling on his fellow prisoners, giving information to the Germans. We all despised him.
T: What did you do on Christmas Day?
W: Christmas was just like any other day. I remember someone had found some colored paper and made decorations and put on a weed. That was our Christmas Tree. We put a few green sprigs on it. But Christmas was a miserable day just like all the rest.
T: When did you leave Stalag 12A?
W: We left right before New Year’s Day and were sent to Stalag 3A at Luckenwalde. 3A was bad in its own right, but it was so much less miserable than 12A that it almost seemed good. We were still crowded at 3A and two people had to share a bunk. Clarence Deal and I shared. The bunks were stacked three high and two to a bunk. Everyone had lice. We would scratch and wake each other up. We had a pot-bellied stove and when it was hot, we would wrap our clothes around the stove pipe coming out of the stove, and the heat would drive the lice out. As they came out we would kill them. We were not able to wash our clothes, but at least we could de-louse them, but we got them right back because the straw in the beds was full of lice.
The hunger at Luckenwalde was bad. The basic urge in life is food. All other urges disappear except for food. We would sit around all day and talk about food. I didn’t enjoy that talk because I was so hungry and did not want to think about food. We had a few paperback books and I read them, trying not to think of food. It was interesting that everyone talked about fancy food, not the basic steak and potatoes, but fancy deserts and exotic dishes. One man kept a notebook and wrote down every type of food the men talked about and he said when he returned to the States he was going to try every one of them. Another man added peanut butter to all of his dishes. He would describe how to prepare a dish, then add peanut butter to it. Hunger is not in the stomach. Hunger is all over the body. It is in the blood. You are hungry in your fingertips, your ears, your nose, even in the tips of your toes. You are hungry everywhere. When we were released from prison, it took a long time to get over that hungry feeling because it fills the body. Hunger from missing a meal is nothing compared to complete and thorough hunger.
T: What did your meals consist of?
W: In the morning for breakfast we had a cup of coffee. It wasn’t coffee, it was something boiled in water. It had a good flavor. At noon we have 1/3 of a canteen cup of soup, Kohlrabi soup, it is kind of like a turnip. The soup was just the Kohlrabi boiled in water with no seasoning. For the evening meal we had a loaf of German bread that 8 men had to share. Those were our three meals and that was every day. It was a meager diet and it kept us just above malnutrition. Once a week we were given sugar-honey for the bread. And also once a week we had a small portion of sausage. One day Russ Miller from Washington was dividing the honey. Every time he would cut the honey he would lick the spoon until we told him to stop, not because he may be spreading germs, but because he was getting more sugar honey than the rest of us. Another fellow prisoner was Jim McKown from Mount Pleasant, Texas.
We were in Luckenwalde for about one month. A French soldier had made a radio and it was hidden in the latrine. They had several large compounds at Luckenwalde, and we were separated, officers from enlisted and privates from sergeants and even different nationalities. I’m not sure why the Frenchman was in our compound, because the rest of us were Americans. He was able to pick up some news about the war on that radio.
I also remember the difference in treatment the Germans gave the Americans, British and Russians. The Germans were harder on the Russians than the British or Americans. The Germans tried to get the different prisoner groups to fight, the Russians to fight the British, the British to fight the Americans and so forth. We didn’t have too much contact with the Russian prisoners.
We were sent from Luckenwalde to Jüterborg, which is about 5 kilometers from Berlin. Jüterborg was also a quartermaster depot for the Germans. There was a small prison compound in Jüterborg that held about 100 prisoners. The compound was divided in two sections with 50 prisoners in each section with a wash area between the two. There was cold running water in the wash area. No shower, just a facet, but there was running water. The latrine was also outside at Jüterborg. I was in the 100 selected to work in the depot at Jüterborg. When we started to work we were under armed guard. The work area and schedule was organized before we got there.
We had always had a huge number of prisoners so we were not used to such a small group. We elected leaders. I think in any situation such as this, there is always someone who comes to the front. Our leader was Red Martin and he joined the army from the Philadelphia Penitentiary. He was elected because he was the man for the time. He knew what we needed and how to steal. That was the reason we elected him our leader and he was a little older than the rest of us. He was a rough-hewn type of young man in his 30s and the rest of us were anywhere from 19 to the middle 20s. I don’t even know his first name, we just called him Red. He began teaching us various tricks. The Germans assigned us to different work crews. If a person came from a farm, he was assigned to pitching hay. One crew was in the warehouse and that was where the “sensitive” material was kept. Red Martin and I both were selected for the warehouse crew because we both had honest faces. Red even told me I had potential to be a good thief. He began to teach us how to steal different items. He taught how he would fool the policemen back in Philadelphia, and we would use the same techniques to fool the German guards.
The warehouse crew would be searched more than the other crews. The building we worked in was a 3-story building. The first floor was dry items for the army. The second floor was a large area almost like a gymnasium and was full of rye. 8 or 10 men would have shovels and they would move this large pile of rye from one side to the other to keep the weevils out. When they got the pile moved, they would turn around and begin moving the pile back, it was just constant, moving this pile of rye back and forth for 8 to 10 hours a day. On the 3rd floor was the good stuff, different types of food, nice food.
In the warehouse, the best way to smuggle something out was in the blouse of your pants. Just drop it down your pants and it would fit into the blouse just above your boots and you could walk out with it. That worked for a while. We were smuggling pretty good that way until one day a guy snagged his pants and it wouldn’t have been so bad, but we were smuggling oatmeal that day. We went through the normal search they gave us and everything was fine until we started walking off, and there was a trail of oatmeal. The guard said, “Kommen zie hier!” They searched us again and we were just loaded with oatmeal, and that ended the blousing method, but we found other ways to steal.
One method was under your armpit. We wore field jackets, and we could carry items under the arms of the jacket. The best way to get away with that method was to flaunt it. We would walk up to be searched and throw open the field jacket, but had the item we were stealing snuggled in the armpit. When you throw your jacket open they wouldn’t suspect we were stealing anything. When we were working with salami and wurst, we would tie two together and put them in our pants, one down each leg and they would be hooked in your crotch. You could feel them moving as you walked. They hardly ever checked the inside of the legs.
Since we were searched more than the other crews, we would try to get the items to a less sensitive crew that wasn’t searched as much as we were. If we could get them to the other crews, we had a better chance of stealing it and getting away with it. The less sensitive crews normally were shoveling the rye or hay. The central point became the latrine. People in the other warehouses could see the latrine and it was constantly watched by the other prisoners. Anytime anyone from the warehouse crew where the food was handled went to the latrine, somebody from another crew would go also and they would swap the item, and it would be transferred from person to person and from crew to crew. If a person from another crew couldn’t get to the latrine, you buried it in the dirt and waited for an air raid. The Americans were bombing at night, so we had an air raid almost every night and we had to walk right past the latrine on the way to the shelter. One person would peel off and wait in the latrine until the raid was over. While the others were in the shelter, he would dig up whatever was buried. When the prisoners returned to the barracks, he would leave the latrine and walk back with them. Prisoners were never searched after an air raid.
Another method we used was to pass items from the third floor to the second floor by the dumb waiter. The men on the second floor were always watching. Whenever they saw the dumb waiter move, they would check it out when the guards weren’t watching. If something was there, they would bury it in the rye when they had the chance. Eventually it was dug up, because the crew on the second floor was not very sensitive and weren’t searched that thorough.
The Germans were very good with inventory. I think you could steal a whole boxcar from the Americans and they wouldn’t miss it, but you steal anything from the Germans and they missed it. One time we got a hold of a box of candy and it was sent down to the second floor and it was buried in the rye. The Germans found the box missing on the inventory and they figured we stole it. They knew anytime we could steal something, we were going to steal it, and they pretty well knew our methods. They figured it was buried in the rye. They had the guards sit down and reversed the shoveling of the rye. So the crew began moving the rye and they finally got to a point where the box was buried, and they tried to build a little peninsula around it and pass it, but the German said the dig in the peninsula. Of course they found the box and we lost it.
T: Did the Germans punish you?
W: Of course, but we figured it wasn’t undue punishment. We would get hit with a rifle butt or something like that. We always figured it was worth the chance of getting caught. The punishment was not of such an extent that it was not worth trying. Sometimes they would put a man into solitary confinement, but we never built any animosity toward the guards. It was like a cat and mouse game. Most of the guards were good people and were just doing their job. Some of the guards were sympathetic towards us. A lot of them were World War I veterans and were older men. One of the guards had a son who was a prisoner in the United States at that time. I remember once when we were carrying cheeses, we were moving them like a bucket brigade from a wagon into the warehouse. We were singing “Come down, wherever you are” to the tune of “Goodnight, wherever you are.” We would sing a lot and that was our main method of communicating with the other crews. A man from the second floor who was shoveling rye came down and saw what we were doing. He was hiding in the stairwell, and when the guard wasn’t looking, instead of throwing the cheese to the next man in line, he threw it over his shoulder to the man in the stairway and he took it up and buried it in the rye. We later cut it up and smuggled it back into the barracks.
The closest I ever came to getting caught was when our crew was moving from one building to another. Red Martin was in our group and he had a bottle of German Schnapps. They had been moving boxes of the bottles and he managed to get one out. I was walking one direction and Red was walking the other and he said to me, “Penn, quick, take this,” and he handed me that bottle. It was a quart of schnapps, and there I was standing out in the open with that bottle. I couldn’t put in the normal hiding places, so I put it down the seat of my pants. We went into the building and I was desperate to get down to that latrine and bury it and get it out of the way. Before long I told the guard I had to go, and I was really nervous with that bottle in my pants, not knowing if the Germans were going to find it or not. We were searched each time we went to the latrine, but that was a chance I was going to have to take, and he gave me a quick search and let me go. I started down and I guess I was walking too fast or looked nervous because the officer in charge of that compound, a German major was nearby and he called me back. So here I was, standing in front of this German major with a bottle of schnapps in my pants. I was scared. He started talking in a mixture of German and English. He made me empty my pockets, and he searched me because he knew I had something. He searched me everywhere except in the seat of my pants. He checked under my armpits, in my pockets, in the blouse of my boots, even in the crotch. He knew all the usual hiding places. I guess the seat of the pants is such an obvious place that he didn’t search there. He let me go, and I walked in the latrine and fell on my face because I was in shock. I knew someone up there liked me, but I felt a little guilty because of what I was smuggling. That night we had an air raid, and I went to the latrine and dug up the bottle and took it to the barracks. There were about 50 of us in the barracks and because of our condition was so poor, that all of us were singing and each one only had a cap full of that schnapps. In the center of the barracks was another latrine, and after we emptied the bottle, we dropped it in the latrine to hide the evidence. I’m sure the Germans knew, because they could hear us singing.
After that episode Red Martin told me, “Penn, if you get the chance to steal something, steal it, it doesn’t matter if you need it or not, take it.” He said if you don’t you will lose your nerve and you will get caught.
There was another man in the compound named Donahoe. His mother was German and he could speak German as well as the guards and he was our interpreter and became our eyes and ears, because he could listen and tell us what the Germans were talking about. Donahoe was about 18 or 19 years old and was about 6 feet 4 inches tall. He was tall and clumsy. The Germans thought that Donahoe would never steal because he spoke German, and he was so clumsy no one thought he could, but it was just the opposite. He was the best thief we had. He told us one time when we first arrived we were replacing French prisoners in the compound. The reason we were replacing the French was because they stole too much. After we had been there about one month the Germans said the “Americans aren’t worth a damn. They don’t any work and steal twice as much as the French ever did.”
Red Martin told me never to forget that philosophy and we were on the bottom floor working with the dry material. We were working with camp stoves, and they worked with chemicals, and it would be enough to heat a can of soup or something. It is like a little metal box that folds up both ways and you set your can on top of it. You light the tablets with a match and they burn. The stoves were sent to the front for the German soldiers. I suddenly noticed that there were no guards in the room. There was no value in the stoves; we couldn’t use them in the compound, but I remember what Red had said, so I picked up the carton and took it and buried it in the latrine and came back in. That night during the air raid, I went to the latrine and dug them up and took them to the barracks. I had the carton under my field jacket because we were not searched after the air raids. I walked into the barracks and walked up to Red and said, “Remember what you told me about stealing something whether you needed it or not?” and I opened my jacket and showed him the carton of stoves. His eyes got big and said, “My, God, how in the world did you get that thing in here.” I told him and asked what we were going to do with it. We divided them up among the men, knowing we would never be allowed to use them. In about 30 minutes Donahoe came in and said the Germans have taken inventory and are missing a case of stoves and know it’s been stolen. Well, Red said let us get them dumped into the latrine, that’s the one that was inside the compound. The Germans searched but didn’t find anything, and not long after that Red gave me the name “steal-em-blind Woods.”
It is kind of funny now to be called a good thief from a professional thief. Well, I got a good reputation for being a thief among the other prisoners because I had stolen the bottle then the stoves that we couldn’t use. We decided we would “go for broke.” There was a building that had canned meat in it and we had never worked in that building before, but there was a window that was broken out and we could get inside. We were going to get inside the building during the next air raid, bury the meat in the latrine, then dig it up during the next air raid. It took a while to work out all the details. On April 19 we had everything figured out, but there wasn’t an air raid that night. We had the cans buried in the latrine and were going to dig it up during the air raid. We waited several nights and there was no air raid. About 5:00 one morning the Germans came in and said the Russians were shelling the area. They brought tools for us to dig trenches. By 10:00 in the morning the shelling had reached us. The Russians were going into Berlin through Jüterborg.
We were in the trenches, trying to protect ourselves from the shelling. We were in trenches all that day and into the night. It was before midnight that we realized that the inner fence had been hit. It was probably about 8:00 at night and we decided to take off because we didn’t want to be liberated by the Russians. We didn’t see any of the German guards and we headed for the American lines. We were all running and every fence was down except the outer chain link fence. We all hit it and every one of us went right over it. The adrenalin was flowing fast. We climbed the chain link fence and went over the barbed wire fence and we were on our way. We could look back and see the fires in Jüterborg and in Berlin. We were heading west but didn’t know how long it would take us. I remember looking back and also seeing the fires in Luckenwalde. It took us five days to get back and I had one regret. We had left about 12 cans of the meat buried in the latrine and we never did get to dig them up. It took us five days to get to the American lines.
T: What did you eat on the way?
W: We foraged, mainly potatoes. The Germans would bury the potatoes and put straw over them to keep them from freezing. We arrived at the Elbe River. We did hit Russian artillery one more time at Torgau. I remember there was a farmer near Torgau and he was out in his field plowing and the Russians were shelling just a few kilometers away. I guess he just accepted what was happening.
When we reached the Elbe River, the Americans said they would not cross the Elbe, which I think was a mistake. Between Berlin and the Elbe River, we saw no German soldiers. We were approaching the Elbe and inquired about the location of the Americans. We were told they were just across the Elbe River. The German civilians asked to bring the Americans across the river; they said there were no German soldiers there. They wanted to surrender to the Americans, not the Russians. I say it was a big mistake to have stopped at the Elbe.
T: When did you first see the Americans?
W: When we reached the Elbe River.
T: What was your reaction?
W: Tremendous happiness. We had all anticipated getting back.
T: Did you still have your uniform on?
W: We had Belgian uniforms on. We didn’t have American uniforms. We may have had our American field jackets. But I think the uniforms were Belgian.
T: Did the Americans know who you were?
W: Yes, they recognized us.
T: Tell me about coming back to the States.
W: Let me tell you a story that is interesting. We had met a forward unit and we needed to get back to an unit area. They gave us a German fire engine they had picked up. The Americans said, “You can drive the fire engine back to the unit,” and they told which way to go. We had one rifle among us, and there must have been 50 of us on the fire engine. The driver took a wrong turn and we drove into a town that hadn’t surrendered yet. So here we were, 50 former POW’s on a captured fire engine driving into this German town. All of a sudden we heard a local say “American! American!” and pretty soon white flags began appearing. We had the one M-l rifle and there was one German soldier in the town. We didn’t know what to do with him and someone said, “Let’s search him.” So we searched the soldier and put him on the fire engine with us and took him back with us. The soldier must have been on leave or something. But it is funny now that the town thought the American army was coming in, and they had been waiting with the white flags and we were the first Americans to come into the town. We went to Halle with our one prisoner. Halle was a collecting point for former prisoners.
We were put on a very strict diet because we had been malnourished for so long. We could only have a combination of eggs, milk and sugar and this was given to us several times a day. We were still hungry, and we were not supposed to eat because of the shock to the system. The urge to eat is so strong that we had the same instincts as in the prison camp and we had to have more food. Of course we were experts in stealing and after stealing from the Germans, the Americans were easy targets. We sent out patrols to steal food, and we found a candy factory nearby. There was an American guard at the German candy factory, but one man talked to him and several of us sneaked inside and brought out cartons of the candy. We had chocolate to supplement our regular meal of milk and sugar and honey. We were informed we would be sent to Rheims, but we couldn’t take anything with us. I had never flown in my life. We all smuggled chocolate on the airplane with us and I knew I was going to be sick and it was eating the chocolate. I told the crew that I needed something because I was going to be sick, and they gave me a bucket and we had just taken off and I was throwing up and by the time we landed I was just spitting in the bucket.
From Rheims we were sent to Le Havre. The American camps at Le Havre were named after cigarettes, Lucky Strike and Phillip Morris. We were kept on our strict diet. We were in a tent camp for 2 or 3 weeks until we were able to travel back home. I went on a small ship back to the States. We hit a storm on the trip back.
T: Where did you land in the States?
W: In New York City.
T: What was your reaction when you passed the Statue of Liberty?
W: It was tremendous, very moving. We were all looking for the Statue of Liberty. We were taken to Camp Buckner for processing to be sent home on leave.
T: What did you do when the war ended?
W: I was home on leave when Japan surrendered and there was a group of us that drove up and down Garrison street in Fort Smith honking the horn and yelling. I went to Hot Springs and took the baths to help us recover from the prison camp. After that I was sent to Camp Patrick Henry, Virginia. I was there until December when I received my discharge. Then I returned to Fort Smith to work for the newspaper.
T: Sir, this is a fascinating interview and I want to thank you.
Obituary
December 18, 1923 - December 1, 2014 OKLAHOMA CITY A
Memorial Service celebrating the life of Pendleton Woods is planned for
Saturday, January 17 at 3 p.m. at Oklahoma Christian University, 2501 E.
Memorial Road, Edmond. The service will be in Scott Chapel, which is located in
Williams-Branch Center for Biblical Studies. Mr. Woods, 90, of Oklahoma City,
passed away at 8:30 a.m. Monday, December 1, 2014, at Norman Regional Hospital.
He had been living at the Oklahoma Veterans Center in Norman since February. A
lifelong writer, he continued working until the end of his life, using a
computer and printer in his room at the Veterans Center. After hitting his head
in a fall in October, his health declined rapidly.
Born December 18, 1923, in
Fort Smith, Arkansas, Pendleton was the second son of John Powell Woods, Sr.
and Mabel Fairfax Hon. He graduated from Fort Smith High School (now Northside)
in May 1941; earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in journalism from the University
of Arkansas in 1948; and was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from
Oklahoma Christian University in 2005. He was inducted into the Oklahoma
Journalism Hall of Fame in 1999; and into the University of Arkansas Alumni
Journalism Hall of Honor in 2001.
Pendleton was married April 3, 1948, to Robin
Freeman, daughter of Omar Dillard Freeman, Sr. and Lois Robin Braidwood. After
marriage, the couple moved to Oklahoma City, where Pendleton had accepted a job
with Oklahoma Gas & Electric Co. He served as editor of the company
magazine "The Meter" until 1969, when he left to accept a position
with Oklahoma Christian University. There, he organized the "Living
Legends" oral history program as a joint project with the Oklahoma
Historical Society. Later, he was instrumental in creating Enterprise Square
USA and worked for many years with the American Citizenship Center, organizing
youth leadership conferences, an effort that he continued until the end of his life.
Pendleton served with the 99th Infantry Division during World
War II. He was captured on a reconnaissance patrol December 10, 1944,
during the German build up to the Battle of the Bulge. He remained a Prisoner
of War until he and others escaped after Russian artillery shelled the compound
on April 20, 1945. After the war, he earned his commission at the University of
Arkansas, then joined the Oklahoma National Guard. He served as Public
Information Officer for the 45th Infantry Division during the Korean
War and continued in various positions until he retired as a colonel
in 1983, with a total of 41 years of military service.
After retirement, he
continued volunteer service with many veterans organizations, including the
Military Order of the World Wars, American Ex-Prisoners of War, the 45th
Division Association and the 99th Division Association. He helped found the
45th Infantry Division Museum. He was inducted into the Oklahoma Military Hall
of Fame in 2002. He was a lifelong member of the Christian Church, having been
baptized at First Christian Church of Fort Smith. After moving to Oklahoma
City, he was at various times a member of First Christian Church, Forest Hill Christian
Church, Southwest Christian Church, 12th and Drexel Church of Christ, and
Mayfair Church of Christ. However, from 1983-2012, he spent every Sunday
morning as a volunteer at the VA Hospital, assisting with the chapel service.
He was a member of Kappa Sigma fraternity at the University of Arkansas and
continued in leadership roles as an alumnus. He served for many years as the
Commissioner of Chapter Publications and was editor of the national magazine
"The Caduceus" from 1979 to 1985. Pendleton was involved with the Boy
Scout movement since childhood. He received his Eagle Scout award at the First
National Jamboree in Washington, DC in 1937. After moving to Oklahoma City, he
served as a Scoutmaster, Explorer Post Leader, and in many other leadership capacities.
He received the Silver Beaver Award and the National Eagle Scout Association
Outstanding Eagle Award. He was also a leader in many other youth programs,
including Camp Fire Girls, Junior Achievement, and DECA. He was involved in
many patriotic organizations, including Sons of the American Revolution and
Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge. For many years, he helped to organize the
4th of July parade in Oklahoma City.
From 1974-1976, he served as Executive
Director of the Oklahoma City Bicentennial Commission. He was also involved
with the Oklahoma Semi-Centennial Celebration in 1957, as well as the
Centennial Celebration in 2007. He was well-known as an expert in Oklahoma
History, and was a member of the Oklahoma Historical Society and editor of its
newsletter "Mistletoe Leaves." He was a founding member of the
Oklahoma Heritage Association and the Oklahoma County Historical Society. He
was very involved with bringing the National Cowboy Hall of Fame to Oklahoma
City.
He was the author or co-author of about 15 books, including a history of
Oklahoma City "Born Grown," which won the Western Heritage Award for
Best Local History of 1975. His latest book, a history of Boy Scouts in
Oklahoma, is scheduled to be published this year. He was inducted into the
Oklahoma Historians Hall of Fame in 2007. He was involved in many
health-related organizations. He was a founder and president of the Oklahoma
Epilepsy Association, and was on the board of many other organizations,
including Variety Health Center, Senior Nutrition Program, OKC Mental Health
Association and Oklahoma Lung Association.He was an early supporter of
beautification efforts and recycling. He was a founder of Oklahoma City
Beautiful; president of Keep Oklahoma Beautiful; and board member of the Tree
Bank Foundation.
He was a member of the Junior Chamber of Commerce (Jaycees)
and was named the Outstanding Young Man of 1953. In 1959, he received the first
ever life membership awarded by the Oklahoma City Jaycees. Pendleton was a
member, officer, or board member of many other organizations, too numerous to
mention. Throughout his lifetime he received awards from many local, state and
national organizations. A few of the major awards were: KOCO-TV "Five Who
Care" award in 1994; Jefferson Award for Public Service in 1994; Points of
Light Foundation Daily Award for September 14, 2006; Older Worker of the Year
for Oklahoma in 2007; Community Champion Award from the National Association of
Area Agencies on Aging in 2012.
Pendleton is survived by a son, Paul Pendleton
Woods, of Stillwater; two daughters, Margaret Robin Woods, of Oklahoma City,
and Nancy Lois (Woods) Cox and her husband, Danny Lee Cox, of Pearland, Texas;
two brothers, John "Powell" Woods, Jr., of Broken Arrow, and Daniel
Hon Woods, of Little Rock, Arkansas; two brothers-in-law, Omar Dillard Freeman,
Jr. and his wife, Elizabeth "Betty" Jane (Wood) Freeman, of Siloam
Springs, Arkansas, and Samuel Donald "Don" Tressler, Jr., of North
Little Rock, Arkansas; two granddaughters, Robin "Danielle" Cox, a
third-year Master of Divinity student at the University of Chicago, and Hannah
Nicole Cox, a freshman engineering student at Oklahoma State University. He was
preceded in death by his wife of 65 years, Robin Freeman Woods; his parents,
John Powell Woods, Sr. and Mabel Fairfax (Hon) Woods; a brother, Gaines William
Woods, Sr.; and a sister-in-law, Carolyn (Freeman) Tressler. Pendleton willed
his body to The University of Oklahoma Medical School for educational purposes.
Eventually, the cremated remains will be interred at Fairlawn Cemetery, 2700
North Shartel Avenue.
No comments:
Post a Comment