Pfc. Dwight Hall

A message from the War Department to Mr. and Mrs. Willis Hall Tuesday informed them that their oldest son, Pfc. Dwight "Blackie" Hall was missing in action.  Attached to an infantry division of the Seventh  Army, he was reported missing in France, since January 9th.      Pfc. Hall, 19, and an honor graduate of the Miller high school, entered the service a year ago.  He received his training at Ft. Benning, Ga., and Ft. Bragg, N.C.  He was sent overseas  in November.  Letters to his parents indicated that he had seen considerable service at the fighting front.  The latest letter from him was dated December 30.

Well, the papers and radio have notified you more of my position and activities than I could myself, because of our strict censorship.  And there's no need to hide from you the fact that I have been in action for some time.  I guess maybe it is just as well that you know; for a time I thought I could keep it a secret and thereby save you some worry.  So far my luck has been swell, and there is no reason to believe it will leave now.

"I have just been awarded the Combat Expert Infantryman's Badge.  Of course, I'm pretty proud of it."

     Further word, a letter and a card, have been received by Mr. and Mrs. Willis Hall from their son, Pfc. Dwight Hall, who is a German prisoner.  Last week the Halls received  their first word from Blackie since he had been reported missing.  The letter, which they received later in the week, had been written several days before the card, but had been delayed.  In it he said:
 

"Well, here I am, alive, and safe and well, and a prisoner of war in Germany.  You have absolutely nothing to worry about now, as I am fed and treated all right.  Of course I miss letters and packages from you, so please check with the Red Cross.  Make the bulk of my packages candy and cookies, but also include a razor, blades, tooth brush, powder, two bars soap and two pairs of woolen socks.   I can write two letters and four cards each month so I'll depend on you to keep in touch with Phyllis and anyone else who inquires about me.  Please write and send packages as often as the Red Cross will allow.  Reading material would also be swell.  Remember everything from you will be censored.  My love thoughts and prayers are with you all, and I'll see you all again.  Keep smiling, Mom.  Love to all."

     It reads in part as follows:

"Hello again!  After such a long time it's really wonderful to be able to write to you again.  I imagine you have worried a great deal about me, but now I am no longer a prisoner.  I am safe and well in American hands.  We are really being treated like kings.  The 'chow' is wonderful, plentiful and delicious.  We have good warm bunks and get plenty of medical care.  The Red Cross is very active, serving doughhuts and coffee and passing out toilet articles, gum and cigarettes.  The army publication, "Stars and Stripes," keeps us well informated with all of the news.  Of course I have had a great many experiences which  I know would interest you, but there is still a war and censorship so I must withhold a few 'military secrets.'  Perhaps I can write a few more of the particulars sometime in the near future.  At any rate, I can tell you that it is great to be out of that God-forsaken Reich and back with decent, civilized peple again!

Gosh, but I'm really just about 'nuts' waiting for news from home.  I suppose Wayne is back from prep school and has taken his exam for Annapolis.  I remembered Keith's birthday too, even though I could only pray and wait for the day when I could give him a belated gift.  I did a lot of praying all during the time I was a prisoner and I know that you were doing the same.  That was just about all that kept me going at times.  But the ordeal is over and our prayers have all been answered so we need worry no more.

I am going to depend on you to notify my friends that I am safe and well.  And write to me just as often as you can via air mail.  I want to know all of the news--church, business, high school, prep school and athletics.  I'll try to dig up some air mail stamps and I promise to write often.  Take care of yourselves and give my love to everyone.  Love to all, Blackie."

     Pfc. Dwight Hall, held in a German prison camp since January 9th, has been liberated, and is now somewhere in camp for recovered Allied military personnel in France, for transport home.

     This good news came to his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Willis Hall, Monday in an indirect, but nevertheless, reliable manner.  First word came from a family friend in Aberdeen, who had seen Dwight listed in an article by Gideon Seymour in the Minneapolis Tribune.

     Some faint idea of the treatment given the prisoners can be gained from Mr. Seymour's article.  Editor of the Tribune, he is at present in Europe, so one of a group of American newspaper men who are studying conditions in the war-torn areas.  Mr. Seymour had spent an hour with what he described as the happiest bunch in the A. E. F., a score of lads liberated from German prison camps.

     All of them he said, had lost weight and they were eating themselves out of their new uniforms.  All were healthy and overjoyed at the prospect of an early departure for home.

     Inadequate food, gruelling work, mostly on bombed German railroads, and long marches between camps, as Russians and Americans came close, were their chief complaint.  Some said they had been frequently kicked and slapped, but on the whole fared better than the Russians.  While treatment varied, the food never did.  Thin turnip or potato soup and a loaf of bread for each six men was standard daily fare.

     "If it hadn't been for Red Cross parcels," said one, we'd have been in bad shape.  They saved us."  But some of the prisoners did not receive Red Cross packages, and they believe the Germans used the parcels for their own civilian population, and supplied Americans only when hunger was sappling morale and reduced them to a state of collapse.

     The groups of prisoners which included Dwight and his comrades were put to work repairing railways after Allied bombings.  They would just get the tracks fixed, they related, when Allied bombers would come over, and the repair work would start again.  The men welcomed the bombers, but their guards refused to let them take shelter during the bombings.

     Occasionally the prisoners were fed horse meat, and Sgt. Glen Ford of Aberdeen, is taking home a souvenir, a horse tooth which he found in his soup. 

     The men were making a rapid recovery after a few days on a bland diet.  They were issued clothes and shoes, as well as toilet articles, and cigarettes.  And as soon as possible, these men will be on their way home.
 
 

     Pfc. Dwight Hall will never again consider Friday, the 13th, as an unlucky day, for it was on that day in April that he was liberated from a German prison camp near Leipzig, where he had been held since February 22, when he was transferred from Bad Orb.

     Pfc. Hall came home Sunday on a 60-day furlough, twenty-six pounds heavier than when he was released from captivity, and a happier G. I. it would be hard to find anywhere.  "This, " he said, "is as near to heaven as anything I could imagine."

     Dwight was part of a company defending a small town about two and a half miles from one German border when he was taken prisoner early on the morning of January 9th.  The men had taken refuge in a house, which was constantly shelled by a panzer division and S. S. trops.  Cut off from reinforcements and completely surrounded by Germans, there was no other alternative but surrender, and at 4 o'clock in the morning in a pouring rain, the men were taken.  "I think I must have been half asleep when I was caputred," said Blackie. "We had been fighting nine days with only three and a half hours sleep during that time."

     The Americans were loaded into box cars, which were locked and sealed for the long and slow trip to Bad Orb.  Only once in four days and nights were they fed, and throughout the journey were given no water.  There were no sanitary conditions and men became ill.  When they reached Bad Orb, the prisoners were housed in two large, crude barracks.  Each barrack had two stoves, but they furnished little heat in the freezing weather.  Wood was rationed, the roof leaked, many of the windows were broken, and the men were constantly wet and cold.  They slept on the floors on burlap bags stuffed with straw.  The pallets were alive with fleas and lice which added to the discomfort of the men.  Sanitary conditions at Bad Orb were indescribable, and most of the men suffered from dysentery.

     On February 22, ninety of the prisoners, including Dwight were again loaded into box cars, to be moved to Leipzig.  Forty-five men were loaded into each car, which were hardly large enough to hold half that number.  Again the cars were locked, and during the two days journey, they were given neither food nor water.  It was during this journey that the rear car was hit by shrapnel, when American planes bombed the unmarked train.  By fortunate circumstances, not a man in any of the other cars was injured, although a piece of shrapnel came through the roof of the car in which Dwight was held, penetrating a helmet belonging to one of the men.  At the same time it split open a can of meat in the helmet, and as the contents liquified by the heat, dripped over the soldier's shoulder, he cried "I've been hit."  "We laughed about the incident afterward," stated Dwight, "but right at the time where was nothing funny about it."

     Arriving at their destination, the men were immediately assigned to repair of railroads.  They worked 14 hours a day on rations that were pitifully meager.  They arose at 3 o'clock each morning, marched under guard two miles to their work, and at 6 o'clock marched back to their crude barracks.  The German method of working was always in reverse said Dwight.  When the men were tearing up railroad ties, they always had to take up the nearest tie, and as the work progressed, the further ties had to be carried back through mud.  The men tried to explain to their guards that taking up the further ties first would be more logical, but to no avail.  So they worked, building the road one day, and tearing it up the next.

     The prisoners were fed once a day, their diet consisting of 330 grams of black bread, hardly larger than an ordinary slice, and thin watery unappetizing soup, in which floated an occasional potato or cabbage leaf.  Sometimes they tried to steal some turnips and for this they were beaten, and the turnips taken away from them.  Only a sadistic impulse could  have prompted this, as the turnips were either left to rot, or fed to the cattle.

     Very few Red Cross parcels reached the prisoners, although ten miles away two million packages were stored.  The men volunteered to march the distance and bring the parcels to the camp, but their request was denied.  What few packages were brought in were at first divided one to each 9 men.  Later the ratio was increased, to one box for 20 men, and then, finally, one box to 42 men.  Yet when the men were liberated they found evidence that numerous parcels had been opened and used by the Germans.

     While Bad Orb was not a work camp, there were no recreation facilities, until the last few days of Dwight's stay there, when a few books and games were sent in.  News of the progress of the war came to them through the Germans, and from this information, the prisoners evaluated their own news.  At Leipzig, even if some recreation had been provided, the men would have been too weak to take advantage of them.  Dwight had his testament with him, and read it through three times.  Later a hospital provided them with ten books.

     Two things kept the men from losing hope under the treatment and starvation.  One was prayer;  the other was  their knowledge of the vast supplies that the Americans had, and the little the Germans had in reserve.  Liberation, they felt, was inevitable, and their spirits, despite the hardships, remained good.

     The men were not allowed to identify themselves as prisoners of war, and were in constant danger of bombing from Allied planes.  One, while marching from work, an American plane flew low over the group.  The men waved, and the pilot recognized them, dipped his wings in salute, and flew on.

     The advance of the Allied armies was rumor at first, but as the days passed, the sound of the guns came nearer, and, then on Friday, April 13, the American tanks appeared.  "There never was a more beautiful sight in the world than that big white star that identified our tanks," said Dwight, in describing his reaction at the prospect of freedom.  "We rushed to the gates, and we waved and yelled.  Those fellows gave us every last ration they had, now we ate!  Everyone of us was sick afterward, but we didn't care."

     The liberated men were flown from the prison camp to a port in France, where they were given medical attention, new, clean uniforms, good food, and a rest.  From the 116 pounds he weighed when liberated, Dwight regained his normal weight of 142 pounds.  From France,  after complete recovery from his ordeal, Dwight was taken to England, and sailed for home.

     News of the surrender of Germany was received by him while he was enroute home.

     While a prisoner Dwight learned enough of the language to converse with his guards.  Hitler's supermen, he said, blamed the United States for the war, insisting Germany would have won if the United States would have kept out of it.  The men used to tell their guards Germany was licked, and the answer was always, "Six years and Germany will win."
 

     What he saw of Germany and Germans convinced Dwight that re-education will be a difficult task.  Children of 8 and 9 were so deeply steeped in the Hitler doctrine that they armed as snipers, and it will take many years to remold them along the lines of peace.  Christianity at least with the soliders, has little part in their lives.  On Easter Sunday, Dwight asked one of the guards if he wasn't going to attend church.  The guard replied that he did not believe in God.

     When his furlough is eneded, Dwight will report at Hot Springs, Ark.  In the meantime, he is sleeping, eating, playing baseball with his neighbor kids, and by normal living, forgetting some small measure his imprisonment.