My wife's grandfather, Wendell, was, in 1944, an infantryman (private 1[SUP]st[/SUP] class) with the Texas 36[SUP]th[/SUP] Infantry Division. He took part in the amphibious invasion of Italy, and on February 9, 1944, was shot and wounded during the battle of Monte Cassino. He was captured by the German Army, and sent to a POW camp in Poland.
Eight days later, my grandfather Tony, a corporal with the New York 106[SUP]th[/SUP] National Guard Regiment, deployed with the 22[SUP]nd[/SUP] Marine Regiment to the South Pacific, was shot and wounded during the invasion of the island of Eniwetok. He recovered in a Honolulu hospital, and later returned to his unit for the invasion of Saipan, where he earned a commendation for bravery in combat.
Seven months later, on September 13, 1944, Charles, the father of a long-time friend of mine, was an Army Air Corp. bombardier in a B-24 Liberator. He was shot down near Mainz, Germany; captured by the German Army and taken to a POW camp (he was wounded while marching to the camp.)
The camp he was taken to was less than 40 miles from the camp where my wife's grandfather was held, at the same time.
In early 1945, both men, as POW’s, took part in a forced march, (known as ‘The March’) for hundreds of miles in the dead of winter, one of the coldest winters in recorded history. Approximately 3500 Allied prisoners died during this brutal forced march.
During the march, Charles noticed that a young farm boy had come to the fence at the road where the column of POW's were walking. The boy held several loaves of bread, and many of the prisoners tried to trade packages of cigarettes for the bread (they had nothing else.) The boy was clearly not interested in the cigarettes. Charles had a deck of cards in his pocket he had received in a Red Cross package, so he pulled out the king of clubs and held it out to the boy, who happily traded a loaf of bread for the card.
All three men obviously survived, and later had families.
Those three men were, for obvious reasons, part of what Tom Brokaw called ‘The Greatest Generation.’