Thomas Saylor, Ph.D.

College of Education

Harold Brick, b. 1924

Harold Brick was born on 17 December 1924 on a farm by Lake Henry, Stearns County, MN.  One of eight children, he attended a two-room school through the eighth grade, then high school in nearby Belgrade.  After graduating in 1942, Harold worked until being drafted into the Army in June 1943. 
            After basic training Harold was made a 60mm mortar gunner and assigned to the 275th Regiment, 70th Infantry Division.  Harold arrived with his unit in Marseilles, France in late December 1944; less than a month later, on 6 January 1945, he was captured in eastern France, close to the German border. 
            As a POW, Harold spent approximately six weeks at Stalag IX-B, Bad Orb, enduring that camp’s poor conditions and chronic overcrowding, before being transported by train with ninety other POWs to a work camp by Trebnitz, some thirty miles south of Leipzig.  Work details included railroad track repair; with some knowledge of German, Harold was selected to be the camp interpreter.  When in mid-April 1945 the Germans evacuated this camp due to the advancing Red Army, the POWs were marched in the Zeitz – Weissenfels area for several days before being found by advancing American forces of the 9th Armored Division.  Along with several other POWs, Harold recalls that he eventually found his way to American forces at nearby Naumburg, and was evacuated to Camp Lucky Strike, in France, and then to the USA.  Harold was discharged from the Army in December 1945.
            Again a civilian, Harold returned initially to Lake Henry and the family farm; he was married (1953) and helped to raise a family, and in 1959 began a 31-year career with the Postal Service, in St Paul.  At the time of this interview (April 2004) Harold Brick lived in the Twin Cites suburb of Roseville.  (information supplied by interviewee)

 
Photo: "Harold Brick and W. Ritzman, taken probably in Chemnitz, Germany."  Last week of April or first week of May, 1945.
Click on picture for larger image.  Photo © Harold Brick; used by permission.

In the interview below, Harold Brick speaks candidly of his POW experience in Germany in 1945, as well as the lifelong effects of those months.

Biographical information and all interview content © Thomas Saylor, 2001-03

Interviewee: Harold Brick
Interviewer: Thomas Saylor
Date of interview: 23 April 2004
Location: dining room table, Brick residence, Roseville, MN
Transcribed by: Linda Gerber, May 2004
Edited by: Thomas Saylor, June 2004  

Interview key:
T = Thomas Saylor
H = Harold Brick 

T: This is an interview for the POW Oral History Project.  My name is Thomas Saylor.  Today is the 23rd of April 2004.  First, on the record, thanks to you, Mr. Harold Brick, for taking time to speak with me today.  Some of your personal information, for the record.  You were born the 17th of December 1924 on a farm actually by Lake Henry, Minnesota in Stearns County.  Is that right?

H: That’s correct.

T: One of a big family of eight.  Second oldest.  You went to a two room school in Lake Henry, a kindergarten to eight school, and then high school in nearby Belgrade.  Class of 1942.  Drafted into the Army June of 1943, and served with the 70th Infantry Division, 275th Infantry Regiment.  You were a sixty millimeter mortar gunner.  You arrived in Europe with this unit in Marseilles, France, 16 December 1944, and became a POW on the 6 January 1945 at Phillipsburg in eastern France, near the German border. 

H: That’s correct.

T: Let me start by asking you to go back to the 16 December 1944 and the time that you were captured, and to describe really how you woke up that morning as a US serviceman and before the day was out became a prisoner of war.  How did that actually transpire?

H: Well, it was…we had been surrounded for six days and my company commander was badly shot up and my platoon leader was killed.  The company executive officer, he was also shot up so our leadership was pretty thin.  Also our radio was shot up.  We didn’t have communication with anyone.  We survived by melting snow for water and the ironic thing of it is right down below the hill where we were at there was a stream with running water.  But we couldn’t get to it.  But we melted that snow.  We put that in our canteen and have it close to our body and that was our water.  Food.  Some had a bar of this or a little bit of that, but that was the only food we had. 

T: Did this, as the days went by here, how long was it before your thoughts turned to the possibility that you might become a prisoner of war?  Or did you ever think of that?

H: No.  I did not think of it.  It was the last thing that was on my mind was becoming a prisoner of war. 

T: Would you say you were surprised then when it actually did happen?  Or were you mentally prepared in any way?

H: I was not surprised because I knew that it could not continue much longer the way it was because the Germans on a daily basis, two or three times a day, they tried to knock us out, dislodge us from the hill and we fought them off every time.  We knew that it was a question of time.  That something was going to happen one way or another, we knew.  But I really thought that the Americans would be coming in and rescuing us. 

T: O.K.  What happened on the 6th of January?  Was a decision made to surrender or was your camp overrun?

H: The decision was made and a lieutenant by the name of Lt. Browten, he’s since died, he and two others, they went down and met the Germans with a white flag and they surrendered our unit. 

T: What were your thoughts then at the moment when that decision was made to be a POW?  What were you thinking?

H: I felt that I had let down my country because I didn’t….I wasn’t really prepared for something like that.

T: Do you remember the first time that you actually saw the Germans really face to face?  Suddenly that these Germans as your captors are really standing in front of you.

H: When I first saw them several German soldiers came back up the hill with Lt. Browten and there was another man with him.  I don’t know who that was.  I saw  them.  I mean I saw others…I mean when we were fighting….but never that close. 

T: Did your unit then….did you put down your weapons, or were you frisked or searched in any way by these Germans?

H: We knew when he went, Lt. Browten went down there, we knew what his intentions were and we dismantled our weapons as much as we could and the ammunition for them.  Like I had a forty-five [caliber] pistol.  I took the firing pin out and broke it and I threw the ammunition, scattered the ammunition.  I mean we were prepared that way. 

T: Were you questioned at all or searched by the Germans when they actually took you into their control?

H: Not initially.  It was probably about…oh…a day later.  We were individually interviewed.

T: What was that situation like?  Being individually interviewed?

H: It was a one on one deal.  I don’t know why I was given…not the opportunity but….they said there was another company from my division that was in the same….similar situation as we were.  They wanted me to go up there and ask them to surrender.  I flatly said no.  That’s about the only thing said other than my name, rank and serial number.

T: So you had a German speaking English to you.

H: Oh, he spoke better English than I do.

T: What kind of impression did this person make on you?  Was it intimidating in any way, or was it…what were you thinking there, sitting across from this guy?

H: He was…it was quite cordial.  I mean the interview. 

T: You didn’t feel threatened at all, in other words.

H: No.  Not at all.

T: Did you feel threatened or ill at ease at all that first day, or those first days, from the Germans?

H: Yes.  This was very shortly after the massacre at Malmedy.  That’s up in Belgium.  We felt that the same thing could happen to us.

T: Was this something that you spoke about with other men or just something that you had in your mind?

H: It was mentioned.  Yes.

T: Do you think that influenced your decision not to surrender for a while?

H: No.  I don’t think that had any bearing on it.  I mean, I was not consulted on the surrender part of it at all. 

T: They didn’t come and say hey, Brick, what do you think?

H: I had no input in that.  (chuckles)

T: Well, so  that was something that men knew about and had in their minds that gee, if and when we surrender the Germans may kill us too.

H: Yes.  Well, this…what really did happen is, we were marched down the hill and we had our hands behind our heads like you always see in the movies and everything.  That’s the way it was.  We went…not very far and there was I’d say probably about twenty-five, thirty German soldiers, cleanly shaven and from the noise they made and everything I think they’d had some liquor.  As we marched past one of them spun me around and took my gloves off my hands.  I spent the rest of the winter without gloves.  I don’t know why I was singled out for that.  Maybe I looked more defiant than anybody else.

T: And that was the only case of physical interaction you had with the Germans in a sense?  And it was sudden and brief, the way you describe it.

H: Yes.  Yes. 

T: Would you describe yourself as more scared during this time, or more nervous?  How would you describe your own emotions?

H: Oh, everybody’s scared.  I mean if they aren’t, there’s something wrong with them. 

T: Did that feeling of being scared gradually diminish or is it something that stayed with you for a while?

H: Yes.  It was there.  It was there almost daily because…especially at Bad Orb.  I mean, you didn’t know from minute to minute and hour to hour what was going to happen there.

T: How did they transport you from where you were captured there to Bad Orb?

H: We walked across the border into Germany and we came to a town by the name of Fischbach.  Te town itself, there was not a building standing.  It was…I’d say the town was about the size of Lake Henry.  That was how big a town it was.  There were people all over the streets there and they threw some of the bricks and stuff and the rubble there at us, and the guards, they got us out to the edge of town where there were some boxcars waiting for us.  I don’t know how come they were waiting, but they were.  They closed the boxcars and locked them.  I don’t know how they locked them from the outside.  It didn’t take too long, and we left. 

T: What was that like going through town and seeing these angry civilians? It sounds like they were angry.

H: Yes.  That’s where you’re thankful that your guards get you out of there.  I mean, they were…they protected us, I’d have to say. 

T: So you think without the German guards there that the situation would have been much different or could have been?

H: Yes.  I’m sure that it would have been. 

T: It’s interesting how the Germans who really caused some of the intimidation or the sense of being scared a day or so before suddenly now are your protectors in a way.

H: Right.  Yes.

T: That’s very interesting.  Is that the only time you encountered German civilians like that, or were there others?

H: No.  There was another time.  After…when we left Bad Orb to go to Trebnitz, by way of Leipzig, our train was bombed…and there were….two cars of us.  Forty-five and forty-five and the third car was guards.  I think there was three or four guards.  I don’t know.  I’m not sure.  But we pulled into a town.  The air raid sirens were going and it didn’t take too long and the bombs came down, and there was a direct hit on the car where the guards had been in.  But the guards were in the air raid shelter.  They left us where we were.  The car was in there was boards knocked off the walls.  We could have crawled out of there. It was that bad there in the car.  We didn’t have any major injuries.  We had some few scratches and all that kind of stuff. 

T: This is in the transport from Bad Orb to what would be Hartmansdorf, I guess,  the camp.

H: Yes.

T: What’s that like being in a train when you hear the air raid siren going off?  Because you…I guess you can put two and two together.  You know what’s going to happen, right?

H: Yes.  You expect something is going to happen.  You just hope that it isn’t going to close. 

T: How did you ride that out with the bombs falling and unable to get out of the car?

H: Well, we were thrown around.  I mean, I think I was unconscious for some time.  I don’t know.  Because….when…after a while there was a German officer.   He came with…and one of the boards that was knocked off the side there.  He had his pistol.  He was waving that in there and apparently his house was hit too.  I don’t know.  But he was….I thought he was going to start blasting away at us.  He didn’t.  And he left and he wasn’t gone too long and he came back again.  And he did the same thing again.  And shortly after that then the guards came and got us out of the cars and there again they protected us.  They got us out of town and fast.  

T: So on more than one occasion the guards responsible for you perhaps saved your life.

H: Right.

T: When you got out of that railroad car there, at a small town where you were being bombed, is that a….

H: It was small.  I didn’t see much of it because I mean we were on the edge of town when we got bombed and we got out another edge.  I mean, we didn’t walk too far and we were out of town again.

T: Were there civilians around again?

H: Yes.  A lot of them.

T: Talk about that situation.  Because here you’ve got the bombing obviously the cause and you’ve got these civilians here.

H: One thing I should mention is, as we were leaving, getting out of town, we met a bunch of Brown Shirts.  They were coming at double time.  We were going one way and they were going the other way and they didn’t bother with us or anything like that, but they were going towards the area where the bombing had taken place. 

T: Were there other German civilians around who directed their attention to you?

H: No.  The civilians that were there were mostly where the bombing had occurred.

T: So they weren’t focusing their anger at you or anything like that.

H: No.

T: That’s more than one occasion though that your German guards have been responsible for perhaps saving your life. 

H: That’s why I brought it up right away, because I felt that was important that they did that. 

T: Does that make it confusing in some way?  You’ve got…you know these Germans are your enemy in a way, and yet here you can really document a couple cases when the enemy saved your life from somebody else.  Does that confuse, does that make it hard for you to decide whether to hate or love the Germans or not?

H: No.  I mean I felt that the Germans as a whole, the people, they didn’t want that war any more than we did. 

T: And the German soldiers with whom you came into contact, you haven’t mentioned a bad experience here or a negative experience yet.

H: Well, personally no.  I myself never got singled out for anything like that.

T: The Germans that you encountered as guards in Bad Orb or at the work camp there at Trebnitz, what kind of men were they?

H: They were mostly old and, in one case, one was shot up.  His name was Fritz.  He had been on the Eastern Front.  He had been at Stalingrad.  I knew that nobody got out of Stalingrad.  I said how did you ever get here?  He said, “I was wounded.  They flew me out.”  And he was a good guard.  I mean he was . . . (trails off)

T: A good human being?

H: Yes.

T: What made him a good human being? 

H: I mean he had respect for us and that kind of stuff.  He did whatever he could to help us. 

T: Where was this?  At Bad Orb or at Trebnitz?

H: It was at Trebnitz.

T: Now what kind of things can a guard do on a daily basis to help you?

H: Well, really not all that much.  Among other things at Trebnitz there we had things quite a bit better  than we had in Bad Orb.  We had all the fuel that we wanted.  As a matter of fact your briquettes, they were squeezing the gas out of them.  But we had all the briquettes we wanted so fuel was no problem.   Not there.  The soup was better.  It had more solids in it.

T: So it sounds like you kind of moved up the ladder in accommodations when you got out of Bad Orb.

H: Oh, yes.  Bad Orb I slept on the floor all the time.  I mean…concrete floor with straw on it.  That was my bed.

T: When you arrived at Bad Orb, I mean this is really obviously your first experience with a prison camp.  When you walked …when you arrived there what kind of an impression did that make when you looked around?  What kind of place was this?

H: Well, first of all it was night when we got there.  It was up on top of a hill.  We walked up the hill and the first thing they  took us down to the kitchen to give us some soup.  Well, they didn’t provide anything to eat it out of so what did we have?  We had our helmets.  Some of our helmets had been used for toilet facilities when we were in the boxcars.   We were in boxcars for forty-eight hours, over forty-eight hours in Frankfurt.   Well, put that soup in there and the soup was carrot top soup with no seasoning.  I guess it didn’t have any seasoning.  I didn’t even taste it.  I dumped mine out because my helmet had been used for, for a toilet.

T: So…that would not make a very appetizing soup bowl.

H: No. (both laugh)

T: Did you actually sit in the boxcars then without moving for a while on the way?

H: We were there for over forty-eight hours and prayed all the while being bombed, and there was one anti-aircraft gun after another going off.

T: In Frankfurt?

H: In Frankfurt.

T: So you were twice in trains that were being bombed.

H: But we weren’t actually hit in Frankfurt though.

T: So it was around you.

H: Yes.

T: So the time your train was actually hit was the one going to Trebnitz.

H: Yes.

T: Being in Frankfurt in a car there, I’m trying to think what kind of experience that must be sitting in a car for all that time.

H: That was very bad because, first of all, we were packed in there.  I would say there was probably sixty-five or seventy in a car.  I mean everybody couldn’t sit down at the same time.  There wasn’t that much room.

T: So did you…how do you manage that?  Did somebody organize a sit and stand thing?

H: It kind of worked its way out.  It did.  There is where I froze my feet, in that boxcar. 

T: Is that something that bothered you throughout the time then as a POW?  The frozen feet?

H: Well, it’s bothered me forever.

T: So there was no heat and this was January, wasn’t it?

H: Yes.  It was very cold.

T: Did the Germans, bring you food, water, any kind of supplies?

H: The doors never were opened for anything.

T: So you’re on your own.  Did some people handle that extended period of time in a boxcar mentally better than others?

H: Yes.  Some didn’t handle it too well.  I mean we had some who…wife and children and all that kind of stuff.  I mean I didn’t have any real close ties to anybody so that…those things didn’t bother me. 

T: How did you manage this?  How do you put your mind in a way where you find a way to deal with this?  How did you do that?

H: I just . . . one day at a time. 

T: Was that hard in any way?  I mean not knowing the outcome or how long  it’s going to be or anything like that in that boxcar?

H: Oh, it was hard in that boxcar.  Those were some of the worst days I had as a prisoner. 

T: Even with the Bad Orb experience that you have alluded to.

H: Yes.  Yes.  The boxcar was the worst.

T: So you must have sat there, they let the boxcars sit there while the air raids were going and then eventually they must have stopped and the Germans came to get you or…

H: I don’t know.  I don’t know why we went when we did.  I don’t know if it was a question of they didn’t have an engine or if the tracks were blown apart or what.  We don’t know why we were there.  Nobody told us anything.

T: Well, let’s go back to Bad Orb.  What kind of facility is this place as far as the barracks and the grounds, sleeping quarters, etc.?

H: Well, the building that I was in was about the size of a basketball court.  It had a real high ceiling, broken windows on the side, a concrete floor and straw on there with paths through there so that those who were sleeping in the middle had some kind of…not privacy, but whatever it is.  There I was able to get a spot by the wall which was good, because the very first night there those who had ate some of that soup it didn’t agree with their stomachs and they had to go to the bathroom.  And the bathroom was on the one end of the building right beside the entrance for the door where it came in.  It was a one-hole toilet.  After we were in that building they turned the lights out and it was dark.  And when you’re in a new place and no place to…you get very disoriented.

T: So in that respect it was good being next to the wall.

H: Next to the wall.  And there weren’t quite as many people falling over me as those that were more in the center.  

T: Was this the building in which you lived the whole time you were at Bad Orb?

H: That’s the only place I was at. 

T: I can think how big a basketball court is.  How many men by your estimate stayed in that building?

H: Oh, (pauses three seconds) two hundred and fifty.  They were laying side by side.  I mean we just…that was without blankets.  I mean the only thing we had to cover us was our overcoat.  That was our shelter.

T: And you had lost your gloves by this time.

H: That’s right.

T: While you were at Bad Orb what condition were your feet in?

H: They hurt me all the time.  I mean…

T: There was no medical care provided for your feet.

H: There was a dentist there.  I don’t know why we had a dentist there.  He didn’t have anything to work with.  But we had a dentist and two chaplains.   One Catholic and one Protestant.

T: And were they all Americans in the building you were in?

H: In the building I was in, yes, they were all Americans.  But the camp itself, I mean, was almost a league of nations.  I mean there was everything there.

T: Did you have any kind of daily routine there of roll call?  And was there any kind of work detail or something you did on a daily basis?

H: Work details were few and far between.  I got selected one time to cut wood in the forest.  But I wasn’t smart enough to ask somebody else for gloves. 

T: What kind of condition were your hands in when you came back?

H: I froze the tip of my finger, one of my fingers, yes.

T: Was this a voluntary work detail or something you were picked for?

H: No.  I was designated to go.  I did not volunteer.  One other time I was selected.  I and no one else.  I was selected to split wood for the camp commandant.  That time I knew enough to ask for some gloves. 

T: A little experience will do wonders, won’t it? (both laugh)  Did you have any colleagues or friends from your own unit that you were in this camp with?

H: Oh, yes.  There was some who were with me all the way through to the United States when we were training and everything.  They were right with us.

T: Were there people that you we might say kind of hung around with on a daily basis or closer friends than others?

H: Yes.  Some from….there were several of them that were right from my squad with me.

T: So you were still together there.

H: Yes. Yes.

T: How important was it to have closer friends or people that you knew right with you there?

H: I think  it was quite important.  Yes.  I mean, it gave you a little feeling of belonging.  Otherwise I mean, some of them, they were somewhat out of it.

T: People by themselves?

H: Yes.

T: Could you do much for each other?  I mean could friends help each other on a daily basis?

H: Not all that much.  I mean there was….bartering around there.  I mean some people, when they were interviewed, they managed to keep some of their personal belongings.  Which I didn’t.  I came out of my interview that I had….I had two things.  I had a rosary and I had a handkerchief in my pocket.  That was my total possessions.

T: Other guys, for whatever reason, hadn’t been relieved of everything.

H: Some managed to come through.  They’d have a knife in their pocket or some had money.

T: So it sounds like the searching that was being done was not consistent.

H: No.  It was not at all.

T: When you captured, did the Germans check your pockets or did you turn the stuff in?

H: No.  They said put everything on the table.

T: O.K.  So they asked you and you actually did it.

H: Yes.

T: It sounds like other guys maybe didn’t.

H: Well, I didn’t want to get caught.  I didn’t have anything to start out with, so it didn’t make any difference.

T: So some people had items for bartering or exchanging at Bad Orb.

H: Yes.

T: What could you barter and exchange for?

H: Bread.

T: What kind of food did the Germans provide for you every day at Bad Orb?

H: We had what they called ersatz [coffee], which was made from the bark of a tree I understand.  A beverage.  Some used it for soaking your feet in. 

T: Was that the only thing  provided in the morning?

H: Yes.  That was the only thing.

T: So no solid food of any kind.

H: No.

T: Was there a solid lunch food?

H: We’d get our…I can’t differentiate when we got the bread and when we got the soup.  But we got them at different times.  

T: But you remember soup one meal, bread the other.

H: Yes.

T: O.K.  Now you’ve mentioned your helmet wasn’t really fit for soup when you  first arrived there.  Were you provided any kind of eating…a bowl or a cup or anything like that or did you have to use your helmet?

H: My helmet was my only utensil all the while I was a prisoner.

T: So you had to obviously find a way to clean that and then use it.

H: I did.  The first day I was there, in daylight, there was a…we had some running water.  Cold water.  I was able to scrub it out as best I could. 

T: And that was your eating thing for soup.

H: Yes.

T: Did you get soup on a daily basis?

H: Most of the time.  But not always.

T: And the same with bread?  It sounds like the meals were fairly regular.

H: They were quite regular but I mean, if something went wrong, then we didn’t get soup or we didn’t get bread.

T: There wasn’t variety in other words either, it sounds like.  You’ve mentioned soup or bread but nothing else.

H: Right. 

T: Were you fed individually or were you fed by group or by room?  How did they actually distribute the food?  TAPE ENDS

T: On the food.  So you went down, almost through a line with your helmet.

H: Yes.

T: And the same for the bread later.  Did you go through and pick that up through a line too?

H: Well, no.  Everybody didn’t have to go to pick up the bread because everybody didn’t get a loaf of bread.  I mean, I think we had to split bread to seven or eight. 

T: O.K.  So a loaf was handed out.

H: Yes.

T: And then who split the bread?  Who sliced it?

H: We broke up into groups.  We were always in the same group.  And initially the group that I was in no one had any utensil to cut it.  Break bread when you’re hungry and you don’t get it very even.  That’s a big problem.

T: And it’s a problem because people are hungry?

H: That’s part of it. Yes. 

T: What’s another part of it?  I mean, if you’re talking about splitting it up without a knife, what kind of problems are there?

H: Well, people get angry because I mean, that’s their lifeline.  I mean a crumb was worth a lot there.

T: So it sounds like whoever was splitting the bread was bound to be the target of some kind of…

H: Right.

T: Because you’re right, It’s almost impossible to split it with your hands evenly.

H: I’ll tell you how we got around that.  Another guy and I, we took my canteen cup.  We broke the handle off and we found a rock and we hammered it.  Straightened it out and we ground it down and put a little edge on it.  I’ve got that knife yet. 

T: So you made a knife so you could slice it.

H: We made a knife.  We took…from my helmet…we took the band out of it.  That was the handle.  That’s what we used for cutting the bread.

T: Did that…the people you were sharing a loaf with…you said it was always the same people.  Did you know them all or were there some people who were not known to you?

H: I  knew most of them, but not really all of them.

T: In this group was it self-selected or were you put into a group of other people to share the bread with?

H: More or less we selected our own group.  More or less.  Not totally because some people ended up…they didn’t have a place to go. 

T: So they might have been assigned to your group.

H: Yes.

T: So the group isn’t necessarily eight friends dividing up bread….

H: No. No.

T: It’s eight people who may or may not know each other.

H: Right.

T: Or like each other.

H: Right.

T: That homemade knife, how well did that work?  

H: It served the purpose. 

T: Did you find it…was one person picked as the slicer or did that kind of rotate around?

H: Being as how I had the knife, I was the slicer.

T: You sliced and then they picked or did you hand the bread out?

H: I got the last slice always.

T: And did that work to your advantage or disadvantage?

H: Disadvantage.

T: And how is that?  By golly, you’re the guy with the knife! (laughing)

H: Yes.

T: So how did it work to your disadvantage?

H: Well, because usually that would be the lesser of all the slices. 

T: O.K.  I wouldn’t want to be the slicer I don’t think.

H: The thing of it is, someone had to do it. And I wasn’t going to let that knife go to…no one else.  I wasn’t going to give to anybody. 

T: Do you think you did a fairly even job of slicing the bread up?

H: I think I did pretty good on it.

T: So slicing the bread was a focus there.

H: Yes.

T: Because it was…it was the only solid food you got, right?

H: There was sometimes a little bit solids in the soup.  Like there would be some potatoes in there.  I’ve heard stories there would be a horse head in the soup kettle.

T: Never saw it in your kettle?

H: I didn’t see it. (laughing)

T: So food was a daily focus, how much and how it was going to be split up.  Tt Bad Orb anyway, was food one of those things that caused or led to disagreements between people?

H: Yes….never in the group that I was in.  But disagreement.  I mean, there was one time…there was two guys.  Somehow at night they got into the kitchen and the guard caught them, and they hacked the guard with a meat cleaver.  The German guard.

T: Were they caught by the Germans, these two guys?

H: Not initially.  The next day we didn’t have our ersatz.  We were all lined up outside.  The machine guns were pointed directly at us.  In addition they had some extra machine guns right on the ground level.  We stood out there all day long.  They told us why.  They told us that we were going to stay there until such a time as those who had done it…and further on when it got later on in the day, they threatened us that each hour they were going to shoot ten of us. 

T: How did this transpire?  They were waiting for someone to finger these people or for them to step forward.  How was this finally resolved?

H: The two guys that did it, they finally were convinced that they should step forward.  I think the chaplain had some input in it.  I’m not sure. 

T: Did they step forward finally?

H: Yes.

T: And what did that mean for the group?  Were the Germans as good as their word?  Did they …that was the end of it then for the rest of you guys?

H: Yes.  We were allowed to go inside.  But we didn’t have any food for that day.  But that was the extent of it for us.  And the two guys who had done it, they lived because I have seen one of them.  I’ve seen him.  What happened to the other one I don’t know.

T: In close quarters like this, it’s cold, there’s not much food.  I’m not sure how well my temperament would hold up in a time like that.  From your observance, did POWs get along fairly well with each or were there conflicts?

H: There were some conflicts, but nothing real serious. 

T: What led to conflicts from as much as you could see?

H: It’s hard to say what would bring it on.  But I never did see a fight.  Never did see that.  Just the occasional shouting here and there. 

T: Now you were at Bad Orb how long?

H: I’d say about six weeks. 

T: Were you made aware that this was a transit stop, that you were going to be moving on to somewhere else, or did you sort of expect that this is where I’m going to stay?

H: That was what we were told when we came there.  That it was a transit camp. 

T: So they told you.  So you kind of knew.

H: Yes. Yes.

T: How much advance warning did you have about the move to Hartmansdorf?

H: Probably about an hour or two.

T: So pretty suddenly it was, pack your stuff.  Let’s go.

H: Yes.

T: You didn’t have much to pack really, did you?

H: No.

T: In your mind, were you a bit nervous about moving or were you happy to get out of Bad Orb?

H: Oh, I had mixed feelings about it.  I knew that Bad Orb was a very bad camp,  as the saying goes it was probably as bad as any in Germany.  But you always  look for something could be better somewhere else.

T: Now from temperament, thinking of yourself, was it your kind of mindset to think of, oh, the next place can only be better than this or were you more inclined to think oh, the next place could be worse than this? 

H: I felt it could go either way. 

T: But you were not necessarily unhappy to be leaving Bad Orb?

H: No. I was not.  Because, I mean, I slept on the floor all the time and that was not good.  Eating out of my helmet.  They did issue me a spoon.  I did get a spoon.  That’s the only issue I got in my time that I was at Bad Orb.  I was one of the few that ever got a spoon there.  Most of them didn’t get it. 

T: Boy.  So that was the only thing you got issued by the Germans was a spoon?

H: A spoon.  It was a little metal spoon.  It was a combination fork, spoon.  It folded in the middle.

T: And did you keep that with you then when you went to Hartmansdorf, too?

H: I kept that with me.  I’ve still got that today.

T: Well, you’ve talked about the move on the train to Hartmansdorf.  Now when you got to the camp you mentioned you were only really there very briefly before you moved on to a work camp.  So can you say much about the camp at IV-F Hartmansdorf?  Or is it something that really was almost like a pit stop?

H: I never…initially we didn’t even go to Hartmansdorf.  We went directly to Trebnitz. 

T: I see.  So the work camp, that was the destination.

H: Yes.  The only time I think I was at Hartmansdorf, I’m not sure, one day a guard and two of us prisoners we walked and got on a passenger train.  We went some distance.  I don’t know how far it was and we got off and the guard went somewhere and we sat in the waiting room and waited for him to be done and then we left.  I think that was Hartmansdorf.  I’m not sure.

T: A bizarre experience.

H: Yes.

T: Waiting in a train station.

H: No.  No.  That wasn’t a train station.  We walked to… it was a military installation where we went to.

T: I see.  So you just waited for him and then he came back…

H: And why we went there I never did know.

T: You just went along with him. 

H: We didn’t.  That’s our road.  I saw civilians that day.  That train was full.  We were standing.  I mean they had those big straps [to hold on to when you stood].

T: So you had this one guard.  What was that like on a train?  You’ve had civilian experiences before by this time.  Were you nervous being around civilians again?

H: No.  Not at all.  I felt comfortable in that train.

T: They didn’t bug you at all.

H: No.

T: What a change from the times when they had focused their anger at you really.  Now you were clearly  marked as a POW?

H: But see here, nothing had happened, I mean to get them all up in arms.

T: Right.  No bombings or anything. 

H: Yes.

T: So they were riding a civilian train and you were with them.  What kind of markings did you have that you were prisoners of war?

H: At Bad Orb all our clothing they put a red triangle on it.  I can’t remember if they put it on the right leg or left leg.  I can’t remember that.  And then the jacket on the back and shirt and everything had a red triangle.

T: Which was a symbol.  Everyone had the same symbol?

H: Yes.

T: And at Trebnitz did you have the same thing?

H: All of us had come from Bad Orb, so we all still had it.

T: You still had the same badge.  Red triangle several places on your person.

H: Right.

T: Well, this work camp.  You mentioned there were about ninety of you went there.  Were you the only prisoners at this location or were there others too?

H: We were the only ones there.

T: What kind of conditions met you when you got there?  You’ve already alluded to the fact that it was a step up from Bad Orb.

H: There it was two separate rooms where we were housed.  Forty-five to one room and forty-five to the other.  The rooms were not interconnected.  You had to go outside and go around to get from one to another.  On the furthest side from one of them was a …I don’t know what you call it.  But it had a boiler in there, hot water boiler, a shower and I guess you could do some laundry there if you wanted.  But we had the fuel.  We could heat up the water.  We’d have hot water there.

T: You could actually take showers or baths there.

H: I did take a shower there.

T: That’s something you did not mention at Bad Orb.

H: No.  I had one initially.  The first day I got there.  The night I got there.  I had a shower.  I had a shower and got deloused.

T: Did you stay deloused very long or were bugs a problem at Bad Orb?

H: Ach!  When you’re in a building where nobody has been and you’ve got fresh straw, you don’t have the bugs.

T: So that’s not something you noticed there at Bad Orb, lice or…

H: I didn’t have but those who were in the rest of the barracks, I mean that had been housing somebody else….I mean they had the bugs.  All the way through I never had any lice until we started sleeping in the barns.  That was right at the end.

T: The sleeping quarters at Trebnitz, a step up from Bad Orb too?

H: We had bunks and we had blankets.  It was…like I said we had all the fuel we wanted.  So we didn’t hurt for being cold in our rooms. 

T: Those are a couple of the things that you mentioned were problems at Bad Orb.  So those on two fronts already, it’s a definite step up.

H:  Yes.

T: The food, the same or different?

H: No.  The bread was the same.  I think we had the same ratio.  We might have been down to six to a loaf of bread but the soup had  more solids.  And there was something is hard to believe.  They brought the soup in on a daily basis by train.

T: So it was prepared somewhere else and brought in to you. 

H: We had big vats, insulated vats I imagine you would call them.  Where we had gotten off the train when we arrived there was Luckenau and we walked along the tracks there for I guess it was two kilometers.  Then we were in Trebnitz there.  Those same tracks there, that’s where that train came on a daily basis and brought us our food.  That same train that brought us our coal, our briquettes.

T: So this is really…it’s not the Hilton but it’s…

H: No.  But almost.

T: Did you talk among yourselves that you really had stepped up as far as conditions?  Were guys talking about that?

H: No.  We did say that it was better.  For myself it was better from the extent that I speak German and when they came and asked for an interpreter nobody volunteered so I figured, well, I can talk a little German so I volunteered and I didn’t have to go to work.

T: So the work detail was different for the rest of the men.

H: Yes.

T: You’ve got ninety men here.  What kind of work were they doing?

H: Some repaired train tracks.  And some worked in the coal mines.  I don’t know just what they did in the coal mines, but they worked in the coal mines. 

T: And neither of those were things that you did.

H: I didn’t do anything except I cleaned up around there.  I stayed in the camp all the time.

T: You really have moved up in the world.

H: Yes.  I did.

T: So at this camp, did you come into contact then with the Germans who were around the camp on a fairly regular basis?

H: On a weekly basis.  The women in the town, they’d come right past the barbed wire at the edge of the camp there and they’d take it to a central bakery to bake their bread.  I, on several occasions, I did talk to some of those women.  Most of them, you start mentioning something about the war and they didn’t want to, that was the end of it.

T: So here’s a positive interaction with civilians as opposed to earlier.

H: Right.  Yes.

T: What do you talk about?  I mean is it just small talk or…

H: Just small talk.  Guten Morgen and that kind of stuff.

T: But it was friendly the way you’re describing it.

H: Yes.

T: Were there German guards or military people sort of guarding this particular work camp?

H: I believe there was an Unteroffizier in charge of us and then I think there were five other guards, and usually one would stay in camp and the rest of them would go with them to wherever their work details were.

T: So you left in the camp during the day, it sounds like, was a German and you?

H: Oh, no.  I was interpreter and then we had…they designated one guy as a barber who had never cut a head of hair in his life.  (laughing) He didn’t go to work. 

T: How do you get these jobs?

H: There was…altogether there was four of us that didn’t go to work.

T: I would imagine…he couldn’t cut hair every day.  So he didn’t have a lot of work, did he?

H: No. (laughs) I mean…and when the rest of them went to work there was only three others there.

T: How did you spend your time during the day?  In a sense you’ve got a lot of dead time it sounds like.

H: I tell you, that’s where I learned to play cribbage.

T: So you had to learn to occupy yourself.

H: That’s right.

T: Same four guys too, right?  The same…they were the same guys you saw every day?

H: Yes.

T: And what do you talk about when you sit around during the day with lots of time on your hands?

H: I can’t remember what we talked about.  I mean….I know we talked about food some. 

T: Would you say, speaking of food at this location, were you hungry as a general rule or were you getting enough to be fairly satisfied?

H: Yes.  You were always hungry there, but you got more than you did at Bad Orb.  There was lots more solids in the soup than there had been at Bad Orb.

T: Did you have roll call in the morning here like at most prison camps, or was it because of the size a little more lax as far as the daily routine?

H: We didn’t have a roll call.  They had a head count.  All the Germans did there, they just counted.  They didn’t care who was there.  They just wanted to know so they had that many. 

T: So you could have brought in some guy from Mars, but if he’s there and he can stand up he gets counted.

H: Right. (laughs)

T: So they counted you up there?  There’s only ninety of you.  That can’t take all that long.

H: No.  That didn’t.  It was no big deal there.

T: So was there a routine where you got up in the morning and people went…knew which detail they were going on or was this kind of arranged on a daily basis?  Where people went.

H: They went to the same place on a daily basis.  I mean they knew where they were going.

T: O.K. So it sounds like getting up and going to work.  Like you get up and have a little something….

H: Except they had to walk.  Most of them, their feet were not in very good shape.  Walking to work was not good.

T: Yes.  How were your feet by this time? 

H: They were improving. 

T: It sounds like just a little warmer in the barracks now too.

H: Oh, yes. I mean this was getting on March now.  I mean, the temperature was getting warmer too.

T:  At Trebnitz but also at Bad Orb, how much news did you have of the outside world?  I mean for example did you know how the war was going? 

H: We got some news at Bad Orb.  How we got it I don’t know.  I mean stuff like that circulates.  At Trebnitz we got very little news because, like I said, any time you’d mention something about the war, that was the end.  There was no…

T: So a conversation that you brought up about the Krieg, that was the end of the conversation with local civilians.

H: One time, I don’t know where, but I got a hold of a German newspaper.  But my reading the German script is not very good.

T: So it sounds like Trebnitz, you really were…it’s a geographically isolated place too, but you didn’t have much knowledge of what was  going on in the larger world.

H: No.  No.

T: How, on a daily basis, were your spirits there at Trebnitz? 

H: Spirits were lots better there at Trebnitz than they were at Bad Orb.  Bad Orb…I mean that was a godforsaken place.

T: It sounds like more than once now, that this having been really at an awful place made you realize that it was not so bad, the second place you were at.

H: Right.  That’s about it.  Yes.

T: Yes.  Did the subject of escape ever come up?  When you were at Trebnitz is that something that  people ever talked about?

H: Never talked about it.  The thing of it is, where are you going to go?

T: But it sounds like you could probably walk away from the camp almost.

H: Yes.  But where, what’s going to happen after that?  I mean, you know your uniform is going to give you away because that uniform, that was the only clothing that I ever had while I was a prisoner.

T: And you couldn’t very well change clothes or you’d be a spy, wouldn’t you?

H: That’s right.

T: So it wasn’t really such a hard decision it sounds like to stay where you were.

H: But yet you read all the time other camps that they escaped.  

T: But what I hear you saying is, for you and the guys at Trebnitz, it was…didn’t even make sense to think about it.

H: No.

T: And so you stayed.  When you think of the two camps you were at here, Bad Orb and Trebnitz, what would you say was the most difficult thing you had to deal with as far as your daily existence?

H: That’s hard to say.  I really don’t know.  Everything was difficult at Bad Orb.  I mean nothing came easy there. 

T: Did you, either at Bad Orb or Trebnitz, have a chance to communicate with your family back home?  To let them know that you were O.K.

H: At Bad Orb one time I was given the opportunity to write a letter and that did get through.  That’s the way they [my folks] found out that I was a prisoner of war.

T: Did you ever get any mail either place?

H: Never.  I never get any mail.  I didn’t ever get any mail while I was overseas.  Period.

T: You landed 16th of December.  Within a couple weeks you were captured so…

H: That’s why I never did get any mail.

T: When you got back home did you find, had your folks been sending stuff?

H: Yes.  They sent some parcels and all that and they told me how they sent…I don’t know whatever happened to them.  Maybe somebody had them.  I don’t know.  (laughing)

T: What was good got picked up along the way it sounds like.   Eventually your camp at Trebnitz was evacuated, as both the Russians and the Americans were coming.  How much advance notice did you have here that you were going to be marched out of there?

H: About the same amount of advance notice I had at Bad Orb: “We’re going to leave. (snaps fingers) Get your stuff together and get ready to go.”

T: Now this is not such a bad location, relatively speaking.  Was it a bit disconcerting to know that you were going to be moving again?

H: The thing of it is, we didn’t know where or what was going to happen.  Walking along the roads in a column you always are afraid of strafing.

T: Right.  Now there’s ninety or eighty-nine of you by this time?

H: Yes.  Same guys. 

T: Was your column ever strafed?

H: No.  But we did see planes up there.  I don’t know why they didn’t strafe us.  I don’t, I’ll never know.

T: Now you mentioned before we started to talk that you were marched what you think was three or four days, you think in circles.  That they were just really keeping you on the road.

H: Yes. 

T: Talk about that march.  What did you do?  Did you have places to sleep at night?

H: We’d sleep in barns.  And there was several….many times it seemed like the German Unteroffizier that was in charge, that he was bartering to get us food and that kind of stuff.  It seemed that he was doing that.

T: Were these the same military personnel you’d had with you at Trebnitz?  They went with you.

H: Yes.  The very same ones.  Yes.

T: What kind of guys were these?  I mean fairly easy to get along with or easy to deal with people?

H: Well, they were elderly.  And then we had that one that had been wounded at Stalingrad.  They were quite easy to get along with.  That one officer, he was more difficult. 

T: Are these guards men who you could actually talk to?  I mean was it that kind of a relationship?

H: That one that had been at Stalingrad, you could talk to him any time.  I mean he spoke some English.

T: When you talked to him, what kind of conversations did you have?  Was it more business or more family or what kind of things did you say to each other?

H: One thing, I remember one day he said to me, “The time is going to come when you and I are going to be fighting side by side.”  He said that to me.  He mentioned something about the Soviet Union and at the time when he told me that I thought he had a hole in his head.

T: So these guards were not people who were intimidating or abusive of the prisoners.

H: No.

T: At Trebnitz, were they?

H: Not there.  No.  Like I said though, that Unteroffizier in charge, he was more difficult.  I did witness one occasion where he pistol whipped that one guy that ended up having spinal meningitis that died.  I saw him pistol whip him.  Yes.

T: While you were at Trebnitz there?

H: Yes.

T: What led to that situation?  It seems out of character with everything else you’ve said about these Germans here.

H: The thing of it is, he wasn’t able to make roll call.  He came into our barracks and he was in his bunk there, and they sat him up and wham, wham! with his pistol.

T: I think you said earlier that prisoner was removed from the camp then. 

H: After, I don’t know, four or five days, something like that, they decided he was sick enough and TAPE ENDS

T: Mr. Brick, you said this particular prisoner who had been pistol whipped was, after several days, then loaded onto a cart?

H: Yes.  We pulled it.  A guard went with us.  We went to another town by the name of Tigert.  The street sign said it was five kilometers from Trebnitz.  There that was a concentration camp there.  There again it was a great big building but there were cots on the floor.  There was a Polish doctor there and he examined us, and he immediately told us that he thought it was spinal meningitis and that those of us who had any personal contact with him should wash ourselves with soap and water.  Clean our clothes.  We had hot water.  We could do that.  We did that.  We didn’t have any soap.  None of us any of us ever contracted that.

T: Was that prisoner left at that facility then?  Is that where you left him?

H: We left him there.  That Polish doctor, the German that I could understand, that’s what he imparted the information to us.

T: Did you ever learn what happened to that person?

H: He died.

T: And did they tell you that at the camp or did you find that out after the war?

H: I’d say about two or three weeks later they showed  me the death certificate.   Yes.  I saw that.

T: What did you end up doing with that news?  Did you tell American officials when you got back to American control about that incident?

H: Yes.  I did that at Camp Lucky Strike.  I understand his body came back to the United States.  That’s what I understand.

T: Did you know that particular soldier?

H: Not personally.  No.

T: Did that remain an isolated violent incident as far as the Germans how this particular officer or the other troops treated the men at Trebnitz, or were there other instances like that?

H: There were some other instances like that on some of the work details.

T: That would involve the guards who were there then?

H: Yes.

T: And what did you hear people talking about, because being the interpreter you weren’t there obviously.

H: Just within the last month, I’m in contact with one of the guys who was there, and he was working on a rail track and apparently he wasn’t going fast enough or he said something had to turn some nuts or what it was and there he said he was…with a rifle butt in his back.

T: So there were cases of the guards mistreating prisoners.

H: Yes.  But from where I was I wouldn’t know about it, because I wasn’t there.

T: And for you personally with what you were doing this is not something you ever had to deal with.

H: Right. Right.

T: Did you at the time consider yourself fortunate for the job that you did  have?

H: Yes.  I considered myself very fortunate.

T: And it’s really as an interpreter, how much interpreting did you ultimately end up doing between the Germans and the Americans?

H: Very little.

T: But they had to have someone, I guess, if a need arose.

H: Yes. 

T: On the march, as you were marched around there, did your knowledge of German come in handy at all?

H: Well, on the first day we started out the Unteroffizier had a bottle of Schnapps and he gave me a slug of Schnapps.

T: What did you make of this particular Unteroffizier because, it’s the same guy, right?  I  mean he’s been with you the whole time.

H: Yes.  I mean he was good, and he was bad. 

T: That’s interesting.  So he wasn’t consistently evil nor was he consistently good.

H: No.

T: So you could see both sides of him.  Just like a real human being, I suppose?  Whatever became of him?  Did he melt away before the Americans found you?

H: I saw him one other time.  On the day when we started back to go to Naumburg.  He was in a truck where they had all their German prisoners.  Now where he went, I don’t know.  But I saw him.

T: Did you make eye contact with him or talk to him at all?

H: I talked with him.  He asked me to help him.  I don’t know if I could have…if I would have.  I don’t know.

T: There’s two questions there.  If you could have, and if you would have.

H: Yes.

T: How about the, If you could have?

H: Yes.  I mean it was an impossible situation, because there was no such thing as I could. 

T: Yes, sure.  Now, would you have?

H: I don’t know. (pauses three seconds) I don’t know if I would or not. 

T: That’s interesting that suddenly the tables are literally turned.  There he’s sitting and you can see him now as a POW.  Now during the couple days that you marched, three, four days, did you walk through towns much or mostly in the country?

H: We walked through the towns.  Like I mentioned, Chemnitz, Zeitz, Weissenfels.  Those are the towns that I remember.  We went through a lot.  Many, many more towns.

T: Any interactions with civilians, either asking for food or them talking to you?

H: None at all while we were doing that.  They knew, it seemed like they stayed away from us.

T: Did they give you food or anything like this or did you ask for food?  Any contact like that?

H: Mostly we didn’t come that close to them.  Like I said, the people more or less stayed away from us.

T: Interesting.  Did you go through any places more than once that gave you the indication that you were going in a circle?

H: I knew about the locations where the towns were, and that’s why I felt that we were going in a circle.

T: During that march was it essentially get up in the morning, march all day, or did you march and stop, march and stop?

H: It’s a march and stop.  We didn’t make a lot of headway.

T: There’s only eighty-nine of you now marching.

H: Yes.

T: So it’s not a big group anyway.

H: Yes.

T: But you didn’t get very far.

H: We didn’t make much progress.  That’s why I just felt that the guards didn’t have any more enthusiasm about it than we did.

T: And were they really guarding you or protecting you?  Did you figure out what they were doing there?  They’d been both on occasion now.

H: They were just walking with us.  That’s all.

T: You mentioned yourself you weren’t going anywhere.

H: Yes.

T: After three or four days of this it did come to an end.  I’m wondering if you can talk about that.  Kind of walk through the events of the end of your POW time.

H: Well, there were four houses on the corners with the barns in between attached to the house.  Only one entrance to the courtyard, with a big, huge manure pile.  We shifted for ourselves there.  We slept in the hay and straw, whatever it was.  We went to the houses and we got some eggs and ate.

T: Did it look initially that this was another one of the daily stops?  Because you’ve had these stops at different barns up till now.

H: No.  The guards, they left almost immediately when we got there.  They figured that was a place where we could stay and they’d go their every which way.

T: So the guards, without much to-do it sounds like, just were gone.  And here you are at this particular farm location.  Were there German farmers actually occupying the farm?

H: Oh, yes.  Yes.

T: Did you get food from them?  Was it a matter of just asking or taking or how did you manage that?

H: You don’t ask, you take. (chuckles)

T: Did the farmer stay while you were there?

H: Oh, yes.  We didn’t pay too much attention to the houses.  We stayed away from them to a better part.  And we slept in the barns.  And then during the daytime, we’d browse around the countryside and, like I said, after several days we commandeered a car.

T: With the Germans leaving could you kind of figure out that the war or that the Allies were close to you in some way?  Or were you not quite sure what to do? 

H: Well, after the very first day, the [American] 9th Armored Division had gone past us already.  We saw them.

T: They didn’t seem to notice you were there?

H: Oh, yes.  They knew we were there.  The privates and PFCs and noncoms, we could get anything we wanted from them.  But nobody gave us any direction, “You go here or you go there.”  Nothing happened like that.

T: They’d help you, but not direct you?

H: No.

T: How did you decide then, being on your own, what the heck to do?

H: Well, one day at a time always.  We stayed in the same barn location.  In the general area.  Not necessarily always that barn.  It was always a barn but…and we ate good.  I mean because we’d go right to their mess facility [American troops] and we’d eat what they ate.

T: Because you were still in uniform, weren’t you?

H: Right.  And that car we had, they went and painted a star on top of it for us.  It was a German car, a four-speed Opel.

T: Were you three armed at all?

H: We had a M1 rifle.

T: So you had a weapon in the car.

H: Yes.  We had a weapon.

T: Did you ever use it?

H: No.  We didn’t have to.  There was one time that we came through a German roadblock, and they looked at us and we looked at them and we turned around and went the other way again. 

T:  How bizarre.  Yes.  That could have gone very badly.

H: Right.

T: You know if I was to paint a picture of a bizarre situation this has a lot of the qualities I think I’d want.  You’re not a POW, but you’re not in American control, and you’re driving a German car around the countryside…(laughing)  Did you have an idea, the three of you there, you mentioned earlier that you were three, did you have an idea of what the hell you were supposed to do or wanted to do?

H: We knew that we wanted to go back eventually, but we didn’t know how we were supposed to do it.

T: The military normally gives directions, don’t they?

H: Yes.

T: And nobody gave you any.

H: They didn’t.

T: And there were no Germans any more.

H: Nobody.  We always had somebody doing something for us, telling us what to do, and now we were all by ourselves.  We didn’t know what to do.  That’s about what it was. 

T: And you said this went on for not just a few days.

H: For about two weeks.

T: And was the routine every day pretty much the same?  Find a place to stay, find some food to eat…

H: Yes.   One time we went into a….this was in Chemnitz.  Went into a beer hall and the place was packed.

T: With…Germans?

H: Germans.  The place was packed.  We ordered beer.  We drank our beer.  We went out.  We didn’t have any money to pay for it.  We just walked out. 

T: How bizarre.  And the war was not officially over yet, was it?

Photo: "Harold Brick and W. Ritzman, taken probably in Chemnitz, Germany."  Last week of April or first week of May, 1945.  Both men are leaning against the Opel automobile Mr Brick mentions in the interview.
Click on picture for larger image.  Photo © Harold Brick; used by permission.

H: Oh, no.  The war wasn’t over.  (chuckles)

T: Did you ever see any Russians?

H: No.

T: So it was…you were close to where the Russians were but still in the American…

H: Yes. Yes. 

T: I hate to use the word tourists, but you’re kind of just drifting around in a way.

H: Yes. I guess we were tourists.  (chuckles)

T: What did you make of this whole situation?  You’re kind of between the worlds in a way.  You’re not with any particular group. 

H: Well, I don’t know.  I think for one thing we felt good that we weren’t under German control.  But we didn’t feel so good because we weren’t in anybody’s control.

T: Did you wake up one morning and finally sort of say, O.K. this is enough of this?

H: Yes.  That’s about the extent of it.  We just can’t go on. 

T: You have to find someone to care about you, right?  Or to tell you what to do. 

H: We found I think it was a staff sergeant and we told him that we had to go back because this couldn’t go on.  He’s the one that told us to latch onto that military convoy and we drove….it took us all day. 

T: And that’s where you ended up at Naumburg.

H: Naumburg.  Yes.

T: What happened when you got to Naumburg?  Did someone finally…notice you in a way?

H: Yes.  They noticed us in a big way. 

T: In what…what do you mean by that?

H: Well, the MPs, the first thing they did is, they wanted the papers for the car. 

T: You didn’t have any.

H: No. (laughing)  So the car was gone.  It was gone. 

T: All right.  So the Opel was gone now.  What happened to you then?

H: Well, then they told us where the airfield was, and how to get there.  That was a couple miles.  So there we were.  Walked.  That’s the only way you’re going to get there.  So we had to find our own way to the airfield.  Still the three of us.  But when we got to the airfield we weren’t the only ones there.

T: Did you see other guys from Trebnitz?  After you left there?

H: I’ve seen them since.  Yes.

T: I mean did you see them in Germany at all?  Either at Naumburg here or was that…

H: I can’t recall whether I did or not.

T: How long were you at Naumburg before they flew you out?  

H: I was there at least a couple days.  At least a couple days.

T: Did anybody talk to you?  And say, debrief you at all?

H: I mean there we were back to sleeping on the floor and eating…we did eat.  We ate K rations.  The sad part of that was there was a German…not a German.  There was a British major who was in charge of the airfield.  It was an American Zone.  But what that British guy was doing there I don’t know.  But after…I think it was the third day, that morning they gave us the news that we were going to get out of there.  In the forenoon there was nine C-47s came in.  They loaded the British on there.  Then for a long time nothing.  None came.  And when some more came in there, they loaded the French on them.  We’re still waiting.  All American planes.  American airfield.  And we’re taking care of everybody else first.  And then it got to be just about getting dark and I never did see so many airplanes in my life that came in there.  We all got out of there that day.  American planes.  All C-47s.

T: So these transport planes are coming in here and taking you guys out.  And like a lot of other ex-POWs you ended up at Camp Lucky Strike in France, I think you said.

H: Right.  Camp Lucky Strike.

T: When you got to Camp Lucky Strike, first of all, how long did they keep you there?

H: I wasn’t there more than two days.

T: And were you flown or shipped back to the US?

H: Shipped.  I think that’s one of the reasons that I got out there faster.  The ship was there waiting for us. 

T: Other guys had been at Lucky Strike for a while.  You were in and out of there.

H: Yes.

T: And the ship, what kind of….

H: Transport ship.

T: And took you to what port in the States?

H: We had a roundabout way to get there.  We went across the Channel to Southampton.  There we stayed for a couple days in the harbor.  The war was still on. 

T: So it wasn’t May 8th yet.

H: No.

T: The war is still on and here you are just sitting there.  Get off the ship or they kept you on the ship?

H: No.  No shore leave or anything.  We were on the ship.  I found out later what we were doing.  We were waiting for a convoy. 

T: Were you part of a convoy when you went to the States?

H: Yes.  We went into the convoy and for the first few days it was one depth charge after another.

T: So you were reminded that the war wasn’t over.  Did the war end while you were on the ship?

H: Yes.

T: Do you remember getting that news on board the ship?

H: Yes.  I remember it. 

T: Talk about that.

H: I don’t know.  Things at that point were happening so fast.

T: You’ve got Naumburg, Camp Lucky Strike, ship, Southampton.  So you’re kind of moving relatively quickly, for military terms.  How did that news, how did you receive that news?

H: Oh, you feel good about it, but I mean there was no big celebration on the ship or anything like that.

T: Were you concerned at all that you’d end up going to the Pacific, where the war against Japan was still going on?

H: Yes.

T: How did that affect you?  I mean in a sense, you’ve got all these memories from being a POW, being captured, being at Bad Orb and yet it might not be over yet.

H: Well, I surely didn’t want to be a prisoner of the Japanese, because I knew that they had it lots worse than we had. 

T: When did you find out that you wouldn’t be going to the Pacific?

H: I didn’t know that until the Japanese surrendered.

T: You thought that really that your division might be going over there.

H: Yes.  We wouldn’t have gone over there as a division.  I’d have gone over there as a replacement to somebody else. 

T: So that was on your mind that you really didn’t want to go over to the Pacific.

H: No.

T: Was it more because of the possibility of being a POW or because…

H: No.  I just felt I had had enough of it. 

T: You’d been in combat there in France, hadn’t you? 

H: Yes.

T:  When you got back to the States, I think we talked earlier, you were pretty quickly back in Minnesota once you landed.

H: Oh, yes.  That was the fastest I’ve ever moved in the army.

T: By train or plane?

H: Train from Fort Lewis straight through to St. Paul. 

T: When you saw your folks again…by the way, were other of your brothers, you had three other brothers, any of them in the service?

H: My younger brother, he was in the service but he didn’t go in until in between Korea and World War II.   

T: So you were the only brother who served in World War II.

H: Yes.

T: When you got home and saw your folks again, what was that like?  I mean you’ve been away for quite a long time now.

H: Well,  I mean it was…I just was back home.  That’s all. 

T: How much did your folks or your brothers and sisters ask about your POW experience?

H: Oh, even if they asked I wasn’t in a very talkative mood those years. 

T: And does that mean that you wouldn’t answer their questions, or would give them a brief general answer?

H: More an evasive answer.

T: Why do you think that was?

H: I don’t know.  I’m sure that I felt that I shouldn’t have been a prisoner.  I think that’s what it was.

T: What do you mean by that?

H: That I let my country down.

T: By being surrendered?  So you felt, is guilty the right word?

H: Yes.

T: And if they asked you about any kind of combat experience, your folks or your brothers and sisters, would you talk about that?

H: Yes.  I’d talk about those kind of things but very little about the prisoner of war deal, and especially the part about that we surrendered.  That was a…..taboo.

T: Did you tell them that or did they just kind of realize that Harold doesn’t want to talk about that?

H: Nobody pushed it.

T: I see.  Were you in general kind of a talkative person, so this was something that they could recognize a difference?

H: No.  I’m naturally a quiet person.

T: How did your unwillingness  to talk about the POW experience, how did that change over the years?  Because, let’s face it, here we are sitting and talking about it.

H: It didn’t really change until when I first joined the Prisoner of War Organization.  It seemed that when I got in a group where our experiences were somewhat similar, it became easier. 

T: So you had other people sitting around with you who had been POWs.  Did  that translate into making it easier to talk to other people, like me for example too?

H: Yes.  After a while it became easy to talk to anyone about it. 

T: Harold, when did you first join the American ex-POWs?

H: I can tell you the exact date because I got the disc with all the POWs in the United States.  I’ve got that and it says on there when it was.

T: Was it in the 90s or the 80s or earlier?

H: It was in the high 80s.

T: What finally convinced you to join or to make contact with that organization?

H: We were in Sauk Rapids,  Minnesota, and my sister’s husband had died.  His brother had been a POW.  He was Air Force.  He signed me up.

T: Had you known that about him before that?

H: That he was a prisoner?

T: Yes.

H: No.  I didn’t know he had been a prisoner. 

T: So really the fact that this being together for this funeral in a way you met him and talked to him a little bit about it.

H: That’s right.

T: So he had been a member by that time? 

H: He had been.  Yes.  He was the State officer at that time.

T: And he was a POW of the Germans as well?

H: That’s right.

T: So here’s a person that had a German POW experience that you could at least relate to a little bit.

H: Yes.

T: How has the ex-POWs Organization helped you in the years since you’ve been in it?

H: I don’t know.  For my part it was good for me to talk about it.  Not only that, I mean the ex-POWs they’ve helped me to get some of the things from the Veterans Administration which I have got now. 

T: Has your disability percentage increased since you joined them?  I mean did they help you get more benefits in that respect?

H: I didn’t have any disability before that.

T: So in real tangible ways they’ve helped you too.

H: Yes.

T: Do you find it easier now or easy in a sense to talk to groups, school kids, or other people about your POW experience?

H: I find it quite easy.  I was afraid of it to start out with, but I found that they aren’t as rowdy as I thought they were going to be. 

T: Do you remember the first time you talked to a group of school kids?

H: Yes.  It was down in Mason City, Iowa.  It was eleventh grade.  I talked and I mean they seemed interested and they asked questions and …

T: Were you surprised by how interested they were?

H: Yes I was.  I was more surprised at how orderly they were.  I was always expecting that I didn’t want to do it because I hear all those horror stories how bad things are on the school busses and that.  I figured, I don’t want any part of it. 

T: So it was a completely different experience from what you were expecting.

H: Right.

T: And since then have you done that more times as far as talking to school kids?

H: I’ve done it about four times now since then.  I’ve done that …other telephone interviews. 

T: So something that you’ve done more than once.

H: Yes.

T: I want to ask about your family again.  Now you and Gloria were married in 1953.  How much did she know about your POW experience?

H: She knew very little until after I got involved with the Prisoner of War Organization.

T: So even a person that you were close to….

H: Yes.

T: Was it she knew not to ask?

H: She knew that I had been a prisoner of war, but that’s about it.

T: Was there  kind of an unspoken agreement in a sense that you wouldn’t talk any more than a general way about it?

H: I really don’t know how we came that we didn’t discuss it at all.

T: Even though both of you knew it existed.

H: Yes.  Yes.

T: And what about your kids as they were growing up?  I know kids can be curious about stuff.  Did they ask you?

H: Well, that’s the thing now.  Even today now the one who was adopted, she’s very, very interested in it.  But the other two TAPE ENDS

T: So you were saying, as for your children growing up, did they know and you not really talk about it, or did they really not even know about it?

H: They didn’t even know about it.

T: Did they find out about the same time that you became involved with the American ex-POWs?

H: I really don’t know when they found out about it.

T: You said that of your three kids, two don’t really show a whole lot of interest in learning more about it.

H: No.

T: But your daughter has?

H: Yes.  She’s the one that’s adopted.  She’s very, very interested in it.  Gloria and I are going to Washington,  D.C. to the World War II Memorial dedication [in May 2004].

T: How is it for you to talk to her about the POW experience?  I mean a conversation with someone like me, we’ve never met really.  Is it easier to talk to her or easier to talk to someone like me?

H: It isn’t hard to talk to her. 

T: So a conversation about some of the details and stuff is O.K. now?

H: Yes.

T: When you got out of the service, how much attention did the service…how much care did they give you as far as physical or psychological recovery when you got back to the States?

H: None.

T: Did anybody ever take down your story or…

H: I have made remarks that, at Lucky Strike, they gave me such a poor physical that I wouldn’t give that physical to a horse.  All they were concerned was that I was alive and that I could walk, and that was about it.

T: Was it any better when you got back to the States as far as the care that they gave you?

H: No. I didn’t get any special care.

T: So they basically checked to make sure you’re still walking and have a pulse….

H: And that was it.  Yes.

T: Was there any kind of counseling offered for what we might today call the psychological aspect of POW?

H: None.

T: Harold, when you got back to the States out of the service, how much of an issue did you have with dreams or nightmares or things that brought back that experience to you?

H: Oh, quite often. 

T: What kind of things did you dream about?

H: Oh, I’d dream about life in the boxcar.  That kind of stuff. 

T: So the boxcar is one of those images that you did have dreams about.

H: Yes.  Yes.

T: Was it one dream that recurred or was it different things around the same theme?

H: It would be a recurring thing, but still at the same time be different.

T: For example in what ways?

H: Oh, it’s hard to say.  I mean it would be different people in it that I didn’t even know.

T: People who hadn’t really been there perhaps.

H: Yes.

T: Did you see people who had been there too?

H: Sometimes.  Yes.

T: But the image of being in the boxcar, what exactly . . .

(no answer)

T: Was it things you remembered about being? 

H: That kind of stuff.  Yes.

T: And would you say boxcar images rather than actual images of Bad Orb or Trebnitz came in your own dreams?

H: Bad Orb was pretty…is pretty much involved too.

T: What are some of the images from Bad Orb that you’ve dreamt about?

H: Well, I physically saw the…what do you call them…the man of confidence, he was the guy that was really the American in charge of us a  whole.  I saw him get hit over the head with a rifle butt.  Not once but twice.  I mean those kind of things.  When you see that.  And what brought that about was the Germans asked him to finger all the Jewish prisoners at Bad Orb.  And he refused to do it, and that’s when he got beat.

T: When the Germans hit him, was that something they did in full view of all other prisoners?

H: In view of anybody who happened to be close enough to see it.  That was…

T: So that kind of physical abuse was something that you weren’t accustomed to really.

H: (softly) No.

T: Did those dreams gradually decrease over time, or are they things that stuck with you?

H: They’re better now than they were.  

T: But they haven’t completely gone away.

H: No.  They haven’t gone away.

T: Has the Veterans Administration with respect to that, have they offered you counseling or help with that over the years?

H: Yes. 

T: Was that a while ago they offered or was that something that happened more recently?

H: I’ve known about it for five years, six years.   

T: Have you taken advantage of anything they’ve offered?

H: No.

T: But at least they’ve made you know, Mr. Brick, we have this available if you want to.

H: Yes.  And I know they have weekly sessions.  I don’t know why, why I took a rain check on that.  I don’t know. 

T: Has the VA helped you with physical maladies like your feet?  I don’t know if they can do much for your feet.

H: No.  They haven’t done anything for my feet.  But all my physical defects that I got they’re helping with.

T: So when it comes to like your cataract surgery, is that something the VA takes care of for you?

H: Yes.  They take care of all my medical needs.

T: How would you rate the care from the VA over the time that you’ve been getting it from them? 

H: I can’t find any fault with it at all.

T: And you use the Minneapolis VA here?

H: Yes.

T: Thinking about when you were working for the Postal Service here in St. Paul.

H: Yes.

T: A number of ex-POWs that I’ve talked to worked for the Postal Service in St. Paul.  Is that something that you were aware of when you worked all those years for them, that you had co-workers who were ex-POWs?

H: I knew some of them, but at the same time there’s others that I didn’t find out that they were a prisoner of war until after they had retired.  They weren’t any different than I was.  I mean…

T: Did your coworkers know about you?

H: Ah…I’d say after I’d been working there about twenty years.  Before that no one knew.  I preferred to keep it to myself.  I didn’t see why they should know. 

T: And even though you knew about other guys, some of them anyway?

H: Well, some of them…I mean like I can imagine when Harold “Snuff” Kurvers…him, everybody knew. 

T: Yes.  He was a POW  of the Japanese, captured in 1942.  So it took you a while in other words to feel comfortable enough to tell anybody really, and it sounds like in the last years since you’ve been involved with the American ex-POWs it’s really been different for you.

H: Yes.  That’s really made a difference.

T: A positive difference it sounds like.   The last question I have for you is, thinking in a larger sense, how would you describe really the most important way that being a POW, that experience, changed your life?

H: Again, that’s hard to say.  I know in later life now it’s changed me.  Changed my life because, as a result of the POW experience, I have the medical attention at the VA which I wouldn’t have otherwise.

T: So a real tangible thing.

H: Yes.

T: Do you think, was the Harold Brick that arrived back in the United States in mid-1945 in any ways different that the guy who went over there?

H: Yes.  Different.

T: How would you describe that difference?

H: Ah…I was harder.

T You mean just more…how do we say, a tougher demeanor in a way?

H: Yes.  That way. 

T: Some guys have said they felt they aged in a very short period of time.

H: No.  I didn’t think I aged all that much.  I was very much wiser.

T: In a positive way?  Something that helped you later on?

H: That went both ways.  I mean on being wiser because….some of the ways I chose to go were not good for anybody.

T: You mean when you got out of the service?

H: Yes.

T: I noticed.  That period between 1945 and the early 50s, what did you do with yourself?

H: Well, for one thing I found a lot of occasions to drink.

T: Is that something that was a different part of your character than before you had gone overseas?

H: Yes.

T: Talk about that.  Did you find a hard time adjusting to really what was  …to being out of the service and coming to terms with things?  How would you explain that?

H: I just felt it was the thing for me to do I guess.

T: Did that go on for a while, Mr. Brick?

H: It went on for some time.  Yes.

T: And were you living at home at that time again?

H: Yes.

T: So your folks…would you say your folks noticed a different Harold Brick living in their  house?

H: They didn’t say so but I’m sure that they did.  They probably knew it wouldn’t have done any good. 

T: What helped you move on from that?  I mean if you were drinking a lot and having trouble adjusting.  What helped you move past that?

H: Well, I wasn’t all that stupid that I knew it could go on forever.  I gradually just weaned off of it.  I mean I still take a drink now…today.  But I mean I don’t…It’s been so long since I had one I can’t remember when I had the last drink.

T: So there was a definite shift.  You had a period where in a sense you describe it as drinking more than you would normally have and sort of coming to, or trying to figure out which direction to go, I guess, after you got out of the service?

H: Yes.  That’s about it.  I had to get my bearings.

T: Being out of the service you kind of had to at age twenty-one there make your own decisions.  Was that hard in a way, trying to figure out where to point yourself?

H: Yes.  You didn’t have anybody telling you what to do and up until that point there I mean you had somebody telling you what to do almost all hours of the day and night. 

T: Suddenly that was completely gone and you had to I guess…back with your folks had to decide when to get up, where to work.  Did you work when you were living at home at that point after the service?

H: No.  I worked on the farm then. 

T: Your folks still had the farm, didn’t they?

H: Right.

T: So in a sense there was work for you there as long as you wanted it.

H: Yes.

T: How long did you stay on the farm there with your folks after you got out of the service?

H: Until about 1951.

T: You stayed on the farm for a number of years then.

H: Yes.

T: Was that easy to readjust to being at home with your folks and working on the farm again?

H: Yes.  That part wasn’t that difficult.

T: That was work you knew I guess from before.  What happened to the farm actually when you left?  Did one of your brothers or sisters take it over?

H: My brothers took it over.  There was two of them there actually.  Then one of them got killed in a car accident and then the other one took it over and he’s since retired.   The farm is still there but he rents it out. 

T: I see.  So he still owns the land?

H: Yes.

T: That’s the last question I had really, about how you feel the POW experience changed your life.  Is there anything at this point that you feel you want to add?  If there’s something you think is important to add, this is a good place to do it.

H: Off hand I can’t think of anything right now.

T: O.K. Well, on the record, I’ll thank you very much for the interview.  I found this very enjoyable.

H: It hasn’t been that bad. (laughs) 

END OF INTERVIEW