Dad's WWII POW Experience Shared This Father's Day

Dad and Mom immigrated to Milwaukee, WI in the U.S. in the early 1950’s from post-WWII Europe. This Father’s Day salute is a brief summary of some of Dad’s WWII experiences.Dad grew up on a small farm in a mountainous part of Yugoslavia known as Serbia. Living just north of Greece, many Serbs share similar features with the Greeks. The dark hair and eyes are typical, and father is no exception. Born in 1918 the youngest boy of eighteen children, he left school after the third grade since the family could afford to educate only their oldest son. Sometimes he farmed and sometimes he tended sheep.

He served in the Yugoslavian army, which surrendered to the Nazis on April 17, 1941. He was twenty-three when the Nazis occupied his homeland and marched him many miles to the POW camp in Bulgaria in his ill-fitting uniform and shoes. To this day he has trouble with his feet.

They then transferred him by train to a POW camp nearly fifty miles north of Hamburg in Germany on a rural peninsula between the North and Baltic Seas. The POWs came from Yugoslavia, Belgium and France to work the farms during the day in place of the German farmers gone to war, and at night they slept at the POW camp. Dad always loved gardening and the outdoors, so, under the circumstances, he was relieved to be working the land. Still wearing his Yugoslavian army uniform, he walked to and from the farm daily.

Though he never discussed the details, one wonders what it was like, being taken prisoner, then marching for extended periods to a foreign country and then being taken by train far north to a country with different customs and a completely different language. Serbian is not a Germanic language; it is similar to Russian or Polish. Having only a third grade education had to make the changes harder. But he learned to speak German, though it is broken, like his English.

The first farmer he worked for was mean-spirited and, according to my father, would “hit” him. One day, when he returned from his day’s work, one of the German guards noticed something, and questioned him about it. Maybe the guard saw some physical marks and asked, “Is the farmer hitting you?” He confirmed the mistreatment. The guard found this treatment unacceptable and denied the farmer this extra help. The guard promised to send him to a nice farmer instead and advised him that if anyone were to hit him again, he was to report it to the guard immediately. It was a longer walk to that farm, but this farmer proved to be very kind.

This farmer provided him with a bicycle to make the daily trip easier. His shoes wore out, so the prison camp issued him wooden shoes. But the farmer said it was not possible to work a farm in wooden shoes, so the farmer bought him a proper pair of shoes. The law said that German families must not eat meals with prisoners. So my father ate in the kitchen with a prisoner from Belgium while the family ate in the dining room. However, the family provided them with the same food. During the war the farmers ate better than anyone.

Over four years later when the war ended, Dad found himself in the British sector and went to Lubeck to register with the Yugoslavian consulate. Consulates established for every nationality were there to speak with their displaced soldiers in Germany. The Yugoslavian consulate informed Dad that his country was now communist. Though some Yugoslavian soldiers returned home, he was not willing to live in a communist country. The British Army offered him the option of enlisting with them. His third option was to wait for the government to relocate him and he would not have to work during that time, just wait. He chose the British army.

They measured their new recruit and issued him a uniform, apologizing that his shirt was too large. They assured him that he would have to wear it only until the proper size arrived. Dad said the shirt was fine. However, the British insisted that they would issue him a properly fitted shirt. He was profoundly impressed.

Dad choked up when he recounted, “I thought, ‘What kind of people are these? They care about me! They think I am important enough to have my clothes fit.” And, in time, he came to learn that these were the common attitudes of both the British and the Americans.

Dad was stationed in Germany for the next six years as a member of the British army. This article is a salute to his sacrifices and his quest for freedom.

An interesting and entertaining sequence of events followed as Dad met and married Mom, and then immigrated to the U.S. with the adventure and culture shock that ensues. Details are found in the book In Search of a Childhood Song Buried Memories My German Mother’s Girlhood Escape From Communism by Vera Miller.