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German POW
Last updated on Thursday, January 02, 2003
German POW
Coincidences many times show us how connected our world really is. For example, "Ask Us" is a feature of Southern New Mexico Online to answer questions people have about New Mexico. Recently, an artist from Corrales, NM, sent an email of his experience in an art gallery in Kassel, Germany where he had an exhibit. During the opening, he relates, an elderly, shy man asked if he knew about Roswell, New Mexico. At first the artist thought he was referring to the UFO Incident but he hadn't even heard about it. Instead he was referring to being a WWII prisoner of war near Roswell. He explained he had never seen the town because he worked in the cotton fields south of town but it identified where he was held. When he left the gallery, he whispered, "Roswell," said the artist.
This Corrales artist requested that information about Roswell be sent to give "this gentleman a great pleasure," and sent the address of the former POW. Emails are the only way we usually answer but in this instance, how could one resist not complying with the request? So into the U. S. postal service went a current Roswell magazine, with the copy of a photo of Camp Orchard, and a copy of my article about the Piece of the Berlin Wall that is located in the POW/MIA vest pocket park at 10th and Pennsylvania Streets.
This information obviously gave the former POW pleasure. He hand wrote a four page letter of appreciation in which he reminisces. Arriving at Camp Orchard in October 1944 and only 18 at the time, he was there until probably March or April of the following year. Then he was sent to a camp in Tennessee. He quotes from the text of the article about Camp Orchard: "conditions were favorable." He confirms that fact and said "compared to others I have experienced 'very favorable.'"
He continues relating the pictures deeply rooted in his memories. "When sitting in a compartment of a train to New Mexico - after all the troubles, the mud and dirt, irregularity, these terrible moments of being hungry and/or thirsty...now this comfort, these regular meals served, it was like a dream; impossible to convey to somebody else...this turmoil of feelings, thoughts, memories; sometimes with the voice of thankfulness 'I have survived.'...It is real, no dream, I'm sitting in a train to New Mexico." He says he knew they would meet other prisoners captured in the North African Campaign.
Every morning the trucks took the prisoners to the cotton fields. He answers his own question of whether picking cotton is a boring job by saying it is not if you are in close contact with a friend working one or two rows nearby.
He expresses his gratitude for the library at the camp because he read Lao Tse. "I copied the wise man's words on toilet paper...all the 81 sentences or only a part of them..I had Lao Tse's wisdom every night under my pillow...I have never forgotten the way this Chinese, wise man, philosopher, 600 years before Jesus Christ, looked at life, explained, saw our reality."
The other book he read was on the philosophy of history. In school, he had dreamed of studying history. "Now, after months and months without reading, starting to read again was like becoming conscious of a new form of a life of richness. A fact," he says, "that can't be conveyed to an 18 year old of today."
He remembers a film on Chopin that was presented as well as a concert. Since this happened 57/58 years ago, he includes a disclaimer that his memory may not be accurate that these happened in Roswell. He is certain, however, of the memory of copying the book on toilet paper as well as working in the cotton fields.
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