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NEW YEAR'S DAY, 1946
As I sit here, the rain is falling outside, attacking the dirty snow drifts and driving them into the muddy ground; but I am warm and dry, in a comfortable room all of my own that I needn't share with anyone. A few hours ago the turkey and cranberry sauce and "fixin's" that go with an American New Year's dinner were on the table and I was indulging my appetite for as long a time as I wished, with no restrictions except those imposed by my own judgment. From the phonograph comes my favorite music. The war is over and I am home.
Last New Year's Day, also, it rained. Twenty of us, prisoners of war, sat around in our damp, drafty room in the barracks at Barth, Germany, thinking and talking disconsolately of the past and future, and trying to forget the ever-present emptiness of our stomachs, trying to forget that turkey with "fxin's" is the proper menu for a New Year's Day dinner, and not black bread and potatoes. I remember that in the afternoon Henry Kaczorowski and I walked in the drizzle over to Tom Davis' room to wish him a Happy New Year. That room too was full of men silently sitting in their worn, greasy clothing, resolutely ignoring the cold and hunger.
The main trouble with us was that the hunger we all felt went deeper than empty bellies, impossible to ignore. Looking at them, you could no longer tell, but some of these men had been there for two years, and some for three.
The fact that at that time I had been with them for only four months made no day was a lifetime. No, the trouble was that we were not freemen. We were penned up like pigs, at the mercy of other factors than our own conscience and free will. Perhaps, when you come to think of it, we were the only Americans who knew exactly how the Poles and Czechs and French felt, and why it was that they fought so unceasingly to throw off their dictators. And I am sure we realized with a silent prayer of thanksgiving that our own nation had never, since its first freedom, been under the yoke of bondage, and that, with the help of God, it never would be.
As the hunger went on it became even more personal, much more than just a yearning for food. It went on to remind us of our homes and families, of the familiar streets of our home towns, of the things we knew were there right at the moment, of the friends and loves who were living that very second, and yet all so far away. Many times I found myself able to close my eyes and, by a concentration of imagination, take a mental journey home to see my family and friends living and moving in the old, well-loved surroundings, so removed from the bare existence that I was enduring. Now the pendulum has swung.
I am here, safely home again, and my memories take me back to dismal rows of ramshackle barracks within a barbed palisade, to a group of queerly-clad. emaciated, but quietly determined men. I suppose that those men, most of them, are now back in homes like this one of mine, warm and comfortable, looking back at last New Year's Day and smiling reminiscently. I wonder if many of them feel as I do, if the same questions are in their minds as in mine.
While we were prisoners, time seemed to stand still. Weary and disillusioned as we were, America was to us a land of dreams come true. Our old haunts and habits and pleasures seemed to be waiting for us in a state, so to speak, of suspended animation. Of course we should have known that it really couldn't be that way.
When we finally got back home we found that a lot of things had changed. Most of all, when we came back there was forced upon us a realization that so many of our countrymen do not fully know, as we do, just how fortunate and blessed they are to have all the things they do have here in this land of freedom and opportunity. We realized that, after all, experience is the only real teacher and that while Americans may have the knowledge that in many respects they constitute the greatest nation on earth, that they are head and shoulders above the rest of the world in creature comforts, in material possessions, in technical achievement and advancement, still they are hesitant, dissatisfied, and full of complaints. It is hard for Europeans to understand this facet of American character, and it is hard also for us-ex-prisoners of war-to understand.
When I got back to the United States and had begun to settle down a bit after the high tension and excitement of traveling homeward and seeing again so many almost-forgotten people and places; as I began reading the newspapers and listening to the radio again, a slow amazement built itself up in my mind.
"What's the matter?" I asked myself wonderingly. "Don't people here in this country know that they are living in a world apart; that in every way they are eating better, living better than the rest of the world for many years can hope to do? Don't they appreciate the fact that if they were in Europe, instead of struggling to get the best seat in some movie house, they would be standing in line and fighting to buy an extra loaf of bread for their families? Instead of worrying about tires and new cars, over there they would simply be walking, never even thinking about owning a car of their own."
There might very well be an honest counting of blessings in these United States of America. There must be if we are to understand and work in harmony with the people of other nations, because our aims are entirely different. When we hear the time-worn excuses European aggressors have given throughout the years, the oft-repeated assertion that the people need "more land and more food," the reaction of the average American seems to be: "Ah-h, don't try to pull that old stuff – do you think we're dumb enough not to see through such a flimsy story as that?" The stark truth is that they do need more land and more food. We here have heard so many times the statement that our country is "a land of plenty" that the phrase and the fact have lost their significance. The problem of mere existence has not troubled us since early colonial days. But in Europe it is quite otherwise. There the question is not "Can we afford a new car this year?" but "Can we afford to live another year?" And the needs of the less prosperous nations are so desperate that dictators will always, so long as no permanent remedy is applied, be able to obtain supremacy by promising the solution of this one question.
I can find only one answer to the way in which many of my countrymen seem to ignore this phase of the world situation, perhaps they don't want to know. They prefer to slide back into a day-by-day living, an unjustified optimism about the future, a hoping against reality; the sort of thing that prevailed before this bitter war began. Most of all, they don't feel like buckling down to the renewed endeavors that could quickly bring the lasting peace and security they, at present, vaguely hope will come about through some miracle of statesmanship. It appears to me that in all this they are shirking a God-given responsibility. I have been back from Europe for only six months, and out of the Army for three, and already I can sense the numbing anesthesia of living in entirely different and comfortable surroundings, and of simply having enough to eat. In thinking back to my life in a Nazi prison camp, I say to myself: "Can that really have been me? Is it possible that things were really like that?"
It is growing a little difficult for me, even after being a part of the misery of Europe, to believe that such conditions actually exist and that any human being, in any part of the world, is forced to spend his days in hunger and physical discomfort. I know therefore that it is hard for people here in the United States to visualize, vicariously, the general want and poverty of less fortunate nations. But we, who are so bountifully supplied with material comforts, must come to such a realization, and be willing to share a little of these advantages we enjoy with those who have nothing.
Instead of searching and striving for new luxuries and new amusements, Americans had better resolve to turn their creative ability and their rich resources to making this whole world a place wherein the peace we want can settle permanently. Otherwise that abiding peace will never materialize.
Yes, I am wondering if other repatriated prisoners of war feel as I do. If they, too, wonder whether the personal worries we used to have about food, shelter and safety have merely been traded, now that we are home again, for doubts about the permanence of the victory we helped to bring and about the motives of those who pose as peacemakers.
If they do, those hundred thousand other ex-prisoners of war, then I am sure they find, as I do, that you can't think about it too long. They, and I, have been apprehensive and fearful too long, about too many things. The mind closes, ostrich like, and I revel in the sheer pleasure of being back where I thought I would never be again, seeing faces I never hoped to see. God has been good and my trust in Him has become complete. Only through His help can the world be saved – may He have mercy on us all.
He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall
abide under the shadow of the Almighty.
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VACATION
WITH PAY:
Being an account of my story of
The German Rest Camp for Tired Allied Airmen at beautiful
Barth-on-the-Baltic
By
ALAN H. NEWCOMB -
DESTINY PUBLISHERS -
HAVERHILL … MASS. 1947