Letters to the Editor

We are always pleased to have letters to the editor because this shows that people are reading our Journal seriously. However, due to space limitations, we ask that letters be kept under 500 words.

To the Editor:

It was with great personal interest that I read Matthias Reiss's article "Bronzed Bodies Behind Barbed Wire" in the April 2005 issue. It took me back to 1943, my childhood and the German POWs in the Chicago Suburbs.

Sometime in the summer of 1943, we boys heard that POWs from the vaunted Afrika Corps were now in a POW camp in the former CCC camp in Thornton Woods. This immediately prompted a bicycle expedition to go see the POWs. We rode a motley assembly of bikes (mine was a homemade bike salvaged from the alleys and had 24" and 26" wheels that my Dad had made) the seven miles or so to the camp. The Army guards promptly turned us away but one stopped us as we rode off and told us if we wanted to see the POWs we should be on Cottage Grove Ave. south of South Holland, IL (the actual locale of Edna Ferber's book So Big) before 7A.M. So the next morning we were out there on the side of Cottage Grove as the POWs approached. There was a GI guard carrying a shotgun with bayonet at the front and rear of each group of POWs with the group being about 100 in number. The first guard barked at us to get off the road and stand back in the farm field. The Germans marched by mostly silently in perfect military formation. Several glared at us while several said "Guten Morgen" or "Guten Tag". We noticed that they were very robust physically and quite tanned. Several had their shirts off and you could see that they were pretty muscular. They were all off to work in the South Holland area vegetable and produce farms.

Periodically that summer and that of 1944 and 1945 we would bike out to see the POWs early in the morning. As time passed more and more of the POW spoke to us as they passed in both German and English with English becoming more prominent as time passed. Sometime in the late spring of 1946, we heard the POW camp had closed which prompted another bike trip. This time we were able to get inside the now deserted camp and proceeded to scavenge all sorts of interesting things to 9 and 10 year olds which did not exactly please our mothers later in the day!

One memory of that time I still have is that the German POWs seemed more robust physically than the older teen age Americans who had not yet been drafted. Upon reading Reiss's article, I was prompted to get out my father's, mother's, his and her brother's and sister's high school year books dating from 1932 through 1939. In looking at the photos of the boys on the athletic teams such as track and swimming, I noted that most of them were on the scrawny side physically compared to what I recalled the POWs looked like. Then I recalled reading a book about the WWII Draft (title unknown) that had said that approximately 1/3 of draft age young Americans could not pass the induction physical in all probability due to the poor diet most had during the depression. No wonder the Government started the school milk program while I was in grade school. I guess they anticipated needing healthier cannon fodder for the future!

Thomas Pearson

Hickory Hills, Illinois

To the Editor:

Dale Andrade's review of Vietnam Chronicles by Lewis Sorley (JMH 69 [July 2005]: 891–94) exposes a perception of the Vietnam War totally inconsistent with either the facts or my own experience in and understanding of that affair. it is a seriously flawed commentary on a seriously important book.

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