Work Commando 311/I

Work Commando 311/I PDF Author: Claire E. Swedberg
Publisher: Stackpole Books
ISBN: 0811766810
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 226

Get Book

Book Description
Private Dan Jones was captured by Nazi sergeants in a smoke-filled forest in Holland. He and a small group of American prisoners, mostly paratroopers from the 101st and 82nd Airborne, were taken to the squalid barn loft that was to be their home for the rest of the war. In the Work Commando 311/I, Nazis forced them to work as slave laborers, repairing and maintaining German railroads that had been damaged by Allied bombs. The ill, weary prisoners, once proud members of elite U.S. fighting units, suffered unaccustomed disgrace. Bickering over the meager food supply added to their anxious depression and hopelessness. Tired of the men’s morose outlook and individualistic ways, Herbert Marlowe, their unofficial leader, held a meeting one evening in the barn loft. Marlow explained that their infighting and irritability were not only keeping their spirits low by also amusing the Germans. He encouraged the prisoners to retaliate against their captors in careful, nonthreatening ways. Jones suggested that they work slowly, looking busy while accomplishing little. Then all the men began to contribute schemes to steal bread, turnips, beets, and coal. A glimmer of hope and a feeling of comradeship made their wretched situation more bearable. Soon they were working together to confound the Nazis in every way possible, and some prisoners even attempted escape. Survival was the captives’ goal, and along the way they suffered sadistic guards, hostile civilians, bitter cold, loneliness, malnutrition, and illness. Work Commando 311/I follows their terrible, exciting story—told through the combined recollections of the survivors—from their early combat experiences to the Allied triumph at the end of World War II.

Work Commando 311/I

Work Commando 311/I PDF Author: Claire E. Swedberg
Publisher: Stackpole Books
ISBN: 0811766810
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 226

Get Book

Book Description
Private Dan Jones was captured by Nazi sergeants in a smoke-filled forest in Holland. He and a small group of American prisoners, mostly paratroopers from the 101st and 82nd Airborne, were taken to the squalid barn loft that was to be their home for the rest of the war. In the Work Commando 311/I, Nazis forced them to work as slave laborers, repairing and maintaining German railroads that had been damaged by Allied bombs. The ill, weary prisoners, once proud members of elite U.S. fighting units, suffered unaccustomed disgrace. Bickering over the meager food supply added to their anxious depression and hopelessness. Tired of the men’s morose outlook and individualistic ways, Herbert Marlowe, their unofficial leader, held a meeting one evening in the barn loft. Marlow explained that their infighting and irritability were not only keeping their spirits low by also amusing the Germans. He encouraged the prisoners to retaliate against their captors in careful, nonthreatening ways. Jones suggested that they work slowly, looking busy while accomplishing little. Then all the men began to contribute schemes to steal bread, turnips, beets, and coal. A glimmer of hope and a feeling of comradeship made their wretched situation more bearable. Soon they were working together to confound the Nazis in every way possible, and some prisoners even attempted escape. Survival was the captives’ goal, and along the way they suffered sadistic guards, hostile civilians, bitter cold, loneliness, malnutrition, and illness. Work Commando 311/I follows their terrible, exciting story—told through the combined recollections of the survivors—from their early combat experiences to the Allied triumph at the end of World War II.

Army History

Army History PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Military history
Languages : en
Pages : 352

Get Book

Book Description


The American P.O.W. experience

The American P.O.W. experience PDF Author:
Publisher: DIANE Publishing
ISBN: 1428990542
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 85

Get Book

Book Description


Special Bibliography Series

Special Bibliography Series PDF Author: United States Air Force Academy. Library
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Bibliography
Languages : en
Pages : 90

Get Book

Book Description


Special Bibliography Series

Special Bibliography Series PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Bibliography
Languages : en
Pages : 308

Get Book

Book Description


In Enemy Hands

In Enemy Hands PDF Author: Claire E. Swedberg
Publisher: Stackpole Books
ISBN: 9780811709002
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 328

Get Book

Book Description
Provides personal accounts of what life was like in German prisoner of war camps during World War II.

American Prisoners of War in German Death, Concentration, and Slave Labor Camps

American Prisoners of War in German Death, Concentration, and Slave Labor Camps PDF Author: Daniel B. Drooz
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Concentration camp inmates
Languages : en
Pages : 380

Get Book

Book Description
Using 16 personal interviews, government documents from Germany and the US, this work explores the experience of American POWs who were held in German concentration, death, and slave labour camps. It provides accounts that document the presence of American POWs in these camps.

The Egyptian Strategy for the Yom Kippur War

The Egyptian Strategy for the Yom Kippur War PDF Author: Dani Asher
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786454008
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 287

Get Book

Book Description
This volume examines the military strategy and issues that Egyptian war planners faced during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Of major interest is the relationship between the political and military leaders and how that affected the buildup and course of the conflict. Taking this as a starting place, the author concentrates on how Soviet military doctrinal changes presented themselves between the conclusion of the Six-Day War and the Yom Kippur War.

Whitaker's Books in Print

Whitaker's Books in Print PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Bibliography, National
Languages : en
Pages : 3116

Get Book

Book Description


The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945, Volume IV

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945, Volume IV PDF Author: Geoffrey P. Megargee
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253060915
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1701

Get Book

Book Description
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945, Volume IV aims to provide as much basic information as possible about individual camps and other detention facilities. Why were they established? Who ran them? What kinds of prisoners did they hold? What kinds of work did the prisoners do, and for whom? What were the conditions like? The entries detail the sources from which the authors drew their material, so future scholars can expand upon the work. Finally, and perhaps most important, this is a work of memorialization: it preserves the histories of places where people suffered and died. Volume IV examines an under-researched segment of the larger Nazi incarceration system: camps and other detention facilities under the direct control of the German military, the Wehrmacht. These include prisoner of war (POW) camps (including camps for enlisted men, camps for officers, camps for naval personnel and airmen, and transit camps), civilian internment and labor camps, work camps for Tunisian Jews, brothels in which women were forced to have sex with soldiers, and prisons and penal camps for Wehrmacht personnel. Most of these sites have not been described in detail in the existing historical literature, and a substantial number of them have never been documented at all. The volume also includes an introduction to the German prisoner of war camp system and its evolution, introductions to each of the various types of camps operated by the Wehrmacht, and entries devoted to each individual camp, representing the most comprehensive documentation to date of the Wehrmacht camp system. Within the entries, the volume draws upon German military documents, eyewitness and survivor testimony, and postwar investigations to describe the experiences of prisoners of war and civilian prisoners held captive by the Wehrmacht. Of particular note is the detailed documentation of the Wehrmacht's crimes against Soviet prisoners of war, which have largely been neglected in the English-language literature up to this point, despite the fact that more than three million Soviet prisoners died in German captivity. The volume also provides substantial coverage of the diverse range of conditions encountered by other Allied prisoners of war, illustrating both the substantial privations faced by all prisoners of war and the stark contrast between the Germans' treatment of Soviet prisoners and those of other nationalities. The volume also details the significant involvement of the Wehrmacht in crimes against the civilian populations of occupied Europe and North Africa. As a result, this volume not only brings to light many detention sites whose existence has been little known, but also advances the decades-old process of dismantling the myth of the "clean Wehrmacht," according to which the German military had nothing to do with the Holocaust and the Nazi regime's other crimes.