XPost: alt.politics.liberalism, alt.society.liberalism, alt.poli   
   ics.democrats.d   
   XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, alt.politics   
   From: mars1933@hotmail.com   
      
    By Martin Brech   
      
    FORTY-FIVE years ago, I witnessed an atrocity: the deliberate   
    starvation of German POWs by our own army. History, written by the   
    victors, suppressed all news of this atrocity until James Bacque, a   
    Canadian author, published his brilliant expose, OTHER LOSSES. This   
    book is a best seller in Canada, a sensation in Europe, yet is   
    virtually unavailable (censored?) in the U.S. Our major booksellers   
    told me their distributors are not handling it. When I prevailed upon   
    a small, independent bookstore to order direct from Canada, the   
    publisher told them they would be the only store in New York State to   
    carry the book. This in 'the land of the free'?"   
      
    Fortunately, Pat Buchanan called attention to OTHER LOSSES in his   
    January 10, 1990 column. He wrote:   
      
      "Conclusion: the U.S. Army killed ten times as many Germans in POW   
    camps as we did on battlefields from Normandy to V.E. day. (German   
    POWs) had their rations cut below survival level until they were   
   dying   
    at rates up to 30% of exposure, starvation and neglect... Red Cross   
    food trains were turned back and U.S. food shipments sat on the   
    docks...One French officer said the U.S. camps reminded him of Dachau   
    and Buchenwald...The book blames Eisenhower. 'The German is a beast,'   
    Ike had written... But that was not how the Canadians and British   
    felt, who treated their prisoners justly...It was not the view of   
    General Mark Clark, nor of Patton...Ignoring the book is not enough."   
      
    Pat Buchanan's courageous column inspired me to help end the cover-up   
    of the atrocity I had witnessed. I wrote letters to several   
   newspapers   
    which were, of necessity, short and incomplete. Now I would like to   
    finally free more of my painful memories, hoping to be heard, so that   
    this will help us to acknowledge our share in the "banality of evil",   
    cleansing ourselves with the truth. Perhaps we as a nation may then   
    put this behind us with some integrity and with some hope for   
    redemption.   
      
    In October 1944, at age eighteen, I was drafted into the army while a   
    student at the NYS College of Forestry. Largely due to the "Battle of   
    the Bulge", my training was cut short, my furlough cut in half, and I   
    was then immediately sent overseas. Upon arrival in Le Havre, France,   
    we were quickly loaded into boxcars and shipped to the front. By the   
    time we reached it, I had developed mononucleosis severely enough to   
    be sent to a hospital in Belgium.   
      
    By the time I left the hospital, the unit I had trained with in   
    Spartenburg, South Carolina was so deeply into Germany that I warn   
    placed in a "repo depo" (a replacement depot) despite my protests. I   
    then lost interest in which units I was assigned to because   
   non-combat   
    units were generally not respected. My separation qualification   
   record   
    states that I served mostly with the 14th Infantry Regiment, during   
    which time I guarded prisoners of war and served as an interpreter.   
    During my seventeen month stay in Germany, I was transferred to other   
    outfits also.   
      
    In late March or early April 1945, I was assigned to help guard a POW   
    camp near Andernach along the Rhine. I had four years of high school   
    German, so I was able to talk to the prisoners, although this was   
    forbidden.   
      
    Gradually, however, I was used as an interpreter and asked to ferret   
    out the S.S. (I found none.)   
      
    In Andernach, between 50,000 and 65,000 prisoners, ranging in age   
   from   
    very young teens to very old men, were crowded together in an open   
    field surrounded by barbed wire. The women were kept in a separate   
    enclosure which I did not see until later. The men I guarded had no   
    tents or other shelter, no blankets and many had no coats. Inadequate   
    numbers of slit trenches were provided for excrement, and so the men   
    lived and slept in the mud and increasing filth during a cold, wet   
    spring. Their misery from exposure alone was evident.   
      
    It was even more shocking to see them eating grass, sometimes   
   throwing   
    it into a tin can containing a thin soup. They told me they did this   
    hoping to ease their hunger pains. Soon their emaciation was evident.   
    Dysentery raged and, too weak and crowded to reach the slit trenches,   
    they were increasingly sleeping in excrement. I saw no sign of   
    provision for water, so the thin soup was their food and water for   
   the   
    day. Some days there was bread, less than a slice each. Other days   
    there was nothing.   
      
    The sight of so many men desperate for food and water, sickening and   
    dying before our eyes, is indescribable. Even now, I can only think   
   of   
    it momentarily.   
      
    We had ample food and supplies that could have been shared more   
    humanely, and we could have offered some medical assistance, but did   
    nothing. Only the dead were quickly and efficiently taken care of:   
    hauled away to mass graves.   
      
    My outrage reached the point that I protested to my officers, but I   
    was met with hostility or bland indifference. When pressed, they   
    explained they were under strict orders from "higher up". No officer   
    would dare to systematically do this to over 50,000 prisoners if he   
    felt he was violating general policy and subject to court martial.   
   The   
    term "war criminal" was just beginning to come into fashion.   
      
    Realizing my protests were useless, I asked a friend working in the   
    kitchen if he could slip me some extra food for the prisoners. He too   
    repeated that they were under strict orders to severely ration the   
    prisoners' food, and that these orders came from "higher up". But he   
    said they had more food than they knew what to do with and would   
   sneak   
    me some.   
      
    When I threw this food over the barbed wires to the prisoners I was   
    caught and threatened with imprisonment. I repeated the "offense",   
   and   
    one officer threatened to shoot me. I naturally assumed this was a   
    bluff, but I began to have some doubts after I encountered a captain   
    on a hill above the Rhine shooting down at a group of German civilian   
    women with his .45 caliber pistol. When I asked, "Why?" he mumbled,   
    "Target practice," and fired until his pistol was empty. I saw the   
    women running for cover, but, at that distance, couldn't tell if any   
    had been hit.   
      
    This is when I more fully realized I was dealing with some cold-   
    blooded killers filled with moralistic hatred. They considered the   
    Germans sub-human and worthy of extermination; another expression of   
    the downward spiral of racism. Articles in the G.I. newspaper, Stars   
   &   
    Stripes, played up the Nazi concentration camps, complete with   
    photographs of emaciated bodies; this amplified our self-righteous   
    cruelty and made it easier to imitate behavior we were supposed to   
    oppose. Also, I think, soldiers not exposed to combat were trying to   
    prove how tough they were by taking it out on the prisoners and   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)