POW No. 92991: The Story Of A Reading Native's Survival In World War II

Friday June 3, 2016 12:01 AM

By Ron Devlin

WEST LAWN, PA

Seated at the dining room table of his West Lawn home, 97-year-old Kenneth A. Schaeffer takes the top off of a tiny white box.

Removing its contents, he carefully unfolds a white silk cloth imprinted with a map of Europe.

As a staff sergeant in charge of a heavily armed mobile half-track in World War II, Schaeffer was issued the map and a compass the size of a dime. Known as escape and evasion maps, they were issued to GIs in case they were captured or stranded behind enemy lines. They were imprinted on silk to avoid the rustle of a paper map, which might give away a GI in hiding.

Schaeffer concealed his map in the lining of his combat jacket and sewed the compass in the webbing of a jacket pocket. "By dumb luck," Schaeffer says, "the Germans never found them when I was captured."

Seventy-one years later, Schaeffer treasures the silk map and compass as symbols of having survived seven months in POW camps in Germany and Poland in the winter of 1944-45, one of the coldest Europe had ever endured.

With the silk map draped over a shadow box containing a Bronze Star, POW Medal and a half-dozen other decorations, Schaeffer told a POW's story.

Becoming a POW

Landing on Utah Beach on July 13, 1944, a little more than a month after D-Day, Army Co. A, 10th Armored Infantry Battalion fought behind enemy lines much of the time as it headed toward the German border.

In September, Schaeffer's unit came in contact with elements of the German Fifth Panzer Army at Arracourt in Lorraine, France.

Amid fierce fighting, Schaeffer's squad was ordered to assume a defensive position atop Hill 265 near Rechicourt, France.

"All through the night, we could hear the sound of heavy German tanks moving into position," he recalls. "We knew we were going to get hit in the morning."

Schaeffer pleaded with battalion headquarters for artillery support and air cover, but none was available.

"At 3 a.m., a lieutenant came to tell us they were going to come right through us," he says. "In morning, he warned, look out."

That officer was 1st Lt. James H. Fields, who would be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for gallantry in the ensuing battle on Sept. 27, 1944.

At dawn, Schaeffer and his 12-man crew found themselves amid a German attack. So intense was the fire, he got off only one rifle shot before hunkering down in a slit trench. Next thing he knew, a Panzer tank was above the trench and a German soldier ordered him out.

"I came out," he recalls, "with my hands up."

Forced march and maggot soup

In freezing weather, hundreds of American POWs were assembled in a field and told to strip naked.

"We didn't know whether they were going to massacre us or what," Schaeffer recalls. "They searched our clothing and gave it back to us."

Marched through German towns, the captives were warned to stay close together and not say they were aviators or their lives would be in danger. Townspeople tolerated ground soldiers, but hated aviators because of intensive Allied bombing.

At Saarbrucken, after a week's forced march with no food, the POWs were loaded in so-called '40-and-8' rail cars. Originally, the cars were designed to carry 40 troops and eight horses, thus the designation.

With 50 POWs jammed in, there was little room to sit. So tight were the quarters, men were passed overhead from one end of the car to use the urinal can at the other, Schaeffer says.

He tried to worm a hole in the wooden floor with a pen knife, but was unsuccessful in escaping.

At Stalag 12-A, a camp for enlisted men in Limburg, Germany, Schaeffer was issued POW No. 92991.

POWs were housed in three circus tents. There were no bunks, cots, heat or blankets. Schaeffer got his first meal in captivity, a cup of barley and potato soup with a little horse meat.

"And, oh yes, some other ingredients - maggots," he recalls. "Needless to say, all the soup was devoured."

Toilet facilities were atrocious, and Schaeffer wasn't the only soldier to contract dysentery. Weakened, he fainted at the door to the camp infirmary and awoke in a bed the next day. Sgt. Van Ee, nicknamed "Ike," checked on him as he lay there for a week.

Saw dust bread and liberation

Conditions were somewhat better at Stalag 3-C in Kustrin, about 50 miles from Berlin, where Schaeffer was sent in late 1944.

About 2,000 Americans, including many from the Battle of the Bulge, were imprisoned in 15 buildings.

As Schaeffer recalls it, there were about 50 men to a building. The pot belly stove was lighted for one hour at night. Each man was issued a blanket. There was no privy and no running water.

"We were so cold," he recalls, "the only thing that kept us warm was our body heat."

As for food, one loaf of bread had to be divided among seven men. The bread, 50 percent saw dust, was so moist POWs toasted it on the pot belly stove.

When Red Cross packages with meat, plum pudding and candy arrived, some men got sick because they hadn't eaten such rich food in months. Schaeffer used cigarettes to barter with guards for more bread.

In January 1945, when a formation of B-17s flew over the camp, the POWs looked skyward and cheered. Schaeffer described it in a card to his sister in Reading, but later would find the Germans had censored it.

With Russian troops approaching, the Germans moved POWs out of the camp in heavy snow. When the column was fired on from the air, Schaeffer and others escaped.

"While I was running, there was small arms fire and many POWs were dropping," he recalls. "I finally reached a farmhouse and, to my amazement, there were other POWs in the cellar."

Schaeffer hid in the cellar with the German family's three young daughters, who were hidden for fear of being molested. When Schaeffer and others left the next day, they took the girls with them at the family's request.

A bumpy road to Odessa

Schaeffer doesn't remember how long he traveled, where he slept or what he ate after leaving the farmhouse.

"Time to me was a blank," he says.

One thing he'll never forget, though, was finding a family hanging from the rafters of a barn where he sought refuge somewhere near Germany's border with Poland. Who hanged them, or why, remains an unanswered question.

Taken captive by Russians, Schaeffer and others were lined up against a barn and faced a firing squad. "We're Amerikaners," they pleaded. A soldier named Jones had an American flag patch on his uniform, and the Russians let the group go.

The fleeing POWs asked a Russian soldier for a ride in his truck. He agreed, but before leaving pulled out a five-gallon can. Instead of gas, it contained vodka.

A teetotaler, Schaeffer downed a shot to please his host. It was awful stuff, he recalls, but his buddies drank their share and his.

With two others, Schaeffer managed to get onto an old mail train packed with refugees. In the middle of the night, the train stopped and the box car doors opened. A young girl who gave birth to a baby on a flat car was put aboard.

"The next morning, the train stopped and she was left off in what looked like a cow pasture," he recalls. "She walked up the hill, unassisted."

The three made it to a Red Cross shelter in Lodz, Poland, in February 1945. Sgt. Clarence Schaeff of Ohio shaved his beard, which had grown to his belt line while in captivity. They got their first warm meal in months, and slept for more than 24 hours.

Heading for Warsaw, they saw people living in hillside craters created by intensive bombing.

Making it to Odessa, they turned themselves over to Russian authorities. Schaeffer would have his first shower in seven months. Their clothing had to be steam cleaned to remove dirt, grime and who knows what else.

Boarding an American ship in Odessa, Schaeffer went to Marseilles and across the Atlantic Ocean to Camp Miles Standish in Boston, from which he had departed three years and two months earlier.

He called home to his parents, Harry and Charlotte Schaeffer in Reading. His older brother, George Schaeffer, came to the phone.

"George, this is Ken, I'll be home tomorrow," said Schaeffer, who was 26. "I'm still whole. I'm OK."

After the war

Kenneth Schaeffer, the youngest of 10 children, went back to East Stroudsburg State Teachers College after the war. He was a junior there when he enlisted on Feb. 15, 1942.

Before the war, he'd been captain of East Stroudsburg's football team, an honor he held at Reading High as well. He earned a degree in history, but taught only briefly in Reading schools.

On June 22, 1946 - 70 years ago this month - Schaeffer married his sweetheart, Miriam Gehris, in First United Methodist Church in Reading.

Schaeffer studied physical therapy at the Medical College of Virginia and worked for 34 years at Jersey Shore Medical Center in Neptune, N.J. In 1990, he and Miriam moved to Whitfield, Spring Township, to care for family members.

Thinking back on World War II, Schaeffer grieves for all the friends he lost.

"I was fortunate to have survived," he says. "I guess the good Lord was watching over me."

Contact Ron Devlin: 610-371-5030 or rdevlin@readingeagle.com.

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Kenneth A Schaeffer